Poet, playwright, critic, fiction and science-fiction writer Brian W(ilson) Aldiss was born on 18 August 1925 in Dereham, Norfolk, and is the author of more than 75 books. He was educated at Framlingham College, Suffolk, and West Buckland School, Devon, and served in the Royal Signals between 1943 and 1947.

After leaving the army Aldiss worked as a bookseller in Oxford for almost a decade, an experience which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955), a volume of short stories. His first science fiction novel, Non-Stop, was published in 1958 while he was working as literary editor of the Oxford Mail, a post he held between 1958 and 1969. His many prize-winning science fiction titles include Hothouse (1962), which won the Hugo Award, The Saliva Tree (1966), which was awarded the Nebula, and Helliconia Spring (1982), which won both the British Science Fiction Association Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He edited SF Horizons: A Magazine of Criticism and Comment with his friend, the science fiction novelist Harry Harrison, and he has edited numerous anthologies, including Introducing SF: A Science Fiction Anthology (1964). He has also written science fiction criticism, most recently, The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy (1995), as well as introductions to classic novels including Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1983).

Brian Aldiss's autobiographical fiction includes The Hand-Reared Boy (1970) and A Soldier Erect (1971), and he has also written three volumes of autobiography, Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990), The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998) and When the Feast is Finished (1999). He is the author of several poetry collections, including Home Life with Cats (1992) and A Plutonian Monologue on His Wife's Death (2000).

Several of his books, including Frankenstein Unbound (filmed 1990), have been adapted for the cinema. His story, 'Supertoys Last All Summer Long', was adapted and released as the film AI in 2001. His book Jocasta (2005), is a reworking of Sophocles' classic Theban plays, Oedipus Rex and Antigone. Cultural Breaks (2006), published to coincide with his eightieth birthday, is a collection of short fictions which includes commentaries on his work by his peers. His latest novel is Harm (2007).

Brian Aldiss is the recipient of numerous international awards for science-fiction writing including a Kurd Lasswitz Award (Germany) and a Prix Jules Verne (Sweden). He lives in Oxford and was awarded an OBE in 20005 for Services to Literature.

Bibliography

• The Brightfount Diaries (1955)
• Space, Time and Nathaniel (1957)
• Canopy of Time (1959)
• Non-Stop (1958)
• Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (1960)
• Penguin Science Fiction: An Anthology (editor) (1961)
• The Interpreter Brown (1961)
• The Male Response Dobson (1961)
• Best Fantasy Stories (1962)
• Hothouse (1962)
• More Penguin Science Fiction: An Anthology (editor) (1963)
• The Airs of Earth (1963)
• Greybeard (1964)
• Introducing SF: A Science Fiction Anthology (1964)
• The Dark Light Years (1964)
• Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1965)
• Earthworks (1965)
• Cities and Stones: A Traveller's Jugoslavia (1966)
• The Saliva Tree, and Other Strange Growths (1966)
• An Age (1967)
• Nebula Award Stories 2 (editor with H. Harrison) (1967)
• Farewell, Fantastic Venus! (1968)
• Intangibles Inc. and Other Stories (1968)
• Report on Probability A (1968)
• The Future Makers: A Selection of Science Fiction from Brian Aldiss (1968)
• A Brian Aldiss Omnibus (1969)
• Barefoot in the Head (1969)
• The Inner Landscape (Mervyn Peake, J. G. Ballard and Brian Aldiss) (1969)
• The Hand-Reared Boy (1970)
• The Shape of Further Things (1970)
• A Soldier Erect (1971)
• Brian Aldiss Omnibus II (1971)
• The Moment of Eclipse (1971)
• Billion Year Spree (1973)
• Equator and Segregation (1973)
• Frankenstein Unbound (1973)
• The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus: An Anthology (editor) (1973)
• The Eighty-Minute Hour: A Space Opera (editor) (1974)
• Decade: the 1940s (editor with H. Harrison) (1975)
• Evil Earths (editor) (1975)
• Hell's Cartographers (1975)
• Science Fiction Art: The Fantasies of SF (editor) (1975)
• Space Odysseys: A New Look at Yesterday's Futures (editor) (1975)
• Decade: The 1950s (editor with H. Harrison) (1976)
• Galactic Empires: Volumes I and II (editor) (1976)
• The Malacia Tapestry, (1976)
• The Primal Urge (1976)
• The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 9 (editor with H. Harrison) (1976)
• Brothers of the Head (1977)
• Decade: The 1960s (editor with H. Harrison) (1977)
• Last Orders (1977)
• A Rude Awakening (1978)
• Enemies of the System (1978)
• Perilous Planets (editor) (1978)
• Science Fiction as Science Fiction (1978)
• New Arrivals, Old Encounters: Twelve Stories (1979)
• Pile: Petals from St. Klaed's Computer (1979)
• This World and Nearer Ones (1979)
• Life in the West (1980)
• Moreau's Other Island (1980)
• Farewell to a Child (Poetry) (1982)
• Helliconia Spring (1982)
• Helliconia Summer (1983)
• Science Fiction Quiz (1983)
• The Last Man/Mary Shelley (Introduction) (1983)
• Seasons in Flight (1984)
• Helliconia Winter (1985)
• My Country 'tis Not Only of Thee: A Story of the World after the Vietnam War (1986)
• The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction: An Anthology (editor with Sam J. Lundwall) (1986)
• Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (with David Wingrove) (1986)
• Cracken at Critical (1987)
• Ruins: A Novella (1987)
• Best SF Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1988)
• Forgotten Life (1988)
• A Romance of the Equator (1989)
• Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990)
• Dracula Unbound (1991)
• Home Life with Cats (poetry) (1992)
• Remembrance Day (1993)
• The Island of Dr. Moreau/H. G. Wells (editor) (1993)
• Somewhere East of Life: Another European Fantasia (1994)
• At the Caligula Hotel and Other Poems (1995)
• The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy (1995)
• The Secret of This Book (1995)
• The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)
• When the Feast is Finished (with Margaret Aldiss) (1999)
• White Mars Or, The Mind Set Free Little, (1999)
• A Plutonian Monologue on His Wife's Death (poetry) (2000)
• Art after Apogee: The Relationships between an Idea, a Story, a Painting (with Rosemary Phipps) (2000)
• Supertoys Last All Summer Long and Other Stories of Future Time (2001)
• Super-State (2002)
• Affairs at Hampden Ferrers (2004)
• Jocasta (2005)
• Sanity and the Lady (2005)
• Cultural Breaks (2006)
• Harm (2007)