Brian W Aldiss - Billion Year Spree

Billion Year Spree by Brian W. Aldiss

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A hugely important work. Brian began the process of pulling together the history of SF which, required a level of analysis and categorisation that we take for granted today. He defines the early literary strands that grow, thicken and mutate into the genre, going up to 1973 in my edition. His reasoning behind his narrative is clear and his coverage of inputs to the genre is fairly comprehensive. I might weight some of those early inputs differently but this is only a matter of degree.
In the intervening years, SF has added a couple of 90° mutations (social sub-genres and the e-pulp explosion) which may well leave the casual reader delving back into Billion Year Spree, gasping for air. Go back in time and what you know isn't yet built or written.
Analysis and categorisation still goes on in other places (e.g. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). For those of us who take the genre seriously, the work has its own reward.



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