Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017)

In 1982, when this book was published, I was 14, a SFF fan and reading novels written for adults. I read it then, and I remember only that I wasn't enthralled. I remember literally nothing else about the book. Fast forward to 2024. I picked up a copy at a library book sale, along with the others in the series. I knew this series is considered to be a masterpiece, and I thought that maybe it was just over my head when I read it the first time. So I decided to give it another go.

I'm not quite halfway into the book, and I'm wondering if I'm going to finish. I'm kind of amazed that 14-year-old me actually DID finish. It's an ambitious premise that Aldiss has attempted, so I give him points for that. But as a story, it's not actually very interesting. The characters feel cardboard to me. And most of them, so far, are men. Women are definitely secondary to the main narrative, and largely interchangeable. Given the time it was written, that's perhaps not surprising, but I'm just tired of reading books like this.

Also, I'm experiencing some cognitive dissonance. The planet is essentially just coming out of an ice age, the people dress in skins and use spears, and follow a hunter gatherer existence. And yet...they have metal implements. They have cloth, even thought they wear animal skins, and they have flour to make bread, meaning agriculture and some kind of mechanical means to turn grain into flour. But none of these more technological aspects are satisfactorily explained, or even alluded to beyond the product mentioned. It seems beyond the capacity of a stone age civilization. Even leaving that aside (assuming some technology left over from previous civilizations), how could you have agriculture when the ground is frozen and always covered with snow and ice? Or, how can you have a permanent town where everyone is a hunter? Hundreds of people constantly hunting in the same area is going to quickly deplete the game. Yet, all the adult males are described as hunters (if they aren't priests), and the women don't seem to do anything but bake bread with flour from *somewhere* since nobody seems to farm. And the humans don't use draft animals. And there don't seem to be any artisans. I mean, who makes all the things that aren't spears? The alien phagor that share the planet do ride the animals that they herd, and they also have metal and cloth, but are nomadic herders with no towns. Again, who weaves the cloth? Who shapes the metal? Who mines the ore? The whole milieu just seems implausible to me.

In other reviews, Aldiss is lauded for his worldbuilding and the scientific basis for Helliconia's ecology. But he hasn't put the same care into creating a believable civilization, at least so far. I mean, maybe there's an explanation for all this, but right now it just seems like Aldiss is ignoring what to me are the keystones of any civilization or society.

Haven't decided yet if I'll go any further, or read the other books.

UPDATE: Read a little bit further, investigated reviews of this book as well as others in the series, and decided to not finish. It looks like, if I don't like it that much now, my opinion isn't going to improve. Those that love it, love it. Those that don't never do.… (mais)

This was the next book in the SF Masterwork series published in 1964. Brian Aldiss was a prolific author of mainly science fiction novels as well as a critic and editor of science fiction stories. He was an English author and particularly with Greybeard follows in the tradition of other English authors of the genre: H G Wells and John Wyndham in that his books are generally well written and avoid super-hero characters. Greybeard is a dystopian novel and is set in the English home counties which lends itself to a more parochial environment.

Greybeard is 56 years old and is carrying out sentry duty around the lands of Sparscot a small community somewhere near Oxford in England. He and his wife are the youngest people in a community struggling for survival after the Accident. In the late 1960's huge atomic bombs had been tested in the earths upper atmosphere which had resulted in a shower of radiation material which caused sickness and death on all parts of the globe and affected the reproductive organs of all human beings and larger animals. There had been no children born for over 50 years. Sparscot is run as a fiefdom by a local strongman and Greybeard has lived there for 15 years, but the warlord is losing his grip and Greybeard has been preparing a boat to take him and his wife down the river Thames to the communities that are said to be surviving along the coast. The dwindling population and gradual sinking of the land has left much of the countryside battling against rising water levels. Massive lakes have formed and the natural world has quickly started to seize back control. Rodents and small mammals who have been largely unaffected have become predators of an ageing human population. There are rumours of goblins living in the woods.................

Aldiss takes the theme of an ageing population with no hope for future generations. People who have survived the aftermath of the accident and who have not succumbed to melancholia continue to fight for their lives. Religious communities have sprung up and folklore and magic is increasingly playing a role in the lives of the survivors, rumours of children being born persist.

A world of wrinkly old people slowly losing their grip on day to day life maybe a nightmare for some people and I look around at some of my friends and I can appreciate that. Aldiss takes these fears and weaves them into a story where petty squabbles and reluctance to work for the good of the community take precedence. The strength of this novel is the creation of a world, where human beings are slowly sinking into a quagmire that they have created. In many ways it seems all too believable and the gloom and melancholic atmosphere was felt particularly keenly by this older reader. It does not work so well as a road movie novel, because Greybeard hardly gets going in his bid to reach the coast. 4 stars for readers over the age of sixty.… (mais)