‘They won’t… they can’t,’ Complain said. ‘Fermour’s only a fool: he doesn’t know. When these others come, Laur, they’ll understand we’ve earned freedom, a right to try life on Earth. Obviously they’re not cruel or they’d never have taken so much trouble over us. They’ll see we’d rather die there than live here.’
A startling explosion came from below them. Shards of plastic panelling blew out into the room, mingling with dead moths and smoke. Vyann and Complain looked down to see Gregg and Fermour floating away to a far corner, away from danger; the priest followed them more slowly — his cloak had been blown over his head. Another explosion sounded, tossing out more dead moths, among which live ones fluttered. Before too long, the control room would be packed with moths. With this second explosion, a rumbling began far away in the middle bowels of the ship, audible even through all the intervening doors, a rumble which, growing, seemed to express all the agony of the years. It grew louder and louder until Complain felt his body tremble with it.
Wordlessly, Vyann pointed to the outside of the ship. Fissures were appearing like stripes all across its hull. After four and a half centuries, ‘Big Dog’ was breaking up; the rumbling was its death-cry, something at once mighty and pathetic.
‘It’s the Emergency Stop!’ Fermour shouted. His voice seemed far away. ‘The moths have activated the Ultimate Emergency Stop! The ship’s splitting into its component decks!’
They could see it all. The fissures on that noble arch of back were swelling into canyons. Then the canyons were gulfs of space. Then there was no longer a ship: only eighty-four great pennies, becoming smaller, spinning away from one another, falling forever along an invisible pathway. And each penny was a deck, and each deck was now a world of its own, and each deck, with its random burden of men, animals or ponics sailed away serenely round Earth, buoyant as a cork in a fathomless sea.
This was a break there could be no mending.
‘Now they’ll have no alternative but to take us back to Earth,’ Vyann said in a tiny voice. She looked at Complain; she tried, woman-like, to guess at all the new interests that awaited them. She tried to guess at the exquisite pressures which would attend the adjustment of every ship-dweller to the sublimities of Earth. It was as if everyone was about to be born, she thought, smiling into Complain’s awakened face. He was her sort; neither of them had ever been really sure of what they wanted: so they would be most likely to find it.
About the Author
Brian Aldiss was born in 1925. During WWII he served in the Royal Signals in Burma and Sumatra. In 1948 he was demobilized and started work as an assistant in an Oxford bookshop. His first published SF story was ‘Criminal Record’ which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954.
His first SF novel was Non-Stop, published in 1958. By 1962 he had already won an award for his series of novellas collectively known as Hothouse. During the 60s he wrote some of his most famous titles: Greybeard (1964), Report on Probability A (1968) and Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (1969). The Saliva Tree (a novella published in 1965) won the Nebula for Novellas that year.
By now, Aldiss’ stylistic concerns and unconventional themes had much in common with the New Wave movement, and he was instrumental in helping obtain an Arts Council grant for New Worlds, the flagship magazine of the New Wave. He contined his prolific output throughout the 70s but achieved great acclaim in the early 80s for the three massively researched novels Helliconia Spring (1982), Helliconia Summer (1983) and Helliconia Winter (1985), the first of which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1983.
More recent writings have been either straight fiction focussing on aspects of Aldiss’ own life (such as Forgotten Life (1988)) or autobiography (Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith’s: A Writing Life (1990) and The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)). Throughout his writing career, Aldiss has been both an anthologist and critic, involved both in the Penguin Science Fiction and The Year’s Best SF Series. Both Billion Year Spree (1973) and its expanded follow-up Trillion Year Spree (1986 with David Wingrove) are considered classic surveys of SF. The latter won a Hugo in 1987. He has also contributed as a reviewer and essayist, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the Washington Post.
ALSO BY BRIAN ALDISS
Novels
The Brightfount Diaries (1955)
Non-Stop (1958)
Bow Down to Nul (1960)
The Primal Urge (1961)
The Male Response (1961)
Hothouse (1962)
The Dark Light Years (1964)
Greybeard (1964)
Earthworks (1965)
An Age (1967)
Report on Probability A (1968)
Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (1969)
The Hand-Reared Boy (1970)
A Soldier Erect (1971)
Frankenstein Unbound (1973)
The Eighty Minute Hour: A Space Opera (1974)
The Malacia Tapestry (1976)
Brothers of the Head (1977)
A Rude Awakening (1978)
Enemies of the System: A Tale of Homo Uniformis (1978)
Moreau’s Other Island (1980)
Life in the West (1980)
Helliconia Spring (1982)
Helliconia Summer (1983)
Helliconia Winter (1985)
The Year Before Yesterday (1987)
Ruins (1987)
Forgotten Life (1988)
Dracula Unbound (1991)
Remembrance Day (1993)
Somewhere East of Life (1994)
The Secret of This Book (1995)
Short Story Collections
Space, Time and Nathaniel (Presciences) (1957)
No Time Like Tomorrow (1959)
The Canopy of Time (1959)
Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (1960)
The Airs of Earth (1963)
Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1965)
The Saliva Tree and Other Strange Growths (1966)
Intangible Inc. (1969)
The Moment of Eclipse (1970)
The Book of Brian Aldiss (1972)
Last Orders and Other Stories (1977)
New Arrivals, Old Encounters (1979)
Seasons in Flight (1984)
The Magic of the Past (1987)
Best SF Stories of Brian W. Aldiss (1988)
Science Fiction Blues (1988)
A Romance of the Equator: Best Fantasy Stories (1989)
A Tupelov Too Far (1994)
Common Clay (1996)
Non Fiction
The Shape of Further Things (1970)
Billion Year Spree (1973)
Science Fiction Art (1975)
Science Fiction Art (1976)
Science Fiction as Science Fiction (1978)
This World and Nearer Ones (1979)
The Pale Shadow of Science (1985)
… And The Lurid Glare of the Comet (1986)
Trillion Year Spree (1986)
Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith’s: A Writing Life (1990)
The Detached Retina (1995)
The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)
As Editor:
Penguin Science Fiction (1961)
Best Fantasy Stories (1962)
More Penguin Science Fiction (1963)
Yet More Penguin Science Fiction (1964)
Nebula Award Stories II (1967) with Harry Harrison
Venus (1968) with Harry Harrison
The Years Best Science Fiction Series (1–9) (1968–1976) with Harry Harrison
The Astounding-Analogy Reader (Vols 1 and 2) (1972–3) with Harry Harrison
Space Opera (1974)
Space Odysseys (1975)
Evil Earths (1975)
Decade: The 1940s (1975)
Hell’s Carotographers (1975)
Galactic Empires (1976)
Decade: The 1950s (1976)
Decade: The 1960s (1977)
Perilous Planets (1978)
> The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (1986) with Sam J. Lundwall
The Book of Mini Sagas I (1985)
The Book of Mini Sagas II (1988)
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Non-Stop Page 24