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1 July 2007
Brian Aldiss - Interview
"Meeting Brian W. Aldiss is always a pleasure. I caught him
in the midst of his portrait being painted and getting
ready to go off to yet another of those science fiction
conventions, where he will be adored by his fans. Life’s
not bad for a man of 82, when admiring fans demand Brian to
sign his name on their tee shirts. It’s not only his fans
who have come to his door but in the past Hollywood film
producers including Corman, Kubrick and Spielberg, asking
for permission to adapt both his general fiction and
science fiction stories. Even Britain’s Queen has awarded
him with an OBE in 2002 for his services to
literature."
By: Nicholas Newman
Before we started the interview, Brian showed me to his jungle
like back garden at his Oxfordshire village home. Brian Aldiss
calls it his ‘mystery garden’, where in the bright sunshine,
with the bubbling waterfall in the background, we discussed his
frog problem. Brain commented that ‘it had been a bad year for
frogs.’ I told him I had plenty to spare and would bring some
round for him to replenish his pond.
Working with Spielberg, Kubrick etc.
It’s amazing how many people have seen, or read, Brian’s work.
Hollywood directors Simon Channing-Williams, Roger Corman,
Stanley Kubrick and Spielberg have all adapted his tales into
films. Three notable adaptions have been Brothers of the Head,
Frankenstein Unbound and A.I. However working with such famous
film directors has certainly been a remunerative, exciting, but
not necessarily a satisfactory experience.
Take his experience working with Roger Corman, a prolific movie
maker who directed the 1990 horror film Frankenstein Unbound,
set in 19th century Switzerland, which starred John Hurt and
Bridget Fonda. ‘Working with Roger was an extremely good
experience for me. Corman invited me and my whole family to the
set, a palazzo owned by the local Mayor of Bellagio on the
shores of Lake Como. ‘The Mayor allowed free use of the palazzo
for the film; on the condition he was given a role as an extra
on the set. Brian had only one artistic difference with Roger
Corman, over the inclusion of an extra scene when Frankenstein
goes mad and destroys a laboratory.
In A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), a modern retelling of the
Pinocchio story, his experiences working in Hollywood brought
home to him the old adage, ‘When one sells something to the
movies the motto is take the money and run.’ Through working
with Spielberg and Kubrick he learnt to appreciate the
difficult task such producers have in adapting prose to the
movies. Brian continued, ‘As Stanley Kubrick observed, you can
have thousands of scenes in a book, but in a film you can’t
afford the time or the money to reproduce every scene.’
In AI, Brian worked with two of Hollywood’s great directors,
Stanley Kubrick and Spielberg. ‘It was interesting working with
Stanley, Stanley Kubrick who wanted the android boy to meet the
Blue Fairy and become a real boy. Brian Aldiss obstinately
resisted this notion.’ Brian was astounded by this suggestion.
When Brian was asked by his wife Margaret why he worked with
Kubrick, Brian replied, ’I had always wanted to work with the
genius that was Kubrick, though after a year’s work Stanley
chucked me out.’ On leaving Brian said to Stanley ‘It’s
impossible for you to make a film of my story and Stanley
replied ‘Yes he could.’ Unfortunately fate proved Aldiss right,
Stanley Kubrick died soon afterwards just before shooting was
due to start and Kubrick’s friend Spielberg completed the film
A.I in 2002.For his stories that have been turned into
films
Brian Aldiss? That’s me!
Brian Aldiss was born in East Dereham, Norfolk, England, son of
a department store manager. Before he became a full time
professional writer, he served in Burma and Indonesia during
World War Two. After the War, he always wanted to be a writer.
He said, ‘"I had the option as a writer of starving in a garret
or starving in a bookshop in Oxford.’ He took the bookseller
option.
Brian started telling tales at an early age at a private
boarding school. There he served his apprenticeship of how to
spin a good yarn, how to get his fellow pupils always begging
for more by creating a cliff-hanger at the end of each episode
of his serial ghost stories, so they had to wait till the next
day to find out what happened next.
It is not surprising that Brian got punished for talking after
‘lights out’ in the pupils’ school dormitory by his teachers
for talking when he should be asleep. He regularly got six with
the cane on his pyjama bottom. He said,’ Nothing that any
literary critics have done since has been more vicious than
these punishments.’
His first book
Brian started his professional writing career, whilst working
as a bookseller in Oxford; he was invited to write a humorous
column about life in a factious bookshop for the Bookseller, a
prestigious book trade weekly magazine. His column attracted
the attention of Charles Monteith, editor at the British
publishers Faber and Faber. As a consequence of this, Aldiss's
first book was The Brightfount Diaries (1955), based on pieces
from his Bookseller column. For Brian Aldiss latest books
What has influenced his writing?
‘Life, the Universe and Everything’ influenced Brian. He read
omnivorously everything from Homer’s Odyssey to the works of
Thomas Hardy, Patrick Hamilton, Sartre and Stendhal. Brian
says, ‘I am often asked what has inspired me, in fact, it is
life that has inspired me.’
When I asked Brian if he was carrying on the tradition of
ancient Rome and Greece, in the telling of tales of beings with
superior powers, strange monsters or gods doing dastardly
deeds, he replied, ’I think I did - together with reflecting
the chaos of the time in which we live!’ In my view I think
even Shakespeare would be impressed with how Brian develops the
their basic plot lines into often very sophisticated stories,
where often several story lines are interwoven, in order to
keep the active interest of the reader/viewer or listener
Science Fiction
He has enjoyed a life-long affection for science fiction,
believing in the power of the imagination to transform our
fallible world into metaphor. But the world visualised in the
forties and fifties, with human exploration of the planets of
the solar system, has not materialised. That exploration would
have been a corporate endeavour. Nowadays, corporate adventure
has given place to the worship of celebrities, often rather
undistinguished persons prepared to pay one million pounds for
a show-off marriage ceremony.
Much of SF now reflects this state of affairs, and has become
more domestic.
The author stated, ‘For myself, I have grown interested in the
vagaries and mysteries of the human mind. My new 'HARM' is an
instance of this. Is Paul, the anglicised Muslim, a victim of
the state - or of his own fevered imaginings? It is not SF as
we used to know it; nor is the world as we used to know it,’
Brian observes.
Thoughts on Europe
In 2002 Brian published Super-state, a novel of a future Europe
some forty years into the future. It was a comic novel packed
full of contemporary recognisable characters. But when asked
what he really thinks of the European Union, he replied, ‘it is
the great social experiment of our time - a wonderful idea.
Europe had, for centuries been plagued by religious obsessions,
dynastic and territorial ambitions, which have stained the
Continent with blood from one end to another, and now instead
of war, we sit round a table in Brussels and argue it out. It’s
fantastic; I don’t understand why more people don’t marvel
about it.’
Should Turkey Join?
His views on Turkey joining the EU were firm. ‘Yes, undoubtedly
Turkey should join, because it is a secular state and it would
be an advantage for Europe and it would help the secular forces
in their struggle against extremism. ‘He knows the country
well, with his son having business interests there. Brian’s
father fought in WW1 at Gallipoli, where on a memorial set up
by the founder of modern Turkey, Atatürk had inscribed ‘Yes
once we fought and died on this ground, and now your sons are
as my sons, and all are equally regretted.’ Brian comments,
‘This is such a grand and generous gesture.’
Latest Books
This summer two new books by Brian W. Aldiss will be published
HARM and the latter, Walcott a story about a fictional family
set in Britain during the 20th century, some of it based on his
own experiences, both worth a read.
At the end of the interview the artist had finally finished her
sketch. It depicted Brian as a casually dressed, irascible
82-year-old man, still a youthful glint in his eye, with no
doubt many more years of writing left. For Brian Aldiss latest
books
Meeting Brian W. Aldiss is always a pleasure. I caught him in
the midst of his portrait being painted and getting ready to go
off to yet another of those science fiction conventions, where
he will be adored by his fans. Life’s not bad for a man of 82,
when admiring fans demand Brian to sign his name on their tee
shirts. It’s not only his fans who have come to his door but in
the past Hollywood film producers including Corman, Kubrick and
Spielberg, asking for permission to adapt both his general
fiction and science fiction stories. Even Britain’s Queen has
awarded him with an OBE in 2002 for his services to
literature.
by Nicholas Newman - 1 July 2007
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