After Aldiss was demobilised from the military in 1947, he returned to Britain. He moved to Oxford where he worked in bookshops and dedicated his spare time to writing fiction.
During the late 1950s and early-to-mid 1960s, Aldiss produced a series of novels exploring ecological themes. His first science fiction novel, Non-Stop, was published in 1958. The novel is set on a generation star ship in which order has broken down, people have split into tribes, and the decks are infested with plants that have escaped from the food laboratories. The protagonist, Complain, sets off to find the now mythical Control Room encountering various adventures along the way.
The novel was inspired as much by the jungle of Myanmar as post-war Britain, which Aldiss found dull and constricting. The item on display is the cover of the first edition of Non-Stop with art by Peter Curl. A group of people are overwhelmed by tall plants with the metal hull faintly visible in the background.
Non-Stop began as a novelette published in the British magazine Science Fantasy in 1956. The editor, E. J. Carnell, championed Aldiss's early science fiction and encouraged Aldiss to expand the novelette into a full novel. In recognition of his support Aldiss dedicated the novel to Carnell, writing of him as the 'starter of Non-Stop'. The novel significantly expands on the novelette version, adds new characters, and changes the ending.
The copy of Science Fantasy from the Brian Aldiss Library contains pencil markings indicating where changes should be made for the novel version. The cover art by Gerard Quinn shows the characters of Carappa, Viann, and Crooner. These characters names would be changed to Marapper, Vyann, and Fermour in the novel version.
The Brian Aldiss Library, University of Liverpool SC&A, uncatalogued
The strange environment of Non-Stop reflects the increasing encroachment of human culture on nature and the inseparability of human culture from nature itself. Aldiss suggests that the human world is shaped by the natural one and vice-versa, a delicate balance that is threatened by unthinking human action.
The cover of the 1991 Russian edition of the novel illustrates this entanglement of the human and the natural. The jungle and the ship are not only side-by-side but interpenetrate with plants growing through the deck.
The Brian Aldiss Library, University of Liverpool SC&A, uncatalogued
In 1962, Aldiss published one of his most celebrated novels, Hothouse. Set on a far future Earth in which the planet is covered by forest due to the increased heat of the sun, humans have reduced into small green creatures that live in the canopy.
The novel follows one of these green humans named Gren. When Gren's family is broken up he makes a journey through the strange world in which vegetable life is a constant danger and spiders build webs to the moon.
Aldiss was inspired once again by the jungles of Myanmar and a huge Banyan tree that he encountered in a garden in Kolkata, India.
Hothouse was made up of five novelettes first published in the American magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1961. Aldiss won the Hugo award for best short fiction for the Hothouse series at the 1962 World Science Fiction Convention.
The June 1961 edition of Science Fantasy on display here included the third novelette, 'Undergrowth', with cover art by Ed Emshwiller. Emshwiller's cover gives a sense of human figures overwhelmed by the natural world.
In Hothouse humans of the far future are no longer the dominant species and are severely vulnerable to a host of unpleasant plant and insect life adapted to violent competition. Aldiss seems to say that human dominance is time limited and that we are vulnerable to the world. This allows us to recognise that we are both shaped by and a part of nature.
On the cover of the 1979 German translation a human is under attack from a beetle of about the same size. The image illustrates a possible future in which a human and a beetle are on equal footing.
The Brian Aldiss Library, University of Liverpool SC&A, uncatalogued
In 1964 Aldiss published Greybeard, another novel of declining humanity. However, it is set in a near future rather than a distant one.
The plot follows Algernon 'Greybeard' Timberlane and his wife Martha on a journey down the river Thames in the aftermath of nuclear testing that has made humanity sterile. Greybeard and Martha must find meaning in a world without children and without a future beyond their lifespan.
The concept of the novel was inspired by his separation from his children while undergoing a divorce with his first wife in the early 1960s.
For Aldiss, Greybeard shared with his previous novels 'the theme of nature taking over'. Plants and animals return with vigour in the face of a retreating humanity. The novel emphasises the impermanence of human life and the regenerative power of nature.
The cover of the 1984 edition by Tim White shows weeds pushing through the pavement in the foreground and grand buildings crumbling and overgrown with vines behind.
The following year, 1965, Aldiss would explicitly address environmental destruction in his novel Earthworks.
Set in a world devasted by pollution and inequality, protagonist Knowle Noland is put to work in industrial agriculture in Britain. He escapes to live with the rebel Travellers but betrays them. As a reward for his betrayal of the Travellers he is made captain of a freighter ship. His ship crashes into the coast of West Africa where the only fertile soil remains. There Knowland is caught up with the political intrigue of the only remaining flourishing civilisation.
The 1988 Methuen edition of Earthworks has cover art by Liverpool born artist John Higgins. Higgins is best known for his work on Judge Dredd stories for the British comics magazine 2000AD and as the colourist for Watchmen.
The original artwork by Higgins, held at the University of Liverpool, depicts the opening scene of the novel in which a corpse floats across the ocean towards Noland's ship. Higgin's artwork captures the surreal juxtaposition of the sea with the levitating corpse. The juxtaposition hints that all is not well with humanity's relationship with the natural world in the novel.
The John Higgins Archive, University of Liverpool SC&A, uncatalogued
Aldiss drew inspiration for Earthworks from Rachel Carson's 1962 non-fiction book Silent Spring which warned of the damage to environment and food systems by pesticides and insecticides.
Aldiss had first encountered these chemicals in World War II when he was issued with DDT to kill fleas on his uniform. After the war, chemicals such as DDT were used on an industrial scale, killing wildlife and destroying soil resilience.
The 1984 edition of the novel shows a polluted and barren landscape with humans restricted to highly dense cities on stilts.