BRIAN WILSON ALDISS - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 07/26/1985 - HFSID 29678

BRIAN ALDISS
His typed letter with rich content about his career and publishing issues in science fiction
Typed Letter signed: "Brian", 1 page, 8¼x11¼. Oxford, England, 1986 July 25. On personal letterhead to Pauline Valentine. In full [ellipses in original text]: "This has been a busy week, so I have been out of touch (as it is, I write an average of thirty letters a week, some short, some long). I have been judging the Mini-Sagas in the Daily Telegraph Colour magazine - BBC 4 Radio competition. We had 50,000 entries ... Most of them pretty awful. But great fun to be involved in. I went up and had lunch on Wednesday in the Lord Byron Suite of Brown's, and we tied everything up. A book may come of it, which I will edit. By the way, I shall probably be on 'Mid Week' on Radio 4 next Wednesday at 9, so cock an ear if you can. Thanks for your letters and the books and the photos. Very fascinating. You are quite a star. It's terrific that football took you abroad as well. I hope you will be able to play again when you are back to full health. Nina Martyn also fell off a pony and suffered agonies for years. I return the photos with thanks. Plus all t'others. The Society. You will get a lot of free help. The fans and writers all help each other. I'll send a 'Locus'. The editor, Charlie Brown, is a pal of mine. If you give him a news story, he will run it and not charge; that is better than a paid ad. Ads in 'Book and Mag Collector' will get you nowhere. Tell Charlie about your football career - send a pic of you (he has pix of me) and he will probably be intrigued. I'm intrigued ... You're too young for this to be a mid-life crisis, but it is unusual for anyone to switch from the world of sport to the world of book (although H.G. Wells did it early). Have you a typewriter? If you type up your news items nicely for Charlie, head it Press Release. Then it is a press release, see? (You release something to the press.) While I'm telling you boring things, here's press release for your dad, about how people pay £100 for a book. It's like paying £1,000 or £10,000 for a stamp. You hope to make a profit later. Scarcity and demand determine the price. But books are alive in a way stamps aren't. At present, I'm good stock. My letters are good stock. Don't lose them. You can sell them when I'm dead. On the subject of prices. Very tricky. I'll write to Mike about his Club. $10 is nothing in the States. £8 is too much here - you can join the BSFA for less. Harry says there's no charge for joining his club. We'd better get this item right, so hang on until I get a word from Mike. The trouble with Mike and me is that we have lowbrow and highbrow (to put it crudely) audiences - great luck, but it complicates life. The highbrow element would think badges a bit naf. Much more crafty would be a limited edition of a new story, which maybe we could arrange. Also this week, I got a large SF Anthology off to the publishers, Penguin. A great relief, a great operation. But I have written nothing creative all week, except a snatch of autobiography. Last Sunday, I gave my talk on 'Mary Shelley: a Writer's Life' to the Boars Hill Association. A great success. At the moment, Margaret and I are mad on the strange Shelley circle; they seem perennially like living people, their faults and virtues still avidly to be discussed. It's gone six; garden calls. I've loved seeing your photos. All the best". British author Brian Aldiss (b. 1925) is a prolific novelist and short story writer, mostly in the genre of science fiction. He has been equally successful as a critic and anthologist. His novels, spanning 50 years, include Hothouse, Greybeard, Barefoot in the Head, The Malacia Tapestry, the Helliconia trilogy and Jocasta. His short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" was the basis of the Spielberg film, AI. His interest in Mary Shelly, expressed in this letter, continued. In his history of SF, The Billion Year Spree (1973), he called her the first science fiction writer. She also made an appearance in his novel turned film, Frankenstein Unbound. Pauline Valentine went on to form a Brian Aldiss fan club, offering (against his advice in this letter) membership badges. Light corner creases. Otherwise, fine condition.