Customer Reviews

At the Caligula Hotel

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Brian Aldiss has been turning heads since the sixties with his novels, science fiction, and criticism. His work in NEW WORLDS magazine helped jump-start the New Wave of SF, and not the least of that work was his poetry. Here's a collection much richer and stranger than the usual chapbook, and as surely as a musk ox falls in love with a refrigerator or a book falls in love with its reader, you will at least feel a strange attraction to this audacious volume. Included are gems like "The Cat Improvement Company," unwinding the helix of Felix's genes for his own good, and the title piece, which ponders the eternal question 'If music be the food of love, should we order in?' Aldiss' agile mind leaps across dark light-years to flirt with an incompatible "Femalien," soars across time to visit Mary Shelley, and rearranges headlines into poetry, leaving plenty of room for small gems and larger pieces. Brian W. Aldiss is the critic responsible for pointing out that FRANKENSTEIN was the first science fiction novel, and also the author of FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND; no surprise that he pays several visits to Mary Shelley, rearranging her own words to make a poem and giving both Victor Frankenstein and his creation narrative voices. Aldiss ends with his "Alphabet Ameliorating Hope," a futuristic tale in verse. Once you've got this book open, it could rain cucumbers for all you'd care.