Supertoys Last All Summer Long [Paperback]

Brian Aldiss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 13, 2001

The title story, "Supertoys Last All Summer Long", filmed as "AI" by Steven Spielberg, tells of a young boy who, whatever he does, cannot please his mother. He is puzzled by this, not realizing that he is an android. The story is accompanied by other tales of science fiction and dark fantasy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Blame it on taxes. According to SFWA Grand Master Brian Aldiss, that's the main reason he sold the movie rights to the Pinocchio-android tale "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" to Stanley Kubrick back in 1982. Bound here along with two followup short stories and nine unrelated short pieces from more recent years, "Supertoys" was to be the source material for Kubrick's last movie. Of course, Kubrick died, and then Steven Spielberg inherited the rights, intending to follow through on Kubrick's original vision.

In fairness, Aldiss has never seen his original story--nor the two pieces added later, "Supertoys When Winter Comes" and "Supertoys in Other Seasons"--as a Pinocchio fable at all. As he recounts in the wry, revealing foreword to this collection, "I could not or would not see the parallels between David, my five-year-old android, and the wooden creature who becomes human.... Never consciously rewrite old fairy stories." But the interpretation of the stubbornly eccentric Kubrick prevailed until Aldiss was "wheeled out of the picture."

These three excellent stories occupy just the first 35 pages of this compilation, but they accurately capture one of the great voices of British SF at his prime, with a plaintive, thoughtfully nuanced story about existence and the meaning of being human. The remaining tales range from intriguing to distractingly strident to borderline mawkish, but make no mistake about what's the main attraction here. In fact, the foreword alone, with Kubrick exposed at his curmudgeonly worst ("[To Aldiss:] You seem to have two modes of writing--brilliant and not so damned good"), makes this a collection worth picking up. --Paul Hughes --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The title story of this collection a 1969 vignette about a boy-robot who wants to be real captured the imagination of Stanley Kubrick, though the acclaimed director never managed to expand it into a feature-length motion picture. Two additional vignettes by SF Grand Master Aldiss 30 years later "Supertoys in Other Seasons" and "Supertoys When Winter Comes" flesh out something of a story line, which has become the basis of Steven Spielberg's probable summer blockbuster, AI. Many of the other pieces here also remain at the vignette level, merely presenting ideas rather than creating stories. "Apogee Again" and "Becoming the Full Butterfly" offer settings where sex becomes a metaphor for survival. "Beef," "A Matter of Mathematics" and "Cognitive Ability and the Light Bulb," like the speechified "III," extrapolate the eventual failure of humanity's attempts to grow and expand to other worlds without harming them. "Marvells of Utopia," "The Pause Button" and the Socratic dialogue of "A Whiter Mars" all examine different versions of Utopia, each a society that has sacrificed some basic human value in order to achieve qualified perfection. The search for a better life through time travel likewise reveals predictable results in "The Old Mythology," while "Headless" delivers heavy-handed points on crime and punishment. This collection is a mixed bag of scenes and cold, distantly told stories showcasing the author's biting sarcasm and apparent lack of hope for humanity's future. (June 27)Forecast: With Spielberg's AI due for July release, sales of this tie-in book are certain to go into orbit.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown Paperbacks (a&C) (September 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841490946
• ISBN-13: 978-1841490946
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,559,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There's more to this book than "Supertoys", July 18, 2001

By 

Shinobi "ninjasuperspy" (Columbia, SC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Supertoys Last All Summer Long: And Other Stories of Future Time (Paperback)

That said, the three Supertoy stories are here, and are quite nice. I think some of the imagery in the three are superior to that of the movie, the first in particular (Monica's response to being allowed to breed is incredible). However, there is much more to this book than just Supertoys.

To start off Aldiss apparently hates humanity, or at the very least human vanity and self-centeredness. He also seems to think that humankind will not grow out of these flaws, instead humanity will become more and more self-centered as time goes on, so be prepared for a future that is at the same time utopia and distopia...

Aldiss's writing style does seem to swing between brilliant and not so good, but there is enough brilliant to make up for the rest. III was particularly grim (the image of what humanity does to the inhabitants of Triton will stick with you), and "A Matter of Mathematics" could possibly be made into a decent screenplay. All told, "Supertoys..." is an incredible collection of eerily plausible sci-fi that just about everyone should read once, if not more. (if just to avoid turning the inhabitants of Jupiter's moon Europa into Campbell's Canned ET)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mythmaking?, June 14, 2003

By 

D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Supertoys Last All Summer Long: And Other Stories of Future Time (Paperback)

The first three stories have obvious parallels (which Aldiss apparently denied) with Pinnochio (and also the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz and Pygmalion and seal-wife and fairy-wife legends). Maybe I'm reading too much into this (making me guilty of deconstructionism) but I saw a pattern of recreation of old stories. "Nothing in Life is Ever Enough" tells the story of Shakespeares "Tempest" from Caliban's angle. "The Old Mythology" is what its title suggests; a visitor from a future age is present at events (told with a sharp sense of humor) that precapitulate (if that's a word) Greek and Hebrew creation myths. "Headless" is a version of the sacrificed hero described in Fraser's "Golden Bough." "A Matter of Mathematics" is about Plato's cave. In "Becoming the Full Butterfly" the breaking of a divine law results in the destruction of a world by flooding. "Talking Cubes"= "The Picture of Dorian Grey." "Steppenpferd"=the Temptation of St Anthony (I couldn't make a connection to Hesse's "Steppenwolf").
Most of the stories have down-beat endings. Whenever anybody has a good time they get their come-uppance, so it's a pessimistic view of the future. Even "The Marvels of Utopia" is dystopic - at least it's far from Thomas More. In spite of they're enjoyable because of Aldiss's sheer good writing,excellent jokes, wild imagination and page-turning action.I

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars disappointing, July 19, 2002

By 

"mjdavis11" (Chester Springs, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Supertoys Last All Summer Long: And Other Stories of Future Time (Paperback)

I bought this book based on the connection to the movie A.I. I am always interested in how a science fiction story or novel has been converted to the screen. I was suprised to find that all the stories except for the cover title were written recently, rather than in the time period of Supertoys, which was 1969. I have read a little Aldiss over the years and find him an OK science fiction writer with novels like Helliconia Summer. I thought the other two Supertoys stories, while written 25 years after the original, did a good job of keeping the tone of the original, they just weren't that interesting. The remaining stories were not enjoyable to me at all and I finally gave up without finishing the book.