- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: House of Stratus; New edition edition (15 Jan 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0755100646
- ISBN-13: 978-0755100644
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.1 x 1.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,883,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Earthworks
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
'No way of solving these problems exists any more. The conventions collapsed like old bridges. On the one side of the gulf is the mind, eternal and untouched - on the other, the body, running, jumping, bleeding ... The mind can take care of itself, as it has had to from the very beginning; it's not as smart as the body, but it can survive.'
The future Earth of Brian Aldiss's Earthworks is a moribund ecological disaster, ruined by poisons, greed, unsustainable development and overpopulation. Mankind is broken, starving, wracked with disease and divided by bitter social injustice.
Our window into this terrible world is the dangerous, crazed Knowle Noland, whose destructive impulses threaten to upturn the wreckage of civilization, either to redemption or final catastrophe.
Rarely do Science Fiction works stand well the test of time as their suppositions are out-dated and superseded; Brian Aldiss's vision is remarkable for having come closer to reality decades after he conceived of this terrible future.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.About the Author
Brian Aldiss, born in 1925, is one of the most prolific authors of both general and science fiction. In a writing career stretching from 1955 to the present he has published over seventy books. He has also been an influential compiler of science fiction anthologies. A Science Fiction Omnibus is available as a Penguin Modern Classic. Faber have reissued six of his best science fiction titles: Earthworks, Cryptozoic!, Barefoot in the Head, Galaxies like Grains of Sand, The Dark Light Years and The Shape of Further Things.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A don't think I have read anything by Aldiss that I haven't enjoyed but I can safely say that I enjoyed this more than anything else by him. The book is short, exciting and yet still contains several very interesting ideas.
This novel is a little dated and a few small "historic" details now seem very unlikely. Despite this it is a great yarn and it is much more interesting than much of the rest of the SF in the market place. This is a very welcome reprint.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A minor novel by Brian Aldiss but still well worth a read. A bit dated in places but still has a compelling and strange narrative, with some relevance to us today, set as it is in a world where man has used up almost all his natural resources and Africa has become the major world power. Manages to pack themes of madness, redemption, love, sex, politics, ecology and religion into 125 crazy pages. Certainly worth it for Aldiss completists.
Format:Paperback
A short book, but one that packs quiet a punch and leaves the reader chewing over its ideas and implications long after its done. Brian Aldiss loves to dig and probe around the edges of one's most basic assumptions. The setting of this slim volume is a future where overpopulation, pollution and soil and resource exhaustion have devastated most of the planet, so that Europe, Asia and the Americas are sunk in poverty, illness and hunger, living out their lives in teeming cities. In this world, it is the African nations which still retain vitality and resources and which are the superpowers of the globe. Much like Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the African powers are hostile and jockey for power, but with the formation of an African Union, under the aegis of a great leader, whose leadership is ushering in an era of peace.
But, the question which is posed to the book's protagonist, Knowle Noland, is whether peace is such a great thing after all? Wouldn't a war, which would cull the world's population in nuclear fires, free millions of their misery and allow humanity to start again, leaving the survivors better off? Knowle gets caught up in an assassination plot put together by a group of cultists. Aldiss is in good form with this one, his writing is top notch, with some truly memorable and haunting sequences. The story is presented in the form of a narrative written years after the events chronicled by Knowle. Not only do we have an unreliable narrator, but one who is conscious of, and often discusses the limits and purposes of what he is writing in a world where few people know how to read. On top of this, Knowle is schizophrenic, and his accounts of some of his hallucinatory episodes are fascinating and tantalizing in that either they provide special insights into the world around him, or maybe that wisdom too is an illusion. Its fun trying to unpack the layers Aldiss throws in here.
Some of the ideas and extrapolations now may seem a little outdated, or not as startling as they were at the time this was written, but this is still a work well worth reading.
But, the question which is posed to the book's protagonist, Knowle Noland, is whether peace is such a great thing after all? Wouldn't a war, which would cull the world's population in nuclear fires, free millions of their misery and allow humanity to start again, leaving the survivors better off? Knowle gets caught up in an assassination plot put together by a group of cultists. Aldiss is in good form with this one, his writing is top notch, with some truly memorable and haunting sequences. The story is presented in the form of a narrative written years after the events chronicled by Knowle. Not only do we have an unreliable narrator, but one who is conscious of, and often discusses the limits and purposes of what he is writing in a world where few people know how to read. On top of this, Knowle is schizophrenic, and his accounts of some of his hallucinatory episodes are fascinating and tantalizing in that either they provide special insights into the world around him, or maybe that wisdom too is an illusion. Its fun trying to unpack the layers Aldiss throws in here.
Some of the ideas and extrapolations now may seem a little outdated, or not as startling as they were at the time this was written, but this is still a work well worth reading.
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