Review
'Brian Aldiss is one of the most influential - and one of the best - SF writers Britain has ever produced' - Iain Banks
Brian Aldiss has long been one of the most celebrated of British SF authors, and along with Arthur C Clarke is probably the most significant writer in the genre since John Wyndham and HG Wells. This collection comes at a particularly apposite time, as we learn that Steven Spielberg is to film Stanley Kubrick's last, unrealized product Al. This story of an android child's desire for a normal life is based on the title piece in this collection, and apart from the fascination of encountering the delicate and moving fable that so inspired Kubrick, we have the pleasure of reading two further Supertoys tales in which Aldiss cleverly develops the themes of the first one. In fact, all the stories in this collection are fables of the future, not just straightforward SF tales. Aldiss utilizes the medium to make cognent and stimulating comments about the present, extrapolated (often grotesquely) into the future. As a vision of how technology, humanity and intelligence remain uneasy bedfellows, the title story would be hard to beat, but the 20 or so pieces here demonstrate Aldiss's considerable range. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
The title story, Supertoys Last All Summer Long, soon to be a major film directed by Steven Spielberg, tells of a young boy who, whatever he does, cannot please his mother. He is puzzled by this, not realising that he is an android, a cunning construct of artificial intelligence - as is his one ally, his teddy bear. It was a story that hugely affected Stanley Kubrick (director of 2001) and Steven Spielberg (who perhaps saw in his forthcoming movie AI (Artificial Intelligence) a complement to his ET!). The other stories in the collection, whether SF, utopian fantasy or dark fable show a master writer at the peak of his considerable powers.
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