Rating: Admirable
Since reading his Helliconia Trilogy (1982,1983,1985), I’ve become quite the admirer of Brian Aldiss, so needing a short but entertaining read after the literary intensity of the last two books, I reached for my beautiful edition of Galaxies Like Grains of Sand that was (re)published in 1980. I’ve since discovered that this book was originally published in the UK in 1959 with the title, The Canopy of Time, and then in the US shortly after as Galaxies Like Grains of Sand. This and subsequent editions dropped a few stories, added some different ones and included extra text that thematically joined together what were originally stand alone short stories detailing a forty-million-year future history of the galaxy. Aldiss’s ‘fix-up’ approach was largely successful, particularly due to his superior way with narrative and masterful style. Despite these stories having been written in the 1950s, they have dated quite well. The stories are presented as snapshots of particularly significant millennia in humanity’s future, beginning with The War Millennia, in which ‘aliens’ are present on Earth collecting flora and fauna as the world is about to plunge into nuclear war. This is the story most tied to its era, with the Cold War in full swing and the risk of nuclear annihilation increasing with each year. Of course, all is not as it seems and what follows is even more intriguing.
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| Aldiss, looking to the future. |
Being science fiction from the 1950s, robots are involved, and they feature strongly in the next couple of vignettes, particularly in The Robot Millenia, which had been published as a stand-alone short story called Who Can Replace a Man? It’s very clever, entertaining, and funny too. Aldiss definitely had a wry sense of humour and playfulness (this was also evident in the Helliconia Trilogy). The Mingled Millenia and The Dark Millenia detail eras in which humanity begins to recover and ventures out into the stars, whilst also losing touch with Earth, which remains a relative backwater in a galaxy where humans have otherwise established some level of primacy. Perhaps the best story is The Mutant Millenia, which gives forth some sci-fi horror and an intriguing evolutionary narrative in which humanity risks being superseded. The Megalopolis Millenia is the lesser of the stories, featuring characters viewing and arguing over some ‘found’ documentary footage of the futuristic, yet seedy Earth City of Nunion. Although well written, it does not add much to the overall narrative arc and diminishes the book’s standing somewhat. The final story, The Ultimate Millenia, is quite brilliant, offering up both the beginning of the galaxy’s end and the very reason for its previous existence. It provides a strong ending to an intriguing and mostly successful future history narrative, with Aldiss’s deft hand guiding the reader through both the big picture and the granular detail of humanity’s future. Although a bit inconsistent, Galaxies Like Grains of Sand can be recommended as an easy introduction to the work of Brian Aldiss, a science fiction writer who was definitely one of the greats, successfully straddling the so called ‘Golden Era (1930s-1950’s)’ and ‘The New Wave’ (1960’s-1970’s) of science fiction, to emerge out the other side with his relevance and status intact.
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| Classic 'Golden Era' cover art. |
