We were very saddened today to hear of the death of Brian Aldiss at the age of 92, a personal favourite of ours here at 30th Century. One of the greats of British Science Fiction, he wrote classic novels such as Hothouse and Greybeard, the epic trilogy of Helliconia, almost unrivalled in the breadth and scope of its imagination and very many others in a substantial body of work. In the 1960s, he was at the forefront of the British New Wave of Science Fiction. He also edited lots of anthologies, was an artist, wrote mainstream fiction and poetry and the seminal history of Science Fiction, The Billion Year Spree. It’s clear from the many tributes that he inspired many others not just to love the genre, but also to write Science Fiction themselves. “I don’t agree with those people who think of science fiction as some kind of prediction of the future,” he said on Desert Island Discs in 2007. “I think it’s a metaphor for the human condition.”