Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss

First published in 1958

Having recently reviewed the digital release of Brian Aldiss' Hothouse, I want to give a shout-out to Aldiss' first science fiction novel. Non-Stop was published in various paperback editions in the United States under the title Starship.

The plot of Non-Stop is ingenious: a generations ship travels on a seemingly non-stop journey through space, its mission long forgotten, carrying descendants of the original crew who now live in warring tribes, some foraging for food in the jungle that has overgrown the ship's aft corridors while guarding against those who live on the more organized "forward" decks. Legends tell them they are on a voyage through space, but lacking windows, they have no understanding of the meaning of space; they picture it as a darkness where distant lanterns burn. The concept of religion perseveres, but it is a religion based on the teachings of "Froyd": they pray for Consciousness to save them from the Subconscious and use "Expansion to your ego" as a ritualized greeting. Aldiss creates a clever and fully realized future for this lost ship: instead of saying "to hell with ...," for instance, inhabitants say "to the hull with ...."

The story follows a small band of explorers who make their way from the aft region known as Quarters to the Forwards, where they hope to learn the truth about their environment. Apart from some "why would they do that?" moments, the novel works not only as a well-written adventure story, but also as sort of a Lord of the Flies commentary on how easily civilization can descend into chaos and superstition.

RECOMMENDED

Hothouse by Brian Aldiss

First published in 1962; published digitally by Open Road Media on May 19, 2015

Like Alan Dean Foster's novel Midworld (1975), Hothouse imagines a forested world in which humans inhabit a middle level, somewhere between the sky and the ground. Unlike Midworld, Brian Aldiss' world is the Earth of the far future. Hothouse is a global warming novel, but the warming (and increased radiation) resulted from the Earth having locked in rotation with a dying sun rather than the destruction of the ozone layer.

The far-future Earth is richly imagined. One side of the planet is always in sunlight, which explains why it is dominated by vegetation. Humans are among the last surviving animals. Human social structure collapsed as humans died from radiation sickness. Radiation-tolerant humans evolved over time (they are much smaller than the humans of our time), as did insects, aquatic animals, and reptiles, all adapting to the Earth's new environmental conditions. The difference between animal and vegetable has in many cases become obscure. Vegetative life mimics animal life, squids walk on land, and mushrooms are the most intelligent species. The strength of this novel is its background: the environment that Brian Aldiss creates and the variety of lifeforms that have adapted to the climactic changes.

The story is less interesting than the background. It begins with a group of humans, exploring the rituals that define their lives and help them to survive. In its early stages, Hothouse is much like Midworld. The novels depart when Aldiss changes his focus from the group of tree-dwelling humans to a young outcast named Gren.

The plot seems a bit random as Gren stumbles from adventure to adventure.  Aldiss doesn't establish Gren's character or personality, other than making him abrasive. I suspect that these problems are explained by the fact that Aldiss originally wrote a series of related stories that he later fixed up into a novel. That would account for the jarring changes in focus and for storylines that appear and then die out.

Some aspects of the story, particularly off-planet travel, are not well explained and are therefore difficult to accept. I like Hothouse more for its concept of far-future evolution (or devolution) than for the story it tells, but the novel's background is so detailed and imaginative that it makes the story worth reading.

RECOMMENDED