Brian Aldiss

Author Brian Aldiss is castaway by Kirsty Young.

Brian is best known for pioneering, alongside JG Ballard, a new wave of British science-fiction writing in the 1960s.

He says sci-fi is not so much a prediction of the future as a metaphor for the human condition; and for him, at least, writing it offered an escape route and a filter through which to view his own extraordinary upbringing.

He grew up in a small Norfolk village in a very devout and austere home. While his father was distant, his mother was still suffering from the grief after her first child, a daughter, was still-born. He was the second child and even when he was very small, remembers feeling a strong sense of his mother's disappointment in him.

The army finally offered a way out for him and it was on his return to England that he started writing seriously while also working in a bookshop.

One of his early works was a short story describing the sadness felt by a boy who was never able to please his parents, which was turned into a film by Stanley Kubrick.

While he remains best known for his science-fiction writing - and has won every major award in the field - he has also written novels, poetry and biographies and short stories.

Now, he says, he aims not for high sales but to become a better and better writer.

Born on 18th August 1925, Brian joins 4 Extra's 100 Club and is one of our Centenary Castaways. He died aged 92 in 2017.

DISC ONE: Walter Brennan - Old Rivers
DISC TWO: Susan Gritton with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Yuri Simonov -
Opening movement of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
DISC THREE: Ella Fitzgerald - Cow-Cow Boogie
DISC FOUR: The Kirov Orchestra - Alexander Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia
DISC FIVE: Sadlers Wells Theatre - Jacques Offenbach’s Quand j'étais roi de Béotie (from Orpheus in the Underworld)
DISC SIX: The Choir and Tambouritza Ensemble of Radio Osijek - Oj Lolo Moja or Oh My Darling
DISC SEVEN: Tom Lehrer - So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)
DISC EIGHT: The London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult - Gustav Holst’s Saturn (The Bringer of Old Age) from The Planets

CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Walter Brennan - Old Rivers
BOOK CHOICE: John Osborne by John Heilpern
LUXURY CHOICE: A banjo

Producer: Leanne Buckle

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2007.