From a Science Fiction Grand Master: The sweeping epic of a planet veering from one extreme atmosphere to another—and the humans trying to survive on it.
Helliconia Spring introduces us to a tumultuous world that follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system—and the satellite from Earth secretly monitoring it. Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Brian W. Aldiss then explores the social and religious divisions keeping the planet’s population in conflict even as they’re devastated by plague in Helliconia Summer, and concludes the trilogy with Helliconia Winter, which recounts both the threat of a looming, frigid age of decay and the hope of a new future.
The Helliconia Trilogy is both a riveting story and a thought-provoking examination of how our destinies are shaped by the environment around us. Aldiss’s study of fields from astronomy to climatology to geobiology endow all three novels with rich details of the planet Helliconia.
This riveting, century-spanning saga is a timely exploration of what climate change can mean for our own planet. “Brian Aldiss’s towering imagination places his Helliconia Trilogy far above standard science fiction” (Daily Mail).
Brian W. Aldiss was born in Norfolk, England, in 1925. Over a long and distinguished writing career, he published award‑winning science fiction (two Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award); bestselling popular fiction, including the three‑volume Horatio Stubbs saga and the four‑volume the Squire Quartet; experimental fiction such as Report on Probability A and Barefoot in the Head; and many other iconic and pioneering works, including the Helliconia Trilogy. He edited many successful anthologies and published groundbreaking nonfiction, including a magisterial history of science fiction (Billion Year Spree, later revised and expanded as Trillion Year Spree). Among his many short stories, perhaps the most famous was “Super‑Toys Last All Summer Long,” which was adapted for film by Stanley Kubrick and produced and directed after Kubrick’s death by Steven Spielberg as A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Brian W. Aldiss passed away in 2017 at the age of 92.