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    The Dark Light Years
    The Dark Light Years
    The Dark Light Years
    Ebook188 pages2 hours

    The Dark Light Years

    By Brian W. Aldiss

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A strange alien species forces us to question our definition of civilization in this biting satire from the Grand Master of Science Fiction.

    What would intelligent life‑forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement? Upon first contact with the Utod— intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain—mankind instantly views these aliens as animals because of their unhygienic customs. This leads to the slaughter, capture, and dissection of the Utod. But when one explorer recognizes the intelligence behind their habits, he must reevaluate what it actually means to be “intelligent.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781497608146
    The Dark Light Years
    Author

    Brian W. Aldiss

    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. 

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    Reviews for The Dark Light Years

    3.5/5

    57 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      While a mildly interesting read, this book is HEAVILY trapped in the period it was written. I would only recommend it to people who love old things like this.
    • 4/5
      A real classic from Aldiss, he sees and understands so well the way I'm sure us humans will behave if we ever get that 'first contact'.
    • 3/5
      Human explorers discover an extremely organic spacecraft, and have difficulty connecting it with the alien explorers from it. We don't easily understand intelligences that don't follow the technology route.
    • 4/5
      Satire. Several different humans have several different reactions to these very alien beings, who have their own unexpected reaction to us. One of the things that's funny is the inability of the humans to recognize their own shortcomings, even when said faults are the same faults they believe the utods to have.

      I would have liked this to be longer, to have the ideas further developed. For example, it seems unfortunately sexist and homophobic, but a careful reading reveals that Aldiss probably has a personal opinion more enlightened than that of the contemporary audience for whom he was writing. (Iow, he didn't mean what he wrote.)

      Worth a reread (maybe someday), because the ideas are thoughtful and plentiful, and so concisely presented, that I'm sure I missed some.
    • 5/5
      "Civilization is the distance that man has placed between himself and his own excreta.""By the standards of another species," Mrs. Warhoon was saying, "our culture might merely seem like a sickness which prevents us from seeing how we ought to communicate with the aliens, rather than any shortcomings of theirs."I must say I'm really late in discovering the sheer brilliance of Brian Aldiss. This is another outstanding novel that is once again challenging and massively entertaining at the same time. Reputedly written (1964) in disgust and anger over inhumane experiments carried out on dolphins, Aldiss poses some big questions What is civilization? What is intelligence? What does it mean to be civilized, and would we recognize these things if they weren't presented to us in non-anthropomorphic forms? To what extent can our behaviours and the norms of our society be said to be the result of civilized, rational thought and to what extent is it irrational, instinctive, tribal in its nature?(Spoilers follow)The story through which these questions are posed starts off with the old SF trope of a spaceship landing on a distant planet and coming across a group aliens (who have also travelled to the world on their own spaceship) wallowing in mud and their own excrement. These aliens are ugly, looking like two-headed hippos and when they move towards the earthmen, they are gunned down. Two surviving specimen are taken into captivity and taken back to Earth where they are kept in a zoo and studied. Attempts to dsicern whether or not the aliens are intelligent and to communicate with them meet with failure and eventually another expedition is sent out to find the aliens' home planet.Aldiss is at his best when skewering the conventions of British society during his time. Even as they talk about the unwillingness of the aliens to attempt to communicate, we see the personal lives of some of the scientists and philosophers working on the project - the petty rivalries, the marital breakdown, the father-filial relationships in disarray. They condemn the aliens propensity to wallow in their own filth, while we see a society which pollutes the environment and doesn't seem to mind so much wallowing in its own wastes. (The scene where two of the scholars go on a date to the theatre is absolutely brilliant. They eat meat, the woman puts on expensive perfume made of ambergris (regurgitated semi-digested squid from a whale's stomach - actually used in perfumes) and they walk through littered streets, wearing masks because of the air polluted by car fumes!) When it is discovered that the aliens can feel no pain or fear, the military gets interested and the surviving specimens are experimented on to destruction in the hopes of developing chemicals that will allow soldiers to fight without feeling pain or fear (The UK is at war with Brazil at the time).But Aldiss' demolition of the myths of human civilization don't end there. Those characters who develop an empathy for the creatures are sidelined or seen to be crazy by society, while those who seem to exhibit psychopathic behaviours are promoted and encouraged. In the second expedition, the men who come across the pacific, cattle-like aliens can't help but let their predatory instincts come to the fore. The only woman on the expedition, who sees in the aliens' buildings and artefacts a sophisticated civilization which has successfully evolved in tandem with nature rather than in opposition to it, is treated as a neurotic and a trophy for expedition's the alpha male. The ending of the book is powerful and brimming with anger.There's a great deal more here to mull over and dissect. Themes of nature/nurture, morality, social relationships, colonialism, all are touched on in this short work. This is another classic Aldiss novel.
    • 3/5
      The title story is an excellent piece of Steampunk featuring H G Wells himself.

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    The Dark Light Years - Brian W. Aldiss

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