Paul Kincaid

Rob Latham in Science Fiction Studies 150, July 2023

In the final analysis, Kincaid views a handful of stories and novels as the author’s signal achievements … all of which … Kincaid illuminates with the searchlight of his fine critical intelligence.

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro in Locus 745, February 2023

Paul Kin­caid’s astutely organized Brian W. Aldiss, in the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series, was, as expected, sagacious, vigor­ous, and opportunely challenging of the conventional critical receptions sur­rounding a complicated, ambitious writer.

Graham Sleight in Locus 745, February 2023

Paul Kincaid’s Brian W. Aldiss (University of Illinois Press) handles a tricky subject with grace, clarity, and precision.

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro in Locus 741, October 2022

 At the start of Brian W. Aldiss, I found myself wondering why, as Kincaid points out, it should be that Aldiss’s work is “easier to admire than to love,” and by the end I had an answer… As Kincaid’s elegant overview makes clear, Aldiss’s work is not only a paean to ceaseless creativity, but a testament to an almost compulsive preoccupation with generating new problems towards whose solution that same sparkling creativity may be directed.

Pippa Goldschmidt in Time Literary Supplement, 30 September 2022

Kincaid successfully meets this challenge by imposing a rigorous structure, reflecting his view that three themes underpin all of the author’s work; his wartime service in the “Forgotten Army” in Burma; his concomitant experience of “the East” (a seemingly orientalist construct of heat, nature and sex); and his subsequent disillusionment with life in colourless and diminished postwar Britain … a level-headed assessment.

Kate Macdonald in Strange Horizons, 20June 2022

… this is a work of scholarship, demonstrating a sound knowledge of the subject, written from an admirably objective perspective, but without getting bogged down in theoretical approaches… Kincaid has done a fine job with an unattractive subject, whose works do not come out shining, clean, and fresh from the tumble-dryer of critical appraisal.

Christopher Priest

Brian Aldiss was science fiction’s most gifted stylist: innovative, elegant, mercurial and always highly readable. He was tirelessly prolific, producing not only stories of adventure in space, travellers through time and several noxious alien beings, but also experimental literary fiction and thoughtful memoir. Paul Kincaid’s superb and closely attentive account of his life and work covers the full Aldiss range, responding sympathetically not only to the extraordinary variety but also the level of ambition.

D. Harlan Wilson

Paul Kincaid’s cogent, career-spanning study of Brian Aldiss’s life and work is a valuable contribution to SF studies. He expertly covers the many books in Aldiss’s canon, shedding new light on areas that have received little scholarly attention while enumerating the author’s importance to the SF megatext. Accessible and illuminating, Brian W. Aldiss should be read by anybody writing about Aldiss, but it’s also an enjoyable biography.