Brian Aldiss is a multiple award winning Grand Master of science fiction, but he cannot be pigeonholed as a ‘science fiction writer’, because he is also a poet, playwright, and general fiction writer. He is the author of over 80 books in total.

 Brian Wilson Aldiss was born on 18 August 1925 in Dereham, Norfolk. He was educated at Framlingham College, Suffolk, and West Buckland School, Devon, and served in the Royal Signals between 1943 and 1947.

After leaving the army Aldiss worked as a bookseller in Oxford for almost a decade, an experience which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955), a volume of short stories. His first science fiction novel, Non-Stop, was published in 1958 while he was working as literary editor of the Oxford Mail, a post he held between 1958 and 1969. His many prize-winning science fiction titles include Hothouse (1962), which won the Hugo Award, The Saliva Tree (1966), which was awarded the Nebula, and Helliconia Spring (1982), which won both the British Science Fiction Association Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He edited SF Horizons: A Magazine of Criticism and Comment with his friend, the science fiction novelist Harry Harrison, and he has edited numerous anthologies, including Introducing SF: A Science Fiction Anthology (1964). He has also written science fiction criticism, most recently, The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy (1995), as well as introductions to classic novels including Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1983).

He wrote a history of science fiction called The Billion Year Spree (1973) which was re-released as The Trillion Year Spree in 1986.

Three films are based on works by Aldiss. Frankenstein Unbound (1990) is based on the book of the same name. AI directed by Steven Spielberg is based on the short story Super Toys Last All Summer Long. Brothers of the Head (2006) is based on the 1977 book of the same name.

Brian Aldiss's autobiographical fiction includes The Hand-Reared Boy (1970) and A Soldier Erect (1971), and he has also written three volumes of autobiography, Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990), The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998) and When the Feast is Finished (1999). He is the author of several poetry collections, including Home Life with Cats (1992) and A Plutonian Monologue on His Wife's Death (2000).

Brian Aldiss is the recipient of numerous international awards for science-fiction writing including a Kurd Lasswitz Award (Germany) and a Prix Jules Verne (Sweden). He lives in Oxford and was awarded an OBE in 2005 for Services to Literature.