Forgotten Life

Forgotten Life
Brian Aldiss

The second volume in the acclaimed Squire Quartet, available for the first time as an ebook.Spanning fifty years and three continents – from pre-war Suffolk, to the Far East in the 1940s, to Oxford and America in the present day – Forgotten Life is a novel of immense scope, encompassing comedy and tragedy, joy and grief, as its three main characters try to work out the most difficult problem of all – the meaning of their own lives.Brian says: ‘This novel, which in retrospect can be seen to have a similar ground plan to Non-Stop, written thirty years earlier, was more warmly received than any other Aldiss novel, not simply by its reviewers but by readers.’Features a new introduction by the author.

Forgotten Life

THE SQUIRE QUARTET

Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army, Aldiss worked as a bookseller, which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work was the story ‘Criminal Record’, which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. Since then he has written nearly 100 books and over 300 short stories, many of which are being reissued as part of The Brian Aldiss Collection.

Several of Aldiss’ books have been adapted for the cinema; his story ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ was adapted and released as the film AI in 2001. Besides his own writing, Brian has edited numerous anthologies of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as the magazine SF Horizons.

Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society and in 2000 was given the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Aldiss was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2005. He now lives in Oxford, the city in which his bookselling career began in 1947.

Brian Aldiss

Forgotten Life

Dedication

for

Margaret

jo

svaki dan

Contents

Cover (#ulink_8030ee8c-35ed-5040-a2d1-cdeefbc262ae)

Forgotten Life

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Book One

Angel

1

It was almost roses, roses, all the way. The fans…

2

Clement Winter left home shortly after nine the next morning,…

3

Clement folded Ellen’s letters carefully back into their envelopes and…

4

Clement sat over his brother’s old exercise book for a…

5

The past immediately becomes history. Even yesterday has undergone a…

6

About a mile from my billet, in a modest side…

7

There was at that time a song very popular in…

8

The crate of film was dumped in the foyer of…

9

Clement shaved in mild good humour. He had no objection…

10

And so I found myself, helpless, with a little kaleidoscope…

Book Two

Anima

11

‘You have been a bit absent-minded since we got home,…

12

Sheila was sympathetic.

13