Somewhere East of Life

Somewhere East of Life
Brian Aldiss

The final volume of the critically acclaimed Squire Quartet, available for the first time as an ebook.Having abandoned Britain to its recession, architectural historian Roy Burnell operates out of Germany, attempting to hold the world together culturally. Moving around the more outrageous parts of the globe, his task is to list architectural gems threatened by war, history and human awfulness.Such is man’s ingenuity, however, that Burnell’s mind is also threatened. Someone has stolen a chunk of his memory – ten years in fact. This chunk, and in particular the more salacious bits, such as his marriage to Stephanie, has been chopped up, recorded in e-mnemonicvision and sold to lovers of soft porn everywhere.First published in 1994 and unavailable for some time. Features a new introduction by the author.

Somewhere East of 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

Somewhere East of Life

Dedication

with love

to Felicity and Alex

bearers of fruits

from

Kidlington and Osh

Contents

Cover (#ulink_9b0bf17c-7905-5aae-8818-e496403fc5fa)

Somewhere East of Life

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

1 Friends in Sly Places

2 Murder in a Cathedral

3 Bishops Linctus

4 FOAM

5 Some Expensive Bullets

6 Soss City

7 ‘The Dead One’

8 Looking for a Postcard

9 A Head Among the Throng

10 ‘Time Had Run Out’

11 ‘The Madonna of Futurity’

12 A Crowded Stage

13 Richard and Blanche

14 In the Korean Fast Foot

15 Makhtumkuli Day

16 Burnell Speaks!

17 Glimpse of Airing Cupboard

18 The Friendship Bridge

19 A Toe and a Tow

20 PRICC Strikes

21 Subterfuge

22 A Brief Discourse on Justice

23 To the Krasnovodsk Station

24 Singing in the Train

25 Snow in the Desert

26 The Executioner

27 Squire Ad Libs

28 Open to the Public