We are delighted to welcome four guests of honour to Intervention; Brian Aldiss, Jon Bing, Octavia Butler and David Langford.
Brian W. Aldiss
One of the few British science fiction writers to achieve mainstream status, Brian Wilson Aldiss is also one of the field's true chameleons, dramatically reinventing his style as the genre itself evolved.
The son of East Anglian shopkeepers, he began writing whilst at public school (a fact recently confirmed when pupils unearthed a time capsule containing a selection of the young Aldiss' risque stories). Service in the British Army during 1944–45 later provided the background for the mainstream Horatio Stubbs novels, whilst work as a bookshop assistant led to the semi-autobiographical series The Brightfount Diaries(1955).
Aldiss' first SF novel, Non-stop (1958), proved a spectacular debut, imbuing the 'generation starship' theme with surprising freshness. His reputation was consolidated with such works as the collection Space, Time and Nathaniel (1957), and Greybeard (1964), Report on Probability A (1968) and Barefoot in the Head (1969). These last reflect Aldiss' quest for stylistic experimentation, with Michael Moorcock's New Worlds an enthusiastic laboratory.
An eminent SF critic and historian, Aldiss' Billion Year Spree (1973, revised and reissued in 1986 as Trillion Year Spree) remains a landmark overview of the genre, its author affirming his belief that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) marks the birth of SF as a distinct literary vein. That appreciation of SF's debt to Shelley had earlier surfaced in Frankenstein Unbound (1973), the only Aldiss novel to reach the screen, although he has collaborated with the actor-director Ken Campbell on a stage adaptation of several of his short stories (one of which, 'Super Toys Last All Summer Long', has been optioned by 2001: A Space Odyssey director Stanley Kubrick).
Octavia E. Butler
Like Brian Aldiss, Octavia Butler has a significant mainstream reputation, underlined earlier this year when she received a $295,000 MacArthur Grant to further her work.
A graduate of Pasadena City College, she attended California State University, the Open Door Program of the Screen Writers' Guild of America and the Clarion SF Writers' Workshop, Butler made her genre debut with 'Crossover' (1971), the first of many works in which she weaves together African-American history, future soceties and a highly intellectual exploration of the alien perspective. Butler's major novel sequence, opened with Wild Seed (1980), charts the creation of a race of African psychics,'Patternists', who eventually face the challenge of extraterrestial viruses and interbreeding with alien invaders.
Butler's own heritage is explored in Kindred (1979), in which a modern African-American woman is hurled back through time into the pre-war Confederacy, confronting the evils of slavery from a twentieth-century viewpoint; promoted by its publisher as a mainstream novel, Butler herself describes the book as 'grim fantasy'. Also of note are the Hugo-winning 'Speech Sounds' (1983), in which plague obliterates humanity's capacity for language, and the following year's 'Bloodchild', which received a Nebula Award for its study of a human male who offers to gestate eggs for an alien donor.
February 1995 saw the Women's Press release of Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993), set in a post-collapse Los Angeles and focussing upon a young Afro-American woman who establishes a new religion. A sequel, Parable of the Talents, is currently in preparation.
David R. Langford
Although his literary canon includes a space opera (The Space Eater, 1982), a political farce (The Leaky Establishment, 1984), a collaborative disaster novel (Earthdoom!, with John Grant, 1987) and a 'Victorian' ufology spoof (An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871—actually 1979), it remains Dave Langford's fanzine work which has earned him the most recognition—a total of thirteen Hugo Awards.
Born in Gwent and educated at Oxford's Brasenose College, Langford moved into nuclear physics with a post at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston; he later wrote a satirical account of his work there for New Scientist, which subsequntly evolved into The Leaky Establishment . 'I'm a technophile,' he confessed in 1985, 'but a somewhat pessimistic one; it seems so unfair that shiny, alluring technological toys keep pointing the way to more and easier megadeaths.' This had earlier led to War in 2080: The Future of Military Technology (1979).
A freelance journalist since 1980, Langford currently has a regular column in SFX and produces a version of his news-sheet Ansible for Interzone. http://www.futurenet.co.uk/
Jon Bing
Jon Bing was born in Norway in 1944. His first book, the short story collection Og jorden skal beve, in collaboration with Tor Åge Bringsværd, was published in 1967. Since then he has published over two dozen novels and short story collections, as well as editing many anthologies, translating Douglas Adams, Brian Aldiss and Ursula K. LeGuin and many others into Norwegian. He has written several original plays for the stage, television and radio. He has also written radio and television plays based on the works of others, among them, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison and Ray Bradbury. He has written comic book scripts, non-fiction about science fiction, book reviews and essays. His short stories have been translated into English, Finnish, German, Italian, Russian and Swedish.
Jon Bing has a doctorate in law, and holds the chair in computers and law at the University of Oslo. He has written several textbooks and non-fiction works in connection with his professional interests. He has won several international prizes for his work, both as a writer and an academic and holds editorial positions on over a dozen publications within the fields of artificial intelligence, information and law. He holds the chair of Norsk Kulturråd—the Norwegian equivalent to the British Council. Jon Bing married writer Toril Brekke in 1988.
It may strike you that Jon Bing has been a very busy man. Among his many interests, he also found time to co-found modern Norwegian SF fandom with Tor Åge Bringsværd, who has been his collaborator on several works. These two were almost single-handedly responsible for the rise in SF publication in Norway in the early seventies. They introduced the British New Wave to the Scandinavian cultural establishment and were the firebrands who revived the Oslo University Science Fiction Society.
Jon Bing has been Guest of Honour at Norwegian conventions, won every prize Norwegian fandom could give him, and has always been willing to extend a helping hand to fandom. His fan-active days were over before this committee member entered Norwegian fandom, but there are tales of his great days as one of the centre-points of Norwegian fandom.
Jon Bing's interest in communication, and his great gift of communicating his many enthusiasms, will undoubtedly make him a valuable Guest of Honour at Intervention. His weird and wonderful ties will brighten the lobby of the Adelphi, and his scintillating conversation will fill up the hotel bars. In addition to all his fine accomplishments, Jon Bing is also great fun to be with!