Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (197 page)

Figure 6
. Diagram of the Great Wheel within the granite of Mt. Kharnabhar. (Bambeck protection).

After ten years, the Wheel has been tugged by a captive back to the point at which he started his imprisonment. A revolution has been completed. On that final day, one prisoner finds daylight instead of stone for the fourth wall of his cell, and may make his exit to freedom; in the cell leading his, another man will be entering for his first day of the ten-year journey into and through the rock.

This ceaseless revolution has been seen by some to be echoed by the ceaseless orbiting of the Avernus, high above Kharnabhar.

Helliconia is a sparsely populated world, at least as far as human and phagor densities are concerned. The following table shows how those densities fluctuate between the periods of extreme cold and heat. Phagor populations are more stable than human ones.

The weight of planetary biomass is in direct proportion to the solar energy absorbed by the planetary surface. At the time of apastron, the total mass is almost one third that at periastron.

Thanks for invaluable preliminary discussions go to Professor Tom Shippey (philology), Dr J. M. Roberts (history) and Mr Desmond Morris (anthropology). I also wish to thank Dr B. E. Juel-Jensen (pathology) and Dr Jack Cohen (biology) for factual suggestions. Anything sound philologically is owed to Professor Tom Shippey; his lively enthusiasm has been of great help all along.

The globe of Helliconia itself was designed and built by Dr Peter Cattermole, from its geology to its weather. For the cosmology and astronomy, I am indebted to Dr Iain Nicolson, whose patience over the years is a cause for particular gratitude.

Dr Mick Kelly and Dr Norman Myers both gave up-to-date advice on winters other than natural ones. The structure of the Great Wheel owes much to Dr Joern Bambeck. James Lovelock kindly allowed me to employ his concept of Gaia in this fictional form. Herr Wolfgang Jeschke’s interest in this project from its early days has been vital.

My debt to the writings and friendship of Dr J. T. Fraser and to David Wingrove (for being protean) is apparent.

To my wife, Margaret, loving thanks for letting Helliconia take over for so long, and for working on it with me.

Brian Aldiss
was born in 1925. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Signals in Burma and Sumatra. In 1948 he was demobilised and became an assistant in an Oxford bookshop. His first published SF novel was
Non-Stop
, published in 1958. By 1962 he had already won an award for his series of novellas collectively known as
Hothouse
, and during the 1960s he wrote some of his most famous novels:
Greybeard
(1964),
Report on Probability A
(1968) and
Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia
(1969). In addition,
The Saliva Tree
(1965) won the Nebula award for best novella. He continued his prolific output throughout the 1970s but achieved his greatest acclaim in the 1980s for the three massively researched novels
Helliconia Spring
(1982),
Helliconia Summer
(1983) and
Helliconia Winter
(1985), the first of which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He subsequently turned his attention to straight fiction focusing on aspects of his own life (such as
Forgotten Life
(1988)) or autobiography
(Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith’s: A Writing Life
(1990) and
The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman
(1998)) before returning to SF.

Throughout his writing career, Aldiss has been both an anthologist and a critic, involved in both the Penguin Science Fiction and The Year’s Best SF series. Both
Billion Year Spree
(1973) and its expanded follow-up
Trillion Year Spree
(1986) are considered classic surveys of SF. The latter won a Hugo Award in 1987. He has also worked as a reviewer and essayist, writing for the
Times Literary Supplement
, the
Guardian
, and the
Washington Post
. In 2001, his short story
Super-Toys Last All Summer Long
was the basis for the Steven Spielberg film
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
. Aldiss was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2005. He currently lives in Oxford.