Earthworks [By] Brian W. Aldiss

The 1960's were a time of utopian hopes, celebrating peace, free love and the brotherhood of all; but also of a deep unease, even a nihilistic fear in the Western World. Surely the Vietnam War, the amoral Nixon Administration and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation fed those fears; conservatives feared the destruction of values and society they had worked hard to attain while their opposite numbers feared their continuation. The developed world's squandering of resources began to be understood by all; no longer did a belching smokestack indicate progress as much as environmental disaster. At this time, science fiction gave us some of the grimmest writing yet. John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange are all outstanding examples of the fear and hopelessness authors of the time understood coursed close under the skin of the optimistic face of society. Brian Aldiss's Earthworks is equally representative of this tone. Although nowhere nearly as well known as my other examples, Aldiss's vision may actually be bleaker. It is set in a future which follows all too recognizably from our own--pollution has taken its toll and disease and hunger are so rampant that they have become the identifying characteristic of the time. Although Earthworks is quite short, at only 126 pages, it is a richly detailed and fully convincing portrait; disease and illness make the storytelling hallucinatory at times, leaving the narrator and reader questioning the very nature of reality. Fans of Philip K. Dick will be enthralled by this quality. Aldiss is a superb writer at his very best here. It is a real pity that Earthworks is out of print, but I would definitely recommend it for any science fiction fan search out a used copy.