Jocasta
The tragedy of Oedipus is precipitated by his unwitting marriage to his mother, Jocasta. Brian Aldiss's psychological novel re-examines the entire Oedipus drama from Jocasta's point of view. At first, the minor vexations in her comfortable family life include having a Sphinx roaming the Theban palace, and dealing with her old grandmother, Semele, a relic of the Bronze Age who still practices magic. Gradually, however, the falsity of Jocasta’s position becomes apparent. The oracle of the gods proves inescapable. Nemesis follows.
In Jocasta, Brian Aldiss brings vividly to life the ancient world of dreaming Thebes: a world of sun-drenched landscapes, golden dust, sphynxes, Furies, hermaphroditic philosophers, ghostly apparitions and ambivalent gods. Jocasta is also a strikingly effective contemplation of an older world order where the human mind is still struggling to understand itself and the nature of the world around it; for in Jocasta’s world the human mind is on the cusp of completing its emergence from the slumber of precivilisation to that of modernity.
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Brian Aldiss
Brian Wilson Aldiss, OBE (1925-2017) was an English writer and anthologies editor, best known for science fiction novels and short stories. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss, except for occasional pseudonyms during the mid-1960s.
Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss was a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society. He was (with Harry Harrison) co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. Aldiss was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2000 and inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. He received two Hugo Awards, one Nebula Award, and one John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He wrote the short story "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" (1969), the basis for the Stanley Kubrick-developed Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Aldiss was associated with the British New Wave of science fiction.
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