Billion Year Spree was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1973 and was revised and expanded as Trillion Year Spree (with David Wingrove) in 1986. The book’s central argument — that science fiction begins with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818 — was controversial when published and has remained so, but it has also become the dominant origin story of the genre, displacing earlier claims for Lucian of Samosata, Cyrano de Bergerac, or Jules Verne.
Aldiss’s argument rests on a precise definition: science fiction is distinguished from earlier forms of fantastic literature by its grounding in the scientific worldview. Frankenstein’s creature is not created by magic or divine intervention but by technology — electricity, chemistry, anatomy — and the novel’s horror comes not from the supernatural but from the unintended consequences of scientific inquiry. This, Aldiss argues, is the essential science-fictional move: the extrapolation of scientific possibility into narrative.
The book surveys the field from Shelley through the 1970s, with chapters on Wells, the pulp magazines, the Golden Age, the New Wave, and individual authors from Verne to Ballard. Aldiss writes as a novelist rather than an academic — his judgments are personal, sometimes unfair, always interesting. He is harsh on much Golden Age science fiction (which he finds technically naive and literarily crude), generous to the New Wave (to which he contributed), and passionate about the writers he loves: Wells, Stapledon, Wyndham, Ballard.
The book remains the single most influential critical history of science fiction, required reading for anyone who wants to understand how the genre thinks about itself.
Collecting Billion Year Spree
First edition (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1973): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $80–$200
- Very good/very good: $30–$80
- Revised edition (Trillion Year Spree, 1986): $20–$50