Faber were my first publishers. I never had to search for them. Charles Monteith wrote to me and invited me to send them 'The Brightfount Diaries'. That book amused people, and from then on I was away. This novel has an oyster design by the very trendy Bridget Riley. My title is a quote from TS Eliot: 'O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, / The vacant interstellar spaces ... ' All the same, it's a cheerful tale of space explorers on an alien planet, who find an alien ship crammed with alien shit ... So metaphysical questions are raised ... Photograph: PR
Faber & Faber (1969)
My family and I were driving round Europe. In the streets of Brussels one night, we saw an inn. Its light burning outside was broken, and read 'Stella Art –' So began this long revolutionary trail, starring the godlike Charteris. Jacket illustration by Erro, from his film 'Mecamorphosis'. 'Far beyond the usual territories of SF,' said my publishers. This fragmented story, dear to me, was written partly in Yugoslavia and partly in Sweden. Europe dissolves. Yugoslavia has gone. I'm not sure about my book Photograph: PR
The jacket of this US edition bears etchings from GB Tiepolo, for whom I had an addiction during this period. On his retirement to Venice, he produced a series of fantastical etchings. My central figure, Perian, moves among the streets of a mysterious age-old city, Malacia, among beggars, soldiers, and dukes. Women in Malacia can fly until they are married or seduced. 'This powerful novel,' say both Harper and Row, 'sets out in dramatic form many of the conflicts and contradictions of our own day.' As I had hoped Photograph: PR
A slender hardcover containing six stories with an oriental cadence. I was living in Singapore and became friendly with the publisher. What I like most about the slender volume is the cover, which I designed. Mr Chopra said to me, 'None of your SF, thank you.' I wrote back, including this sheet of paper. The economical Mr Chopra pressed it into service. One of the stories here is 'A Romance of the Equator,' which, back in Britain, became a book in its own right. Two can play the economy game ... Photograph: PR
There comes a time in every young man's life when he finds he is not so young any more. It's when you write your autobiography. Few autobiographers are shown in the nude, as I am, together with other members of Royal Signals 'S' Relief. We are in the Mu River in Burma in 1944; behind us is a semi-sunken railway engine. And inside this large volume is the story of my life, here, there, everywhere, told as honestly as I was able. I was living in Oxford, in a house where my second wife was about to die Photograph: PR
The American rather than the English edition. I liked the style of this hardcover's jacket. I lunched with the publisher and his lady; the blighter stuck me for the price of the meal. This is the first of four volumes known – or unknown – as The Squire Quartet. Covering our loves and troubles, the series ran into problems in the UK, with each volume being published by a different publisher. Anthony Burgess called this volume rich, saying it was 'not afraid of thought, full of vital rounded characters'. Alas, that didn't help much Photograph: PR
The difficulties of writers! I submitted the manuscript to Stratus because they had already reprinted sixteen of my earlier books. It was accepted, but Stratus was in trouble. A dedicated lady editor got it printed and ready for publication. Stratus collapsed. The novel was never published or distributed. I had previously paid a young woman in Crete to paint this cover in Byzantine fashion. It shows the infant Jesus being suckled by Anna, his grandmother. We were told milky St Anna's body lay in Hajia Sophia. We went there to beautiful Istanbul but found nothing Photograph: PR
Another beautiful book, this one published by the celebrated company in Uppingham, Rutland. I was having problems with a literary agent, as sometimes happens. Goldmark were as nice as pie and sent a helicopter to take my partner, Alison, and me over England's green and pleasant land to meet our amiable new publisher. The meat sandwich of the book contains the second world war and Steve's problem: was it intended he should drown on those glorious Walcot sands? It is a long sensuous story, told for once in the second person singular, where the loving but unreliable Aunt Violet makes an appearance now and again Photograph: PR
This portly paperback contains all Helliconias, Spring, Summer and Winter. The cover, beautiful and dignified, carries a quote from the TLS, claiming that 'Science fiction has never before had this grandeur.' Hmm, I spent two years on research before writing a word ... Most SF contains assumptions – an assumption that we will colonise Mars, let's say. Here, we assume that a year may last for 5,000 years, leading to two types of being. Front page, New York Times, 16 September 2011, announces NASA has discovered a distant planet with two suns, a lesser and a larger. Some astronomers though this impossible. It is the Helliconian model Photograph: PR
Translations appear all round the world – I've included this large Chinese paperback because it looks so beautiful. Perhaps because I have visited China more than once – particularly Chengdu – they have paid some attention to my work. I wrote a history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree, entirely because I felt so disposed. It was needed. The task was not proposed to me, nor was I commissioned. The finished book had a slow but steady readership. Later I was asked to elaborate it with the aid of my friend David Wingrove. Here it is in Chinese Photograph: PR
