The master speaks

Went to see Brian Aldiss last night at OUSFG. About 20 or so of us crammed into Seminar Room A in Jesus - rather crowded and a little too hot - all ready to listen to the master. By far the most shocking revelation of the evening was that the OUSFG creation myth (that Aldiss created the society in order to get them out of his room and stop them nicking his books) was more or less true - even the origin of 'Speculative' instead of 'Science' was right (the proctors thought 'Science Fiction' didn't sound high brow enough for a university society). I thought the whole point of oral history was that it was embellished and in (not very) extreme cases, made up! But apparently not. Who would have thought the elders could be trusted to get something like that right. It was great listening to Brian telling stories about how Kingsley (Amis) introduced him to C S Lewis (the first senior member of OUSFG) and how C S Lewis sent one of his (Aldiss') books to Tolkien who wrote him a very nice letter telling him how much he enjoyed it. James Blish's widow Judy had come along to help Aldiss out (he's hurt his arm) and they told us a little about the time Aldiss visited them in New York and how determined Blish was to move to England once he fell in love with Oxford. It was a really lovely evening. Archie managed to record the event on minidisk so there may well be a transcript later for those of you unavoidably detained in other countries and stuff.