'An extraordinary book' The Listener

'An extremely urgent criticism of the present' Daily Telegraph

The earth is recovering from the Acid Head War, in which hallucinogenic chemicals were the primary weapon. Many humans are now suffering from delusions and are unable to tell the real from the imaginary.

When a man named Colin Charteris tries to make sense of the drugged-out world, he is taken as the new messiah. As he descends into paranoid visions, he begins to believe this himself.

Mirrors fantastically the violence and destruction of our times ... an extraordinary book ... a dark, sombre, sustained vision ... dense and powerful * The Listener *
The most ambitious psychedelic sci-fi novel of the era * Conceptual Fiction *
Extraordinarily inventive * Oxford Mail *
The kind of breakthrough which crushes criticism with admiration * Western Mail *
An extremely urgent criticism of life in the present * Daily Telegraph *
An extraordinary tour-de-force * Encyclopedia of Science Fiction *

Brian Wilson Aldiss was born in 1925. He was a highly decorated science fiction author who achieved the rare feat of acceptance as a writer of real significance by the literary establishment in his lifetime. As well as his many award-winning novels he has been a hugely important anthologist and editor in the field. He also wrote the pre-eminent history of the genre (with David Wingrove), Trillion Year Spree. He died in 2017 the day after his 92nd birthday.