The author Brian Aldiss charts his life from his first memories to his status as successful writer of general and science fiction. Born in 1925, he grew up in the Norfolk town of Dereham, where his grandfather owned an old-fashioned department store. After attending several minor public schools - and having an affair with the matron at one of them - Aldiss was sent to India in 1944, and then Burma, where he joined the "forgotten army". Returning to England, he worked in a bookshop and became a reviewer and then a columnist; the columns were turned into his first book. Subsequent fame through his writing was to bring run-ins with Hollywood and psychoanalysis.