RIP Brian W. Aldiss/Eclipse play-list

OK, this isn't going to be an epic. Science fiction writer Brian Aldiss died a couple of days ago. He was 92. Every time I visit Locus, I expect to see obituaries for my heroes Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg -- they're getting up there, but they're both hanging in.
I haven't read that much Aldiss -- only one short story, I think, the surprisingly adult for its time "Poor Little Warrior" -- and a novel, the not-quite-successful but still striking (and definitely involved with current concerns) HARM. But I've read several of his memoirs, and I think his histories of science fiction, BILLION YEAR SPREE (1973) and the updated TRILLION YEAR SPREE (1986), are still the best at tracking the history of the field. Somebody should write the history of the SF field's past 30 years.
But here's why Aldiss's death means a lot to me. His memoirs are often pretty amazing. THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE has some great behind-the-scenes stories about what it was like to be one of the top British SF writers back at the dawn of the "New Wave" in the early 1960's. And it also talks about some emotional problems Aldiss had that he didn't get fixed for YEARS. BURY MY HEART AT W.H. SMITH'S is sort of a first-draft of TWINKLING OF AN EYE. The later book is much longer, and MUCH more personal.
His first book, way back in 1955, was a fictionalized memoir, THE BRIGHTFOUNT DIARIES, about his experiences working in an Oxford bookstore after World War II. I read it in the summer of 2013 -- I'd always wondered what working in a bookstore was like. And after I finished it -- even though not much happened, it wasn't very dramatic, and it certainly wasn't the charming English novel I'd expected -- suddenly a lightbulb went on over my head.
"Hey, even I can write a novel in which nothing happens," I said to myself. And six weeks later I had written a rough draft for my first e-book, GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!, about the three years I spent working in a record store. It was like reading Aldiss's book showed me how to do it.
So there's that. So now I need to read some more of Aldiss's many writings. I've been told he wrote some pretty great science fiction, back in the day....

Here's what I was listening to during the eclipse yesterday, my 58th birthday. We enjoyed the change in the color of the sky, the temperature dropping, and the birds and traffic going all quiet, from the safety of home, rather than traveling along with half a million others to the path of totality down in central Oregon:
* Vangelis -- Alpha.
* Happy the Man -- On Time as a Helix of Precious Laughs, Wind-Up Doll Day Wind.
* Mark Knopfler -- Going Home (Theme from LOCAL HERO).
* Pink Floyd -- High Hopes, Bike.
* Steve Tibbetts -- Ur.
* Lyle Mays -- Ascent.
* Deodato -- Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001).
...There was probably a little more, but I can't remember what else. (Alzheimer's, ya know.) And we did NOT play DARK SIDE OF THE MOON....
Was nice to have such a huge astronomical event on my birthday -- I planned it that way, of course. And it wasn't even the end of the world or anything. No major fireworks. Thank goodness.
Later on in the day, The Girlfriend and I went to Tacoma's HI-VOLTAGE RECORDS (free plug) and heard some nice jazz from Art Pepper, rather good though morose early-'60s broken-hearted love ballads by Willie Nelson, and some killer rock and roll from (good Ghod!) Nazareth! RAZAMANAZ, it was. But EVERYthing sounds great on HI-VOLTAGE's sound system....