The Malacia Tapestry. Brian Aldiss

      

      BRIAN ALDISS

      The Malacia Tapestry

       Copyright

      HarperVoyager an imprint of

      HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

      This ebook edition first published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

      First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 1976

      Portions of this novel appeared in a different form in Orbit 12, copyright © Damon Knight 1973

      Copyright © Brian Aldiss 2015

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

      Brian Aldiss asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007482368

      Ebook Edition © October 2015 ISBN: 9780007482375

      Version: 2015-08-28

       Dedication

       For Margaret

      time under prisms

      dawn and pollen clouds afloat

      presaging changes

      you are the glimpsed light

      in my smokey existence

      frail but enduring

       Epigraph

      You sing of the old gods easily

      In the days when you are young,

      When love and trust seem not at odds;

      But I know there are gods behind the gods,

      Gods that are best unsung.

      K. G. St Chentero

      (XVI Mil.)

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Introduction

       BOOK ONE

       Mountebanks in an Urban Landscape

       A Balloon Over the Bucintoro

      

       BOOK TWO

      

       A Feast Unearned

      

       Woman With Mandoline in Sunlight

      

       A Young Soldier’s Horoscope

      

       The Ancestral Hunt

      

       BOOK THREE

      

       Castle Interior With Penitents

      

       Wedding Cups and Naked Guests

      

       About the Author

      

       Also by Brian Aldiss

      

       About the Publisher

       Introduction

      A note on the original text published by Jonathan Cape in 1976:

      Malacia is one of my great fantastical territories. I was moved to make Malacia in imitation of England, which had become boring at that time, just when I had returned from exotic tropical climes. I inserted the odd dinosaur to liven matters up a bit. Oxford lacked dinosaurs. I submitted my finished novel to my publisher at Jonathan Cape – very pleasant people. And just to cheer up that wodge of manuscript, I inserted between its pages some reproductions of etchings by G.B. Tiepolo – crazy, lovely things that even Italian art critics could not comprehend. Off went the manuscript. It happened that my publisher was about to visit the German book exhibition in Frankfurt; a thoughtful man, he took my manuscript with him. He read it while flying back to London. And he liked it so much that he hung on to the Tiepolos, to use them here and there throughout the original book.

      Brian W. Aldiss

      Oxford, 2015