Steve Aylett

Steve Aylett (b. 1967 in Bromley, United Kingdom) is a satirical science fiction and slipstream author of several bizarro books. He is renowned for his colorful satire attacking the manipulations of authority, and for having reams of amusing epigrams and non-sequiturs only tangentially related to what little plot the books possess.

Aylett left school at age 17 and worked in a book warehouse, and later in law publishing.Fact|date=February 2008

Aylett claims to have books appear in his brain in one visual "glob" which looks like a piece of gum (but denies it's "channelled"). ref|FMInterview

Bibliography

* Beerlight:
** "The Crime Studio" (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994)
** "Slaughtermatic" (Four Walls Eight Windows,1997)
** "Atom" (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000)
* Accomplice:
* # "Only an Alligator" (2002)
* # "The Velocity Gospel" (2002)
* # "Dummyland" (2002)
* # "Karloff's Circus" (2004)
* "Bigot Hall" (1995)
* "The Inflatable Volunteer"(1999)
* "Toxicology" (collection) (Four Walls Eight Windows, first edition 1999, expanded version 2001)
* "Shamanspace" (2001)
* "Lint" (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005)
* "Fain the Sorcerer"
* "And Your Point Is?'
* "The Flash"

Beerlight

"Slaughtermatic", "The Crime Studio", "Atom" and some of "Toxicology" are set in a supposedly future dystopian town called Beerlight, apparently modelled on Baltimore.

Accomplice

"Only an Alligator", "The Velocity Gospel", "Dummyland", and "Karloff's Circus" are set in Accomplice, a suburb on a tropical peninsula in a perhaps nuclear-blasted future, underneath which live demons. Aylett says he is in the tradition of "real satirists" such as Voltaire, Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain.

Lint

'Lint' is a satirical, Zelig-like biography of an imaginary author. The book traces his career through thinly disguised satires on a number of well-known writers from the late 20th Century, including Philip K. Dick, Hunter S Thompson and Ken Kesey.

Comic books

He has written issue #27 of "Tom Strong" and a comic called "The Nerve", as well as visual artifacts such as Jeff Lint's comic "The Caterer".Newer projects include "The Promissory" for ARTHUR magazine’s ‘mimeo’ line, now published independently at lulu.com.

Quotes

- The truth is easiest to disprove - its defences are down.

- One thing you’ll say for skeletons, they’ll always give you a smile.

- Ideas are self-replenishing, like snot.

- You cannot ice-skate and be bewildered at the same time.

- In America fundamentalist Christians believe the world was created 6,000 years ago - in England people drink in bars that are older than that.

Awards and nominations

"Slaughtermatic" was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1998.

Winner of the Jack Trevor Story Award in 2006.

Notes

#Note|FMInterview Rick Klaw, [http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/aylett-interview/ "A Glob of Multicolored Chiming Vibrational Bubble Gum: An Interview with Steve Aylett"] , "Fantastic Metropolis" (19 February 2005)

External links

* [http://www.steveaylett.com/ Official website]
* [http://www.snowbooks.com/wiki/Jeff_Lint/ Jeff Lint Note: this is a spoof Wikipedia page hosted by the publisher. Jeff Lint is a fictional character, the protagonist of the eponymous book 'Lint']
* [http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2002_apr/interview_steve_aylett.html 2002 interview]
* [http://www.goaste.cx/goaste/aylett001.html 2005 interview]
* [http://fractalmatter.com/main/?p=212 2006 FractalMatter interview]