Before you is one of Aldiss’s best creations. A “space saga” comparable in scale, fascination and epicism only to Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. A saga about the planet Helliconia, on which each “great year” is the lifetime of hundreds of generations. About a planet whose sun turns again and again around a brighter star, bringing with each revolution radical changes in climate and ecology. This is a world written down to the smallest detail - from the art of war to diplomacy, from science to philosophy. Welcome to Helliconia! novel, the book includes the writer's introduction to the 1996 re-release of the trilogy, as well as appendices created by him specifically for this re-release.