Hello Summer, Goodbye

First published in 1975, Hello Summer, Goodbye is a minor classic of the SF field. Set on a planet whose elliptical orbit creates intense summers and long, cold winters, it tells of the love between Drove and the girl Pallahaxi-Browneyes, whose affair is set against civil war and the dread approach of winter. It's also a brilliant depiction of an alien world, with bizarre tidal effects and even stranger native creatures. As Coney states in the Author's Note: "This is a love story, and a science-fiction story, and more besides." It's also a beautifully-written, lyrical adventure story with one of the finest closing lines in the genre. Michael Coney established himself in the mid-1970s as one of the leading British science-fiction writers of his day, with a string of novels distinctive for their combination of light readability on the surface and much darker inner depths. Hello Summer, Goodbye first appeared in 1975 while Mike was managing an Antiguan hotel called the Jabberwock, a beachfront nightclub with a few guest rooms. He had left Britain in 1969, after the sort of disengaged career attempts that characterised the early years of so many writers. But Britain was never far from Mike's work and the atmosphere of the west country provided a strong flavour in his novels and stories. It was particularly noticeable in Hello Summer, Goodbye.