Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Kværndrup : Mini-Bøgerne, 1979.
Description
A classic, about a far-future Earth dominated by gargantuan plants and the few humans who remain Millions of years beyond our time, our Earth has long since stopped spinning-and giant flora have taken over the sunlit half of the motionless world. Here humans are among the very few animal species that still exist, struggling to survive against enormous odds, but they have become small and weak, and their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing. When the aging leader of Gren's tribe decrees it is time for the old ones to go "Up," the younger are left to make their own way below. Although the journey will not be an easy one for young Gren, he sets off on an odyssey across a perilous world populated by carnivorous plants and other evolved vegetation. But any knowledge to be gained at the terminator-the forbidding boundary between the day world and the night-might well prove worthless for the boy and the companions he amasses along the way when the expanding sun goes nova and their Earth is no more. A thrilling parable of courage, discovery, and survival, Hothouse is among Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss's most beloved and enduring works. Ingeniously inventive, richly detailed, and breathtakingly lush and vibrant, the doomed world and people that Aldiss creates will live forever in the minds of all those who enter this remarkable realm.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member reading_fox
Poor. The initial premise is fairly interesting and more or less reasonable, however the plot rapidly devolves into shaky logic, inconsistencies and contradictions.
The basic premise is that over millennia the tidal effect of the moon has stopped the Earths rotation, and both bodies are now in a
Gren and his surviving troop mates are devolved humans living in this luxuriant forest world, surrounded and competing with various vegetable evolved species for nutrients. And here almost straightaway Aldiss starts failing to make sense. Humans have survived but almost all other animal species haven't. Termites and wasps are the remainders. What? Why humans, why those? What about cockroaches and rats species far more able to survive the fall of civilisation than we, or wasps. Even more weirdly he then refills those same niches with motile plant forms. This just doesn’t make sense. Advanced plant forms yes - predatory also yes, maybe some increased freedom of movement I could see. But spider forms? Really? Not just in shape but in web spinning ability! This was just beyond believable without explanation. Unfortunately there was no such forthcoming. For the truly preposterous idea that such vegetable Transferers could reach the Moon, he offers a brief techno-babble. But even in '62 when this was first written Aldiss seems to have no concept of just how far away the Moon is, or how harsh the conditions are in-between.
Anyway, Gren is somewhat of a throwback to a slightly more inquisitive type of human, and soon quarrels with his troop. We briefly follow the fate of the rest of his troop before abandoning them for 200 pages. Meanwhile Gren strikes out on his own and has some adventures - again mostly with preposterous adapted plants. The mental siren call was particularly bizarre. Eventually he becomes infected with a mutant Morel fungus - which is apparently the original source of intelligence in humans, and is now the renewed source of intelligence in the world. I guess Hothouse is a story solely based on how a Morel looks vaguely like a brain - all wrinkled and spongy. One wonders what Aldiss was tripping on when he wrote this.
Subsequently we discover that there are a few other animals in the world. Gren gets to see the twilight zones between the absolute cold of the dark side and the brilliance of the sun side. Guided by his new morel intelligence Gren eventually decides to attempt to return home.
There is no characterisation, no attempts at making a subtle point about society or culture, no deeper meaning at all. As an exploration of what the future of Earth could be aeons later, it is briefly interesting, before becoming laughable. It doesn’t even manage to summon the tension of a B-movie thriller. I never cared what happened to Gren or his various women, and ended up skipping over various passages waiting for something interesting to happen.
The basic premise is that over millennia the tidal effect of the moon has stopped the Earths rotation, and both bodies are now in a
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fixed aspect to the sun. This is feasible if somewhat difficult to fully determine. The sun as it ages has got hotter - this definitely is true, but I'm unsure whether the sun would nova before the earth became tidally locked. This manifold increase in solar radiation caused the decline of the animals and the blossoming of the planet kingdoms. Well I'll accept this as the one free pass that SF stories get in order to explore something novel.Gren and his surviving troop mates are devolved humans living in this luxuriant forest world, surrounded and competing with various vegetable evolved species for nutrients. And here almost straightaway Aldiss starts failing to make sense. Humans have survived but almost all other animal species haven't. Termites and wasps are the remainders. What? Why humans, why those? What about cockroaches and rats species far more able to survive the fall of civilisation than we, or wasps. Even more weirdly he then refills those same niches with motile plant forms. This just doesn’t make sense. Advanced plant forms yes - predatory also yes, maybe some increased freedom of movement I could see. But spider forms? Really? Not just in shape but in web spinning ability! This was just beyond believable without explanation. Unfortunately there was no such forthcoming. For the truly preposterous idea that such vegetable Transferers could reach the Moon, he offers a brief techno-babble. But even in '62 when this was first written Aldiss seems to have no concept of just how far away the Moon is, or how harsh the conditions are in-between.
Anyway, Gren is somewhat of a throwback to a slightly more inquisitive type of human, and soon quarrels with his troop. We briefly follow the fate of the rest of his troop before abandoning them for 200 pages. Meanwhile Gren strikes out on his own and has some adventures - again mostly with preposterous adapted plants. The mental siren call was particularly bizarre. Eventually he becomes infected with a mutant Morel fungus - which is apparently the original source of intelligence in humans, and is now the renewed source of intelligence in the world. I guess Hothouse is a story solely based on how a Morel looks vaguely like a brain - all wrinkled and spongy. One wonders what Aldiss was tripping on when he wrote this.
Subsequently we discover that there are a few other animals in the world. Gren gets to see the twilight zones between the absolute cold of the dark side and the brilliance of the sun side. Guided by his new morel intelligence Gren eventually decides to attempt to return home.
There is no characterisation, no attempts at making a subtle point about society or culture, no deeper meaning at all. As an exploration of what the future of Earth could be aeons later, it is briefly interesting, before becoming laughable. It doesn’t even manage to summon the tension of a B-movie thriller. I never cared what happened to Gren or his various women, and ended up skipping over various passages waiting for something interesting to happen.
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LibraryThing member kevinashley
I'm finding this book difficult to review having read it in one form or another three times over 40 years or so. First as a short story, which covers the first episode in the full book, then the whole novel a few years later, and finally re-reading it many years on. The impressions it left are very
What's consistent about my feeling after each reading is the originality of the premise. On a far-future Earth, the sun has begun to swell as it approaches red-giant stage (or perhaps nova; I'm not sure Aldiss really made his mind up about this) and the result has been an explosion of the plant world and the virtual elimination of animal life. There are a few exceptions, among them very primitive humans, shrunk to monkey-like proportions, who eke out a perilous existence amongst fast-moving carnivorous and poisonous plants of many forms. This world is well-portrayed in the early chapters and is captivating.
On my first readings, that feeling stayed with me throughout; I almost wonder now whether I read a different version. Because I now feel somewhat let down by the way the book plays out, and feel that the author wasted a fantastic premise which could have been explored in many ways and instead ended up with a lacklustre adventure story with characters that one doesn't feel sympathy for. The later reading also revealed a lack of consistency in the portrayal of this future world that spoils it. For instance, at one point a human group emerging from the forest for the first time sees what we must guess is some future evolution of the termite mound. They exclaim that it looks 'just like a castle' and wonder who built it. But these are humans who for thousands of generations have known a world with no buildings of any sort and who have no history. Why would they even have a word for 'castle' or know the concept of 'building'? There are other similar incidents that jar.
But despite these flaws, there are some ideas that are wondrous. The transporters, giant vegetable vessels kilometers long that travel between Earth and moon laying spider-like webs as they do so are one such. There are others. Read the book for these alone, and if you get frustrated as the ideas get fewer, leave it be. It's not at all like me to suggest you leave a book unfinished, but this is one time when it might be worth it. But do try to finish; it's a slim volume.
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different.What's consistent about my feeling after each reading is the originality of the premise. On a far-future Earth, the sun has begun to swell as it approaches red-giant stage (or perhaps nova; I'm not sure Aldiss really made his mind up about this) and the result has been an explosion of the plant world and the virtual elimination of animal life. There are a few exceptions, among them very primitive humans, shrunk to monkey-like proportions, who eke out a perilous existence amongst fast-moving carnivorous and poisonous plants of many forms. This world is well-portrayed in the early chapters and is captivating.
On my first readings, that feeling stayed with me throughout; I almost wonder now whether I read a different version. Because I now feel somewhat let down by the way the book plays out, and feel that the author wasted a fantastic premise which could have been explored in many ways and instead ended up with a lacklustre adventure story with characters that one doesn't feel sympathy for. The later reading also revealed a lack of consistency in the portrayal of this future world that spoils it. For instance, at one point a human group emerging from the forest for the first time sees what we must guess is some future evolution of the termite mound. They exclaim that it looks 'just like a castle' and wonder who built it. But these are humans who for thousands of generations have known a world with no buildings of any sort and who have no history. Why would they even have a word for 'castle' or know the concept of 'building'? There are other similar incidents that jar.
But despite these flaws, there are some ideas that are wondrous. The transporters, giant vegetable vessels kilometers long that travel between Earth and moon laying spider-like webs as they do so are one such. There are others. Read the book for these alone, and if you get frustrated as the ideas get fewer, leave it be. It's not at all like me to suggest you leave a book unfinished, but this is one time when it might be worth it. But do try to finish; it's a slim volume.
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LibraryThing member Stevil2001
In 1962, Brian Aldiss won the Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction for the "Hothouse" sequence of stories. 1959 had seen categories for Best Short Story and Best Novelette, but from 1960 to 1966, there was just a singular Best Short Fiction category. Even beyond that, the rules didn't work the way
I both can and cannot see why this won. There definitely are arresting, interesting images. Though not the earliest by far, Hothouse is still a pretty early example of the climate apocalypse subgenre. The warming of Earth (from natural causes) has caused a massive proliferation and evolution of plant life, and thus the downfall of the human race, which exists only in isolated pockets of depressed intelligence. The book follows one human as he journeys across his world, often at the behest of a superintelligent morel, and encounters different aspects of the amazing ecosystem. I would say the world was the best part, but I actually found reading the worldbuilding and scene-setting a bit of a slog. There is some neat stuff here, but it feels buried in a dull, aimless travelogue about dull, aimless people, and the exposition itself was often dull and aimless too; I was rarely excited to pick the book back up, and it took me a while to read despite being only 250 pages. I've liked some of Aldiss's short fiction that I've read, and he made good editorial choices in his Galactic Empires anthologies, but this is the first of his novels that I've picked up (for certain definitions of "novel") and it doesn't make me want to read another one. Not bad per se... but it never clicked with me. I kind of feel like I'd rather look at some illustrations of the world that Aldiss created!
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they work now; the five "Hothouse" stories have a collective wordcount in the novel range, and thus if the sequence was nominated as a unit these days, it would have to be in Best Novel. The same year Aldiss won the Hugo (there is a funny story about this in my Penguin Modern Classics edition), the five stories were published as a fix-up.I both can and cannot see why this won. There definitely are arresting, interesting images. Though not the earliest by far, Hothouse is still a pretty early example of the climate apocalypse subgenre. The warming of Earth (from natural causes) has caused a massive proliferation and evolution of plant life, and thus the downfall of the human race, which exists only in isolated pockets of depressed intelligence. The book follows one human as he journeys across his world, often at the behest of a superintelligent morel, and encounters different aspects of the amazing ecosystem. I would say the world was the best part, but I actually found reading the worldbuilding and scene-setting a bit of a slog. There is some neat stuff here, but it feels buried in a dull, aimless travelogue about dull, aimless people, and the exposition itself was often dull and aimless too; I was rarely excited to pick the book back up, and it took me a while to read despite being only 250 pages. I've liked some of Aldiss's short fiction that I've read, and he made good editorial choices in his Galactic Empires anthologies, but this is the first of his novels that I've picked up (for certain definitions of "novel") and it doesn't make me want to read another one. Not bad per se... but it never clicked with me. I kind of feel like I'd rather look at some illustrations of the world that Aldiss created!
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LibraryThing member Greatrakes
My favourite Aldis Science Fiction novel. Hundreds of millions of years into the future the sun has expanded and the world has become locked with the moon, so that only one side of the earth faces the sun. The few small green descendants of humans have a precarious existence, one of the few
Ambulant plants rule the planet and are the hunters and the hunted. In this impossible world we follow the brutal story of one small group as calamities force it to wander through the world meeting strange creatures, learning how all this came to pass and finding the great secret of the propagation of life in the universe.
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remaining mammals, their destiny is to live in the jungle and finally travel to the moon in the body of a huge vegetable spider, to metamorphise into flying people.Ambulant plants rule the planet and are the hunters and the hunted. In this impossible world we follow the brutal story of one small group as calamities force it to wander through the world meeting strange creatures, learning how all this came to pass and finding the great secret of the propagation of life in the universe.
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LibraryThing member eleanor_eader
Surreal and intriguing sci-fi… I think the main thrust of the reader’s interest is the world that Aldiss has created here, rather than the character’s story within it, which seems more a vehicle to explore the jungle, its inhabitants, and the history of the remains of humanity rather than to
Not my favourite sci-fi read, but remarkable for being the only one (thus far) to include birds that are actually vegetation and morels that possess people.
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tell their story which is essentially one of flight and fear. Despite this, I enjoyed it in a ‘huh, quite an imagination you’ve got there, Mr. Aldiss’ sort of way. The principal character, Gren, is allowed a little personal growth (sorry, I couldn’t resist), but considering all he’s gone through, is basically unchanged by the end. When the elders of his tribe ‘go up’ to heaven – that is, hitch a ride in airtight urns on the legs of mile-long space-travelling spider-plants, he leaves his childhood friends when his desire to lead the group is challenged, and from then on gains and loses travelling companions as he battles with the dense, dangerous undergrowth, one of which is a parasitic intelligent fungus that takes over his brain.Not my favourite sci-fi read, but remarkable for being the only one (thus far) to include birds that are actually vegetation and morels that possess people.
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LibraryThing member HeikeM
Hmm. Not quite sure with this one. The story is completely unimportant, the main weight lies on the description of a planet earth that is unrecognisable from the one we know. The sun is dying, emitting heat and high radiation, so plants and animals have evolved/mutated into new forms and with them
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the human race. I was a bit annoyed with the whole thing because I read books for the story. And there isn't much of interest here. Sometimes I felt as if the author thinks us all stupid - instead of finding myself in a strange world, ready to discover all the new things I felt being lectured to. Characters kept explaining everything, which you just wouldn't do - or would you after remarking on the beauty of a tree, continue explaining the oxygen production? The book reads easy enough, the descriptions themselves are interesting and fun, but on the whole it is a tad boring. Show Less
LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
It's not just pulp fiction - it's vegetable-pulp fiction!
Long aeons in Earth's future, an Age of Plants has risen. Dangerous, carnivorous plants are everywhere - some species are even mobile hunters! The remaining humans are a dwarfed, shrunken species. With greatly reduced intelligence and a
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simple, tribal lifestyle, they struggle to stay alive long enough to maintain their population.It's an interesting premise... sadly, the execution is, quite frankly, terrible. The writing is clunky. The plot, practically non-existent. The characters are (at times, quite literally) interchangeable, with no depth or even an attempt at giving them individual personalities. Basically, there's a group of these future humans, and they wander around, encountering one monster or other hazard after another, and gradually getting picked off.
The main raison-d'etre of the book is to imaginatively describe these alien organisms, one after another. They're created from a purely fantastic perspective, not an actual 'scientific speculation' attempt. Nothing about the world described makes any logical sense. That's fine - except nothing about the book is strong enough to carry it as a fantasy, either.
It's also quite offensively sexist. Not in the way of many golden-age SF books, with nubile alien slave girls and sexy sorceresses - I love those! No, it's more of an insidious and constant flow of: every time an incident is portrayed, the female characters are less intelligent, less assertive, more timid, unable to come up with their own ideas, shown as interchangeable as lovers. Hey, they're good at 'giving comfort' though. Even though the future society, we are told, is matriarchal, it's the male characters that have to take charge in every situation and are the main 'do-ers' throughout. It is very clear that Aldiss never even considered that a woman might bother to read his book.
The content here was originally published in five installments in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1961. Unbelievably, they were collectively awarded a Hugo for 'Best Short Fiction.' An abridged version was previously published as 'The Long Afternoon of Earth.'
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LibraryThing member Cecrow
Practically all the virtue of 'Hothouse', short of its place in Hugo history, arises from the overwhelming force of its world-building. The sun is completing its lifespan, billions of years from now. Earth has ceased to rotate and the moon is in a locked position, the two webbed together by
If only it had a plot as creative to match, and - more tragically - didn't steer the story away from this incredible environment. These, and the sometimes obvious sewn-together nature of the novel (it was originally a series of short stories) detract from what this novel might have been. But just for that horrific glimpse of an oppressive jungle Earth designed by nature to kill you mindlessly and mercilessly in myriad ways - the same one the novel's characters incredibly desire to return to when they are led away and astray - this is worth picking up for an old-fashioned futuristic shiver or two.
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interstellar-travelling spiders. A banyan tree has expanded to encompass the entire continent (Eurasia?) where most of the action takes place, only limited by the planet's dark side and its oceans. All the land and coastlines are teeming with half-sentient vegetation that has supplanted most of the animal kingdom, humans and a few breeds of insects being the major exceptions. Vegetables have come a long way: now the nettlemoss wants to ensnare you, the tigerflies want to lay eggs in you, the wiltmilt will slurp you up, trappersnappers will drag you to the forest floor - a place you never want to go. That's only the start of a long list of entrapments. Human history has been erased and we've shrunk to a fifth our former size. Technology is stripped away, and our thinking has turned fuzzy at its edges. We've only instinct and our reduced ingenuity left to turn more innocuous surroundings to advantage: termights to travel alongside of, suckerbirds to attack for food, dumblers and traversers to transport us, fuzzypuzzles to shelter us, burnurns to deliver us to the afterlife on the backs of the oblivious, monstrous traversers. If only it had a plot as creative to match, and - more tragically - didn't steer the story away from this incredible environment. These, and the sometimes obvious sewn-together nature of the novel (it was originally a series of short stories) detract from what this novel might have been. But just for that horrific glimpse of an oppressive jungle Earth designed by nature to kill you mindlessly and mercilessly in myriad ways - the same one the novel's characters incredibly desire to return to when they are led away and astray - this is worth picking up for an old-fashioned futuristic shiver or two.
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LibraryThing member Radaghast
One of the most unique premises I've come across. The world has been taken over by plant-life, which proceeds to fill all the niches by the now extinct animal life. It's a ridiculous idea and much of the science is junk. But who cares? It makes you think and there are many surprising twists. This
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book harkens back to a time when sci-fi writers were willing to take many more risks, when they were as willing to put the same effort fantasy writers do into world building. Show Less
LibraryThing member sf_addict
Hmmm, read this years ago and recently came across it as a Penguin Classics re-issue so bought it. Having finished it I can honestly say its more fantasy than SF! And the od thing is when reading it I found I didnt remember any of it,! My memories of the book went as far as kids running on a beach
I found the Tummy-belly men very annoying-an early publisher recommended he cut those out of the book to bring the page count down to 160. Maybe he should have!
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and finding a morel!I found the Tummy-belly men very annoying-an early publisher recommended he cut those out of the book to bring the page count down to 160. Maybe he should have!
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LibraryThing member shawjonathan
What a luxury to read a book where a child dies horribly in the first couple of pages, where the earth’s temperature has risen to the point where almost all mammals are extinct and small groups of humans cling to a precarious existence, where women lead those human groups and the men are
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protected and pampered because reproduction depends on their survival, and where none of these things is weighed down by real-life concerns about child protection, anthropogenic global warming or hegemonic patriarchy. Hothouse was first published in 1962 (and a year earlier as a five-part serial in a science fiction magazine), when gender politics and ecological anxieties were dots on the horizon for most people, and it was possible to approach in a spirit of joyful play subjects that are now matters for earnest, urgent and often acrimonious discussion. Show Less
LibraryThing member comixminx
Interesting and unusual; and by the end I didn't want to stop reading. Very full of casual death though, particularly at the beginning; grim and unremitting as well as weird and imaginative. It does make you think of how fantastical things written by men tend to get categorised as / allowed to be
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thought of as sf rather than as fantasy; this is very definitely not hard sf, possibly not really even sf at all. Show Less
LibraryThing member wissamktb
More dark fantasy than science-fiction.
Hothouse has a lot nice imagery and Brian Aldiss' imagination does not let up, but the constant flight for survival--the fact that on every page someone is getting attacked or is attacking some plant creature--can get tedious with repetition.
Hothouse has a lot nice imagery and Brian Aldiss' imagination does not let up, but the constant flight for survival--the fact that on every page someone is getting attacked or is attacking some plant creature--can get tedious with repetition.
LibraryThing member ScoLgo
A fantastical far-future tale where vegetable life rules an earth circling a dying sun. There is a lot to like here but the writing is a bit disjointed at times. The flow of the story feels as though Aldiss was making it up as he went along -- as though he had no clear story arc idea in mind when
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he began writing. Nevertheless, some of the fantastical creatures were magnificently realized. The Traversers have to be one of the more memorable life forms I have ever come across in sci-fi. If only the adventures experienced by the main characters had been as well conceived. Show Less
LibraryThing member ikeman100
I like much of the work of "the great Brian Aldiss". He was a real pioneer of Classic 50-60s SF. This book, however, was not for me.
I believe you could get deep into this strange world and enjoy it but after a few chapters I opted out. Just was not in the mood for this experience. Maybe someday.
I believe you could get deep into this strange world and enjoy it but after a few chapters I opted out. Just was not in the mood for this experience. Maybe someday.
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Short Fiction — 1962)
501 Must-Read Books (Emma Beare, 2006) (Science Fiction)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1962
Physical description
35 p.; 29.7 cm
ISBN
8787834006 / 9788787834001
Local notes
Omslag: Niels Erik Knudsen
Omslaget viser hænder, der rækker ud efter en grinende flue
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Oversat fra engelsk "Hothouse" af Carl Fjeldvig
Omslaget viser hænder, der rækker ud efter en grinende flue
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Oversat fra engelsk "Hothouse" af Carl Fjeldvig
Other editions
Hothouse by Brian W. Aldiss (Paperback)
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Pages
35
DDC/MDS
| 823.914 |