TO READ FOR NEXT WEEK:

More time for Hothouse (???)

Right now the link to The Dragon Masters is to Amazon, but it's less than $4 for a ebook version.

I'm not sure how far anyone's gotten into Hothouse, but I won't force people to read it because it's totally ridiculous. We can pick some material off our list below for next week.

DISCUSSION OF LAST WEEK'S READING:

Hothouse by Brian Aldiss

Golem XIV by Stanislaw Lem

Prompts for discussion

Hothouse: The end of Chapter 6 makes a nice cutting-off point for this discussion, I think. The book later goes on to evoke some pretty biblical themes and explore the virtue (or lack thereof) of intelligence, and how humans have lost it as the world evolves. This actually makes a nice tie-in for Golem XIV in that sense. What is the value of intelligence in the evolutionary scale?

Golem XIV: I'm at a loss for a particularly specific question to put here, but I'm sure people here could say a lot about the Golemology contained in this work.

And remember to vote for your favorites for next week

Ongoing list of material to vote on

Frankenstein

Forbidden Planet

The Day the Earth Stood Still

I, Robot (book)

Watchbird by Robert Sheckley

Equoid by Charles Stross

Blood Music by Greg Bear

Shoutouts:

kleinbl00 JakobVirgil mhr OftenBen plewemt elizabeth blackbootz flagamuffin Meriadoc minimum_wage Tiger_the_Lion _thoracic johnnyFive tehstone rthomas6 War Dala OftenBen bhrgunatha kantos francopoli anatomygeek Purple_Ruby

zebra2:

So I acquired the paperback version of Hothouse that I had intended to scan before finding the digital version. There is a bit of a treat there in the Introduction/forward that is not in the digital version, though. The intro includes an excerpt from Aldiss on his very dramatic thoughts about the editing process:

His editor was right about the tummy-bellies, and was trying to do a great service by erasing them from the face of literature.

The whole thing is balls-to-the-wall crazy type sci-fi and reminded me of Fantastic Planet in that sense. It just gets weirder and weirder as it goes on, while occasionally dipping into the uber-trite:

Yes, the tummy-bellies are Aldiss' attempt at comic relief. His concept of humor is exactly what you would expect of someone who wrote a book like Hothouse: like some alien had encountered "comedy" for the first time and earnestly tried to emulate it.

Occasionally you also get a nice reminder that you're reading a book written in the 60's.

Overall Hothouse was a hoot, but I won't accuse it of being a literary masterpiece.

posted 2741 days ago