In the last few years, I’ve run into a new genre label. "Cli-Fi," for the uninitiated,

refers to science fiction stories built on global warming scenarios. Many of

these works are formulaic, and as predictable as a Meryl Streep Oscar

nomination, but the best of them—say Ian McEwan's

Solar

or Paolo

Bacigalupi's

The Wind-Up Girl

—transcend genre labels and rank among the

finer literary offerings of the current day.



But the 21st century has no monopoly on cli-fi.

Some of the most influential examples date

back to the 1950s and 1960s, when British

science fiction authors developed many

variations on the climate change novel. J.G.

Ballard wrote several dystopian novels based

on cataclysmic weather, most notably

The



Drowned World

(1962) and

The Burning

World

(1964), and similar themes play a role

in Arthur C. Clarke's

The City and the Stars



(1956), Nevil Shute's

On the Beach

(1959),

and Brian Aldiss's

Hothouse

(1962). None

of these books puts the blame on rising carbon

dioxide levels, and instead remind us that there

is more than one way to cook a planet. But each succeeds in making the

atmosphere into a major protagonist in its unfolding drama, with all the

potential for paranoia and claustrophobia implied by such a state of affairs.



Of these works, Aldiss's may be the most audacious, and the least easy to

define. Some have even argued that

Hothouse

is not even science fiction,

rather a surreal fantasy novel. Certainly the science here is dodgy at best.

Could the position of the Moon, still visible in the sky, really form "one angle

of a vast equilateral triangle which held the Earth and Sun at its other angles"?

Could the revolution of the Earth really wind down to a "standstill, until day and

night slowed, becoming fixed forever"? Could an enormous spider really stretch

a web between the Earth and the Moon? No, no and no. But such is the science

behind this cli-fi classic.



Even if you get beyond these unconvincing attempts to offer a scientific

underpinning to

Houthouse

, you will soon encounter other elements beyond

the usual conventions of pulp fiction. The story unfolds more like a Homeric

epic, or perhaps an Old Testament story, with counterparts here to an exile

from a Garden of Eden and the wandering exploits of a chosen people

seeking a homeland. At other times, Aldiss seems to take a page from the

Darwinian playbook—perhaps the last thing one would expect to find in a

quasi-Biblical narrative—and in the process anticipates Julian Jaynes'

The

Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

(1976)

with a bizarre evolutionary account of how reflective thinking might arise in a

pre- or post-historical human society.



The book begins in the midst of a massive jungle, dominated by a single banyan

tree that has spread over an entire continent. (Aldiss was inspired by a visit to

the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, where he saw the so-called

Great Banyan

, a

single tree that has set down new roots and expanded to cover some four

acres.) Here a small human community struggles for existence in a

hothouse environment alongside countless types of hostile vegetables

—plant life that has turned predatory in the struggle to survive.



The sun is in its final days, turning into a red giant. Temperatures have risen,

and all human cities have apparently disappeared. Civilization has returned

to the tribal stage, and scientific knowledge replaced by ritual, superstition

and taboo. Tiny matriarchal communities survive in the branches of the

banyan tree, avoiding the ground level where vegetative predators are too

dangerous. Here again, Aldiss is implausible—in the opening pages of



Hothouse

, various angry plant attacks the tribe of Lily-Yo every few hours,

and almost every step is fraught with danger. How anyone could survive in

such a setting for a month, let alone long enough to grow up and reproduce,

is inconceivable. But what

Hothouse

lacks in credibility, it compensates for

in suspense and creativity. I feel safe in proclaiming that no sci-fi novel offer

more ways to die at the hands (branches? roots?) of plant life. In the crazy

world of this novel, vegetables can attack you from the air like a bird, swallow

you up like a whale from the deep, trap you in a cage like a hunter, tie you up

like a cattle-roper at the rodeo, or kill you in any number of other inventive ways.



Needless to say, Lily-Yo's tribe has a high mortality rate. The group initially

consisted of ten members, but the deaths (which start on page one) come

so fast and furious that you might think that Aldiss had drawn on Agatha

Christie's

And Then There Was None

as a role model. Eventually the group

decides to break-up before everyone succumbs to the marauding plants, with

Lily-Yo and the adults climbing up to the sky (literally to the moon on a big

spiderweb—I kid you not!) and the youngsters setting out on their own to

establish a separate tribe.



Gren, the rebel without a cause in the new generation, soon splits from the

rest of the next-gen

Lord of the Flies

cadre, and embarks upon a series of

journeys and adventures that make

Gulliver’s

look like a boring bus tour by

comparison. He finds a mate along the way, a herder named Yattmur, and

before long the couple are blessed with a baby boy named Laren. But by this

point in the story, an invading fungus (who looks a bit like an over-sized

mushroom) has shown up, as bossy and disagreeable as a sit-com

mother-in-law. This new arrival has attached himself to Gren's head, and

not only refuses to leave, but even takes over the young man’s brain.



Yes, this sounds ludicrous. But Mr. Aldiss has never been much for restraint

in his stories, and when he tries some new or different effect, he gives us the

full monty. With

Hothouse

, he not only has described a world in which high

temperatures have allowed plants to run amok, but he also found a way to

impart the rising mercury levels to his readers, who encounter a story that

resembles a feverish dream, a nightmare in which even the bizarre and

implausible take on a sort of inner logic and inescapable momentum.



Aldiss tries to raise the ante in the final pages, and reaches towards a

grand, cataclysmic conclusion—in which his main characters must choose

between acceptance of the Earth's impending destruction or embark upon

a (once again implausible) plan of rebirth and regeneration. Few readers

will find this resolution satisfying or convincing. Aldiss needs to turn to

science to find a solution to his characters' pressing problems, and in this

novel nothing is weaker than the explanations and hypotheses. For this

reason, those who look to Aldiss's cli-fi classic in search of thought-provoking

"global warming" scenarios are likely to be disappointed. Our author has,

instead, delivered a hot and humid fairy tale, one even grimmer than the

Grimms' grimmest.



Yet you shouldn't let this deter you from reading

Hothouse

. Aldiss is an

engaging author even when he is an unconvincing scientist. In other words,

treat this book as a travelogue, a kind of apocalyptic

National Geographic



from a future hell. Forget about understanding the science; instead enjoy

the predatory scenery.





