Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide

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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 simple, tribal lifestyle, they struggle to stay alive long enough to maintain their population.

hothouse, but one day 40C The terrifying truth: Britain’s a hothouse, but one day 40C

There's a childish simplicity to the language that the characters use. Some of it works really well as a cute, rhyming poetry (we meet Tummy-bellies and Leather-feathers and there were many things named like this). But a lot of it was like a roughly spoken kid lingo: There's one more thing. These stories were written in 1961 before they were put together as one novel the next year. As I was reading it, I kept thinking to myself that this novel was the inspiration for Dune. The Morel could access our genetic memories into the deep past. The ecological concerns were breathtaking and very well thought out and developed, whether or not they're inaccurate. There were so many links and ties between the two novels that I had to put it down and do a little research. I kept assuming that this was a homage to Dune, for heaven's sake. Nope. It came out 4 years before Dune, and does an awesome job at outperforming Dune in these ways. And that grand scheme, once revealed, is what makes the novel worthy of its own chapter in that trillion year spree:

The plants and vegetation evolved so greatly that many lifeforms mirrored and imitated animals from our time-period, not only in behavioral patterns and functionality, but in many cases, even in their physical description. Alas, we did not dare to have any hopes you would share your food with us, for your food is sacred and you wish to see us starve. You are very clever to hide from us the jumpvil food we know you always carry. We are glad great herder, that you make us starve if our dying makes you have a laugh and a gay song and another sandwich game. Because we are humble, we do not need food to die with..." YEP. Coastal communities will fight a losing battle as bigger and more frequent storm surges, increasingly powerful waves and a remorseless hike in sea level supercharge cliff erosion and permanently swamp low-lying terrain. Sea level is now rising by a centimetre every two years, which is more than double the rate for the period 1993-2002. Within 80 years it will certainly be more than a metre higher, and could have climbed by 2m or even more. This would bring the North Sea far inland, threatening especially low-lying communities such as the Lincolnshire towns of Boston and Spalding.

Hothouse Earth by Bill McGuire | Waterstones

Since the Paris pledges are not being kept, we appear on course for 4°C or more. Kevin Anderson, professor at the University of Manchester and deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research writes that “avoiding even a 4°C rise demands a radical reframing of both the climate change agenda and the economic characterisation of contemporary society.” Hothouse Earth says some researchers are worried that Greenland may be close, or have already passed a tipping point that will see its ice melt and raise sea levels by around seven metres. As ice melts, the earth rebounds from beneath the weight. This leads to increased earthquake and volcanic activity. On the other side of the world, the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, could approach a tipping point in the next 10 years. The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is also at risk of breaking up. It already contributes 4% to sea level rise. Such dangerous habitat has brought about a true death of history, with humans too busy trying to survive for another hour to have any time left for industry, writing, art or even speech in extreme cases. Aldiss may be repetitive here, underlining his main idea (inevitable since the novel is essentially just a bulking up of the initial short story), but I have no quarrel with his stylish presentation: For me a more satisfying slice is to be had by considering Hothouse as a response to the Far East, rather as Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy is a response to his youth in China and then having to learn to live in Britain. This presents it's own difficulties, as Aldiss writes here "whereas I had adjusted to the squalor and poverty of India, I hated the squalor and poverty, allied to the depressing climate, of my homeland" (p270). I'm not sure if it is a case of the author having to use fiction as a way of expressing the alien quality of another land and other people for themselves, or seizing on fiction as the best way to make us readers experience those alien qualities, but for me writing this today Hothouse is a fictional response to coming in to the real presence of a banyan tree. And for me that holds open a new promise of creativity - for what art will be created when people come from the land of the Banyan tree to the north sea islands with their soft and dismal drizzle, fried fish and steak and kidney pudding? What deep terrors, ancient anxieties or even wild hopes will they then need to impress upon the people they return to at home?Heatwave sees record high temperatures around world this week,” Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, July, 2018 In later years, Aldiss would go on to write “Trillion Year Spree” , a celebrated history of genre. “Hothouse”, for all its poor scientific grounding and even less accomplished plotting and characterization, is worthy of inclusion in this history, for the way it marks the transition from planetary adventure and romantic paeans to science (Burroughs, Verne, Wells) to the more rigorous works of Asimov and Clarke, and to the more ambitious attempts to define our human nature within grander spatial and philosophical frames of reference. It is also an early recipient of the Hugo awards for the short story version, in recognition of its daring concept and evocative prose. Estimates vary significantly, but there could be anywhere between 250 million – 2 billion climate refugees within the next 80 years.

Hothouse Earth - Icon Books Hothouse Earth - Icon Books

In the 1950s, anthropologist/ecologist Gregory Bateson and colleagues coined the term “Double Bind” to describe just such a dilemma: Contradictory demands that are inherently impossible to fulfill. According to Garrett, “seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change” puts human enterprise in just such a “double-bind.” Das Hörbuch kann ich übrigens nicht empfehlen, was nicht nur an der unnötigen Länge liegt. Den Vorleser fand ich einfach grässlich. Er quakt und grunzt sich durch die Geschichte, dass es nicht zum Aushalten ist. The characters I liked most from the outset either died off or were MIA for all or most of the remainder of the book, like the too few insects, such as the bee-creature on the book cover, seen here:

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Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? J. Hansen, M. Sato, P. Kharecha, et. al. (NASA, Columbia Univ., Univ. Sheffield, Yale Univ., LSCE/IPSL, Boston Univ., Wesleyan Univ., UC Santa Cruz): Cornell University Library Selbst als philosophische Novelle mit kafkaeskem Charakter gibt das Buch so nicht besonders viel her. Sie strotzt vor erzählerischen, literarischen und Logikfehlern. Wie der Autor damit einen Preis gewinnen konnte ist mir schleierhaft. Earth has not experienced such a hothouse state — characterized by the absence of continental glaciers and sea-level over 100-meters higher — since the Cretaceous period, 100-million years ago. At that time, atmospheric CO 2 had reached 2000 parts-per-million (ppm) and average temperatures had reached 11°C warmer than the 20th century average. We’re now at about 410 ppm CO 2, and 1°C warmer than the 20th century average. Meanwhile, in spite of good intentions, we have not slowed our carbon emissions. Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions,” Michael R. Raupach, Gregg Marland, Philippe Ciais, Corinne Le Quéré, Josep Canadell, Gernot Klepper, and Christopher Field; PNAS, 2007