Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [117]
Signet had their revenge. When I received my complimentary copies of the book, I found it was entitled The Long Afternoon of Earth. I wrote to the editor, saying the title sounded more like Anthony Trollope than Brian Aldiss. Their rejoinder was pretty neat: ‘Had we called it Hothouse, the booksellers would have put it in the Garden section…’
Since then, Hothouse has gone though about thirty reprintings and translations. This modest success comes perhaps because it is an account of a journey; one book on my shelves is Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Novel (by Percy G. Adams), which points convincingly to an order of precedence.
Adams quotes from an essay by Levi Strauss which offers some support for science fiction as an important literary form:
“… that crucial moment in modern thought when, thanks to the great voyages of discovery, a human community which had believed itself to be complete and in its final form suddenly learned… that it was not alone, that it was part of a greater whole, and that, in order to achieve self-knowledge, it must first of all contemplate its unrecognisable image in this mirror.’
My compulsory ‘voyage of discovery’ to India and elsewhere has left its permanent mark.
The misfortune of a young man who returns to his native land after years away is that he finds his native land foreign; whereas the lands he left behind remain for ever like a mirage in his mind.
However, misfortune can itself sow the seeds of creativity.
Peer through the banyan leaves and perhaps this is what you will find.
Brian W. Aldiss, 2008
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Dedication
Front Quote
HOTHOUSE
PART ONE
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
PART TWO
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
PART THREE
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
chapter twenty-three
chapter twenty-four
chapter twenty-five
chapter twenty-six
Afterword