"Hothouse" by Brian Aldiss

The sun is going nova and the increase in temperature has rearranged the world's genetic balance. Humans have "devolved" into small, relatively brainless creatures who eke out survival in a small ecological niche. A few species of insects -- the "termights" and wasps -- have grown larger but remain relatively humble beside the immensity of...

...the plants, which dominate the food chain and comprise most of the earth's diversity. Struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment, the plants have become vicious predators and are constantly fighting each other. They also like to fight the humans, which is when most of the fun occurs.

This is the basic idea behind Brian Aldiss' "Hothouse," which I read based on two factors:

1. Brian Aldiss was a major booster for Anna Kavan, who I have a medium-grade obsession with. I figured it was time to read one of HIS books.
2. Killer vegetables scare the heck out of me.

I'm not an avid sci-fi reader these days but I USED to be, and my dissatisfaction with the genre is fully represented in this book: it is so in love with its IDEAS that nothing else needs development. Characters and style are chucked aside so that Aldiss can describe The Next New Vegetable Horror, which is always followed by a detailed historical explanation for how the Vegetable Horror came to be...an IMPOSSIBLE explanation, since none of the humans have any way of knowing such details. The book is a slave to its concept, which reminds me of so many sci-fi stories I read as a teenager.

Fortunately Aldiss' concepts are fun, if physically impossible. His vegetable monsters are ingenious, bizarre, and never repetitive, and -- yes -- some of them scare the heck out of me, especially the parasitic Morel.

Most beautiful of his concepts is that of the "traversers," mile-wide vegetable bags who spin webs from earth to the moon. Their webs add a magic touch to the squshy unpleasantness of the dying earth. I say "magic" because the idea is both imagination-stirring and totally wonked. But anyway.

Sometimes Aldiss dispels the books mystery with excessive descriptions of "how and why," but at other times he leaves us totally baffled, and that's when the book excels. At one point, some adventurous humans discover a long-dormant tool from the past, a flying bird-like machine that constantly shouts bizarre slogans ("Boycott chimp goods! Don't allow Monkey Labour in your factory. Support Imbroglio's anti-Tripartite scheme!") This machine achieves absolutely nothing for anybody but the humans enjoy having it around; they call it "Beauty."

Aldiss also writes excessive language for the annoying "tummy-belly men":

"Never before have we seen the stalker-walkers to take a walk with them when they go stalking-walking? Where were they when we never saw them? Terrible herder man and sandwich lady, now you two people without tails find this care to go with them. We don't find the care. We don't mind ever not to see the stalker-walkers stalky-walking."

This quote alone sort of sums up the book: it's a weird, annoying, funny hodge-podge of thoughts all jammed together. "Hothouse" is a mess full of abrupt endings and loose threads, maybe because it was compiled from a series of five novellas that Aldiss had written previously.

Mess or not, "Hothouse" is still fun to read. It is dense and impossible and silly, and I would go so far as to say it's poorly written, but the ideas and the crazy moments keep it going. You don't HAVE to believe that a bunch of mindless vegetable bags have colonized the moon by spitting bubbles of oxygen at it, you just have to be intrigued by the concept, and I am.

Horrorbug

I was leaving my apartment the other morning when I noticed something grey on my wall. It was about a centimeter long, somewhat diamond-shaped...and it was MOVING. I had accidentally discovered The Horrorbug.

Reader, put down that hotdog before you continue, because this is just awful.

When I got closer I saw that the back-end of the creature -- the big, bulky part of it -- appeared to be a mutant housefly: partially-formed, covered with little grey hairs, the wings small and stubby. Poking out of the fly's neck -- where its head should be -- was the front half of a long, worm-like, six-legged insect. This insect was inching its way up the wall, alternately stretching out, then humping up the carcass behind it.

I ran to get my camera, which is unfortunately not suited to close-up entomological study. Here is The Horrorbug, on my wall, rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise:
The protruding black smudge on the left is the head of the insect, partially withdrawn because I'm scaring it. The rest of it is the mutant fly-carcass that it's dragging along.

Using the tools of a seasoned insect researcher, I trapped it inside an empty cassette case and left for work. When I came home it was still alive, crawling around in its strange inchworm way. It seemed to want to hang off of the ceiling of the cassette case: it would climb up, secrete some sort of sticky substance, and then retreat back inside the carcass, leaving me staring down into the little hole where the fly's head used to be. So I'd knock it down and watch it crawl around some more.
I've done a lot of Googling to try to figure out what I've found, and I think it's what's called a "pupal parasitoid." These ghastly little parasites are injected inside the pupae of other insects, where they leisurely eat and grow.

More specifically I think that The Horrorbug is pachycrepoideus vindemiae, a wasp that actually parasitizes DEAD pupae, which would explain why the fly carcass it's pulling around looks so old and stunted; the pupae is probably an also-ran from that brief fly infestation that I had a few months ago.

I can't find any more information, however. These pupal parasitoids don't generally REMAIN in the pupae (as far as I can tell), so why is The Horrorbug still carrying this one around, treating it like a shell or a cocoon? How does it poop? Why does it want to hang off the ceiling? WHAT DOES IT PLAN ON DOING NEXT?!?

The Horrorbug hasn't moved for two days. I wonder if it's dead, or if it's just being crafty.

The Masturbatory, Self-Interested Fiber Disease

I try to stay on top of all the most grotesque and mysterious fringes of our bio-diverse world, especially when they're related to parasitism. I'm pleased to finally find out that they've named a film genre after my obsessions: "Body Horror."

My fear and fascination of parasitic invasion probably began (as I've said before) with "The Seeds of Doom" and solidified with "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" which puts me in a particularly exclusive body horror sub-genre: fear of being turned into a plant.

That sounds funny I'm sure, but through most of my life this has been an honest-to-goodness little phobia...but though it still fascinates me I no longer sort of suspect that it will happen to me. I'm not alone, though, judging by the amount of horror fiction written on the subject: "Fungus" by Harry Adam Knight springs immediately to mind, and also "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson (which inspired the Japanese film "Attack of the Mushroom People.")

All this explains why I find "Morgellons Disease" so intriguing. Rampant parasites under the skin? Weird egg-sacks? Multi-colored cellulose fibers growing out of sores that never seem to heal?

That would be interesting enough, but add to this the fact that the "disease" -- which apparently affects thousands in the United States -- is most likely a case of internet support groups gone mad, and you have a REAL fascinating story.

I won't recite the whole schpiel -- you can research it yourself if you're interested -- but I will point out the prevalence of Morgellons-themed You-Tube videos by people who are supposedly filming their "intelligent fibers." I'll also point out the intellectual dishonesty of so many of the "sufferers," who proudly trumpet that the CDC is investigating the disease but neglect to mention that they're only doing it because they're barraged with letters about it.

The claims of the sceptics seem reasonable to me: it's delusional parasitosis (otherwise there'd be SOME physical evidence other than what's posted anonymously on YouTube), but the sufferers of delusional parasitosis now have Morgellons to fall back on. Now that they have a support group they can all cluster together and reinforce their beliefs, avoiding the antipsychotic medication that would supposedly stop the delusions. This is complicated by people who want to be part of a grotesque mystery, and -- perhaps -- by a real but much-less-spectacular condition that a very small group of people actually have.

But maybe I'm wrong! Lord knows that being worried about something unknown and dangerous makes most people feel more alive. No wonder many of us sort of half-wish it would turn out to be real!

The Masturbatory, Self-Interested Death Orgy

Minutes after the second spate of Virginia tech shootings became news people had turned tragedy into a tool to support their causes. The postings I personally saw -- on Americablog -- connected the incident to both gun control and the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, on the right (Townhall), the incident was being used to illustrate the heartlessness of the left (turning tragedy into support for gun control) and to then say "I wish some of those students were carrying guns."

The frenzy has already started in the media, I'm sure. Have they chosen music to go with the Blacksburg graphic yet? What's the catchy phrase, is it "Virginia Tech Tragedy" or "Columbine II" or "Blacksburg Slaughter?" It may be too early for the shots of cute weeping children, but I'm sure the satellite trucks are ready for the upcoming mourning ceremonies and the inevitable pilgrimmages which allow people to say they were there (and maybe get on TV and be part of an event).

The real frenzy will begin once we know the ethnicity and social affiliation of the attacker. In the few clips I watched yesterday the poor news anchors were virtually PANTING for this information. Does "Asian" mean, like, a muslim from India or Pakistan? Or was he a Christian fundamentalist? A recent immigrant? An over-achiever? Did he watch violent movies, was this an example of jilted male rage, and what sort of music did he listen to? Where are his parents, HOLY COW, WHAT AN INTERVIEW, find his parents! Are there any copycat killers? Exacly how many morbid records did he break? Let's interview pundits with contrary opinions about how the incident was handled, speckled with families of the slain, heroes of the day (quick, find a hero!) Let's even raise our ratings by condemning the way the news media latches on to tragedy in order to raise ratings.

On Sunday we might find out which element of American foreign or domestic policy prompted God into doing this. There will be an "outpouring of sympathy" across the country, in which people hope silently for more camera time and get a thrill out of the "bonding." If they ever read this blog entry, they will accuse me of not "feeling" anything and insist that they have every right to be -- not just sad or regretful -- but totally and verbally broken up and outraged about what happened. There will be an unspoken desire to keep the story alive so we can all feel excited and in permenent danger. The school officials will be rightly or wrongly crucified. The Bush administration will accuse democrats of crassly pursuing corruption investigations while the rest of the country is "in mourning."

Very little of it will be honest, most of it will be destructive, and it makes me damn sick.

The Horrible Hagfish

Yesterday I brought you the bread-secreting bowery bums. Today I bring you...the slime-secreting hagfish!

I love to read about disgusting animals, especially parasites. It instills in me a sense of nature's ingenuity and her unique code of aesthetics: lots of animals are horrible, but some of the most horrible animals are also the best adapted to their environment. Sometimes I feel like those pre-1930s naturalists who considered such animals to be degenerate abominations, and wrote treatises about how they had actual "devolved" due to laziness and immorality. Other times I can only marvel at their functional beauty.

I also like to read about horrible animals because I like to be grossed out.

So I happily present the hagfish. They're usually about 18 inches long and, like a lamprey, they can attach themselves to other fish and slowly eat them alive. But unlike the lamprey, the hagfish has a special ability to tie itself in knots...this ability gives it traction, allowing it to actually INSERT itself into other fish...and eat them from the inside out.

Hagfish can also produce HUGE amounts of fibrous slime...they can literally cocoon themselves in slime in just a few seconds, and can clean themselves off again by tying their bodies into a knot and slipping the knot back along their skin. Here's a video of a hagfish inside a slime cocoon...you can see it best halfway through.

WARNING: According to this link hagfish sometimes "burrow in the soft bottom." So if you've been feeling strange lately, grab a mirror and take a look. You don't want somebody ELSE to tell you.