Amber's Weird Library

     Millions of years in the future, when the sun is dying, the Earth has become tidally locked and attached to the moon with cob-like webs make by giant spider looking plants. Half of the planet is always in the daytime and half is always night. Most life lives in the perpetual afternoon . Plants dominate, they hunt, they fly, they hop, they graze, they even fight battles with one another. Humans survived but they look little like the humans of today. They are smaller and have green skin. They live in matriarchal tribes hopping through the branches of a giant Banyan tree trying to survive the last years of life on Earth. This is the setting of Hothouse by Brian Aldiss a story that begins as one of survival in the afternoon on Earth but ends up being a deep musing on intelligence and humanity.       Hothouse was originally published as a group of short stories that won the Hugo Award for Short Fiction in 1962 . We follow a tribe of future humans ...

     Solaris is a planet almost completely covered with an ocean of a plasma material. Scientists from Earth have been coming to Solaris for years trying to research this ocean that seems to be one sentient being. If it is one sentient being, then the scientists hypothesize that they should be able to communicate with it.       Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is the newest researcher from Earth to arrive on the station hovering over Solaris . He is there to meet the other three scientists. He soon discovers that one of the scientists has taken his life, one is hiding, and one is acting mysteriously and talks about visitors. Then Kelvin meets his ex-girlfriend on the station, but the problem is that she took her own life 7 years before.       This is the mystery that sets up the novel Solaris . The story is told from the point of view of Kelvin as we follow him on the station trying to figure out how his ex-girlfriend can be there and ...