Hothouse
Literary Journal
Category: Literary Adjacent
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By Celeste Hoover Runaway cattle-rustlers, saloon shoot-outs, and frontier posses—these tropes and countless others of the American Wild West have achieved immortality through the dime western novel. Originally written as one-off serials or pamphlets in the late 19th century, the plots of dime westerns center on easily recognizable clichés: the ranger new in town, the…
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Has anyone mentioned that it’s been a hard year? Unprecedented times? They have? Oh well, we’ll skip that part then and instead talk about the positives that shone through this last year. While we dealt with these… never-before-seen times, most of us found comfort in art. So, we present to you not a meditation on…
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by Skylar Epstein In his 2001 novel, Comic Book Nation, Bradford W. Wright posits that there are intellectual pitfalls in analyzing a medium like comic books too deeply. Why? Because they’re just for fun. Comic books are entertainment for kids and teenagers, so the argument goes that attempting to apply the same methods of analysis…
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by Megan Snopik The novel-to-screen-adaptation discussion has always been tumultuous, with one never quite living up to the “hype” of the other. The idea that the book is always better has also been debated in recent times, as quality film and television become instantly accessible to the home audience through streaming services like Netflix, Hulu,…
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By Scotty Villhard Before you read this article, please know that several sensitive and potentially triggering topics will be mentioned, including corpses, suicide, and references to anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, racism, and ableism. In addition, there will be spoilers for Swiss Army Man, True Stories, and The Midnight Gospel. It’s weird. It’s all very, very weird. And…
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By Skylar Epstein Earlier this month, I wrote about how audiodramas were carrying the torch of science fiction and telling incredibly diverse stories using an innovative medium. I mentioned a few notable audiodramas in my previous article, so I’ll be expanding on those here and introducing even more recommendations in this article. To give some…
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by Scotty Villhard What turns a swindler into a con artist? What separates your ordinary robbers from your gentleman thieves? What is the distinction between a burglary and a heist? Media is full of these confidence folk, criminals of the finest quality. They can be found in films like Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and novels like…
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From Frankenstein to Firefly, science fiction has taken many forms and encompassed all different kinds of stories. This means that there is boundless potential for creativity under a very broad umbrella, but it does make it hard to pin down exactly what someone means when they talk about science fiction. As a previous Hothouse article…
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“Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.” from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by…
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This Valentine’s Day, we asked our website writers to contribute the real-life love stories of those who write literature. Whether it’s a tale of happily ever after or heartbreaking rejection, read on to discover some of the romantic adventures of the authors we still read today. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scotty Villhard In the novel The Great…
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by Abdallah Hussein Books have never been more likely to be adapted into films than they are at present. With the rapid growth and advancement of the film industry, this practice doesn’t seem likely to wind down anytime soon either with recent fan-favorites such as Bridgerton, Little Women, and The Queen’s Gambit dominating our social…
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Written by Kylie Warkentin There are few things as universal to the human experience as the pleasure of sharing a meal with a loved one. The kinetic affair of its creation, the care in overseeing its bake time, the pleasure in seeing it mix, sizzle, rise—and then tumble down into the sweet mouth of someone…
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