Not every mind is human, and that’s a challenge for science fiction authors. It’s hard enough to write from a different human point of view: We’re a varied species, each one of us with our own experiences and quirks, but at least we can talk to each other. Non-humans … well, they never have long conversations with us, alas.
Yet, if we’re going to write science fiction, we can’t let that stop us. For my novel Semiosis, I needed to write from the point of view of a plant — an alien plant, of course, not an Earthly one. All right, where to start?
Obviously, we know some things about Earth plants, so I began researching them. What is their experience of life? For one thing, they’re under a lot of stress. Growing seasons are short, and weather is uncertain.
Spring ephemerals, such as trilliums and snowdrops, illustrate this anxiety. They grow and flower as early as possible in spring, sometimes right through snow, dangerous though that must be. They catch the sunlight before trees put out leaves and cast shade. They offer nectar to the first bees that wake up after winter, monopolizing their attention. Then these plants go dormant until next spring: That’s the extreme step they must take to get their day in the sun. They leap upward at the first hint of springtime.
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“Where do you get your ideas?”
If you’re a writer, you may have been asked that. Here’s how I got the idea behind Semiosis and turned it into a novel. Exactly how it happened isn’t typical, but it’s not unusual, either — there are a lot of paths to a novel, and they’re all good — but I think this story illustrates an essential and sometimes overlooked aspect of writing.
The whole thing started with the houseplants on my dining room table in the late 1990s. (The photo is from this decade: different house, different plants, but just as many of them.) One day, I discovered that the little pothos in a mixed planter had wrapped itself around another plant and killed it. At first, I blamed myself for not having noticed earlier and intervened. Then a philodendron on a bookshelf tried to sink roots into another plant. I became suspicious and did some research.
What I learned was disturbing. According to botanist Augustine Pyrame de Candolle, “All plants of a given place are in a state of war with respect to each other.” They compete for light and nutrients, and they use ingenious tactics to abuse and even kill each other. For example, roses have thorns so they can impale their prickles into other plants and climb over them. In the process, they might kill the other plants — but this is war. Roses don’t care as long as they’re victorious.
( Collapse )If you or someone you know and love hasn’t read the novel Semiosis yet, the ebook will be on sale throughout the month of September for only $2.99 for Kindle. This promotion will include an excerpt from the third book in the Semiosis trilogy, Usurpation, which will be released on October 29.
Besides that, from September 4 to 6, Barnes & Noble is dropping the preorder price for Usurpation, as well as other preorders. B&N Members get 25% off, and Premium members get an additional 10% off. This is good for print, ebook, and audiobook editions.
Meanwhile, I’ll be at Chicago’s Printers Row Lit Fest on Saturday morning, September 7, at the Speculative Literature Foundation table. Come say hi!
This is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Semiosis. Octavo, the botanist, explains what plants tell us about the overall ecology:
“But the presence of the wheat worried me. The wheat was a lot like Earth grass, and if there was grass, then there were grazers, maybe animals like gazelle, moose, or elephant. And if there were grazers, then something hunted them. So far we had seen only small browsers and predators like little land crabs with trilateral symmetry, but we had found bits of big crab shells — and of big stone-shelled land corals with stinging tentacles. None of us went barefoot anywhere.”
Every flower is unique. And yet, some small yellow flowers share a common nickname among botanists: DYCs, Damned Yellow Composites. Those are plants of the Asteraceae (daisy, aster, and sunflower) family, which are common worldwide. They’re usually tenacious weeds, and they may be pretty, but they can be so alike that they’re hard to tell apart.
Sometimes botanists don’t even try. It may not matter to the local ecology exactly which species those flowers belong to. Identifying them as DYCs serves well enough except for the most rigorous scientific purposes.
Every small songbird is also unique but far too many look similar to each other. The ones that are hard to distinguish are sometimes called dickybirds by birdwatchers, and often these birds — especially warblers — have a touch of yellow.
There are more galaxies in the sky than grains of sand on Earth’s beaches, so how many stars will be standard M-class yellow stars like our own Sol? Too many to count.
Flowers, birds, stars: yellow abounds. So does ambition.
Flowers, birds, and suns all strive for more, and our universe undergoes constant change as a result. Birds compete with song. Stars create more complex matter at every generation. Imagine what a weed will be like as eternity gives it time to perfect its art. The bouquets will astound us with their sheer ambition.
( Collapse )Usurpation will have an audiobook, and Daniel Thomas May and Caitlin Davies will be narrating it. They narrated the first two novels in the trilogy, Semiosis and Interference — and they did a fabulous job! I’m delighted to have them back.
The audiobook is now in production, and the novel Usurpation will be released as hardcover, ebook, and audiobook on October 29.
My novelette “Life from the Sky” is included in the July 2024 issue of Forever magazine. The story tells how this isn’t a good time for an alien life form, no matter how simple and harmless, to land on Earth. The story was originally published in Asimov’s magazine in 2018.
Forever is a monthly science fiction magazine that features previously published stories you might have missed, edited by the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, Neil Clarke. The July 2024 issue also includes “The Gods Have Not Died in Vain” by Ken Liu, and “Unauthorized Access” by An Owomoyela. Cover art by Ron Guyatt.
You can by it from Weightless Books: Forever Magazine Issue 114.
(Photo: Me trying to steal Neil Clarke’s Hugo Award at the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon.)
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If you can read Spanish, you can buy the Spanish-language version of my novelette “Who Won the Battle of Arsia Mons?” [“¿Quién ganó la batalla de Arsia Mons?” translated by Virginia Sáenz] published in the anthology Excelsius 2024. I attended the Celsius 232 literary festival for science fiction, fantasy, and horror in Spain in July, where an anthology of works by writers attending the festival was created as a premium for its Patreon members. It is now on sale to the public, and it includes stories by Angela Slatter, Beatriz Alcaná, Cat Sparks, Charlie Jane Anders, Fulanito Pingüino Escritor, Guillem López, JV Gachs, María Zaragoza, Santiago Eximeno, and Thomas Olde Heuvelt.
( Collapse )Here’s an excerpt from the novel Usurpation, which will be published in October in hardback, ebook, and audiobook (in preparation). You can preorder your copy now.
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CHAPTER 3 - Year 2885 CE - Pax Institute, Bayonne, France - LEVANTER
She has arrived, the new director of the Pax Institute, and I will be destroyed. She confirms her credentials with the building and walks through the front door.
She is going to take my place. She will find out that I, Levanter, am not a human being. Foolishly, I used my real name to declare myself director, the name Mirlo gave me three centuries ago. He planted seeds he brought from the planet Pax, and I and my two sisters now grow here at the institute’s garden. My name is in the record’s big clumsy library in too many places to erase before she accesses the system. It is even on a sign in the garden in front of my main stalks. She will discover that Levanter is a rainbow bamboo.
No one knows we are intelligent. No one can know. Bamboo grow all over the Earth, and humans would kill us all if they knew. Not all humans are killers, but some are, and they have proven themselves efficient.
How do you meditate? Sitting still, eyes closed? That’s one way to do it: We can imagine ourselves serene like the stars overhead, moving in stately, measured rhythms. We breathe in and out, and they rise and set.
Or we could meditate like the stars as seen from another point of reference, dashing to and fro frenetically. Our Sun moves at 43,000 miles per hour. Nearby Barnard’s star is moving away from us at 200,000 miles per hour, while a star called Ross 128 is moving toward us at 69,000 miles per hour. Stars race through the sky, and they outnumber all the grains of sand on all our beaches. Their heavenly haste creates the galaxies that fly like hurricanes across the cosmos.
You can sit still to meditate. Or you can emulate a star and race like a cannonball from place to place, tugged throughout your journey by bodies as small as a planet or as large as the black hole at the center of a galaxy. Your course will be constantly modified by outside forces as you career past them.
Movement is beauty. Speed is ecstasy. Stars never travel alone and never make the same journey as their neighbors — and here on Earth, every moment of their voyages are tracked with scientific awe.
You can be like them. Savor tomorrow morning’s mad rush. Imagine yourself as a star while you move fast and phrenetic, your destination subject to constant influence and change.
Meditate on your blazing, ecstatic celerity toward parts unknown. You will be heavenly.
