For April’s Book Club we read Semiosis by Sue Burke. I really enjoyed this novel. We have been alternating between fiction and non-fiction this year, and I thought this novel (Ms. Burke’s first) was well-researched across botany, physics, psychology, and most-importantly self-consistent with the dynamics she created even though there were unexplained elements of the societal rifts that I would have loved to see explored more deeply.
On its face Semiosis is a First Contact-Whodunnit-mashup following the story of human refugees from Earth colonizing a planet which they name Pax. The compact they create is one that encourages peace, valuing life and equality, but the struggles of the novel do not enable these noble edicts to persist for long. Intriguingly, there isn’t one protagonist in this novel, or one antagonist. Initially at least you are rooting for the human colony as they wrestle with the planet’s flora and fauna.
Burke evokes an ecology that is alien but familiar with an inventive population of predators and prey: vicious ground-eagles, giant toxic slugs and the fun, easily domesticated fippokats. As the generations on the planet evolve, the slow and stealthy ways of the plants are realized. These are not the flora and fauna of Earth with millennia of additional evolution. These plants can nourish and support the humans or poison and attack them. Plants which have learned over millennia how to domesticate and recruit the animal-life of the planet for their ends. They too are colonists, engaged in turf wars which can turn vicious.
Humans have to take sides determining who to ally with in the plant wars. Octavo the botanist is the first to realize the compromises involved in survival: “We wanted (to) find a happy niche in another ecology. Instead we found a battlefield.”
But the battles aren’t limited to humans and plants. As the generations evolve and adapt to the planet, they increasingly rebel and we go from plants attacking humans to humans attacking one another. This part of the novel could have benefited from more psychological development. The way the community evolves into aggression from such an extreme initial commitment to peace and equality in just one generation is hard to imagine, but there is a strong undercurrent of control, manipulation, and dishonesty, which make the children determine that to survive they must move past the initial generation and their false compact of hope and peace.
As interesting as the humans and their generational evolution is, the most fascinating character is the giant bamboo plant that comes to dominate the lives of the colony from generation 2 onward. So crucial is it to the humans’ survival, they name it after an early colonist: Stevland. In return for their ‘gift-centers’ or latrines and their irrigation labour, it provides an array of fruit and plant tools.
As is the case on Pax, Stevland can alter human physiology and behavior by way of chemicals. It communicates with colonists, and earns its own passages of narration. Initially Stevland’ s voice is clinical, arrogant, and dry. Think Hal the computer-plant, “With the burn of light comes glucose to create starch, cellulose, lipids, proteins, everything I want… In joy, I grow leaves, branches, culms, stems, shoots, and roots of all types. Water flows through the repaired foreigners’ pipes like veins in leaves, freeing me from rains and seasons so I may develop at will.”
I found this voice disturbing at first, with its insistent ‘I’. But that monstrous ego grows on you. Stevland has I would argue the most interesting character arc where ‘he’ faces crises and changes. When a human ‘moderator’ scathingly advises him to grow a sense of humour, he takes it literally. By year 107, its ‘humour root’ enables ice-breaking jokes and sarcasm, which makes his initial interactions with Sylvia and Tatiana almost unrecognizeable. During one tense passage, Stevland communicates with surrounding lesser plants:
‘”Pests.” “Bad.” “Bad.” “Bad.” “Bad.” “Bad.” “Bad.”, they answer one by one. My humour root observes that they have little to say but are talkative nonetheless. I am glad I grew the humour root. I can endure unpleasant situations better.’
Moral ambiguity, aggression, tribalism, and peace are found throughout the novel, but I was particularly struck by Stevland’s journey on this. He is arguably the novel’s most cunning and manipulative antagonist: a plant that out-thinks humans and knows it is better. Stevland the bamboo is initially an enemy who domesticates the humans to their greatest ally trying to defend and protect them, while still having his own agenda and objectives.
Despite the colonists’ quest for Pax, this novel is punctuated by violence, murder, and war, but even with that the novel maintains a strong sense of hope. It’s neither dystopian, nor utopian, but as complex as the business of life. The community’s idealism energizes the narrative as they struggle with the messiness of both human nature and alien beings. First Contact isn’t one breathless moment but a challenge that unfolds over decades, much like the relationships explored. Unpredictable, urgent, occasionally bloody, the story is page-turning with characters and themes that embed themselves deeply in one’s consciousness. I highly recommend even if you aren’t a sci-fi person.