“Semiosis” by Sue Burke
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Rating: 3/5 Stars
An interesting novel set over several human generations on a world where a colony of humans has become dependent on an intelligent plant to provide them with the required nutrients. In return, the humans ‘serve’ the plant by protecting it from other predators and helping it to spread when required. An unusual novel presenting a plant as a form of intelligence, possibly superior to man.
The plant’s intelligence isn’t evident at the start when the colony begins. But the biologist in the colony begins to suspect that the plants on the newly colonized planet, Pax, are intelligent when one plant tries to kill them while another ‘protects’ them. The way herbivores behave also give a clue as to whom is the dominant species on the planet. As the colony slowly grow under the plant’s protection, conflict breaks out over whether to move the colony to yet another plant that may have attempted to ‘bribe’ them with gifts and the offer of more protection.
Partway through the book, the point of view shifts from the humans to the plant, which can now communicate with the humans with more than just scents and tasty fruit. The plant can see using numerous light sensitive cells and write messages with dye-sensitive ones. The plant also talks with other plants through the language of chemistry. The plant and humans now coexists, although tensions remain over who dominates and whether domination or mutual coexistence is the more desired outcome.
For the book is also about the colony trying to find a new way of life after the conflicts that have affect Earth and cause the colonist to flee to a new planet. This would be challenged when yet another alien species is discovered on the planet and the colonists and plant have to decide how to deal with them: with cooperation or with conflict.
By the end of the book, a new balance has been achieved by aliens, humans and plant: but who knows how long it can last and how it may handle any new crisis in the future.
Book read from 2024/07/29 to 2024/08/07