This book is set six millennia in the future when, because the sun has begun to go super nova and its solar radiation has increased, vegetation has climbed to the top of the life form hierarchy. The ascendancy of the vegetable world began with a battle amongst the trees which began to grow very quickly because of the increased heat. Ultimately the Banyan tree won and a single enormous Banyan tree now covers the entire sunny side of the planet. Different kinds of mostly predatory vegetable life forms live on different levels of the Banyan tree.
As the solar radiation was increasing human skulls began to shrink and then human bodies themselves began to shrink too. It was actually discovered that humans were comprised of the humans themselves and morel mushrooms which acted as the humans' brains and the increased radiation killed the morel mushrooms which resulted in the changes to the human form. Consequently, in this world humans are no more than a few inches tall and are dumb as doors.
This book is the story of a particular tribe of humans which is forced to split up and the journey of the members of the tribe after the split. A group of them end up on the moon and prepare for an attack on the earth, another group faces attacks from all kinds of predatory creatures, and the final group adventures all around the earth after some of them have been occupied by morel mushrooms.
The book uses the cover of an almost childish theme to discuss some fairly sophisticated ideas. The tenuous ascendancy of humans is obviously front and center, however, the author deals with the violent tendencies of the morel mushrooms and the implications of gender reversal as women take on a very different role in this world than men. This is a very imaginative piece of science fiction which is well worth a read even though it is not as fast paced as one would like it to be.
1 comment:
Excellent review!
Post a Comment