Author: Sue Burke

From November 9 to 11, I’ll be attending Windycon 45, Chicago’s oldest science fiction convention. It’s a literary-based event (the guests of honor are authors, filk musicians, artists, cosplayers, and fans), with children’s programming, games, anime, panels on all sorts of topics during the day, and parties at night. Usually more than a thousand people attend.

My schedule:

Friday, 10 to 11 p.m. panel. Science in the Kitchen: How science is changing the way we eat.

Saturday, 9 a.m. to noon, Writers Workshop. We’ll critique short stories and chapters of novels. Preregistration required.

Saturday, 4 to 5 p.m. panel. ¿Como Estás? Translation Challenges: What are the challenges in translating your work to other languages?

Saturday, 8 to 9 p.m. panel. Animal Typecasting: Hollywood and authors typecast all the time. Why are reptiles almost always the villain? A discussion about different animals and how they are typecast.

Sunday, 1 to 2 p.m. panel. Autonomous Cars: More and more, our cars are becoming automated. Is this new technology awesome or awful?

If you’re there, say hi!

— Sue Burke

Chapter 3 ends with Higgins saying: “I would go out to share some truffle with Pitman soon, and I would sing him a sad song about fear and hope, failure and healing, about sweet and fresh sap in leaves evergreen with grief. Maybe I could teach the pack to coo along. Music the Pax way. Cross-species communication. They never did that on Earth. Singing fippolions. Dancing fippokats. Helpful, talkative plants with a sophisticated appreciation of abstract ideas. Good times. They can happen. Wait and see.”

Here are the words to that song. Feel free to set them to music.

Grief Evergreen (Higgins’s Song)

People will die, and I knew that yesterday.
People will cry, and I know that now today.
I would have been fine just knowing that yesterday.
I didn’t want to learn I was right today.

(Chorus)
Fresh sap in the leaves evergreen,
clean and new every season,
grief evergreen.

The ache of a soul that lived a night too long,
the one that brought sorrow and failure and wrong,
the one I saw coming. I knew all along
I couldn’t stop it. I wish I were that strong.

(Repeat chorus)

Life is a song, and time never stops breathing.
I can’t be quiet, I can’t refuse to sing.
I can’t stop sunrise, and I can’t stop the spring.
It hurts more to keep silent. I have to sing.

(Repeat chorus)

Trees — and other plants — can serve as an inspiration and guide. Here are a few quotes to ponder:

“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.” — Amelia Earhart, aviation pioneer (1897–1937)

“Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves … But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom.” — William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842–1910)

“Live like a tree, giving, forgiving, and free.” — Debasish Mridha, physician and author

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” — Hal Borland, journalist and naturalist (1900–1978)

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” — Walt Whitman,

In Semiosis, our colonists wake up in orbit around a planet at star HIP 30815. Where is that? In the constellation Gemini. But let’s get more precise.

The above photo, which pinpoints the location, comes from In-the-sky.org, which offers guides to the night sky specific to your location. The site can be set to “night mode” so you can use it as you stargaze.

The “HIP” in the name refers to the Hipparcos Catalog, one of a great many lists of stars. The Hipparcos catalog was compiled from the data gathered by the European Space Agency’s astrometric satellite Hipparcos.

The number basically follows the order of the object’s right ascension, that is, its east-west coordinate starting at the March equinox. This is the celestial equivalent of terrestrial longitude, so the number is merely the star’s place in an ordered list.

The “f” designates the planet. By convention, planets are given letters in the order they are discovered. That means there are five other planets at star HIP 30815 (according to the novel, not current science, which hasn’t identified any so far).

You can get much more detailed scientific information about the star at Universeguide.com.

Sky-map.org offers photos and additional technical details, such as the variety of names the star has: HD 1989, HD 45506, TYCHO-2 2000, TYC 1328-38-1, USNO-A2 1050-03646671, BSC 1991, HR 2340, and HIP 30815.

Finally, here’s the passage from Chapter 1 of the novel that specifies the star:

We awakened, cold and dizzy, with our muscles, hearts, and digestive systems atrophied from the 158-year hibernation on a tiny spaceship. The computer had brought us into orbit, sent a message to Earth, then administered intravenous drugs.

Two hours later I was in the cramped cabin trying to sip an electrolyte drink when Vera, our astronomer, came flying in from the control module, her tightly-curled hair trailing like a black cloud.

“We’re at the wrong star!”

I felt a wave of nausea and despair.

Paula was spoon-feeding Bryan, who was too weak to eat, and she seemed calm, but her hand trembled. “The computer could pick another one if it was better,” she said.

“It did!” Vera said. “It is. Lots of oxygen and water. And lots of life. It’s alive and waiting for us. We’re home!”

We were at star HIP 30815f instead of HIP 30756, at a planet with a well-evolved ecology, and, I noted, abundant chlorophyll. The carbon dioxide level was slightly higher than Earth but not dangerous. Seen from Earth, both stars were pinpricks in the Gemini constellation near Castor’s left shin. As planned, we named the planet Pax, since we had come to live in peace.

Autumn officially began on September 22. For some plants, the angle of the sun tells them what season it is. Others rely on the temperature. In any case, at this time of year, deciduous trees drop their leaves to prepare for winter.

The 2018 Fall Foliage Prediction Map at Smokymountains.com has a week-by-week interactive map showing regional peak colors for the United States. (See photo above, which is for October 8.) The web page also explains the science behind falling leaves and has downloadable coloring sheets for children.

When the time comes, trees cut off the flow of nutrients to leaves, which lose their chlorophyll, and beautiful underlying colors are revealed. (This season is typically called “fall” in the United States versus “autumn” in Britain for historical reasons.)

Years ago, I witnessed something that showed me the power of trees — not their strength but their autonomy.

The air could not have been more still that autumn morning, yet a tree near my back door was losing its leaves. One by one, they fell of their own weight as the tree let go. Leaves dropped steadily and eerily through the becalmed air.

Usually we think the wind sweeps the autumn leaves from the trees, and maybe it provides an extra tug. But trees decide to shed their leaves at the moment they deem best. Though they seem almost inert, buffeted by wind, soaked by rain, baked by sunshine, and parched by drought, they control their fates as much as any of us. We, too, can be uprooted by disasters, attacked by illness, cut down by predators, and suffer wilting thirst. Being mobile does not make us less vulnerable. Or more willful.

So on that cool morning, I watched a tree prove that it was the master of its destiny. One by one, it clipped its bonds to its leaves, and they dropped off. The tree was taking action, and no one and nothing could stop it.

I just read the novelette “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth” by Daryl Gregory, and I loved it. If you liked my novel Semiosis, you might like this story, too.

You can read it for free at the Tor.com site, or buy it for your e-reader for only 99¢. Purchase links are at the end of the story.

It tells what happens to a boy when seeds from outer space land on Earth. Are the seeds a disaster? How do they change people’s lives? How do they change the Earth? Why were they sent? None of the answers come easy for the boy in the story, and some of the answers might surprise you, especially in the last few paragraphs when he finally understands.

Do your houseplants hate you? No, they don’t, no matter how much you neglect them. In fact, they’re praying to their green gods for your prosperity. They’ll struggle on as best they can, offering you beauty and silent non-judgmental companionship in exchange — they hope — for more or less regular watering and a spot near sunlight.

Plants need you, no matter how inconstant you are. A lot of the vegetable kingdom depends on animals, in fact, and plants haven’t always chosen well.

Consider this story of apples and oranges — osage oranges, to be exact.

First, the apple: colorful and tasty. Many animals love sugary treats. Apple trees make sweet fruit for us to munch on so we’ll throw away the core, and the seeds can germinate in a new place. (They don’t trust us much, though. They’ve made their seeds too bitter to consume so we’ll do our job right.)

How has this strategy worked out?

Apples originated in central Asia, and ancient peoples brought them east and west. When apples reached North America, they found a champion named John Chapman, “Johnny Appleseed,” who brought orchards to the United States frontier. In the 20th century, with more human help, the trees conquered large portions of Washington State. Now, 63 million tons of apples are grown every year worldwide, much of them in northern China.

From the apple trees’ point of view, it doesn’t get better than this. They grow worldwide and get lots of tender loving care. Human beings have served them very well.

In contrast, there’s the osage orange tree. It also produces fruit: green, softball-sized, and lumpy, full of seeds and distasteful latex sap. No one eats it. The tree originated in North America and once grew widely, but by the time European settlers arrived, its territory had shrunk to the Red River basin in eastern Texas. How did it fail?

The fruit had appealed to the Pleistocene’s giant ground sloth, a member of North America’s long-lost megafauna. The sloth scarfed them down, not chewing much, and the seeds traveled safely through its digestive system, emerging in new territory. Then, 11,000 years ago, human beings came to North America and couldn’t resist the allure of a couple of tons of meat per slow-moving beast. Giant ground sloths disappeared, and six of the seven species of osage orange also went extinct.

Why haven’t the remaining trees adapted their fruit to contemporary tastes? Because trees live for a long time, and 11,000 years ago for them is like the High Middle Ages for us. Lucky for them, humans find their wood useful and rows of the trees effective windbreaks, so they currently grow across the United States and the world.

Still, useful wood isn’t much to offer the animal kingdom. Plants usually bribe us with food, the way that prairie grass entices grazers like bison to clear its domain of weeds. The bison nibble away weeds at the same time they munch on tasty grass leaves, which grass plants can easily replace. There used to be a lot more bison in North America, though. This strategy is starting to look shaky.

Flowering plants give bees nectar in exchange for hauling pollen from flower to flower, but bees seem to be having a rough time these days, too. If they go, both wild and domestic plants are in deep trouble.

Plants find animal partnerships tempting. We’ll work hard for a fairly low price. But we’re unreliable and short-lived as individuals — and too often as species.

Back to your houseplants. Many of them likely originated in tropical rainforests. Your living room resembles a jungle: warm, reasonably humid, and moderately lit. Growing in confinement there isn’t such a bad life.

You, on the other hand, are fragile, distractible, hyperactive, and a bit murderous of your own kind as well as other species. Have your houseplants fallen into good hands? Can apples rely on us, and for how long? Are osage oranges one more extinction away from their own disappearance?

Your houseplants suffer from existential angst. Food is love, and so is fleeting beauty. They give their all for you. Go water them, offer reassurance, and consider what you owe to plants. You — and other species — need to be there for them now and in the future. Make them happy. Survive.

(This article originally appeared at the Tor/Forge blog.)

It’s long been known that acacia trees in Central America have a mutual relationship with ants. The ants guard the trees, and the trees give the ants food and a place to live. But an enzyme in the acacia food makes ants dependent on the tree. The ants can eat no other food and must protect the tree as their only source of sustenance. They become true service animals.

In another case of mistreating insects, it seems that the “love vine” or Cassytha filiformis, which is a vine-like parasitical plant, not only steals nutrients from other plants, it steals from wasp galls, too. This is a parasite parasitizing a parasite — there is no honor among thieves.

Another parasite, Pilostyles hamiltonii, doesn’t simply sink rootlike structures (haustoria) into another plant, it lives inside its host entirely. Only its flowers emerge, erupting out of the host plant when the time is right. Imagine suddenly breaking out in alien flowers.

If you can’t steal from them, kill them. Some flowers produce toxic nectar. Why they do that isn’t clear. Honey made from toxic nectar is toxic to humans, and in the past, we’ve used it as a weapon. The only thing sneakier than plants are human beings.

Finally, there’s plant blindness — our blindness to plants. This Youtube video by biology student Benedict Furness explains the danger of failing to see plants and how we can overcome it. And we should. Plants are dangerous and aggressive, and we fail to see them at our own peril.

I’ll make three public appearances in the first two weeks of September.

On Tuesday, September 4, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., I’ll be at the American Writers Museum in Chicago. I’m part of the Fearless Women in Science Fiction panel with Mary Robinette Kowal, whose latest book is The Fated Sky, and with Tessa Gratton, author of The Queens of Innis Lear. I’ve met them both before, and they and their books are amazing. You can find out more about the panel here at the tickets page and at the Facebook event page.

On Sunday, September 9, I’ll be at the Kerrytown Book Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’ll appear on a panel with Mary Robinette Kowal again and with Jacqueline Carey. Our panel is from 3 to 3:45 p.m., with a book signing from 3:45 to 4 p.m. You can find out more about the festival at its website and Facebook event page.

Finally, on Monday, September 10, at 7 p.m., I’ll be at the Cromaine Library in Hartland, Michigan, as part of a series called Sallie’s Author Visit. I’ll talk about my novel and getting published. Here’s the library’s webpage and details about the visit.

If you’re in Chicago or Michigan, I hope I get to meet you.

— Sue Burke

People who had read my novel, Semiosis, recommended this book to me, so I bought it, and they were right, it’s a good book. Later I learned that Adrian Tchaikovsky had provided the extremely favorable cover blurb for the British edition of my novel. I owe him one for that.

There’s a lot to love about Children of Time. Tchaikovsky probably doesn’t know it, but in the Kindle edition, at the 99% mark (that is, at the very end) this sentence has been highlighted by 686 readers: “Life is not perfect, individuals will always be flawed, but empathy — the sheer inability to see those around them as anything other than people too — conquers all, in the end.”

This assertion is the rocket fuel that propels the book to science fiction’s heights. Our better natures triumph.

Here’s the official description:

“Winner of the 30th anniversary Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel

“Adrian Tchaikovsky’s critically acclaimed, stand-alone novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet.

“Who will inherit this new Earth?

“The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age — a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

“But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.

“Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?”

Just as I had been told, the book touches on some of the same themes as mine: human beings attempting to colonize other planets, first contact with non-human life forms, and the sad certainty that humans will make at least a few foolish choices. Tchaikovsky approaches those questions from an entirely different angle, though, one that produces a different but very satisfying story.

He also uses some wise storytelling techniques. The narration alternates between the stories of humans and uplifted spiders. He finds a way to follow the same human beings across a long period of time (600 pages and thousands of years). The new masters of humanity’s last refuge, the spiders, go through a great many generations (this is not a spoiler) but they keep the same names. All this helps the reader move easily through a complex and ambitious plot.

In the end, the humans and spiders enter into direct conflict, but they don’t share the same culture or technology, so they don’t want the same outcome from the conflict. This is the ending that inspired so many highlighters.

Permeating both his book and mine is this question: How would intelligence differ in different species? It’s a question with as many right answers as there are species. Tchaikovsky’s book considers what spiders would think if they could think. He works through that question with patience and logic and creates a fascinating alien civilization.

I have only one quibble. The ideal reader for this book would have arachnophobia. I do not, and now I wish I did so I would have enjoyed the book even more as I overcame my fears during the course of the story. Here on Earth, I admire the spiders I encounter, even the ones inside my house — they eat mosquitoes, so I consider them allies. What if we could go to the stars with these clever beings? This book makes me want to do that.