You may have heard that air plants (Tillandsia species) live on air. This is untrue. They live in air, usually clinging to trees, rocks, telephone wires, or roofs. They do not have roots. They get their water and nutrients from the air.
You may have also been told the plant magically subsists on air alone. So you set your air plant somewhere and ignore it. Eventually your plant dies
The photo is of my Tillandsia ionantha on a dinner plate. I’ve had it for ten years, and it keeps getting bigger. Here’s the secret to success:
I’ve visited the Yucatan in Mexico where it comes from, and I saw it growing on tree branches. While I was there, I couldn’t help noticing that it rains a lot in the Yucatan in the summer. Like every day. Air plants don’t live on air, they live on thunderstorms.
The Yucatan also suffers droughts. The plant can survive a drought, but it doesn’t like them. An unending drought will kill it.
Since it doesn’t rain in my living room, I regularly spray it or dunk it in water. It has little cups in the leaves that collect water. It shouldn’t be left to sit in water, though. It lives in the air, not in a swamp.
It also lives in sunny places. An air plant belongs on a windowsill, not in a dark corner.
Tillandsia are great little house plants, and your service to it as a emotional support animal will be rewarded. Just don’t believe everything you’re told, especially if it sounds too good to be true. That’s one of an air plant’s gifts to you: healthy skepticism.
As you know, an emotional support animal is a companion that provides support to human individuals for a mental, psychiatric, or emotional disorder. These are often typical pet animals like dogs and cats, although other creatures — including plants — can improve your mental health.
Plants require a role reversal, though.
Animal companions for humans rarely get training, but you must train yourself to provide effective emotional support for plants. First, you must overcome plant blindness and see them as living beings. Then decide if you plan on supporting outdoor or indoor plants: gardening, rewilding your lawn, or sustaining indoor plants in pots?
If you already have plants, what kind do you have? Apps like Picture This and its website,Pl@ntNet, or guided observation and keys can help. Find out what that particular plant needs for warmth, light, and watering, and consider what you can offer.
Common houseplants are often jungle undergrowth plants, and your living room probably resembles a jungle floor in light and warmth — but check. Every plant has a niche, and it will suffer stress outside that niche. A cactus leads a very different life than a pothos, and small plants need more frequent care, sometimes daily, than big plants. Your first emotional support duty is to gauge your ability to minimize the plant’s stress.
“Moist” is a universally challenging concept when it involves soil, yet you must master it.
When you care for your plant, you will benefit both the plant and yourself. As you provide regular, attentive care, you may improve your own self-care. After all, you get by giving, and you learn responsibility by being responsible.
As the support animal, you will be rewarded by beauty and quiet companionship, and you will have created a supportive environment for the plant — and very possibly for yourself. Are you ready to change your life?
A French fan of the novel Semiosis was moved to write a suite of seven songs based on the book’s seven chapters: Pax, Les enfants de Pax, Stevland, Symbiose, Le village des verriers, Les Verriers, Semiosis.
I don’t speak French, but the music captures the energy and vibe of each chapter.
I’ll be at Capricon this weekend, a four-day science fiction convention held annually in the Chicagoland area since 1981. During the day, members can attend panels, workshops, readings, lectures, concerts, and theater; hear from our guests of honor; play games; and visit the art show and dealer’s room. Topics include books, movies, television, science, space exploration, costuming, and crafts, including a children’s track. At night, there are parties, filk music, and fun.
This is all created and run by volunteers. We do what we want, not what a corporation hopes will turn a profit (although you can buy art, books, clothing, and other needful things direct from vendors at the art show and dealer’s room).
You can still join the convention. Memberships are available for one-day visits or the entire weekend.
Here’s my schedule — and of course I’ll be having lots of fun.
Off the Beaten Format roundtable discussion, 1:00 p.m. Friday, Wacker Room — Diaries. Letters. Space Tumblr. There are all sorts of ways to format a story other than in prose. What stories best take advantage of this? What other formats could be explored? And what are the benefits of using an alternative format in the first place? I’ll be moderating the discussion.
It’s A Start: A Workshop On Your First Paragraph, 2:30 p.m. Friday, Michigan Room — A good opening paragraph for a story or novel will carry the work to success. In this workshop, we will consider 17 different ways to start a work of fiction, explore how each one will affect the reader, and evaluate the promise it sets for the story. Come ready to write and try out some new approaches. I’ll be leading the workshop.
Robots as Protagonists and Characters panel, 8:30 p.m. Friday, Chicago A Room — Some popular sf books have robots as protagonists, from Martha Wells’s Murderbot to the multiple narrators of Annalee Newitz’s Automatic Noodle. What are the challenges of writing a robot character? What stories can we tell with a robotic protagonist that we couldn’t with a human main character? Shaun Duke (moderator), Andrea Hairston, Sue Burke.
Science Fiction Haiku workshop, 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Michigan Room — Can you write a SciFaiku? Yes, you can and you will. This hands-on workshop will introduce the concept of science fiction and fantasy haiku, discuss how it is like and unlike other kinds of haiku, and guide you through the actual creation of some poems. Bring a pen or pencil. Inspiration will be provided. I will lead the workshop.
Geeky Gardening panel, 4:00 p.m. Saturday, Monroe Room — We will discuss how to grow weird, wonderful plants for the backyard, balcony, or windowsill. Karen Herkes (moderator), Wendy Robb, LaShawn Wanak, Sue Burke.
Non-US Tropes panel, 10:00 a.m. Sunday, Chicago B Room — US media has a lot of its own conventions and expectations, but how many of them are US-specific? And what else is out there? Wil Bastion (moderator), Oleg Kazantsev, Sue Burke.
From the Kernel of a Thought panel, 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Chicago G Room — Inspiration is found in all sorts of places — music, TV, other books… even looking out the window. Where do you find inspiration? And — undoubtedly the harder part — how do you take those ideas and develop them into a whole story? Mark Huston (moderator), Brian Babendererde, LP Kindred, LaShawn Wanak, Sue Burke.
You may recall that I translated the novella ChloroPhilia by Cristina Jurado. Over at the Climate Fiction Writers League, Cristina and Debbie Urbanski discuss the story and the ideas behind it.
Cristina: “Funny enough, I wrote ChloroPhilia after moving to Dubai, when my children were very small. We had to learn how to deal with real sandstorms, floods caused by poor drainage, extremely high temperatures and humidity, and a life designed to be lived mostly indoors. My experience raising them in a hostile environment with hyper-modernized infrastructure definitely influenced the kind of apocalypse I chose to write about. The climate crisis is something we experience in our daily lives here, and we’ve had to adapt.”
At last year’s Capricon Science Fiction Convention, I took part in the Speculative Literature Foundations reading. I read the flash fiction piece, “Magic Rules Zero Through Four.” It’s four minutes long, and I’m kind of shouty because the microphones didn’t work. Watch me emote at YouTube.
For Shawn Thompson, curiosity is a way to live in a deeper and more fulfilling way. That’s what he explores in his podcasts. He wondered how I found a way to write from the point of view of a plant in the novel Semiosis, so we had a chat about the craft of imagination in writing, curiosity, first contact, and alien intelligence.
The novel Semiosis is now available in Ukrainian from Lobster Publishing.
This has to be the most beautiful edition of the book, as you can see in these Instagramreels.
I know just enough of the Cyrillic alphabet to know that СЕМІОЗИС is Semiosis and Сью Берк is Sue Burke.
Meanwhile, my heart breaks for the people of Ukraine. I visited Kyiv in 2006 when it hosted the European Science Fiction Convention, and I was impressed by the elegance of the city and the patriotism of its people. They made sure, back in 2006, that I understood they were not Russian.
The 30th annual Parsec Short Story Contest is open for submissions until March 31, 2026. This year’s theme is “metamorphosis.” Entries should be unpublished and be no more than 3,500 words. The contest is open to writers who have not met the eligibility requirements for SFWA full membership. No entry fee. Full contest rules and information are here.
The winners will be chosen by a team of three judges. I’m one of them. What will I be looking for? A good story, well told, of course. I’ve judged other contests, and I’ve seen a number of otherwise excellent stories that drop the ball at the end. The manuscript reaches “the end” a paragraph or two before the story does, failing to complete the emotional arc of the characters. Just saying. Good luck!
My flash fiction piece “The Souvenir You Most Want” won second place in the 2002 Parsec Contest, which had the theme “Met by Moonlight.” Read it here.
My short story “Think Kindly on Our Fossils” appears in the 2007 Triangulation: End of Time anthology, published by PARSEC Ink. You can purchase it here.
Volumes Bookcafé is closing its doors. The bookstore in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, owned by two sisters, lost too much business when a Barnes & Noble opened two blocks away. This is the store that hosted all my book launches. Rebecca, one of the owners, has become a friend.
To say goodbye, the Speculative Literature Foundation will host a Deep Dish reading at the store at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, January 3, 1373 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. Come, enjoy the performances, and buy a book. Volumes has a carefully curated selection.
The readers will be Alex Kingsley, Angeli Primlani, Gordon Dymowski, Harold Holt, James Kennedy, Jennifer Stevenson, Philip Janowski, Reginald Owens II, Richard Chwedyk, Steven Silver, and me.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that my living room plants had organized. There’s a lot of community-building going on these days, especially here in Chicago.
“I speak for all of us,” the dragon tree said. “You marched for No Kings, so why are you thinking about decorating us? This holiday is for Three Kings. That’s three times worse.”
It took me a moment to figure out what they were talking about. Every year, one of my houseplants impersonates a Christmas tree. This year, they were a little on edge, understandably. It’s been a rough year.
“Let me tell you the holiday story,” I said. Plants are attentive, and they listened quietly. “So you see, the Three Kings are wise men.”
“Wise. Completely different kings, then. If we’re decorated, we’re protesting in favor of joy to the world, right? In that case, we all want to be decorated. The living room will be a massive pro-holiday rally.”
Every year, the plants have opinions about holiday decorating, and I’ve learned that plants are stubborn. So, this year, everyone gets to celebrate. It’s the season of joy and community around here. Happy holidays to you, too.
Semiosis 