Las Médulas, Spain, the remains of a mountain that was excavated in Roman times for its gold. Photo by Sue Burke.
What’s it like to write a novel? Much has been said about it, perhaps too much, but let me add one more metaphor anyway:
It’s like digging a big hole. By hand. You likely start out choosing where to dig and knowing the approximate size of the final hole — that is, you’ve chosen the genre and you know the final manuscript should be the size of a book. You may have carefully researched the site, taken copious notes, and done your best to be prepared. Or maybe you’re just going see what you find. In either case, you start digging, one handful of dirt at a time. The project is big and goes on for a long while.
If you’re lucky or did some test digs, you won’t find an enormous rock in the middle of the dirt you need to excavate. You will certainly find smaller rocks, tree roots, some worms and other critters — and bits of archeological ruins because we always encounter the past.
You’ll also find buried treasure, maybe a lot of treasure. That’s your best clue that you’re digging in the right place.
Photo by Sue Burke at the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“Where do you get your ideas?” If you’re a writer, you may have been asked that. Here’s how I got the idea behind Semiosis and turned it into a novel. How it happened is neither typical nor unusual – there are a lot of paths to a novel, and they’re all good – but it does illustrate an essential and sometimes overlooked aspect of writing.
The whole thing started with the houseplants on my dining room table. One day, I discovered that the little pothos in a mixed planter had wrapped itself around another plant and killed it. At first, I blamed myself for not having noticed earlier and stopped it. Then a philodendron on a bookshelf tried to sink roots into another plant. I became suspicious and did some research.
What I learned was disturbing. According to botanist Augustine Pyrame de Candolle, “All plants of a given place are in a state of war with respect to each other.” They compete for light and nutrients, and they use ingenious tactics to abuse and even kill each other. For example, roses have thorns so they can impale their prickles into other plants and climb over them. In the process, they might kill the other plants — but this is war. Roses don’t care as long as they’re victorious.
Even more disturbing, I learned, are the ways plants use animals for a variety of tasks. They grow flowers to attract pollinators, as we all know, and they’re sometimes very unkind to hard-working insects. Plants also grow fruit so that we’ll eat it and spread their seeds. When a tomato (tomatoes are technically fruit) turns red, the tomato plant is sending you a message: eat me now! We think we grow crops to feed ourselves, when from the point of view of many plants, they reward us with food to manipulate us into helping them survive in wartime. We serve the plants.
I wrote and sold a magazine article about the viciousness of the vegetable kingdom, and as a science fiction writer, I thought I ought to do something more with the idea. But what was the story?
Then, at a science fiction writing workshop, the instructor posed a writing prompt about a special kind of wall that suddenly appears in a war zone. War? That might work. What if, on a distant planet, a human colony suddenly appeared like a wall between warring plant factions? (Two classmates also got good ideas from that prompt. One wrote a tender steampunk love story, and another wrote an epic fantasy novel.)
Soon enough, my short story was written and published, dramatizing the dangers of setting up a colony between warring plants. A couple of years later, I came back to the story and thought about expanding it into a novel — so I began more research. Even a fairly Earthlike planet needs a carefully designed ecology.
A few unexpected details discovered during that research became critical. On Earth, most iron has sunk to the planet’s core, but a lot remains mixed in the crust, so iron is common. However, if a planet happens to have a lot of carbon as it is formed, almost all the iron sinks and the crust becomes iron-poor. Plants need iron to create chlorophyll. Your blood is red from hemoglobin, which contains iron. You have what plants want. Stories need conflict. This one could be life-or-death.
I also realized that no matter how I tweaked the plants, they’d respond slowly. They’re low-energy beings. I needed to slow down the story but still keep it compelling. I decided to jump in time between chapters by skipping from one generation of the human colonists to the next, a kind of story called a roman-fleuve.
By then, I had finally developed the idea enough to begin writing – after spending a few years to amass all the details.
Story ideas come from many sources: sometimes from a conversation, a news report, an old memory, an episode from history, a reaction to another story, a compelling prompt, or a random observation as you’re walking down the street. I believe that ideas are as easy to encounter as snowflakes in winter. What’s hard are stories. Ideas need to be dramatized. It may take time, observation, research — and possibly a little luck — to discover the drama behind the idea.
There’s no right or wrong way to find the drama. I can only offer one piece of advice: Be patient with the process. The idea is only the first step.
My brother’s family sent me this plant for my birthday yesterday.
They know me well. “Another plant for your growing jungle!” the card said. (Kathy, my sister-in-law, invented the fippokat as a child and lent it to me for Semiosis and hasn’t complained about the ways I’ve used and abused them.)
The card from the florist identified the gift as a “Green Plant(s). Moderately bright locations are preferred on most plants. Water thoroughly when soil is dry to the touch…”
I needed to know more, of course. What was it? How exactly should I care for it? Plants always want something from their service animals, sometimes something very specific, and I’m willing to acquiesce in order to have strong, healthy, happy houseplants.
The flower, a spadix, told me it’s a member of the Araceae or arum family. That narrowed it down to about 3700 species. But only a few of them were likely to show up in a Chicago florist shop. A peace lily (Spathiphyllum)? Wrong leaves. Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema)? Maybe. The variegation and texture of the leaves seemed familiar, but pink?
In any case, the plant originated in Asian jungle undergrowth. The Missouri Botanical Garden, which has a large collection of Araceae, recommends partial to full shade and home-level warmth. NC State U Extension adds that they like humidity. No problem. I live next to Lake Michigan and it’s foggy here a lot.
Welcome to your new home, Pink Splash/Lady Valentine! May you live long and prosper. I’ll do my best to make that happen.
Full disclosure: The author approached me to see if I wanted to write a blurb for her book, a literary thriller, and if so, she’d send me a copy. The book was about plants, and plants are my thing. I took a look at her other writing and decided I would probably enjoy the novel.
I was right. Here’s my blurb:
The delight and grit of Paris, the desperation of poverty, the love of plants and family – all beautifully and authentically told. The literary side of the novel brings sensitivity and texture to the struggling characters and their surroundings, and the thriller side kept me up late, anxious to find out what happens next.
Literary novels tend to emphasize character, and with only a few words, Karen Hugg creates people you might recognize if they came walking down the street. She presents the protagonist with complexity and depth. Renia is a poor Polish immigrant to Paris, working in a floral shop. She has a flower whose scent only seems to attract trouble and danger, but she has neither the resources nor strength to protect the flower and herself and her sister at the same time.
Thriller novels emphasize peril. Because Renia is trapped by poverty, by a conflicted and demanding family that she loves deeply, by other people’s bad decisions, and by a situation that requires more than she has to offer, her troubles grow until her life and the lives of others are in danger. She won’t surrender, but her choices become few and dire.
Those two sides of storytelling combine to become a potent combination.
Finalists for this year’s John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction novel have been selected, and Semiosis is on the list! I am deeply honored.
The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel , or Campbell Memorial Award, is an annual award presented by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best science fiction novel published in English in the preceding calendar year. It is the novel counterpart of the Theodore Sturgeon Award for best short story, awarded by the same organization.
(The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is a different award presented along with the Hugos at Worldcon. Yeah, I was confused at first, too.)
The Campbell Memorial Award will be presented in Lawrence, Kansas, on June 28. This year’s jury included Gregory Benford, Sheila Finch, Elizabeth Anne Hull, Paul Kincaid, McKitterick, Pamela Sargent, and Lisa Yaszek.
The full list of nominees:
• Semiosis, Sue Burke (Tor)
• A Spy in Time, Imraan Coovadia (Rare Bird)
• The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
• Time Was, Ian McDonald (Tor.com Publishing)
• Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (Ecco)
• Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice (ECW)
• Theory of Bastards, Audrey Schulman (Europa Editions)
• Unholy Land, Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)
• Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)
• The Freeze-Frame Revolution, Peter Watts (Tachyon)
• The Loosening Skin, Aliya Whiteley (Unsung Stories)
Ants on peonies
Peony flowers provide food for ants, and the ants protect the blossoms from other floral-feeding insects.
Podcast: Buzzing Bees and the Floral Microbiome
Why and how do bees have to buzz to pollinate some flowers? How do bees know which flowers need buzzing? How do flowers benefit? Scientist Avery Russell explains it all in great detail.
Poul Anderson (1926–2001) won multiple awards and much acclaim during his career. His story “Eutopia” in the Dangerous Vision anthology (1967) remains one of my favorites for the way the plot hinges on the final word. This is typical of Anderson. His plots were genius.
Likewise, all nine of the stories in the collection The Best of Poul Anderson are impeccably told – and yet this book left me troubled. A quick summary of the stories might offer a clue about why.
“The Longest Voyage” (1960): Explorers (men) rather like 1700s sailors on Earth are circumnavigating their planet, and they find a high-tech artifact. Won the 1961 Hugo Award for short story.
“The Barbarian” (1956): A spoof of Conan the Barbarian.
“The Last of the Deliverers” (1958): A man arrives in a future Ohio town and debates politics in a satire of the Cold War.
“My Object All Sublime” (1961): A couple of men meet over time travel and crime – to say more would be a spoiler, and there’s a nice twist.
“Sam Hall” (1953): A man fights an oppressive government. Nominated for a Prometheus Award and Retro Hugo Award.
“Kyrie” (1968): A woman falls in love with a doomed alien. Nominated for a Nebula Award.
“The Fatal Fulfillment” (1970): A man falls afoul of a repressive system of psychological control.
“Hiding Place” (1961): A space opera story involving Nicholas Van Rijn, one of Anderson’s recurring characters.
“The Sky People” (1959): In the future on a resource-depleted Earth, a savage attack falls on a peaceful city, and a brave captain (male) saves it.
You may have noticed a certain dearth of women in significant roles. And consider the description of the only woman who is a protagonist: Her ship’s captain regards her as “gauche” and “inhibited,” and he tries to suppress his “distaste” – “but her looks! Scrawny, big-footed, big-nosed, pop eyes and stringy, dust-colored hair….”
When women are introduced in these stories, they often lead with their breasts and sex appeal: “her build left no doubt [of her mammalian life form],” “the rich black dress caressed a figure as good as any in the world,” “blond, big-eyed, and thoroughly three-dimensional,” “her gown was of shimmerite and shameless in cut,” “young and comely, and you didn’t often see that much exposed female flesh anymore,” “a stunning blonde,” “she was nice-looking … and he thought he could get her into bed.”
In “The Hiding Place,” Nicholas Van Rijn has brought a female paid sex companion on his trip whom he keeps underclad and verbally and physically mistreats. In fairness, he’s an ass to everyone, but her abuse has a rapey edge – and he’s the hero of the story. In “The Sky People,” the rescuing fleet has bare-chested woman aboard who “comfort” the men as their only means to join a exciting mission of discovery. Couldn’t they be full members of the crew and share in the adventure without prostituting themselves?
I was born in 1955. I grew up in a time when girls could only wear skirts to school – among many other arbitrary, humiliating, harmful rules, such as no competitive sports; women could legally be paid less than men for the same work if they could even get the same work; reproductive rights didn’t exist. As a headstrong girl, I chafed at the restrictions, stereotypes, and peremptory limited horizons. Reading these stories is a return to the nightmare time when I was legally a second-class citizen.
Poul Anderson can’t be held too much at fault for not seeing that, though. Second-wave feminism didn’t begin in the United States until after most of these stories were published, and progress toward equality was (and still is) slow. Other authors of that time, in and out of science fiction, were equally blind to what we can easily see now.
My question is this: What are we blind to now? What in today’s fiction will future readers point at and wonder how we could have missed something so utterly glaring?
We’re all idiots, we just don’t know what kind of idiot. Reading this book with its painful flaws ought to keep us humble.
This may seem like a question for poets, but botanists know why roses have thorns.
First of all, to set the record straight, roses do not have thorns. They have prickles. Thorns are modified leaf stems or parts of leaves, while prickles grow from the epidermis or cortex.
Rose prickles serve to keep away predators. Rose plants are tasty, according to deer. The prickles, sometimes brightly colored, say “keep away!” This message is also directed at you, Mr. and Ms. Florist. Roses don’t want their flowers stolen.
But most rose prickles curve down to serve another, more insidious purpose. When roses grow, they clamber over other plants. The prickles serve as hooks to help anchor rose branches into their unfortunate neighbors. But as the roses grow, they can monopolize the sunshine, and the plants they grow over will starve and die. Roses don’t care.
Thus we can conclude that if someone gives you a rose, this is hardly an act of love. The flower didn’t want to be harvested and handed over to you, and roses are nasty plants anyway.
Poets, take note. Rather than roses, praise the love apple. When it turns a beautiful color and becomes aromatic, it’s inviting you to take it and share it as a true symbol of esteem, nurture, and even passion. Nothing says love like a tomato.
This is my new favorite plant, a Rhipsalis creuscula or coral cactus.
I got it a month ago from my brother, who sent me some cuttings from his plant by mail. His plant came from cuttings my mother gave him almost thirty years ago from her plant. She died in 1994.
So this is my mother’s plant! She’s the one who turned me on to houseplants in the first place, and now I have a houseplant from her again. It’s sitting on the window ledge in this room — celebrating Mother’s Day.
The cuttings from my brother arrived a bit travel-weary, but he assures me it’s a “vigorous” plant that should become beautiful soon. To my eyes, it’s already beautiful.
The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the finalists for its 2019 awards today. Semiosis is one of the ten finalists in the Best First Novel category.
Winners will be announced during the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle, WA, June 28 to 30. Awards are presented in sixteen catagories. Locus Magazine has covering the speculative fiction field since 1968 with news, reviews, commentary, and data. No one knows the field as well as Locus!
The full list of Best First Novel finalists — all well worth reading:
Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt; Macmillan) Semiosis, Sue Burke (Tor) Armed in Her Fashion, Kate Heartfield (ChiZine) The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK) The Quantum Magician, Derek Künsken (Solaris US; Solaris UK) Annex, Rich Larson (Orbit US) Severance, Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus, Giroux) Witchmark, C.L. Polk (Tor.com Publishing) Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga) Empire of Sand, Tasha Suri (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
This may seem like a question for poets, but botanists know why roses have thorns.
This is my new favorite plant, a Rhipsalis creuscula or 
The Locus Science Fiction Foundation 
Semiosis 