Review of Semiosis by Sue Burke

So you land on an alien world teeming with life, determined to build a colony. It’s a struggle—which you expected. What you didn’t expect was to find yourself in an uneasy alliance with a bamboo-like plant covering a good chunk of your area. And as your descendants grow up and expand, this alliance deepens into a mutualism that is reassuring for some and concerning for others. That’s the fascinating proposition at the heart of Semiosis, and Sue Burke delivers an interesting twist on a somewhat tired subgenre.

The members of the Pax expedition flee a war-torn, warming, depleted Earth. They make planetfall and begin to build a new life for themselves, a new society. But the plant life on Pax turns out to be just as—if not more—intelligent than the animal life, and it starts to communicate with the colonists. A century elapses, during which a single plant—granted the honourary name of Stevland, the first colonist to die on Pax—emerges as an intermediary between the humans and the other plants, not to mention a fledgling member of Pax himself. Moreover, the humans are not the first alien colonists to arrive on this planet, and when the descendants of those colonists show up to reclaim the city the humans have moved into … it might mean war.

Semiosis has an interesting narrative structure. It’s essentially a series of linked novelettes, each one a vignette in the story of this colony. Each chapter follows a different character, moving forward down successive generations of colonists, the previous chapter’s viewpoint character receding into memory and lore. Occasionally, Stevland also receives a voice, his sophistication in narration improving as he adapts to human patterns of thinking over the years. This structure allows Burke to cover the generational time required to build out this society and work through her intriguing thought experiment; at the same time, as is often the case with generational stories, it makes it more challenging for the reader to connect with the protagonists.

But really, your enjoyment of this book will live or die on how much you vibe with the novel’s central conceit. As symbolized by its title, this is a story of symbiosis through adaptation of meanings. Burke illustrates, through the convenient device of alien plant life, how plants are more than passive participants in an environment. They are dynamic, some might even say intelligent or sentient. I enjoyed her descriptions of the interconnected root systems, the way Stevland could alter his chemistry to produce certain compounds or send or receive nutrients, could direct parts of himself to grow in various ways. Although these plants are alien, from my rudimentary understanding, Earth plant life isn’t far off from this. My only real quibble was how Stevland’s speed of communication seems very on par with humans’, whereas I would think a far older plant, like a tree, would think on a slower time scale. But that might be excused by Stevland’s quick-growing, bamboo-like nature—he does allude to rocks being the “slowest” thinkers, suggesting there are indeed different timeframes of sentient thought on this planet.

The actual characters, the story? It’s whatever, to be honest. Each novelette is kind of its own story: there’s a revolution, a murder mystery, a war. Each one brings challenges that force the human colonists to adapt or die and have us wondering whether humans can coexist with alien intelligences, either Stevland or the Glassmakers. Burke does a good job of asking questions and maintaining a fairly philosophical bent. In particular, I quite enjoyed the sections from Stevland’s point of view, the way he discusses husbanding the humans as a kind of intelligent service animal. At the same time, Burke butts up against the limitations of her chosen structure and storytelling modes fairly quickly. She also chooses to end it at a very abrupt, interesting place.

Semiosis succeeds in the sense that it really does feel novel. I called the space colony subgenre “tired” at the start of this review, and that might be an exaggeration, but I feel like you really need to dig in deep and come up with something special at this point. “Alien worlds be dangerous” is not, in and of itself, a sufficient premise any more. In this respect, Burke’s creativity is refreshing and laudable. I’m not falling all over myself to extol this book, but I think for the right person who wants a slightly more philosophical story, you’d enjoy this.