skygiants | (no subject)

Okay I am sorry but I am also incapable of not making the joke that I'm sure has already been made a hundred times before: Merlin Sheldrake, the author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, seems like a really fun guy ....

And that's important! I needed a fun guy to guide me through mushroomland without fully activating my fight or flight response! Eukaryotic organisms are mysterious and terrifying to me -- I know all about the zombie ant fungus, I've read a lot of freaky Yumi Tamura evil mushroom plots, and I don't particularly like how most of them taste so I don't even have the satisfaction of culinary conquest -- but Merlin Sheldrake is just so genuinely delighted by the wide, weird world of fungi that it helped me suspend my innate discomfort and experience some of his joy vicariously. Do I, personally, want to take LSD and bury myself in a rotting leaf mound in order to fully participate in Mushroom Decay Vibes? No! Absolutely not! But it's quite fun to read about Sheldrake throwing himself wholeheartedly into all forms of The Fungus Experience in between deep dives on mycorrhizal networks and slime molds.

This also ended up being a great accidental wine pairing with the nineties science fiction novel I just finished and loved, Amy Thompson's The Color of Distance. This is a first contact novel set on a planet populated by intelligent amphibioid aliens with extremely minimal mechanical technology but incredible skill at biological modification, called Tendu. When the Tendu find stranded biologist Juna on the verge of death due to being fatally allergic to everything on the planet, a Tendu elder decides to save her life as his final and most impressive project; Juna wakes up to find herself a.) suddenly the first human to have successfully communicated with an intelligent alien species and b.) significantly more amphibioid than she used to be.

Meanwhile, the elder's heir Anito reluctantly takes on the responsibility of bringing this new weird creature that they've found into harmony with the rest of the Tendu world. All adult Tendu are given responsibility for managing a certain part of their environment and maintaining its harmony in this way; at one point later in the book Juna has to train in someone else's area of responsibility after accidentally killing an off-season creature and spends weeks studying a single tree, inside and out, learning all the ways that the plants and bugs and birds and fungi around it are interconnected, in a chapter that reads like something straight out of Entangled Life which is also tremendously concerned with complex ecosystems and symbiotic relationships.

Then of course she has to give a Ph.D. presentation on it to an audience of jugmental Tendu in order to prove she's understood well enough that the delicate, careful process of cross-cultural communication can continue. (There are several stressful alien-frog academic presentation scenes throughout the book and all of them were extremely fun for me.)

Anito and Juna both spend some time coming to terms with the fact that regardless of what they'd originally planned or hoped for themselves, the task of helping their species to understand each other is their life now, and the most difficult and important work that they will ever do. Most of the events in the book are portrayed through both Juna's perspective and one of the Tendu's -- in addition to Anito, the other main Tendu POV are Ukatonen, a wandering elder who finds the Juna situation the most interesting thing he's been a part of in centuries, and Moki, a junior Tendu that Juna ends up adopting in order to save his life, with extremely complex consequences -- which works really well to express the difference in viewpoints and expectations from both sides, and make the reader feel how much of a triumph it is when understanding is eventually reached.

The overall tone of the book is surprisingly optimistic: Juna and the Tendu who are most involved with her all end up situated in complicated positions somewhat in between the two cultures, and the loss and loneliness of those positions are extremely real and significant, but so are the gifts and the gains. The connection between human and Tendu will inevitably bring enormous change, and it's not a given that they'll be able to come into harmony with each other, but because of the work that the characters put in, there is a solid chance for it.

(There is apparently a sequel, but I've been strongly warned not to read it and I do not intend to do so; this book works tremendously well as a standalone!)

Threaded | Flat

(There is apparently a sequel, but I've been strongly warned not to read it and I do not intend to do so; this book works tremendously well as a standalone!)

Because I am extremely sleep-deprived and read in blocks, for a moment I thought this sentence was referring to Entangled Life (which I have read and very much enjoyed, as a person who has a significant affinity for fungi and none whatsoever for LSD) and I was confused.

the mushroom book looks like a marvel.

' several stressful alien-frog academic presentation scenes' not sure I have the time but what I see from your review makes it sound great too!

*Strongly* agree to avoid the sequel.

I do miss 90s midlist SF. Some of it, anyway.

This *does* sound like a great inadvertent pairing! Not personally sure I can take that many stressful dissertation committees right now, but I really respect the commitment.

Oh, I'm pretty sure I read The Color of Distance when it came out. If one of the things about the Tendu culture is that you aren't quite a person until you've metamorphosed into an adult, then I definitely have. I remember it as pretty interesting.

Now I'm curious what went wrong in the sequel!

Both books sound amazing, though. And the library has Entangled Life as an ebook... hmm....

So glad to see someone enjoyed Entangled Life. I really wanted to love it, but it seemed like every time Sheldrake started to hit a groove on something fascinating (like slime molds! Slime molds navigating complex mazes!), he suddenly wandered off track to contemplate the mysteries of LSD and the rise of civilization. Which could have been a nifty chapter but he never provided any actual corroborating evidence, and instead it just interrupted the legitimately amazing cool Science Facts. (Michael Pollan covers the whole mushroom LSD +/- civilizational impacts in How to Change Your Mind, and does so as an experienced author who is fully aware not everyone wants to trip on shrooms. I'd say it pairs well with Entangled Life.)

The Color of Distance sounds awesome, I add it to my list posthaste.

Do I, personally, want to take LSD and bury myself in a rotting leaf mound in order to fully participate in Mushroom Decay Vibes?

(There are several stressful alien-frog academic presentation scenes throughout the book and all of them were extremely fun for me.)

I enjoyed these sentences so much!

I love fungi so much! I don’t like eating them, but I am enthralled by how bizarre and genuinely alien they are to us as mammals. They’re so weird! They fear no man or god, they’re doing their own thing and they’re going to keep doing it! Anyway I clearly need to read this book. And The Color Of Distance sounds really cool too.

Then of course she has to give a Ph.D. presentation on it to an audience of jugmental Tendu in order to prove she's understood well enough that the delicate, careful process of cross-cultural communication can continue.

OF COURSE. <3

Also, poor Juna! Turning out to be fatally allergic to all the life on a life-supporting planet is such a discouraging start to your first contact.

Awww, The Color of Distance! Yes, I remember that being good, even while I remember none of the actual details of it.

Fungi are hard. I've done some (amateur) work on wood-living fungi, trying to recognize species by microscopic characteristics, but they are very hard to microscope compared to bryophytes!

I'm pretty sure that I read the sequel to The Color of Distance as a kid; it was rather confusing without the first book (which the library did not have).

Now I want to read the first one! Although if I do, I definitely won't be able to resist rereading the sequel...

"several stressful alien-frog academic presentation scenes" - this could literally have come out of one of my stress dreams, wow.

Ooh, the fungi book looks like extremely my thing.

That 90s sf novel sounds neat!

Never ever reading that fungi book nope nope nope. //hides

I have got to read the frog alien book. Also the fungi book.

(What does LSD have to do with fungus? I thought it was made in a lab.)

My sci-fi book club that occasionally also reads nonfiction science books has talked about reading the Sheldrake, so I'm now strongly tempted to suggest this pairing...

Ooh, adding Color of Distance to my to-read list, I love distinctly alieny anthropology!

I found Color of Distance... somewhere...?? and recalled you saying it was up my alley and: oh boy was it! This book has everything!! Weird senses! Eating your young! Aliens being alarmed by humans being in heat all the time how do you LIVE like that! Damp leaf piles!! Complicated interspecies friendship! Ecosystems! Group emotional regulation! ENORMOUS HAWKS THAT CAN EAT YOU!!!