Imagine if we had a Planet B. Imagine that human life had a second chance at survival and the opportunity to create a utopia on another planet. We could “start over” and recreate civilization having (ideally) learned from our past mistakes. Now imagine having to learn everything about this new planet’s ecosystem over again, which had much more time to evolve due to the planet’s age in comparison to our familiar Earth. Semiosis explores how humanity would deal with a new planet that is suitable for human life but inhabits creatures and plants very different than what we know.

A group of about 50 people (referred to as Generation 1 or Parents) from various locations on Earth and from different professional backgrounds travel to the new planet they call Pax – a journey that takes over 150 years to make. They do not experience a smooth landing – heavier gravity caused one of their pods to crash, killing about a dozen of them and destroying extremely valuable equipment. Needless to say, they are already off to a rough start in their pursuit of continuing life on a new planet. Not only must they learn about their new environment but also how to survive as they go along.

Semiosis features multiple points of view, from sequential points in time after landing, and from those of different generations (which eventually become their class systems, whether intentionally or not). For example, our first narrator is Octavo, the colony’s botanist, from Generation 1, with events taking place during Year 1. In the next chapter, the story jumps to Year 34 with our second narrator Sylvia, from Generation 2 (the first generation born on Pax). While this style of storytelling seems appropriate for exploring the colony’s ongoing survival over 100+ years and across seven generations, readers might at times find it difficult to remember character backgrounds and their relationships with one another.

Eventually, Octavo discovers that Pax’s plants are intelligent; they see the colonists as a threat and work to exterminate them, causing the colonists to react accordingly in order to survive and co-exist with their “neighbors”. As the story continues, Sylvia discovers an abandoned city far from the established colony, with a rainbow-colored bamboo plant surrounding it. The bamboo plant tries and succeeds in attracting Sylvia by creating delicious and beautiful fruit; she is able to convince her peers to move, but not without violent opposition from the Parents. In a short amount of time, Sylvia overrules the leader and the colony moves to the city.

The colonists discover that the bamboo is sentient and they learn how to communicate with one another. Semiosis is unique in that regard – instead of our characters first meeting the planet’s current residents, they are meeting intelligent plants. At first, the bamboo appears self-serving – after all, the reason it wanted to convince the colonists into staying is to use them as tools for its own survival. But we later notice that the plant aims for mutualism between it and the humans. This mutualism is put to the test once the colonists come into contact with an insect-like species, which happens to be the group who originally built the city and abandoned it. Our human and plant characters have to work together to decide what to do about the newly discovered group: fight them for the city or try to integrate them into their society.

Sue Burke’s ability to describe how a plant might think is admirable; biologists and like-minded readers will appreciate the meticulous thought that went into developing a plant character. However some may argue that she focused too much on overcoming this challenge and not enough on developing our human characters. While each generation overcomes their own challenges and learns from them, we don’t spend enough time with any of the narrators to see any complexity. We could also consider that Burke did that on purpose in order to emphasize the encompassing themes of human nature and perseverance – in other words, the colonists’ desire to succeed in creating a new civilization, or fear of failure by reverting back to the behavior that contributed to the destruction of Earth.

Sci-Fi fans will enjoy what Sue Burke does with the genre and will have fun picturing the colorful and complicated world that she paints for us. Her sequel to Semiosis, Interference, will be published this fall.

An interview with Sue Burke can be found in Episode 5 of The Nerd Cantina podcast, and you can purchase her books with the links below.

• Semiosis: https://amzn.to/2DvT1cC
• Interference: https://amzn.to/2VjTpFf