Saving this science-fiction classic until now was unexpectedly fortuitous because I have better idea of its influence having watched films such as Vesper and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind that were clearly inspired by it. Right off the bat, it blew me away with its depiction of a far future Earth in which what remains of humanity must eke out a precarious existence against the plant-life that predominates. The amoral perspective, since there is no room for anything other than survival, is sobering and this is pretty much purely a survey of the ecosystem of the era. My interest did fall off somewhat once it establishes a pattern of its characters being continually forced to confront unfamiliar environments due to a series of misadventures, rather than staying in one particular biome to explore it in-depth. But it remains one of most eye-opening and original science-fiction books I’ve ever read.

A small tribe of humans live in the branches of a huge tree system that has grown to encompass the continent. They are led by a woman, Lily-yo, as men are considered rare and too precious to be risked. When a child is killed by a predatory plant creature, she and another of the adults take her soul, a carved representation of her self, to the Tips above the tree line. After a mishap, Lily-yo realizes that she is getting too old to lead the group and must herself proceed to the next stage of their life-cycle. That is to encase herself into seed-casings and allow themselves to be carried by the giant, spider-like Traverser plants on their webs into space. Meanwhile the designated new leader of the group Toy has trouble asserting her authority against the rebellious young male Gren. While trying to bring down a flying a giant suckerbird, they are accidentally brought along as passengers and crash land in a coastal area with a different biome. Gren is separated from the rest of the tribe. He encounters a sentient fungus that calls itself a morel. The morel attaches itself to Gren’s head and unlocking lost knowledge in his genes, claims to guide Gren to safety.

There’s a lot more to the book than this as Gren’s adventures take him ever farther afield from his native jungle and we also get to see what happens to Lily-yo’s splinter group. It’s incredible as a feat of pure imagination as the imagery of a far future hothouse Earth in which vegetation runs rampant is so vivid. That it jives so perfectly with our modern fears of global warming is all the better. I’ve read complaints that the physics of the setting don’t make much sense, with the relative positions of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun locked to one another so that portions of Earth are either in perpetual daylight or darkness and a vast web connecting the Earth and the Moon. But it makes for such a compelling, original vision that I’m willing to give it a pass. I’m less fond of the increasingly exotic powers that are introduced later. A symbiotic intelligent fungus is plausible enough for me but it being able to access ancestral memories is already pushing it and it gets wilder from there. Still there are plenty of things to be amazed by including the myriad ways that plant-life have evolved to become more animal-like and how humanity has adapted in so very many different ways.

As excited as I was to be immersed in this world, my enthusiasm started to wane when I realized that it would indefinitely keep up the pattern of throwing the human characters into one adventure after another. This makes sense as it was originally published as a series of standalone novelettes. The exclusive focus on action and introducing new species and biomes become grating after a while. It’s shocking to see a human child get killed within the first few pages but eventually you realize that their attrition rate seems too implausibly high for them to be a sustainable population. I would have preferred following a social group over the course of years and decades so as to be able to learn about a complete lifecycle. Unfortunately this book is just not that sophisticated. It’s all about breathlessly showing all manner of weird and crazy stuff one after another but you barely get more than a brief introduction before we’re off to the next new thing. I hardly believed it when we got a look at what passes as a civilization among the termights, the successors of the insects, and then they are never seen again.

Granted even if this book wasn’t everything I’d hoped it was, it’s still an incredible feat of imagination. Some of its biological creations are too far out but many are plausible and feel horrifying to us. It’s no wonder that it inspired the films, comics and games that came later. This might have been a better known book if not for the fact that it doesn’t really have a plot nor any memorable characters. It’s science-fiction worldbuilding at its best and pretty much nothing else.