In Semiosis, the human community learns, over the course of several generations and about a hundred years, that in order to survive they must give up their colonialist/pioneering/conquering mentality, and instead negotiate ongoing relationships with the other species. Pax also has a population of large arthropod-like beings known as the Glassmakers intellectually and culturally, they are at least the equals of Homo sapiens, though their manners and outlooks are unsurprisingly quite different. (The colonists give names reminiscent of Earth species to all the life forms they discover, even though their biochemical makeup and descent are quite different). There are also a number of language-capable animal species too, including the predatory eagles and the scavenging bats. All the plant species on the planet are sentient to varying degrees they are often engaged in Darwinian struggles against one another as well as against the animals who feed on them.

These include, most notably, intelligent plants. Human colonizers, fleeing an ecologically and politically ravaged Earth, arrive on Pax they must learn to get along with the native life forms.

That book introduced us to Pax, a superhabitable Earth-like planet some fifty-six light years away. Sue Burke’s new science fiction novel Interference is the sequel to her previous book Semiosis.

Sue burke books