SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Interference by Sue Burke: https://t.co/r1m85Lndtv
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 29, 2021
Short Review: 7 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): The follow-up to Semiosis features a return to Pax, the world where intelligent plants domesticated its human colonists and an alien race, as a new group of humans comes to the planet and discovers the result. Still solid, but doesn't do anything new.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 29, 2021
2/3
Interference is the sequel to Sue Burke's Semiosis from from 2018 (which I reviewed here). Semiosis is usually not the type of book I love - it's an idea based sci-fi novel, featuring a story over a number of generations of humanity on an alien planet. Yet unlike most "generation ship" type novels, it spent enough time with each generation, who often overlapped, and had an idea interesting enough - humans getting essentially domesticated by super-intelligent plants! - that it kept me hooked and interested throughout. If you liked Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time for example, you'd like Semiosis, which is similar (with plants instead of spiders) but a little more in depth with its characters, to my satisfaction.
Interference takes place after Semiosis and features a new party of travelers from Earth going to check on the Pax colony that was the setting of Semiosis, in which the human settlers now use mostly primitive technology in cooperation with another alien species, the Glassmakers, all under the authority of Stevland, a super-intelligent rainbow bamboo plant. Needless to say the modern humans, coming from a crappy Earth setting, do not understand what they find, and set off a new round of conflicts between human, alien and plant. It's an interesting story, but one that honestly doesn't feel like it adds too much more than Semiosis did originally.
-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
The planet of Pax now exists in a state of equilibrium, with Stevland the rainbow bamboo helping maintain the peace between the humans (the Pacifists) and glassmakers. Still, internal strife between the two species, as well as the different generations, continues to exist and worse, recent changes in the environment outside of Stevland's reach suggest new dangers on the horizon.
And then the ship from Earth arrives.
The Earthlings come from an Earth featuring a dictatorial government, which scapegoats one old human and all her subsequent clones for the destruction of the old world and humanity and maintains a perpetual war with Mars. Their personnel is mostly made up of scientists...but also one meddling government bureaucrat and a soldier, who have their own ideas about what to do when confronted with the unusual.
And to them, everything about Pax is unusual, even with the secret of Stevland kept by the Pacifists and the glasskeepers. And so the Earthlings' arrival - and their ignorance of what to them looks like a dissent into primitivism - threatens to upset the equilibrium and allow perhaps for a new species to assert its dominance....
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Unlike Semiosis, Interference does not take place over numerous generations, with the only time skips involving a period in which the Earthlings are in hibernation on the trip to Pax from Earth in between the first chapter (which acts more like a prologue) and a time skip between the last chapter and the Epilogue. We are instead dealing with the same cast throughout. Like its predecessor however, Interference switches each chapter in perspectives, jumping from Earthlings to Pacifists to Glasskeepers and in the biggest chapter, to the perspective of Stevland.
These point of view changes, along with the fact that we are sticking with the same cast throughout, allow us to get to know a good amount the characters, which again prevents this from being a dry idea focused SciFi novel even as it deals with more interesting ideas - the domesticated by plants humans meet undomesticated humans! They're confronted by new dangerous plants! The ideas of the alien species coming back to Earth! etc.
And Burke manages to keep the novel, which is only around 300 pages, interesting throughout even as characters make some seemingly contradictory decisions to everyone's harm. The most well done idea is the argument that modern humans, and humans in general, are a total mess without the guidance of the Bamboo, causing dissent amongst themselves and among everyone else, without the guidance of a higher power like Stevland. They destroyed their planet, scapegoated one person for it (and have kept cloning her to endlessly punish her, which is what one of the Earthlings has fled from) and cannot rationally sit back and understand what is going on without their own prejudices getting in the way. This is true even of the scientists who are most eager to explore and don't maintain the bad approaches of the bureaucrats - they simply cannot understand how well maintained and worthwhile a life there is among the Pacifists, even if the primitivism isn't necessarily a virtue. Burke's argument that humanity isn't worthy of controlling itself through the story is pretty well done, leading to an epilogue that is both chilling and as a result kind of hopeful in its horror.
Still, this isn't really saying too much that Semiosis didn't already say, and the big addition of another plant species that threatens everyone - and the potential presence of other settlements elsewhere on Pax - doesn't really add anything? It just feels like more of the same with regards to the former - a source of conflict but not one that's particularly as interesting as the conflicts between the two types of humans and everyone else - and with regards to the latter, it never really ever goes anywhere. This is my biggest issue with Interference - its biggest themes are already dealt with in Semiosis and there's just more of them here, with it dealing with the unworthiness of humans (and other animal species) once again. If you loved Semiosis then, Interference might be the book for you. But if you merely liked it or found it interesting, I don't really think there's enough here to come back for.
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