The story begins on an overcrowded
future Earth. Cities are clusters of vast tower buildings - I believe each
building was supposed to be a mile square and about 200 stories tall. Each
city has about 1 billion people. Although planets in other star systems are
being developed for human habitation, the number of new settlers they can
absorb is less than the growth rate of Earth's human population and the number
of retirees returning from the frontier planets. (The frontier planets'
economies have a hard time supporting retirees, so the retirees tend to go back
to Earth.) Population pressures have lead to a populist movement favoring the
elimination of as much as possible of Earth's animal life, in order to make all
resources available for humans.
Through the events of the
protagonist's life, the story shifts away from Earth. While there is logic to
how her personal life leads her to other planets, it's also somewhat like
shifting to a different story. I'm not familiar with the origin of this novel,
but I wouldn't be surprised if it is the result of combining three novelettes
or short stories.
The latter part of the book
focuses on events after she goes to a planet referred to as Moss. Both humans
and an extraterrestrial race are on Moss to check out its potential for
settlement, including determining whether there is any native intelligent
species. This is a planet with little or no native "animal life". I
put that in quotes, because some of the native "plant life" is rather
animate (a word I believe is derived from the same source as the word
"animal".) The native "plant life" is part of a
coordinated biosphere which treats the biosystem as a thinking entity that can
make decisions and coordinate actions for the planet's life. There is at least
one type of "plant life" that travels on its own "legs" and
is capable of acting as an entity with its own ideas, although it intends to be
a cooperative part of the biosystem.
Humans initially have trouble
understanding that the plants or biosphere are intelligent, communicating
being(s). Part of this hinges on the native life communicating via a language
expressed in smells. (The native life did not evolve eyes or ears, but did
develop scent receptors.) Not only is the idea of a scent language one that
humans generally don't look for, there are other reasons why the human
investigators are initially looking in other directions.
These ideas are only
developed so far before the story shifts again, although still revolving around
the planet Moss. It turns out that a couple of centuries previously, a group
of spaceships from Earth were forced to land on Moss and the descendents of the
crews have since divided into two conflicting (more or less) pre-industrial
societies. Meanwhile, the extraterrestrials who are considering Moss for
settlement are part of a species that is secretly planning to start a war with
humans, in order to acquire human worlds and women. Behind this scheme is
actually a third race which has been maneuvering to get this war against humans
begun, so they can take over the worlds of both races. Meanwhile, Moss is
connected to another world by way of some "space anomaly" - and on
that world is yet another nasty species that is a danger to humans and other
races. Also on this connected world are members of another race the
protagonist has met on a planet she worked on years ago...
Throwing all those war-happy
species and others at you in one paragraph above might make the book sound like
a cheesy “humans vs. blood-thirsty aliens” story. It's certainly more
sophisticated than that. However, all those wheels within wheels doesn't leave
much room for thoughtful delving into overpopulated Earth, a plant-world Gaia
talking in smells, or similar deeper issues that the book has raised earlier.
As a result, I don't feel it
lived up to its potential. There are ideas and scenarios in the book that may
very well interest you, but it may not be remembered as much as a cohesive
whole.