OF MYCELIUM AND MEN (The Biomass Conflux #1), by William C. Tracy @SciFiMonth

I first saw this book mentioned on John Scalzi’s blog in its “big idea” section, where the author generously offers other writers a space to showcase their new works: I was immediately intrigued by the core concept of a multi-generational ship landing on a new planet to establish a colony, and the added detail of the colonists’ battle with the native fungal mass covering the entirety of the planet represented a further incentive to keep this book on my radar.  What better occasion than SciFi Month to finally read this story?

The eight generational ships carrying a slice of humanity toward its destination should have arrived at their new home in a matter of decades, but both the first potential landing site and the second one proved inhospitable and so the fleet kept on searching: as the story opens, they are now at their eleventh attempt, and more than four centuries have elapsed since departure.  The new planet, soon christened Lida, is the most promising one so far in terms of ground and atmospheric conditions, although it presents something weird: a biomass of fungal nature, often quite deep, is covering the whole planetary surface.  Unfazed by the unexpected find, the leaders decide to effect landfall, burning off a huge portion of of the biomass to clear out the landing site that will in time become their first city. What the new arrivals don’t know, however, is that the fungal mass is a huge, connected organism capable of thought and planning, and the colonists’ projects will have to constantly deal with this organism’s resilience and curiosity, often with deadly consequences….

Of Mycelium and Men proved to be somewhat different from what I anticipated, which was something more… dynamic along the lines, for example, of Michael Gear’s Donovan series, while this book focused more on personal stakes and interactions, keeping the constant battle with the biomass rather on the sidelines, even though there were several very intriguing sections written from the point of view of the fungal organism itself that were both enlightening and unexpected. 

The human colonists are divided into three groupings: the largest is that of the Generationals, the overall work-force that operated and maintained the ships during the long voyage, each generation passing down their knowledge to the next one and more or less creating a sort of caste system in which the young are compelled to follow in the elders’ footsteps with little or no chance of choosing another career path.  At the top of the food chain there are the eight Administrators, people gifted with gene modifications that would allow them a centuries-long lifespan, therefore assuring them of a quasi-totalitarian rule over the Generationals: Admins were kept in suspended animation for most of the journey and woken only when a momentous decision was required, and have therefore taken on an almost mystical authority they are more than ready to exploit to keep the crew in line.  In the middle there are the Vagals: enhanced soldiers whose implants grant them increased strength and reaction speed and who are the defensive arm of the colony and, more importantly, the enforcers of the Admins’ will.

It’s not difficult to imagine how the unexpected ground conditions, coupled with the societal system established onboard, might create frictions once the colonists find themselves with literal room to expand but are stymied by the dangers of the biomass: the battle with the fungus depletes the fledgling colony’s resources – particularly where building materials and defensive armaments are concerned – and when the animals and cultivations are attacked by the spores, killing many of the former and rendering most of the latter inedible, the colonists have to deal with the specter of famine as well.   It’s a bleak, disturbing prospect that colors the narrative and keeps you on edge for the future of this slice of humanity in such a hostile environment, and it’s indeed the element that kept me reading on as the story progressed through the first twenty years of the colony’s development.

And it’s a good thing that the plot proved to be so intriguing because here I failed to form any attachment to the characters, even though there is a fairly good number of them offering their point of view: the main one is that of colonist Agetha, who together with her husband Daved has high hopes for the future but is uncertain about her willingness to be a mother in such a dangerous environment. The Vagals’ point of view comes from the character of Anderson, and I truly liked what little I could see of him, especially when he starts to relax a little and takes more part in the colony’s life. And the Admins are well represented by Jane Brighton, the classic villain-we-love-to hate with her steely determination to see her projects (and her rule) take hold, no matter the cost: her ruthless treatment of the dissenting voices is one of the more chilling aspects of the story, one that makes the encroaching fungal mass look like the lesser danger.

Expectations often being a reader’s worst enemy, I was yes intrigued by the story told in this first volume of the expected trilogy, but at the same time I was slightly disappointed by its loss of narrative momentum when it chose to focus, for example, on minute details of the colony’s construction to the detriment of the developing social issues or of the disastrous attempts at contact made by the biomass. Then there was the slight irritant of the new way of counting time developed by the Generationals who used “megaseconds” instead of hours or days and so forth: at the start of the book the author provides a conversion table, but I never felt the inclination to do my own math and so lose the narrative flow, and since the conversion was often inserted in the dialogue I wondered at the real necessity for such a distraction that, from my point of view, was more annoying than informative.

Still, Of Mycelium and Men proved to be interesting enough to keep me reading on and since I’ve learned that the second book in the series is already available I will certainly want to learn what the Lidan colonists’ future will be like.  Hopefully, a first contact with the fungal mass will provide some intriguing developments…

My Rating:

Artwork by Yosua Bungaran Cahya Putra