Omnivore

© 1968 by Piers Anthony


I now know more than I ever wanted to know about fungi.

Thank you, Piers Anthony.

All kidding aside, Omnivore was a surprisingly good SF read. Got off to a slow start (who are these lumberjack dudes punching each other somewhere on earth – isn’t this a science fiction novel?) but quickly picked up. Actually, the novel turned out to be commendably economical, a nice blend of flashback and foreboding.

[All life on earth can be divided into three kingdoms – Animal, Plant, and … care to guess the what the third kingdom is?]

“Subble” is an android – or a heavily reprogrammed entity living in the shell of a human body, hard to tell which exactly – who works as a special agent for the government. Super-smart, super-strong, super-tenacious-D, but his memory is wiped after every mission. To keep him sharp. His current mission is to interview three surviving members of an exploratory voyage to the planet Nacre.

[If any one of the millions of species in the fungal world were to become intelligent, they’d be feeding on us in like point-oh-two seconds.]

Each interview, intense in its own different way, is followed by a vivid flashback of what happened on Nacre, a world where fungoid life has run amuck. And what happened is, intelligent life had been discovered. What is revealed over the course of the novel is a truly unique and fascinating alien creature, and by alien, I mean alien – a being whose evolutionary development has led to a completely different way of perceiving its environment which in turn has led to a different type of intelligence or consciousness, or something like that. Now I ask you, science fiction reader – what could be more interesting than that? Furthermore: different organics / different perception / different intelligence + survival of the fittest = the possible end of mankind … especially since Agent Subble is convinced at least one of the creatures has returned with the explorers to Earth!

[Did you know that fungi reproduce through the spread of millions and millions of microscopic spores? Thought experiment: what would happen if a dominant alien fungus were to set foot on this planet and suddenly find itself in a very amorous mood …]

Omnivore is only the second Piers Anthony book I’ve read (the first being the mediocre and disappointing Firefly fifteen years ago) and I have to admit I’m pleasantly impressed. You all know how Hal Clement is the undisputed master of “hard” SF, science fiction grounded firmly, minutely, in concrete, realistic science. Well, what Clement did for physics and chemistry in his stories, Anthony has done for biology in this one. He spends a lot of time musing about the herbivore / omnivore / carnivore relationship, especially as a hinge to understand the new otherly-intelligent life discovered on Nacre. Heck, it almost made me want to take a college botany class. Very impressed, too, with story structure and a satisfactory denouement. I might have to forgive him for Firefly and keep my eye out for more of his stuff.

Grade: A-minus.