Thursday 19 February 2015

The Walking Forest

On Staurn, the Walking Forest attacks Heim's party and they must fight their way through.

Preliminary theories of the forest:

the abundant ultraviolet from Staurn's sun makes plant chemistry unusually energetic;

those trees need a particular mineral so a wood appears whenever faulting exposes a vein;

geology is faster on bigger planets so maybe this form of life can depend on geological accidents;

or maybe bacteria deposit organic material that is exposed fairly often;

the trees could broadcast spores that lie dormant for centuries;

the spores sprout and consume the deposits;

the forest must keep moving because it exhausts the soil where it stands;

sunlight gets the trees moving;

when they exhaust a vein, they die and their reprocessed material wakens the spores that they have left.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I'm reminded of JRR Tolkien's Ents and huorns, that we see in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Except that the Walking Forest of Staurn is science fictional, rather than fantasy.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Exactly. Anderson explains. Heim comments, "I've GOT to believe that thing is natural." (p. 111)
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Exactly! In SF something like the Walking Forest of Staurn HAS to have at least a pretense of a scientific explanation, else THE STAR FOX would not be SF. Needless to say, I enjoy both kinds of literature, SF and F, as long as it's done well.

Sean

Jim Baerg said...

Another SF story with something like a walking forest was "Day of the Triffids".

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Jim!

A story which I read long ago.

Ad astra! Sean