Stack Overflow: Alien Intelligence

Geek Dad

12-05-2025

We've named ourselves Homo sapiens because what sets us apart—according to ourselves—is the way that we think. We are knowledgeable, wise, sentient in a way that other creatures are not… aren't we? What happens when we encounter minds that are quite different from our own? Today's stack includes a few stories of people encountering alien intelligences.
Semiosis , Interference , and Usurpation by Sue Burke
I mentioned the first book in this trilogy, Semiosis , back in April when I was about halfway through. I've since caught up on the next two books in the series and I've really enjoyed the whole trilogy. It'll be hard to talk about the whole trilogy without some spoilers for the first two books, though I think I can communicate at least some of it in broad enough strokes. The overarching theme is sentience, and each book has its own tagline: 'Sentience takes many forms.' 'Sentience craves sovereignty.' 'Sentience will prevail.' The exploration of different forms of sentience is fascinating and Burke does a great job of conveying them convincingly.
Semiosis centers on a small human colony on a planet they've dubbed Pax. They've left Earth behind literally and are also attempting to do so figuratively, though it's hard to escape your own culture even if you mean well. On Pax, they encounter many different flora and fauna, and eventually discover that the plants on this planet are sentient. They are able to communicate to each other through chemicals passed along via roots, through pollen carried by the wind, and more. One plant, a rainbow bamboo, is particularly intelligent and becomes central to the story, which unfolds over the course of a few human generations, by the end of which the bamboo has become a full-fledged member of their community. (There are also the Glassmakers, some other sentient aliens they eventually encounter and integrate into the community as well, though not without some initial conflicts.)
Interference takes place a couple hundred years later. Things have been in turmoil on Earth—for one, Earth is at war with the Mars colony. A ship has been sent to Pax to see what has happened to the colony; they lost radio contact but Earth has evidence that the colony survived. By now, the Pacifists (as the colonists are known) and the Earthlings have diverged a bit in culture as well as language. The technology available on Pax—which has very limited metal—is still fairly primitive, whereas the Earthlings all have embedded chips that basically allow them network access. As with the first book, the story is told from the point of view of various characters throughout: Earthlings, Pacifists (both human and Glassmaker), and even the rainbow bamboo. The Earthlings fundamentally misunderstand what's going on at the colony; they think the Glassmakers are just trained animals and not intelligent beings, and they don't understand the significance of the bamboo—though that's because the Pacifists have agreed to keep its intelligence a secret. There's also conflict within the ranks of the Earthlings, who disagree on the purposes of this trip and how things should be handled.
Usurpation takes place back on Earth again, nearly 400 years later, enough time that the visitors to Pax had returned, bringing with them seeds of the rainbow bamboo as well as some of the small fauna. (And there are also other alien flora and fauna from other planets now as well.) Pax and Earth have now been back in radio contact, sending messages back and forth, though the distance means that it takes about 55 years for a message to be received. The bamboo has propagated and there are many groves around the world, celebrated for its colorful appearance and the caffeinated fruit that it produces, but it has kept its intelligence a secret, known only to the former director of the Pax Institute who discovered it on the trip to Pax. Levanter, one of the initial bamboo groves at the Institute, has been its director for nearly a century, pretending to be human, but politics and warfare bring unexpected visitors.
In the last book, we encounter yet another type of intelligence: robots. Robots are everywhere, created by humans to perform various tasks. Sometimes robots are disconnected from the networks and become wild, wandering off with purposes unknown to the humans. The interactions between humans, the bamboo, and the robots during an ongoing war is the bulk of the story—particularly when Levanter receives a message from the Pax bamboo that the bamboo is supposed to command and protect humans.
Although all three books let different voices speak, the structure of the books varies a little from book to book. Interference has fewer, longer chapters all narrated by a single voice. One, voiced by the bamboo, is about 100 pages on its own. Usurpation also has long chapters, but often will include several different voices, or switch between voices mid-chapter. It did take me a little bit longer to get into Usurpation because the opening chapter didn't really include the plants at all until later, though I trusted that Burke knew where she was taking me, and it paid off.
Burke explains in the afterword that these books were inspired by her mother's love of houseplants, and the question: What if plants could think? Scientists have begun to find ways that plants sense and react to things, a primitive sort of cognition. Burke took that further and created a planet dominated by plants. The story takes place over such a long span of time because 'plants generally react slowly'—but their permanence also affects their personality in the story. As they see it, animals can move, so running away is always an option. We can provoke conflict because if things get bad we can flee—but plants have to figure out how to solve problems in a different way because they're stuck in place.
At the bookstore today, I happened to see a book called Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity by Robert N. Spengler. I haven't actually read the book, but the brief summary is about the way that the domestication of crop plants could be seen as plants exploiting humans rather than the other way around. In the Semiosis trilogy, we get to see the plant's perspective, and it is given intelligence so that this co-evolution happened with intent; the plant considers how to train animals—including humans—to help it with its own objectives. Anyway, if you like the idea of plants that can think and communicate, you'd enjoy this intriguing trilogy.
Suitor Armor Volume Two by Purpah
I shared about the first volume of Suitor Armor in my 'Artificial Intelligence' column last fall. This is a webcomic-turned-hardcover, and the intelligence in question is a magically animated suit of armor. The court mage Norrix created the armor to serve as the king's champion, and as far as he's concerned it's just a dumb machine that follows orders. But Lucia, a fairy (disguised as a human) who has also begun a mage apprenticeship with Norrix, has had more interactions with the armor—now named Modeus—and realizes that not only does he think, but he can also speak, and definitely has feelings … or is at least trying to understand them.
Unfortunately, since humans and fairies are at war, Lucia has always had to hide her true nature. When she learns that Modeus' purpose involves killing fairies, she wonders what will happen if he finds out who she really is? And what does Modeus really understand about the world? This volume feels a little more high stakes than the first, with a lot more tension as secrets start to be revealed.
Tongues Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen
Prometheus lies chained to a mountainside, having a conversation with his only consistent visitor, the eagle who arrives daily to eat his liver. A young American wanders across a desolate landscape, talking to a teddy bear on his backpack, and gets picked up by some soldiers driving past in a Humvee. Followers of a mysterious figure named Z, or perhaps Omega, are kidnapping children to train as soldiers. Astrid, an African orphan, has been recruited for a mission by a god only she can see.
Anders Nilsen deftly weaves together these odd threads, creating a story that mixes ancient myths with modern-day tensions. The gods—who appear in unusual forms here—have powers that defy human understanding and a historical conflict that long outdates the current human war, but there are also connections that link them. In a flashback, we see Prometheus and Epimetheus observing early humanity as they acquire language—in this case, humans themselves are the alien intelligence, and their development of language even influences the way the gods communicate with each other. Astrid has been told she is special, that she has a special role to play in the upcoming battle … though the messengers are unsure. Perhaps she is nobody.
I've only read one other book by Nilsen: Big Questions , which I picked up used at a bookstore years ago. I was struck first by the sheer size of the book, but also by the fine details of the illustrations. Tongues isn't as long as Big Questions but it's still a hefty book, at nearly 370 pages. It's a big hardcover that I mostly read sitting at a table because it's a bit heavy for holding in my lap in a cozy chair. Nilsen's page layouts rarely use a traditional grid pattern, instead combining polygons to form strange crystalline structures filled with drawings, giving it a three-dimensional look. There are a few pages with flaps that fold out, revealing surprises underneath. There are parts of the story that include some body horror, some grotesque violence, illustrated with the same precision and detail as everything else.
Tongues is an amazing book that digs into some big themes about the nature of humanity. Prometheus is asked if he regrets what he did, the sin that led to his eternal torture. Presented with what humans are like now, what they've managed to do with his gift, would he have made a different decision? I had somehow glossed over that this was a Volume 1 when I started reading it, but it closes with a few scenes that hint of crucial decisions yet to be made. I don't know how long it will take for Volume 2 since it's such a lengthy book, but it's definitely on my reading list.
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