looking for fantasy s.s./elders morph into trees

[ipomea]

Hello all,
I'm trying to find the name of a story read many moons ago about a community, where, secretly, the elders, when they died, turned into trees. That's all I can remember, so if any have knowledge of this obscure thing, I'd appreciate contact!
Thanks

 

[ambershadow]

I think I remember reading this a long time ago but I can't recall the title or author.

 

[spidergravy]

Hi there

the only one that sounds familiar is an Orson Scott Card book from the Ender series. Acorns or some such are planted in the bodies of the Pequeninos and trees grow from them, which are another sentient species on the planet Lusitania. I'd go and have a look upstairs for the name of the book but the baby's just going to sleep and she gets cross if I stomp around in the attic while she's trying to nod off. It could be "Speaker for the Dead" or "Children of the Mind".

 

[Moss Ryder]

Ya Im sure its the Ender books. Xenocide, Speaker for the Dead, and Children of the Mind are all based on the planet Lusitania(mostly)

 

[Spade]

There's a Stephen Baxter story called The Sun People where a race is alive for three days before they have to find a place to plant themselves and "consolidate" - or turn into trees. It's the first story in Vacuum Diagrams.

 

[digs]

As other people said I think it's Speaker for the Dead (the first of the Ender series set on Lusitania) - just finished it myself

 

[ipomea]

Hey, thanks to all who replied to my inquiry about above story. I don't think it's the Ender series that you talked about. it could have even been a juvenile fiction, but it is a 'normal' village and toward the end the young boy finds out that his grandfather(I think) has not died but has become a tree. Anyway, thanks for the responses guys!!Peace.

 

[Ravensquawk]

Not an exact match, but:

I sought a story for years after reading it, about an “alien” who turned into a weed.

He’s not alien on his home planet; a small exploration ship from Earth is visiting it and studying life.

The adults do not die before turning into plants; the very ending is that becoming plant-like is the forgotten adult stage of that planet’s people.

"Unhuman Sacrifice" by Katherine MacLean

The coming-of-age ritual among the people on that planet is being carefully hung upside down until stretched. Even the elders had forgotten any purpose to this ritual.

Late in the story, when the Earth men interfere with the native Spet (that planet's version of a young boy) being hung upside down and cut him free, they find out what generations of elders had long forgotten. Stretching prevents the youth from naturally growing into their adult stage that used to happen every annual flood season: rooting hands and feet into the flooded ground, taking a breath of water, and becoming an aquatic plant.

There is a side-story of the anthropologists being paid and ordered to bring along an ethnologically ignorant, insensitive Earth missionary who wants only to convert the natives. This man grabs the changing Spet in the water and yells, “He’s turning into a weed!”

The captain brings a native potted plant taken from the planet on all of his future travels, thinking he is bringing along his friend Spet.

The other crewmember narrates or thinks, “It’s the wrong bush, but I’m not telling him that.”

 

[PaulMmn]

I haven't read through it yet, but the Kindle book, "The Essential Keith Laumer," edited by Christoper Broschell, has pictures of people in ?flight suits? with their feet anchoring themselves into the soil. Background has other people anchored to the earth, with their arms overhead turning into branches. One of the stories, HYBRID (from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1961) seems promising. Creatures who started life as roaming creatures, reach a metamorphic phase, and anchor themselves down as trees. Don't know more; haven't finished reading!

There was also Niven's "The Handicapped", a science fiction short story by Larry Niven, originally published in the December 1967 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction as "Handicap". Set in the Known Space universe, the story introduces the Grogs, the sessile but sentient inhabitants of the planet Down.

 

[Ravensquawk]

There are several question threads on forums that have a lot of answers of stories about people turning into weeds, people turning into trees, sentient trees that people combine with or join.

Although my favorite was and still is Katherine MacLean's about nonhuman peoples having a natural phase of adult life as a semi-aquatic plant:

It's surprising (to me) how many similar stories there were about one Earth human, or in one case a family of them, turning into trees or large plants.

On this forum there was a question that was answered with Alan Dean Foster's "Midworld".

This question has a fair whack of answers. (The OP never confirmed any of them.)
I've bookmarked them and have read several. And several, including my favorite by MacLean, could be a possible answer to that question.

It also linked to an excellent search asking for help finding a "science fiction short story where people grow roots and become...plant-like".

I kept this search as my cynosure when I was going nutz trying to rediscover MacLean's story. Ironically, no one gave (or confirmed) the right answer there. Someone did give a precisely matching description matching MacLean's story, gave no title, and attributed it to Robert Sheckley.

I've since read several of the stories in the answers: "Gone Are the Lupo", "Whatever Became of the McGowans?", "Piper in the Woods", and they all had good stories people turning into plants.

One of the answers answer this question too. And there are a lot of leads that might, you know, lead to story in question.

Since the elders become trees, it's probably one of the off-Earth stories. Maybe?

 

[Hugh]

"Unhuman Sacrifice" by Katherine MacLean

Memorable story!

 

[Ravensquawk]

Memorable story!

Oh, it so is!
One of my favorites.
It took me years to find it again, because it stuck like a burr in my memory.

Or rather, like a semi-aquatic plant that had lost the ability of conscious thinking.

I bought an old book of MacLean's stories just to read more of her too-rare writing.

 

[Ravensquawk]

I haven't read through it yet, but the Kindle book, "The Essential Keith Laumer," edited by Christoper Broschell, has pictures of people in ?flight suits? with their feet anchoring themselves into the soil. Background has other people anchored to the earth, with their arms overhead turning into branches. One of the stories, HYBRID (from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1961) seems promising. Creatures who started life as roaming creatures, reach a metamorphic phase, and anchor themselves down as trees. Don't know more; haven't finished reading!

There was also Niven's "The Handicapped", a science fiction short story by Larry Niven, originally published in the December 1967 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction as "Handicap". Set in the Known Space universe, the story introduces the Grogs, the sessile but sentient inhabitants of the planet Down.

I just read Keith Laumer’s “Hybrid” as a continued exploration into my curiosity about “people turning into plants”.

It is about three Earth men landing their small merchant/money-seeking/treasure-hunting ship on a planet, and one of them temporarily having his nervous system conjoined with that of a dying mile-wide tree. In exchange for the tree showing him how to repair and strengthen his body, he agrees to be used as a host to take the tree spores internally back to Earth.

A spore invasion of Earth! The spores are activated by mating, and the couple’s children will live long, healthy, human-normal lives, then take root and become trees.

That cover on ISFDB can only represent that story in that anthology, but it’s not really accurate. Only one man is affected; and even he doesn’t ever take root on the alien planet. He is free to move about, return to Earth, and spread the tree-life by procreation.

I’m not even sure that his own life would ever become a tree-form, even if he wanted it to. I conclude from the storyline that he isn’t going to change into a tree, no more than a blue-eyed person who has a green-eyed child can change the color of his own eyes.

The life-forms on the visited planet do have a young free-moving animal phase and a sessile adult plant phase. But the story only includes them as background, and centers on the one tree’s life.

All this by way of saying it’s a good story that I read out of curiosity about whether it matches this question. I recommend it, though it doesn’t answer this particular question.

 

[Orcadian]

Oh, it so is!
One of my favorites.
It took me years to find it again, because it stuck like a burr in my memory.

Or rather, like a semi-aquatic plant that had lost the ability of conscious thinking.

I bought an old book of MacLean's stories just to read more of her too-rare writing.

@Ravensquawk (or anyone): That [Unhuman Sacrifice] does sound like an intriguing story. Eyes not working well enough to read any more, alas. Several of MacLean's stories are on Librivox but not this one, AFAICS. Do you know of an audiobook anywhere in the white or grey zone? Thanks!

 

[Ravensquawk]

@Ravensquawk (or anyone): That [Unhuman Sacrifice] does sound like an intriguing story. Eyes not working well enough to read any more, alas. Several of MacLean's stories are on Librivox but not this one, AFAICS. Do you know of an audiobook anywhere in the white or grey zone? Thanks!

I just now downloaded the Libby app on my tablet so I could search for this.
I had the Overdrive app, but it sent me to downloading Libby for audiobooks. With family members who use them, but whose taste for science fiction doesn't match mine, I'm still catching up.

Then I bookmarked Amazon's "Audible" app to search there.

A search for "Katherine Maclean" did come up with some Amazon Audible anthologies. One problem is that her writing is is too damm obscure anyway - and it shouldn't be.

One audible is one of her stories, actually one of the best stories ever: "The Snowball Effect". Its title starts with "X Minus One" for some reason still unknown to me.

Her stories are so hard to find even in print - I bought an old, yellowed anthology ("The Diploids", iirc), or in online archives, even.

A "re-search" for the online print archive (to replace the Web Archive bookmark I apparently lost) did find Unhuman Sacrifice on page 100 of "Astounding" November 1958.

That just doesn't help find audiobooks. Yet.

One bookmarked site under her name I clicked "accept the risk and continue" -- and the site had been seized by the FBI. Huh!

Doing a re-search for Unhuman Sacrifice on ISFDB showed it more anthologized than I remembered, almost like it was updated recently; then I started searching for audiobooks of the more recent anthologies, like "Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963)".

No results on that yet, but the search is on.

Those audiobooks have some great stuff I didn't know they had, such as professor David Kyle Johnson's lecture series, "Sci-Phi: Science Fictions as Philosophy". I had watched all of them on Hoopla or Kanopy: he is extremely engaging. I highly recommend it.

 

[Orcadian]

...
One audible is one of her stories, actually one of the best stories ever: "The Snowball Effect". Its title starts with "X Minus One" for some reason still unknown to me.
...
Her stories are so hard to find even in print - I bought an old, yellowed anthology ("The Diploids", iirc), or in online archives, even. A "re-search" for the online print archive (to replace the Web Archive bookmark I apparently lost) did find Unhuman Sacrifice on page 100 of "Astounding" November 1958.
...
That just doesn't help find audiobooks. Yet.
...
One bookmarked site under her name I clicked "accept the risk and continue" -- and the site had been seized by the FBI. Huh!
...
Doing a re-search for Unhuman Sacrifice on ISFDB showed it more anthologized than I remembered, almost like it was updated recently; then I started searching for audiobooks of the more recent anthologies, like "Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963)".
...
No results on that yet, but the search is on.

Thanks very much, Ravensquawk, for going the extra mile! Astonishing (or perhaps not ) that the FBI takes an interest in science fiction... Incidentally, The Snowball Effect is available on Librivox, so I might just start there. Re Unhuman Sacrifice, I won't abandon hope quite yet.. And will keep looking myself.

 

[Ravensquawk]

Thanks very much, Ravensquawk, for going the extra mile! Astonishing (or perhaps not ) that the FBI takes an interest in science fiction... Incidentally, The Snowball Effect is available on Librivox, so I might just start there. Re Unhuman Sacrifice, I won't abandon hope quite yet.. And will keep looking myself.

I see that her "Games" is there (which I remember not liking; but tastes differ), and sadly her excellent "Incommunicado" isn't.

But other authors' "Two Weeks in August" is, and "Duel On Syrtis" by Poet- er, I mean, Poul Anderson are there. (I just now finished reading that wondering if it were a forgotten re-read, and the only thing familiar to me was the drawing that went with it.) And other stories. I'll keep watching.

I checked on what site got seized by the FBI, and it was "b-ok.cc" "Z Library". There were sites and Reddit posts about it being seized subtitled "piracy". But a Reddit post about it listed "the definitive list of sites for ebooks and audiobooks" with Z Library crossed out.

Even reading about Librivox and its being affiliated with Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive is getting interesting. Going down a rabbit hole here.

​

 

[Orcadian]

... But a Reddit post about it listed "the definitive list of sites for ebooks and audiobooks" with Z Library crossed out.

I'll check that out; thanks.

Even reading about Librivox and its being affiliated with Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive is getting interesting. Going down a rabbit hole here.

Aah, the rabbit hole - very familiar with that problem.

 

[Ravensquawk]

@Orcadian Still looking but only found Books On Tape

 

[Orcadian]

@Orcadian Still looking but only found Books On Tape

Thanks for persisting!