(Found) Humans remade by starfish aliens; interstellar tree voyage.

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

A couple of SF novels I read in the mid '90s. They had been recently published, I think. There may be more in the series. In the first, long after going extinct, humanity has been re-created by aliens on the other side of the Galaxy, using genetic and cultural information from our ancient radio transmissions. Some of the attempts at reconstructing our way of life are a bit off - in one scene, there's a string quartet playing, but instead of bows they have little wheels on sticks. The aliens are large and radially symetrical, with 10-fold symmetry. They are basically benign, but a bit clueless about human psychology. Fed up with being kept on display like performing seals, some of the humans start a violent uprising.

In the second book (which I read first), some of the humans are on a voyage back to Earth. Their vehicle is a "Hyperion"-esque giant spacefaring tree, called Yggdrasil. Towards the end of the trip, they start encountering other life from Earth - a civilisation of rats, and some humanoid dragonflies. First contact with the latter is pretty disasterous - the dragonflies have a habit of biting people's heads off. The cover had an image of the tree, with the branches and roots forming a circle.

If this rings a bell, please let me know!

 

[hitmouse]

Is this something by Larry Niven?

Could Integral Trees be the second book? I havent read it since the 80s, and cannot remember the details.

 

[CassFrank]

This is Donald Moffitt’s Genesis book series. Genesis Quest and Second Genesis (1986).

From Wiki: “An alien race (The Nar) assemble humans from a stream of genetic information transmitted by radio from the Milky Way Galaxy. The resulting colony of humans spend some time integrated into the Nar society before growing restless, discovering the secret of human longevity, and embarking on the seemingly impossible millennia-long mission of a physical journey back to Earth. This epic journey is made in a gigantic space-grown semi-sentient Dyson tree known as Yggdrasil.”

The Genesis Quest - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

This is Donald Moffitt’s Genesis book series. Genesis Quest and Second Genesis (1986).

From Wiki: “An alien race (The Nar) assemble humans from a stream of genetic information transmitted by radio from the Milky Way Galaxy. The resulting colony of humans spend some time integrated into the Nar society before growing restless, discovering the secret of human longevity, and embarking on the seemingly impossible millennia-long mission of a physical journey back to Earth. This epic journey is made in a gigantic space-grown semi-sentient Dyson tree known as Yggdrasil.”

The Genesis Quest - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

View attachment 101535

^That's the bunny! Thanks for hunting this down - it's a story that stuck with me, but I don't think I've read anything else by Donald Moffit. I'd also forgotten the life-extention element. (Will have to check out "Integral Trees" too - it sound beserk in a good way.)

FOUND.

 

[KiraAnn]

Is this something by Larry Niven?

Could Integral Trees be the second book? I havent read it since the 80s, and cannot remember the details.

Integral Trees is nothing like the search parameters, although it is a good book.