Book Review: The Integral Trees

Larry Niven

1983

Awards: Locus

Nominations: Nebula, Hugo

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ –

Larry Niven has done it again: created a clever, original, self-contained, outer-space habitat of strange configuration and enormous scope. It may not be as fully realized as his Ringworld, but it is still unique and impressive.

                                                  

Niven’s new bio-zone exists in a binary star system thousands of light years from Earth. One of the stars is a tiny, almost defunct neutron star. The neutron star is orbited by an enormous torus of gaseous cloud, which is probably the remnants of a large gas planet destroyed when the star went nova. The whole package—gas torus and central star—orbits together around the system’s other star, a bright yellow dwarf.

The gas torus is filled with oxygen and completely hospitable to a wide variety of life forms. The only catch is that there is no real gravity in the torus, just strong winds blowing around it which create tidal pulls: west-to-east on the inner rim and east-to-west on the outer rim. All indigenous fauna have adapted accordingly, each species having their own form of winged or expelled-gas-driven locomotion. I loved the strange native beasties that Niven created for this gravity-less environment.

And there are a number of neat places for the torus’s inhabitants to live. There are ponds: large globules of water drifting slowly around in the winds. There are jungles: conglomerations of plants and vines held together by a web of their own roots and branches. And there are trees: trees with enormous trunks, some a hundred kilometers tall, growing radially out from the central neutron star to the outer edge of the torus. The trunks are completely straight and smooth except for a small tuft of leaves and branches at each end. These tufts blow in the wind, eastward at the inner end and westward at the outer end, so that from afar, the entire tree looks like an integral symbol.
 

These various habitats are home not only to many native species, but also to humans—perhaps hundreds of them. These humans are the descendants of a handful of Earth space explorers who emerged from cryo-sleep far from home, mutinied against their ship’s oppressive AI guardian, and fled in research modules to start a new life of freedom in the torus. Centuries have passed since the original mutiny and the mutineers’ descendants have forgotten most of their history and science and now live as rudimentary farmers, hunters, and artisans.

I have to admit that I thought this was all a bit goofy at first. But I was sucked in to the story despite myself.

The story starts on one of the enormous integral trees, Quinn Tree, which has recently been pulled into a dry lower zone of the torus by the gravitational field of a passing planet remnant. The tree is dying, suffering from drought, and so is the human settlement on its inward tuft. The chief administrator of the settlement orders a troupe of nine misfits to climb up the trunk to try to find new sources of food and water for their starving village. After the misfits cross the midpoint of the tree they run into another population of humans they never knew about, which has completely different customs and taboos. The two groups fight, but the rotting tree bursts apart during their skirmish, casting the Quinn settlement misfits and one of the strangers adrift. They are all left floating together in the air, clutching a large piece of bark as a life raft.

Through creativity and cooperation, the bark-raft refugees survive and eventually make their way to a jungle. They only just start making friends with the humans living there when the jungle is invaded by a more technologically advanced group of humans from another tree. The whole batch of them—the original Quinn Tree misfits, the same-tree adoptee, and their new jungle allies—are all taken prisoner, brought to the invaders’ London Tree, and made into slaves and/or prostitutes. There they all suffer to varying degrees, trying to survive and doing what they can to stay in touch with each other, and carefully waiting and watching for a time when they can make their escape and get to a tree of their own.

The Integral Trees is almost Asimovian in that there is very little actual action, and that the story keeps you involved instead by having characters that are sympathetic and interesting, and constantly giving those characters new and complex problems to solve to survive. When there is action, it is exciting, but most of the book is exposition, conversations, problem-solving, journeying, and discovery.

The one character that didn’t really seem to have much of a point was Sharls Davis Kendy, the cyber-copy AI on board the original colonists’ ship, who has been locked in orbit for the past 500 years, waiting for the mutineers to come back so he can discipline them. The Quinn Tree misfits come close to him at one point, and even talk to him briefly, but in the end nothing comes of it and he is relegated to his waiting role once again.

But the rest of the characters and the rest of the story more than make up for the Kendy dead end. And the best thing about the book is the message running throughout about the importance of inclusiveness and the benefits that diversity brings. The original nine from Quinn Tribe are continually thrust into new life-threatening situations, but they overcome every obstacle by opening themselves up to new friends and allies, by working together, and by learning about and making good use of everyone’s skills—even the oldest and the most seemingly physically incapable. Their journey is really all about building a new tribe that includes members from all the varied places they come across, where they all can be free and be themselves. It’s an optimistic and uplifting message, and it doesn’t really ever get too hokey.