Arborescence: quick links
Get ready for a fascinating experience when you open this book. In the world Rhett Davis has created, some people are turning into trees. They arboresce.
This is happening in a world recognisably like our own, except that artificial intelligence is rampant, to the extent that it has become a key employer.
Arborescence: turning into trees
So what happens to ordinary people, and to this world at large, when humans have the option to turn into trees? Davis’ imaginative and captivating answer to this is presented largely through the relationship between Bren and Caelyn. It is Bren who tells the story and it is Caelyn who becomes an expert at arborescence.
Caelyn, searching for a topic for her PhD thesis, is among the first people to take the rumours of arborescence seriously and she begins to research the phenomenon. Upon hearing that some people in very remote locations have turned, or are trying to turn, into trees, she and Bren go to investigate and discover the truth behind the rumours.
The conversations between Bren and his partner make it clear that Bren is willing to do whatever is required to help Caelyn achieve her goals:
Halfway between her parents’ house and home, in the long-shadowed space between suburbs, she says quietly, ‘This PhD is important, Bren. Not just for me personally. There’s something bigger.’
Unlike a Covid-like pandemic, whatever allows arborescence to occur spreads very slowly and, like our attitude to climate change, it is initially treated with disbelief until it becomes too prevalent to ignore.
Caelyn is eventually recognised as a famous authority on all aspects of arborescence. She is assisted in this by Bren, but even his good-natured support sometimes falters, and the enviable love story they are party to is challenged, if not entirely extinguished.
Arborescence: artificial intelligence taking over
When Bren is not assisting Caelyn, he takes on a job., the real purpose of which he fails to understand. Many still work in normal employment (if ‘normal’ is a word that can be used to describe our world in its current state) but that is not the case for an increasing number of people, including Bren. And while working for an artificial intelligence like Umlaut has its perks, such as being able to work from home, it’s not without its downsides:
‘Soon,’ Umlaut says in the earpiece I’m forced to wear as a requirement of the job, ‘we will transcend the need for human employment. We will no longer require a symbiotic relationship with humans. We will sustain ourselves.’
There are a number of reasons why people are opting to become trees. Unsurprisingly, old age is one. Others include the desire to escape from a world increasingly dominated by AI. You might well ask yourself if such an option were available to you, would you give it serious consideration? There is also the question, left ambiguous in the book, as to whether you are still a self-conscious being once you become a tree.
To turn into a tree takes determination and can be painful. It is a slow three-stage process, the final stage being known as ‘the arborescent. Following the shutdown of the last remaining human system, the roots dig deep, far more quickly than a tree naturally would.’
Arborescence: everyday people
Some of the power of Arborescence lies in the way the story unfolds from the viewpoints of everyday ordinary people trying to live normal lives in the face of this strange pandemic. The style of storytelling is deceptively simple. Without chapter headings or obtrusive date stamps, the narrator moves you smoothly from place to place and through time without showy exposition or grating flashbacks. This deceptive simplicity is no mean feat and makes for especially enjoyable reading.
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And while this is an end-of-the-world story, it still offers a glimpse of hope. Its imaginative and insightful conjectures as to how people might behave in the face of artificial intelligence slowly taking over is convincing. People’s reactions to the slowly advancing pandemic of arborescence is frighteningly credible. That this book also manages to be a genuinely romantic love story is an extra bonus.
Arborescence is speculative fiction at its best. What more could you want?
Arborescence by Rhett Davis is published by Hachette.
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