Piers Anthony
Omnivore (1968)
Reviewed: 1995-12-30

Welcome to Nacre, a world brilliant from space but subdued on its misty surface, a world where animals and plants have been overtaken in the evolutionary race by fungi, the third kingdom. The number three figures highly in this rather intriguing and memorable little book. Three human explorers; Veg, Aquilon, Cal; man, woman, man; physique, emotion, intellect; a triangle, whose habits coincide with the most highly developed life forms of Nacre: herbivore, omnivore, carnivore. Meet the mantas, the superior predators of this strange and fascinating ecology, creatures that are truly alien.

We learn about Nacre by accompanying Subble, a government agent with superhuman qualities, who is sent by the authorities to question the three explorers after their return to earth. His investigation gradually unravels the mystery of Nacre and the inherent danger this mushroom world poses to all life on earth.

Credit goes to Piers Anthony for creating a trio, or rather quartet of imaginative, albeit to the modern reader underdeveloped characters, along with a highly memorable alien world, ecology, and species. And he finally does justice to the fungi, one of the sections of biology neatly ignored in conventional SF world building. There is an undercurrent of mysticism to this book, something I did not mind but which is obviously a matter of taste in SF.

PS: Anthony wrote two sequels, Orn and Ox. I read the whole trilogy more than a decade ago (in German translation, back then) and wasn't impressed by the sequels at all. I re-read Omnivore (unadulterated) for this review, but don't expect me to cover the rest of the trilogy.

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