It’s that time of year again, when our thoughts turn to buying gifts for our loved ones with a sense of doom, panic, and utter terror. Be not afraid. I’m here to help.
First, for the terraformer
on your list, I cannot recommend Douglas Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home strongly enough. I’ve been gardening for a couple decades or more , and I wish I’d known long ago how important native plants are to the food chain. I admit I bought this book because I was searching for a more comprehensive theory of terraforming alien worlds than the one I’d cobbled together for my science fiction. Yes, yes. I was being an alien invader. Well, I found my theory, and now I’m on the home team, too.
A lot of insects, including the caterpillars that birds feed their babies, eat only one plant, the one they evolved with. I know this sounds nuts, but apparently it’s true. Plants don’t want to be eaten and are full of toxins to protect themselves, but there’s someone out there somewhere who wormed its way into that ecological niche for that particular plant. So when we plant Japanese pachysandra, English ivy, and boxwoods here in North America, we’re starving the critters. If we plant invasive non-natives like yellow iris, Bradford pear, and barberry, we’re destroying their habitats. Like I said, I wish I’d known all this long ago. As it is, I’ve spent a lot of time this year pulling non-native invasives like garlic mustard, stilt grass, and pachysandra. Think about it. How are we going to terraform alien planets if we don’t have intact systems to export?
Where Professor Tallamy makes the case and provides useful recommendations, Sharon Sorenson’s Planting Native to Attract Birds to Your Yard is chock full of more practical advice, lists of native plants that feed birds (via berries, seeds, and feeding insects the birds eat), and excellent pictures. I have found it super useful. She also addresses the science, although not as in-depth as Tallamy. Buy this one, too, for any terraformers, gardeners, and bird lovers you know.
For those of you with children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, or neighborhood kids who look up from their phones to say hello, AND they like Harry Potter, Dave Freer’s Changeling’s Island is a winner. (You regulatory lawyers will know that the comma before the AND means that all the enumerated children need to like Harry Potter, not just the neighborhood kids. We regulatory types have to be consistent.) It’s a book for all ages. I loved it.
Do you have Heinlein fans amongst your giftees, terrifying teenage girls, or just science fiction fans generally? Check out Sarah Hoyt’s Darkship Thieves, which I’ve recommended before over the years. Give your Tolkien and Wheel of Time fans J.M. Ney-Grimm’s Tally Master for a treat, and Cedar Sanderson’s Cute Moose to the very youngest in your life. Last but not least, allow me to humbly suggest my own Mercenary Calling for any space lawyers in need of a present.
In the meantime, for your first steps as a terraformer, plant an oak. Read one of the books above to find out why.