Friday Fungus: On the shocking absence of mushrooms in Neal Stephenson's 'Seveneves'

I'm a lot of a fan of Neal Stephenson's writing - he is among the most creative and innovative of modern SF writers. And 'Seveneves' is no exception as it tells the story of man's survival after the moon, inexplicably, blows up.

As ever with Stephenson, the writing is dense reflecting how much he's researched the ideas presented. Indeed, for non-physicists wanting to get their heads round the science and maths of orbits, the book is fantastic. But if your head doesn't want to get round Lagrange points and orbital decay the story still carries you along as a few thousand intrepid folk struggle to create a means of survival in space. And Stephenson knows his audience:

“We're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We're all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn't bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It's our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.”

So up there in space (and, as a sideline, in caves under Alaska too) the human survivors have to eat. Indeed, it's the lack of food that does for one section of the space-dwellers, turning them into cannibals. The mention of how this started is a beautifully snarky reference to the culture of blogging and social media:

“Tav started it,” Aïda said. “He ate his own leg. Soft cannibalism, he called it. Legs are of no use in space. He blogged it. Then it went viral.”

The main source of food Stephenson gives us up in space is algae grown hydroponically in the little spaceships (delightfully named 'arklets'). And this is fine except that it's rather limiting. It's true that algae - as plants - have the additional advantage of helping with the atmosphere but it's a lot harder to get the necessary nutrients from this source than from another option - fungi. Yet, for some reason, this option isn't even considered even though the intensive production of fungi as meat substitutes is a well established science:

Mycoprotein is made in 40 metre high fermenters which run continuously for five weeks at a time.
The fermenter is sterilised and filled with a water and glucose solution. Then a batch of fusarium venenatum, the fungi at the heart of Mycoprotein, is introduced.

Once the organism has started to grow a continuous feed of nutrients, including potassium, magnesium and phosphate as well as trace elements, are added to the solution. The pH balance, temperature, nutrient concentration and oxygen are all constantly adjusted in order to achieve the optimum growth rate.

The organism and nutrients combine to form Mycoprotein solids and these are removed continuously from the fermenter after an average residence time of five to six hours. Once removed the Mycoprotein is heated to 65°C to breakdown the nucleic acid. Water is then removed in centrifuges, leaving the Mycoprotein looking rather like pastry dough.

If you were really setting up to survive in space entirely 'off-grid', I'd expect someone to suggest the role of fungi in making that possible. There's little about the process described above that couldn't be replicated off the planet. And for all you mushroom haters - you'd get used to it!

The next consideration - admittedly one Stephenson doesn't set out in scientific detail - is how to 're-terraform' the earth after it's surface had been scorched for four thousand years. Here, again the role of fungi (and to be fair those algae) is significant:

Mushrooms have been around for tens of millions of years and their activities are indispensable for the operation of the biosphere. Through their relationships with plants and animals, mushrooms are essential for forest and grassland ecology, climate control and atmospheric chemistry, water purification, and the maintenance of biodiversity. This first point, about the ecological significance of mushrooms, is obvious, yet the 16,000 described species of mushroom-forming fungi are members of the most poorly understood kingdom of life. The second point requires a dash of lateral thinking. Because humans evolved in ecosystems dependent upon mushrooms there would be no us without mushrooms. And no matter how superior we feel, humans remain dependent upon the continual activity of these fungi. The relationship isn’t reciprocal: without us there would definitely be mushrooms.

So, if you're going to create a human-friendly environment on a planet, the starting point has to be fungi because without those fungi it's not a human-friendly environment.

None of this distracts from the book. As James Lovegrove in the FT puts it:

Seveneves is a superhuman achievement, dense, eloquent, exhaustive, exhilarating, powerful, utterly readable, and ultimately uplifting. Stephenson imagines the worst that can happen, and insists that we can make the best of it. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and he feels fine.

I just think it would have been even better with mushrooms.

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The Panda Principle

Pandas are cute. Big, furry, friendly and, well, just cute. Indeed we know that pandas are cute because 'wuffie' use the panda as their logo - after all these lovely bundles of funny fur are just the sort of wildlife we want to save. For sure that giant international charity doesn't use a really ugly animal or one that might frighten the children. Nope they use the cuddliest of all animals as bait for our support.

And this is The Panda Principle. These are animals that have a seriously restricted diet, really aren't all that keen on sex and only live (wildly) in China where they - people that it - eat everything. None of these factors are great survival traits. But, trust me folks, the panda won't be getting extinct any time soon because the panda is cute. We'd miss pandas, it would be terrible if they died out. Whereas for lots of other animals - rats, leeches, those really ugly giant toads - our response to their extinction would be at best, "oh dear".

The thing with this survival lark is that you have to be either very adaptive, very fast breeding or living in a place where people don't live. Or else you have to be cute. Foxes are cute especially when we get that moonlit glimpse of the vixen with her cubs playing on the back lawn. And this cuteness trumps the fact that those same foxes were yesterday rampaging through a neighbours pen slaughtering her prized rare breed ducks and fancy chickens.

Cuteness wins as a survival trait in a world where humans dominate. Now I appreciate this is probably hubris but such views are essential to the modern idea of conservation and environmentalism. This isn't about nature red in tooth and claw. It's not about how small us humans are next to the awesome power of nature. Nope, it's about us, about how we cause all the problems (like those pandas getting fewer). However, us humans are suckers for cuteness - especially us urban humans far from the reality of living with animals.

And that cuteness means that those big furry animals we ooh and aah over will survive. Perhaps in bounded and controlled environments - they are animals after all. But survive they will - most so we can gawp at them, put pictures of their babies on the Internet and exalt the giving of alms to sustain their survival. Here's to The Panda Principle!

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The Rooks' Tale...

As the clouds gather and the wind rises, we still fly, still search, still cry our cries and still feed on that which others refuse. This is why we succeed, how we thrive while they suffer, scream complaint and fade into memory. The storm however rough, does not make us fear, it is a time of plenty for those brave enough to carry on, not scared of the rain or the wind.

Yet you look at us with distaste, calling us ugly, scavengers, driving us off with stones. But we return. We are strong, stronger than you. Prepared to make our own future, to stare out your condemnation with our dark eye. Content with knowing that we will not struggle, not lose to the weather nor to your assault.

If you wish to thrive, you who fear the wind and rain, you must be like us. Cowering in some corner waiting for the hand of some munificent spirit to save you from the sky's curse will not serve you. Do that and you will fail - to be just a memory of something good, something beautiful. But a failure just the same, a reminder that dinosaurs are not ugly, just dead.

Do not fear the storm. Fly into its face. Cry loudly. Adapt to the world's changes. And succeed.

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