Gardenpath has discovered something impossible. Everyone knows that their world is the only place where life can be found. The rest of the galaxy is dead, only a source of resources to be mined. But Gardenpath is sure that they have found signs of life on a distant planet, and they are going to prove it as they work their way through the exams required to become a professor and an Investigator at Memory. A Wall is Also a Road, by Annalee Newitz, is a moving, intelligent tale of exploration. It follows Gardenpath as their discoveries do more than re-write their understanding of life and sentience.
Because everyone knows that there is no life beyond Gardenpath’s home planet, they keep their initial findings quiet until they land on the unnamed planet and see for themselves. They are utterly astonished to find not just organic molecules but a complicated ecosystem of plants and animals. Life in this new place is so different from what Gardenpath is used to that they’re not sure if it’s possible for multicellular organisms to be sentient. This is about the point that I finally understood that Gardenpath and their people are amoebae. (There were hints. We see Gardenpath and their cohorts communicating via scent and gestures, for example.) Multicellular organisms are just weird. How do the bipedal creatures not fall over all the time? Are the sounds they make some kind of language? Are they responsible for the neat rows of crops Gardenpath saw near their landing site?
Gardenpath’s people have enough technology not only to launch and recover Gardenpath from their investigation site, but also to generate a suit that allows Gardenpath to assume the form of one of the bizarre, vocalizing creatures and take a closer look. Their graceless appearance in some kind of settlement garners the sympathy of one of the bipedal creatures (which Gardenpath ends up calling Unnamed for most of the book, even though we can recognize humans), who rescues Gardenpath and escorts them into the city. This biped, called Murtis, is very accommodating of Gardenpath’s inability to speak Latin or understand human gestures. Murtis takes Gardenpath to where they have room at what turns out to be a lupanar (brothel) in Pompeii.
As soon as I saw the name Pompeii, paired with the level of technology on display by the Unnamed, I knew that it was only a matter of time before Mount Vesuvius would destroy it. Gardenpath arrives in Pompeii shortly before the earthquake of 62 CE. They revisit many times between that date and August of 79 CE. Just like Gardenpath, I got attached to the people they got to know in Pompeii. Would any of them survive? Would any of them become one of the ash covered victims of the volcano?
Over the course of their visits, Murtis shows Gardenpath some of the (now famous) sites around the city. We get to visit the House of Julia Felix in its heyday. There’s a trip over to Herculaneum and what I think is the Villa Papyri. We meet gladiators and sex workers and enslaved people and merchants and nobles. We get to experience the baths and the wine of Pompeii in its last years. And we get all of this in contrast to Gardenpath’s high-tech but also very organic world, a place even more foreign than a two thousand years dead Roman city. I was equally fascinated by both settings.
Gardenpath is pushed to become an amateur anthropologist and linguist in their efforts to understand the Unnamed. They meant to be a biologist who found only signs of life out in the galaxy, not a whole civilization of creatures that took a completely different evolutionary path. And they are very lucky to have encountered the very adaptable Murtis when they first blundered into Pompeii. Murtis is able to accept Gardenpath’s cluelessness about, well, everything from using the communal toilets and sleeping to praying and sex. She generously answers Gardenpath’s endless questions. She even comes to love the scholarly weirdo, even if they are occasionally exasperating.
Gardenpath is caught between their worlds, unfortunately. In their homeworld, they have to worry about academic politics and the unethical use of their discoveries. On earth, they fret about warning their subjects about the signs that Vesuvius is going to erupt in a year or five, interfering with the Unnameds’ biology, and getting too friendly with their subjects. They have to grow so much to accommodate all of the newness and irrationality they encounter. This book offers so much food for thought about the nature of intelligence, research ethics, and even agitating for necessary change in the face of seemingly impossible odds (and when it’s wiser to leave things as we find them). A Wall is Also a Road is a wonderful read.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review consideration.