Summer 2019 (Hugo Award Nominee 2019 - Novelette);

This one just felt so much longer than necessary.

I'm still confused about the title containing 'the last nine days,' while the story covers eighty-seven years. I am interested in the premise of the whole planet being taken over shtick, but I felt like this one swam in circles not going anywhere. I wondered several times where it was going, and what was supposed to be taken from certain scenes, and whether the end would tie up. Sadly, none of these things were answered by the end. ( )

Hugo nom '19

I was very impressed with this one. Especially since it read like a narrative taken out of [b:Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence|23569887|Brilliant Green The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence|Stefano Mancuso|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1416776434s/23569887.jpg|43168304]. At first it kinda felt like a PKD right out of [b:The World Jones Made|216361|The World Jones Made|Philip K. Dick|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355411592s/216361.jpg|209468], but I'm very glad it went off on its own track and theme.

Alien invasion done right! With SCIENCE. :) Between When We Were Starless and this one, I have a hard time deciding which I love most out of this year's crop of Hugo shorts. :) ( )

Slo-mo alien invasion story where the aliens are plants. Riffs on The Day of the Triffids.

A science fiction novellete about alien seeds arriving on Earth that are potentially foreshadowing an alien invasion. The story follows a man's life at a different points. It is a good story that focuses more of finding yourself. ( )

The idea of following a character over a lengthy period by describing selected periods in their life many years apart is hardly a new one. I used it myself in a story that was published in a literary magazine (although the story was science fiction). Gregory makes good use of it here in his description of an invasion of Earth by alien “invasive” plant species. And it works, because the alien plant is integrated into the life of the narrator. I don’t have a problem with episodic narratives, whether they have a clear through-line or not; and ‘Nine Last Days on Planet Earth’ certainly has a clear through-line. The story opens in 1975 and ends in 2028. The author was apparently ten in 1975 (he’s a year older than me), so it’s unlikely he remembers enough about the year to do a good job of evoking it. And so it proves. (Of course, 2028 is nine years in the future, so how is he supposed to “remember” it?) But this is not a story that bothers much with time or place, using labels to signal setting to the reader. It doesn’t actually matter that much, because the narrative is chiefly focused on LT’s relationship with his partner and their life together. ‘Nine Last Days on Planet Earth’ I thought slow to start, but once it got going it was pretty good reading. I liked its episodic narrative, I liked its central relationship, and I liked the way it linked the alien plant to the relationship. Often, genre stories literalise metaphors, or are based around thumpingly obvious metaphors of their premise. ‘Nine Last Days on Planet Earth’ falls into the latter category, but it doesn’t make a meal of its metaphor, and leaves it sufficiently open to interpretation. It’s nice to see some restraint. ( )