Trish's Reviews > Nine Last Days on Planet Earth

Words were not required. Sometimes the only way you could tell someone you loved them was to show them something beautiful.

One day, meteorites shower the Earth for what is considered an unusually long time. As can be seen by people's findings, they were small black-and-silver shells containing whoknowswhat seeds. Soon after, governments start confiscating any and all alien seeds they can get their hands on and possession of one becomes illegal. Nonetheless, the seeds spread - some because they simply weren't found (being so numerous and often having hit remote areas) and some because they are kept by humans and spore. These start growing and becoming plants.
LT is a young boy when the meteorite shower happens. We follow him until he is 97 years old and thus see the seeds grow into vines and flowers, how humans try to make sense of the alien vegetation making a home on our planet and the consequences this has for the indiginous species as well as for us humans.
Along with those agricultural, social and political developments we also follow LTs personal life from boy to teenager to college student to young man to father to grandfather and great-grandfather.

The story is that of our planet, of global warming, of evolution and subsequent change.
It is also about human relationships. From failed marriages to bad relationships to the joy of having and raising children to your partner dying before you.
But life goes on. Time doesn't stand still for anyone. There is a constant flow and time is often relative, as Einstein so aptly put it. Mammals experience time differently from other animals or even plants and yet we all make our connections, strengthen them, let them wither and form new ones, plant new seeds and let those grow as well.

A beautiful and subtle story full of great imagery that doesn't take long to show an entire human life with all its hardships and riches. The writing style, while being simple, entangled me by capturing the tone of the tale, thus rounding off the reading experience.

Maybe not my favourite of the nommed stories but it definitely deserves to be nominated for a HUGO.

Read it for free here: https://www.tor.com/2018/09/19/nine-l...