It oughta be a movie: The Merro Tree, by Katie Waitman
I read this book several times when I was in high school and remembered certain parts of it vividly but couldn’t recall the title. I recently found it through the rather bonkers GoogleBooks1 search: “20th century”, “science fiction”, gay alien snake. Because how many sci-fi books published before the year 2000 could possibly have a male humanoid main character with a snake-shaped boyfriend? And yes – this was the first hit! I was able to get a used copy cheaply, though the book is currently out of print. That is a shame, because it holds up quite well and indeed was a bit ahead of its time. I say this not just because of the growing popularity of stories with queer characters and/or unconventional-looking love interests2, but because the main plot revolves around artistic freedom and censorship, with ideas of cultural appropriation versus appreciation being a major part of the conflict. It’s possible I read this with moderat nostalgia goggles, but I found both the main plot and main relationship compelling, the colorful worlds and alien life forms endlessly entertaining…and how many space operas include actual opera (and some two dozen other performance styles) after all?
1. I hadn’t known about this specialized search engine, though I frequently use Google Scholar. But one of my college friends reminded me it was initially built on our very own University of Michigan library. So that’s kind of neat!
2. See ‘The Shape of Water’, not to mention the whole genre of pulp bigfoot/dinosaur/alien/coronavirus romance novels. Yes, someone wrote a trilogy of the latter!
When we meet the performance master Mikk while he is incarcerated on a world not his own awaiting a tribunal that could result in his execution – all over some forbidden performance. Through flashback chapters, we learn more about him and the circumstances that led him to this place. While he’s galaxy-level famous for having mastered a hundred or more art-forms, that potential wasn’t always obvious. Mikk is, arguably, non-neurotypical for his species, having exceedingly sensitive sight and hearing that often left him overwhelmed or unable to perform tasks in the usual way, and which did not mesh well with his emotionally volatile mother’s penchant for screaming and insistence on perfection3. He was relieved and delighted to be sent to a boarding school for the arts, though he was still considered extremely odd: at one point a teacher realizes that the mess he’s playing is the melody from one piece and the harmony from another, backwards and mixed with the birdsong from the garden! He truly started his late bloom – like the merro tree the book is named for – as an artistic genius when he is apprenticed to Master Huud, who finds himself trying to be a trauma counselor as well as a teacher, and ends up as a surrogate father. It is on his first trip with Huud that Mikk meets Thissizz, the serpentine love of his life. Seeing their introduction and the adorable crush they clearly already have on each other as adolescents, you understand Mikk’s distress on learning that Thissizz has been appointed as one of the tribunes who will pass judgement on him, and even more so when he can’t get Thissizz to even look at him!
3. This bit is kind of hard to read, honestly – and it only gets worse when you realize that, due to Vyzanian’s long lifespans, this abuse wasn’t 10 or 12 years out of Mikk’s life but probably something closer to a century! Vyzanians are also incapable of forgetting; there’s even a proverb that the best way to torture a Vyzanian is to give them something terrible to remember.
I feel like I should note at this point that this story is not “monster erotica”. While there is a considerable amount of innuendo, there are no on-page sex scenes between anyone. The relationship sub-plot between Mikk and Thissizz is honestly really sweet; It still would have been even if the story had gotten a bit spicier, but that could have really narrowed the audience base, particularly in 1997. What I think is interesting about their relationship is the unusual use of the “soul-mates” trope, which I’m not usually a fan of. For one thing, it is outright stated that this immediate, intense bond is both very rare and potentially dangerous: There have been serassi - as Thissizz’s people, the Droos, call it - who have literally devoured each other. It isn’t painted as something that most people can or should aspire to. Most importantly, I get the distinct impression that Mikk and Thissizz probably would have fallen in love even if they weren’t serassi, which is one reason it doesn’t go "dark". They are both artistic – Thissizz is a gifted singer – and have a keen eye and ear for beauty. The Droos are very tactile and not shy at showing affection (platonic or otherwise); Mikk, given his cold and lonely upbringing, definitely needs hugs! At the same time, Thissizz has some grammar difficulties even with his own language and is delighted that Mikk has a very quick ear to learn what he means. Later in their relationship, Thissizz is agitated for days because half a galaxy away Mikk was getting beaten up for trying to undermine a performance style that involves animal cruelty. But I totally believe he would have jumped on a spaceship to rush to his side and nurse him back to health even if he hadn’t been able to feel Mikk’s pain so literally. However, their relationship also isn’t exclusive. Mikk is pansexual in the Jack Harkness multi-gender AND inter-species sense, and he exercises those options even after he and Thissizz get together. But that’s OK, because Droos are polygamous: Thissizz has multiple wives and dozens of children, and some of his wives have other husbands. Thissizz might tease at being jealous – when Mikk is preparing to go to Earth, he jokes about Terran snakes being, uh, doubly endowed – but it’s not actually an issue because they both know their relationship can’t be replaced. Given Thissizz’s inert behavior at the tribunal, though, both Mikk and the reader wonder: Can it be broken?
Why is Mikk on trial? Well, the gist is that there the Somalites have a spiritually powerful artform known as songdance. When their world is destroyed by a catastrophe, Mikk (and Mikk only) is barred from performing it. A group called the Council licenses and oversees inter-world performances. They have a lot of power; Mikk, and his mentor, have pissed them off before. The conflict here is that the Council sees enforcing this ban as a way to punish a troublemaker but justifies it by citing the Somalites’ last wishes. Mikk argues that this one-person ban actually goes directly against the spirit of those wishes. Now, is Mikk’s position correct? That’s a complicated issue, which I’ll discuss in the spoiler section. But, even if you think he’s wrong, death is clearly too high a price for his transgression, so the conflict still works.
And why is songdance so important to Mikk? Well, this exchange with someone who saw him do a bit of songdance – which made her collapse in tears - is the key, I think:
“Long ago, before you were born, I was…damaged, Hegron. It left me afraid of getting hurt, and, as a result, I have always been especially careful not to let people see too far inside me.” Hegron’s brow relaxed. She understood this…slaves had to find ways to protect their inner lives, too. “Thissizz is the only one who has been able to reach past that fear and find me. With him, I’m safe. With him, I have the strength to be defenseless.” Hegron was quiet a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. “That’s what was in the music,” she said. Mikk’s pale eyes widened. “Yes!” he said softy. “I think so…that’s exactly what it was.”
He’d just seen Earth snow, and was thinking about his first visit to Droos and the pain of being separated from Thissizz…and the songdance conveyed that emotion straight into Hegron’s soul.
I really enjoy the range of worlds and cultures that this book manages to fit into its modest page count. The descriptions are often beautiful. Of the world of Droos: “Long, steamy tropical days gave way to equally long, bitterly frigid nights. The enormous tree flowers, their stalks as thick as columns…drew in on themselves at the approach of darkness, curling their leaves and petals tight or swallowing them into their stalks entirely.”
There are some clever bits of world-building: Opening the door to the wasp-like H’n N’kae queen’s chamber involves not just a set of numeric codes but a smear of pheromones as well, while the Droos carve their tunnels by having one serpent hold the chisel with their tail and another swing the hammer. And there are quite a few funny moments, sometimes resulting from inter-species misunderstandings. For instance, at one point Mikk sleeps with a charming blue actress (the same color as Thissizz at that point in his life, I noticed!) who is unfortunately rather acidic; a friend with a more basic body composition basically has to pee on him to stop the burning!
There are some things one could quibble about. For instance, the Droos live a long time and have multiple babies at a time and yet their planet is very pastoral and uncrowded (which would be odd unless there is super high infant mortality); they also have weirdly pointy teeth for vegetarians4. And, while I can buy Mikk’s octopus-like costume designer friend Maya, I don’t know how you could plausibly get a coelenterate (AKA sea anemone) that can live on land, let alone speak! But I did like that, due to extreme day-night temperature cycle alluded to in the quote above above, the Droos have evolved the ability to turn their metabolism up and down at will5. Also, everything on Vyzania is alcoholic, so Mikk could down a dozen martinis with no effect, but when Thissizz visits he has to order de-alcoholated fruit if he doesn’t want to be smashed 24/7. I don’t love the number of times the book refers to how fat the main antagonist is, especially since that is a valued quality in his culture and the main characters usually respect cultural differences as well as differences in physical form. Earthlings, for instance, are considered pretty narrow-minded for wanting to keep the less humanoid-looking aliens like Thissizz off their planet! This is probably some Jabba the Hutt/Baron Harkonnen influence creeping in…and the man is so repellent personality-wise that it probably would be much harder than usual to squash down one’s knee-jerk biases (Vyzanians are pretty slim, as of course are serpents). However, if that were a deliberate point it would have been better made using a quality most readers don’t also have a bias against! We do get a bit of commentary on other sorts of discrimination. For instance, same-sex relationships are not considered nearly as odd as between-species relationships, and the latter gets brought up in Mikk’s trial as an attempt to impugn his character – the old “won’t anyone think of the children?” argument. Which ends up being a bit ironic, but…spoilers!
4. Though the idea of a serpent that eats fruit does have a kind of mythic resonance!
5. Granted, this is probably in there to make the idea of snuggling with a snake seem more appealing, but the author actually went to the trouble of explaining it and making the plants have day-night cycles too, which I appreciate.
I really have to give props to my school librarian for making this book available to my young self at a time when one high school friend’s mom flipped out at mine for letting us watch ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’6 and took away her other kids’ Harry Potter books to ensure they didn’t contain anything satanic. Even now, I’d be surprised to find one ready to brave the potential censorship - which is one of the reasons the story resonated, of course! It wasn’t until later that I worked out why this, ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ and certain Ursula Le Guin stories stuck with me so strongly. Besides being good stories set in interesting worlds that anyone can enjoy, they were also pretty much the only bisexual7 representation I had available and, not only that, depicted social settings where it wasn't a big deal. The first two involve non-human men, and the latter take place in alternate non-earth societies, which is probably why I didn't think at the time "I like visiting these worlds so much because these people are like me". But, even so, these stories (plus good-ally parents) were important in developing an internal sense that it would be all right if that were the case. So…thanks, to Ms. Waitman and the unknown librarian alike!
6. Because it promoted truancy, I think? Meanwhile, my dad always pointed out that Ferris and company planned a day that was way more educational than what they would have gotten in school, including going to the art museum and the German cultural festival and sampling fine French cuisine. Somehow, I feel like Mikk would approve!
7. In the activist “umbrella” sense – which is how I usually use it - not the “parsing details of preference” sense, where bi- and pan- and omnisexual are different things. And yes, I'm absolutely counting the vampires because A) even though I'd only seen the movie, it's not like the blood metaphor or Lestat...in general is subtle, and B) later installments reveal Lestat had a boyfriend when he was human too. But, oh, that I had known ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ existed!
Adaptation issues:
The structure of this book would lend itself well to a screenplay with little necessity for re-arrangement. It reminds me of something like ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, where in the flashbacks we see how the protagonist’s life has developed in such a way that he knows the answers to the questions he’s being asked. In particular, this story would make a great anime. It is extremely colorful, with a range of different aliens and cool stage acts that would be very expensive to render properly in a live action film. But the animation could be spectacular! Also, there are multiple favorable references to Japan8 , and anime itself is an artform that draws on a wide range of inspiration, so it seems like a good fit in those respects as well. Picture the glass dance, invented, it is said, by a Vyzanian soldier in that planet’s civil war mourning his fallen commander by dancing on an upturned glass. By the time Mikk performs it in New York, it involved a line of glasses, his feet creating a ringing percussion on them without shattering them. And you’d have to get a good composer to properly fill in scenes like this:
Mikk…carried a crystal wand and a clear globe about the size of a soccer ball. The globe held what looked like a pretty little rubbery tumbleweed… “Yii is a Qo, one of a rare race who lives on a chain of asteroids with a very thin atmosphere…” He stroked the globe gently, “Qo live about twelve Terran years. Yii is ten so this is probably her only tour.”…The Qo, alone in the spotlight, gave off a pulsating radiation and, at first, that was all, but gradually a sound began to rise from the globe…The sound became a voice, a female voice, soprano, sustained beyond the bounds of any human voice…A second sound, another voice, joined in: mezzo-soprano. A third voice, a forth voice – all added their special resonance as more and more of Yii’s tendrils began to shiver and tremble. In only seconds, an entire celestial choir sang from the vibrating Qo in the transparent globe.
But it could be amazing!
One could dive into the cultural appropriation debate a bit more than the book does, but that’s getting us into…
8. “Terrans judge by appearances.” The old master freshened his glass. “We’re talking about a very insecure people…When I finally met their masters, none of them except the Nipponese kabuki actor were willing to teach me anything in person.”
**Spoiler section**
Is Mikk justified in violating the ban on him performing songdance? Well, that gets complicated.
Martin Brannick, a New York Times art critic, makes a cultural appropriation argument when explaining why a set of performances by Mikk’s troupe that included Shakespeare and Gershwin upset him; he says: “Terran music is born out of the unique sensibilities of human beings. Mikk is a fine performer, but he is not a human being. By definition, he cannot comprehend the source of our music’s spirit”. However, Martin is clearly incorrect about that; after all, he couldn’t have understood the grief and anger in the Vyzanian glass dance if there wasn’t a good deal of overlap in how humans and Vyzanians feel and express those emotions. Also, there is no history of colonization and exploitation of Terrans/Earthlings by Vyzanians – this isn’t white Australians printing Aboriginal designs on mugs and selling them without permission/compensation, for example, but more like a Japanese person performing ‘Macbeth’ (or reinterpreting it, as Kurosawa did with ‘Throne of Blood’). Humans could join troupes like Mikk’s and perform Shakespeare to the galaxy themselves if they wished. The critic’s reaction, in light of Terran prejudices toward "aliens", is more like the “auggh, is there nothing that we’re best at anymore?” response that some white golf fans had to Tiger Woods! Now, it is probably true that some species are more likely to become performance masters than others. Thissizz can’t be a juggler or an acrobat or perform the glass dance because he has no limbs. However, neither can Mikk sing like Thissizz: he can sing the same melody, but it will sound as different as the same tune played on a piano versus a viola. That’s why performance masters have a troupe – they can do way more things than the average performer but they can’t do everything, and they are usually cosmopolitan types who like introducing the amazing performers from all the species they meet along the way to new audiences.
The situation is a bit different with the Somalites, though, because they and their culture are dead…and, even if it came from one elder suffering a high level of distress, Mikk was asked to let that culture die. And had it been just that “gentleman’s agreement” not to perform songdance, he might have hated it but stuck to it. But then the Council got involved and made it a law that applied only to one man with harsh penalties – which makes it more of a censorship issue. When Mikk sees people responding to a bastardized version of songdance, he can’t stop himself from showing the audience what it is supposed to be like. Mikk is being a little arrogant but is at least more right than the Council. The fact that he later escapes and does the songdance dressed as a Somalite, including face paint, though…oof, I dunno. Granted, that’s a disguise because he’s on the lam, but it’s a little too minstrel-show for my taste. At the same time, there is good that comes out of it: The performances induce world after world to break their ties to the Council, eventually causing it to fold and freeing performers from its arbitrary and punitive rule.
There are clues in the book that the Somalite elder forbade him from performing to get exactly this effect – that it was a sort of reverse psychology. For one thing, the disaster isn’t a surprise to the Somalites. Even Master Hudd comments on how unusually hot it seems when they visit; foreshadowing of the star’s radiation pulse, I suspect. But more importantly, like Vyzanians, though perhaps for different reasons, Somalites get premonitions. They recognize Mikk before he’s properly introduced seemingly from his distinctive red hair:
The Somalite turned her head, and as her eyes fell on Mikk a strange sharp jolt shot up his back into his shoulders and his ears filled with strange, distant half whispers...He shivered as though she had actually touched him, and, when she came close, she did, passing her fingertips slowly through his hair… “I’m Vyzanian,” he said, thinking she might be trying to identify his race. “How appropriate…Remember everything, Vyzanian.”
And:
Whees-ary lifted his head when the two Vyzanians entered, took one look at the young apprentice, and said… “Now this one comes. Is it already so late?”…“Your master had another apprentice years ago…he lacked something you have…You have a very great anger.” Mikk glanced nervously at Huud Maroc…”What does anger have to do with emptiness? With peace? Doesn’t anger destroy peace?”… “Don’t confuse peace with calm, my young friend, and don’t label all anger destructive.”
As Mikk points out later, telling a Vyzanian to forget anything is an exercise in futility, but here his actual (future) songdance teacher commands him to remember, and the elder who says he shouldn’t perform is the same one who recognizes who he is and gives permission anyway – and tells him to use anger, the mood in which he illegally performs the dance and does it well enough to see what Peace is. The elder also says this:
“How long is death?” “Forever,” Mikk said. “Is it?” Whees-aru grinned.
He’s not speaking only of the dance: In the end, Mikk finds and adopts a little girl who is at least half Somalite, and to whom he can give songdance back.
Now, outside of this specific context, Mikk’s “art belongs to the world” stance is perhaps a bit too extreme – if a people really wanted to be forgotten, that is their right9…although, at the same time, it is a bit iffy whether one person, however wise, can speak for an entire culture. Wherever you fall on this issue, there is definitely good fuel for discussion here!
9. Though one tribune has an interesting take on that. Et* poses that the Somalites were an insular and ungenerous culture, never helping any other people reach what they called Peace, “willing to leave others floundering in darkness” – so why risk death to save anything created by them? To which Mikk replies that all peoples are flawed, but their art can still have merit.
* - the neutral pronoun in this book.
I don’t know why the counsel thought including Thissizz as a tribune would be a good idea; possibly they just wanted to torture both of them. But possibly Mr. “Think of the Children” gave Thissizz an idea, because when it is his turn to speak he pulls a bit of reverse psychology too. For a famous performer, Mikk is unusually willing to interact with the kids in his audience, even inventing a “surprise tunic” with loads of pockets all filled with toys – they can point to one and get whatever is inside. So Thissizz speaks dismissively of this invention, which prompts children and former children from across the galaxy to shower the tribunal with letters of protest detailing fond memories of Master Mikk spanning 500 years.
That wouldn’t have been quite enough to save Mikk; six of the eleven tribunes still vote to convict. But, like the hero or heroine of a fairytale whose habit of kindness toward random old ladies and animals wins them their help in a crucial moment, Mikk has one more unexpected ally. A few years ago, he’d been doing a cruise ship circuit trying to get away from thinking about the death of the Somalites and the sting of the performance ban, when a strange unknown entity – a sort of electric shapeshifter - boarded the ship. The mostly human passengers were terrified, but Mikk managed to show it he meant no harm by juggling for it, and it mimicked his own form before departing. This still-unnamed creature shows up to help spring him from prison, after which he finds plenty of other friends willing to hide him. How did it find him? Well, I imagine it might have been feeling a bit bored floating about in space and went to look for its new friend, and found the whole galaxy buzzing with news about the tribunal.
If this did get an adaptation, I could totally picture a fun trailer or end-credits video of Mikk and company set to Dua Lipa’s ‘Levitating’ (if one could afford it). The song already has an anime-style music video, and the story does indeed involve premonitions, a good amount of glittery eyeshadow, “renegading” across the milky way, and one character is literally electric!
I believe that you’re
for me, I feel it in our energy
I see us written in the stars
We can go wherever, so let’s do it now or never
Baby, nothing’s ever, ever too far
Glitter in the
sky, glitter in our eyes
Shining just the way we are
I feel like we’re forever, every time we get together
But whatever, let’s get lost on Mars…
