Writing Sci-Fi with Slime Moulds: How Scientists Shaped a Novel

Before writing a science fiction novel, I ask scientists extremely strange questions. My upcoming book, A Wall Is Also a Road (out 6 October), presented an unusual creative challenge: my protagonist is Gardenpath, a cellular slime mould pursuing a graduate degree in environmental science.

Why a slime mould? Partly because I spent most of graduate school feeling like an amoeba. But also because exploring an alien mind fundamentally different from our own felt like the ultimate test of speculative fiction.

Building a Believable Alien World

Gardenpath studies at a university floating high above our galactic plane in the circumgalactic medium, a region most people have never heard of. This roughly spherical space hosts the Magellanic clouds, rogue stars, planets, and debris ejected from Sagittarius A*, the black hole at our galaxy’s center. It’s theoretically packed with resources to support advanced civilizations.

Before imagining what Gardenpath looked like, I needed to understand where they lived. I contacted Molly Peeples at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, whose lab created stunning simulations of this distant region. The circumgalactic medium, she explained, contains warm and cold spots in swirling gas, almost like Earth’s weather systems.

This geographic understanding shaped everything about my slime mould character. I decided they would experience the circumgalactic medium like humans experience our atmosphere. Their single-celled bodies could be absolutely enormous in low-pressure, diffuse gas environments. Living there would fundamentally alter their scientific assumptions too. Gardenpath’s professors believe the galactic plane where we live is utterly lifeless and uninhabitable. Who could survive in that radiation-saturated gravity well?

Communication Beyond Sound

Gardenpath expresses frustration differently than humans do. Rather than emitting sound waves through thick atmosphere, they spurt electrons, hormones and chemicals, opening membrane receptors to receive responses. It’s cellular signalling to us; to them, it’s simply talking.

Wesley Swingley, a molecular biologist at Northern Illinois University, spent an afternoon brainstorming about culture among polymorphous beings who communicate through scent exchanges. A diffuser becomes a megaphone. Methane serves as a question mark. Swingley suggested they’d need an organelle for storing memories, which I called a gnosome. Since their membranes are permeable, professors can physically reach inside students’ bodies during exams to probe these memory structures. Creepy? Absolutely.

Cells have numerous single-purpose receptors, leading us to develop an “oath receptor” concept, essentially a biological friendship ring. When Gardenpath’s classmate Oriel wants eternal friendship, both reach inside each other to create specialized receptors that only receive their friend’s signals. Imagine your best friend gifting custom ears that hear only their voice.

Details That Matter

Slime mould graduate students need publishing systems too. They store data inside fungi, making their libraries look like mushroom nurseries. To send information? Plug your fungus notebook into a vent and release spores carrying your work to its destination.

I also developed slime mould body language. They become bumpy when nervous, stretch tall when laughing, sprout extra eyestalks when intrigued, and dangle extended arms to add sarcasm. This creates hilarity when Gardenpath encounters humans on Earth, who superficially resemble perpetually sarcastic creatures paying minimal attention to anything with just two eyes.

Yet Gardenpath finds friendship with Murtis, a woman living in Pompeii beneath an intriguing volcano. Yes, I consulted multiple archaeologists. Eric Poehler at the University of Massachusetts Amherst walked me through Pompeiian plumbing and explained the famous “prosciutto sundial” discovered nearby in Herculaneum. The specifics matter, even in speculative fiction about science and biology.

Working with actual scientists transformed this project. Their expertise grounded my imaginative premise in scientific plausibility while inspiring ideas I never would have conceived alone. The result isn’t just a story about a slime mould; it’s an exploration of consciousness itself through radically different sensory and cognitive frameworks.

Source: New Scientist

What would our own civilization look like if we perceived reality through completely alien senses?