Give me your Fangorns and your Lothloriens, your Green Hearts and your Elvandars. Evoke your Haunted Forest Beyond the Wall complete with creepy weirwoods, your Steddings and your Avendesoras. Send me pleasant dreams about Totoro’s Japanese Camphor and the Forest Spirit’s kodama-filled canopy. Or, y’know, tree cities full of Wookiees instead of elves. I will take them all!
Forests in speculative fiction novels have a special place in my heart. Especially tree-cities.
In real life, all forests seem magical to me. I can’t think of a culture that has not populated them with myths or religious figures. In Australia, First Nations people will tell you about ancient spirits dwelling in our forests whether tropical, temperate or dry. Proud Lebanese will tell you that their cedar forests were used for Solomon’s Temple and to build Noah’s ark. They may not know that those same cedar forests appeared in the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2100 BC. Those heroes fought off monsters and cut down the trees. In contrast, the characters of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion travel on treeships beyond the stars…
Take me there. I’m with you! As long as trees are, too.
Here are a mere eight of my favourite fictional forests:
The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
When telling people I’ve written a novel about a magical forest, the most common response so far has been: “You mean like The Magic Faraway Tree?” This staple of English-speaking childhoods was indeed beloved by my smallish self, not only for the magic tree which grew all kinds of leaves, fruit and nuts on the one plant but the vast cast of magical creatures which made the tree their home.
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Of course, the jungles of the subcontinent aren’t fictional. It’s just that this was the first book where I saw a wilderness treated remotely in fiction like an ally and protector, with its own languages and laws, instead of a hostile thing to be conquered. Wiser people than I have much valid criticism to heap on this book, and yet I still sometimes dream of stretching out on a rainforest limb beside Bagheera and Baloo.
Robin Hood
Ah, Sherwood Forest. Again, a real forest, populated by larger than life characters. Sherwood has been a forest since the end of the last ice age, apparently, and yet one man, the King of England, “owned” every deer in it. Ha! I have my suspicions about what the druids would have had to say about that. Ancient oaks, here as elsewhere, form the heart of this forest, including the one that famously served as the archer-thief’s hideout.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings seem to be about dwarves, elves and metaphors for sensible, down-to-earth English folk, but really, it’s all about the trees. More, it’s about how trees are good and the industrial revolution is bad.
Tolkien lovingly names and describes them—oak, ash, beech, birch, rowan, willow. Tom Bombadil, a forest god, and Goldberry, a river goddess, seem the only incorruptible aspects of Middle Earth. Baddies cut trees down. Goodies, in contrast, reside in or amongst trees. Or hide in them from wargs. Galadriel’s magic sustains the Mallorn trees of Lothlorien which, instead of losing their leaves, turn golden and glitter. These trees, along with others of Mirkwood, the Old Forest and Fangorn can accumulate wisdom, act in the interests of good or evil, and are as beautiful, vital and alive as the speaking characters.
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
“I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees!”—yes, I have been known to utter this in despair at parties when developers ask in all innocence why I don’t seem excited by the innovative architectural design. Even a toddler can grasp that when the last truffula tree is cut down, and the swomee-swans, humming fish and bar-ba-loots are gone, all the money in the world can’t save your soul, and it doesn’t matter that the glorious truffula forest is completely made up.
The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
The title says it all, really (it’s a great title, isn’t it?) With it, Le Guin reminds us that our home planet is “Earth.” In many science fiction stories, including this one, we appear as “Terrans.” We’re all about the dirt, not the ecosystems supported by it, not just because agriculture is the basis of Western civilisation but because our religions or philosophies of superiority rely on separating ourselves from “lower” forms of life.
Walking the Tree by Kaaron Warren
The title says a lot here, too. In this fantasy world, Botanica, a continent dominated by a single mammoth tree is circumnavigated by girls in a five-year-long rite of passage. Walking the Tree is a strange and beautiful book with a complicated, likeable protagonist to keep us company on our journey across the colourful patchwork of her world.
The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
Like Warren’s work, the second book of Jemisin’s Inheritance trilogy is set beneath the canopy of a single, enormous tree. I loved the transformative power of this tree, the monolithic inability to ignore it. The rustle of its leaves was part of the music of this rather musical book—the main character couldn’t see—and the roots and branches grew and disturbed the order of the city of Shadow. But also, as with the Warren, the tree was a power that divided people, as opposed to bringing them together.
This article originally appeared in the Tor/Forge newsletter and was reprinted on Tor.com in February 2017.
Thoraiya Dyer’s Crossroads of Canopy and its sequel Echoes of Understorey are available from Tor Books. The third volume, Tides of the Titans, is forthcoming in January 2019.
Top image from The Two Towers (2002)
Thoraiya Dyer is an Aurealis and Ditmar award-winning, Sydney-based writer and lapsed veterinarian. Her short science fiction and fantasy has appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Cosmos, Analog and various Australian and US anthologies. Four of her original stories are collected in “Asymmetry,” available from Twelfth Planet Press. Her Titan’s Forest series—Crossroads of Canopy, Echoes of Understorey, and the forthcoming Tides of the Titans—is published by Tor Books. She is @ThoraiyaDyer on Twitter.
The One Forest from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
The rainforest planet of Midworld, the ancient mystical woodland of Mythago Wood and the vast endless forest of The Vorrh are some of my suggestions.
One of the most fascinatingly unforest-like forests grows in Larry Niven’s ‘The Integral Trees’.
No mention of Ryhope Wood from Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood series? Wow.
Robin Hobb’s Forest Mage trilogy had a great rainforest.
@@@@@#4 William Reynolds, I second that. Ryhope Wood is an egregious omission from any roster of fictional forests. And since all the forests on this list aren’t even fictional anyway, I’d also like to nominate the Hoh Rainforest , on the northwestern fringe of Washington State. No other place has ever filled me with such a surreal sense of having crossed over into a magical dimension, with its prehistoric-looking ferns and massive ancient trees covered with moss thicker than sheep’s wool. If you’re a aficionado of forests, or would like to see a place that might as well have inspired Fangorn, the Hoh is well worth a visit–even if it breaks your heart to realize that once, before the white man arrived with his axes and saws, the entire Olympic Peninsula looked much like it.
@@.-@ I third that! You can’t really talk about fantasy forests if you don’t talk about Ryhope. That forest still lives inside me after all these years. I had a drink with Holdstock once, and found him a hell of a friendly and wonderful fellow. Reading (or re-reading) him is pure straight-to-the-heart joy.
Another shout out for Ryhope Wood. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so evocative, atmospheric or imaginative. Holdstock deserves more recognition.
@1. Yes, the One Forest and it’s remnants and Forestal guardians, especially Garroting Deep.
And speaking of the inhabitants of the forests, the scene in C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian when the trees/forest gods/dryads wake up and attack the Telmarines has stayed with me for years.
Ostern Ard’s Aldheorte, from Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series.
And the whole of the world from Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse. Although that would be a somewhat different experience.
The forest in the Green Sky Trilogy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Sky_Trilogy) by Zilpha Keatley Snyder is worth mentioning.
Re: Middle Earth
Of course, a lot of the “goodies” wantonly cleared forest: where does all that farmland occupied by Hobbits come from? The Hobbits, in their past, would have clear-cut the forests. The Hobbits would have used wood for fuel, that is heating their homes (the poorest may have just gotten chilly), cooking, metal-working, etc, but the forests would need to be eliminated for farmland.
One wonders how many old trees the Hobbits slew to produce their neat fields.
@@@@@#11 swampyankee I haven’t read the Fellowship of the Ring in over 25 years, but I do recall that the trees of the Old Forest were palpably hostile to Hobbits. Your comment shines a harsh new light that hostility. Perhaps Old Man Willow, from his perspective, was merely defending himself from an invasion of those rootless monsters who had exterminated so many of his kin to build Bucklebury and Hobbiton.
@@@@@ #6 jeromemartel I spent some time in the Olympic National Park, one of my favorites, and I absolutely agree.
It’s never seen in either the main sequence books nor the short stories, but the vastness and richness of the forest of the Susdriads is hinted at in Lee and Miller’s Kroval books. Clan Korval’s tree and its seedlings are the last remnants of that once world-spanning ecosystem. Who knows; they may get their own world once again.
Martha Wells’ Raksura books feature some particularly vivid forests!
@3 I also liked Niven’s Integral Trees and Smoke Ring. Fascinating setting for adventures.
And in the late 1970s, Analog published in three parts the novel Class Six Climb by W.E. Cochrane. Climbers looking for new challenges on a world where the trees are thousands of feet high.
How about the forests in Janet Kagan’s “Hellspark”? The plants use natural electricity – static from brushing in the wind and water, and the tallest trees are actually trying to attract lightning…
Goodies, in contrast, reside in or amongst trees. Or hide in them from wargs. Galadriel’s magic sustains the Mallorn trees of Lothlorien which, instead of losing their leaves, turn golden and glitter. These trees, along with others of Mirkwood, the Old Forest and Fangorn can accumulate wisdom
Dude, you literally just named two of the most evil and terrifying places in Middle Earth.
You could argue that the Old Forest is actually worse than Mordor. Sam and Frodo managed to cross half Mordor on foot without running into any trouble in several days. They got about three and a half miles into the Old Forest before almost getting wiped out. Many or maybe all of the trees of the Old Forest are awake, and hate humans (and hobbits and everyone else). Tom Bombadil lives there and even a creature of his undoubted power is unable to tame the evil of the Old Forest outside the immediate vicinity of his own house.
And Mirkwood is so called because it contains Dol Guldur, the former home of Sauron (spoiler: he is not a goody). It has GIANT SENTIENT HOMICIDAL SPIDERS in it.
The message here is, to put it mildly, somewhat more nuanced than “trees and forests are good”.
Baddies cut trees down.
This, too, is an error. Lots of people cut trees down. The Brandybucks cut a load of trees down to stop the malignant Huorns of the Old Forest invading Buckland. Beorn cuts trees down (he carries a felling axe and lives in a log cabin, for heaven’s sake).
What baddies do is cut trees down unnecessarily, for the sheer joy of destroying them.
where does all that farmland occupied by Hobbits come from? The Hobbits, in their past, would have clear-cut the forests.
No; there are still plenty of forests in the Shire.
@18
Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. We do not know the limits of Tom’s powers (hey didadilo) we only know the limits of his ambitions; of which he has very little (hey bitadittle).
Ah, so you’re arguing he might be unwilling to improve the Old Forest rather than simply unable? Hmm. Fair point, I suppose. Though I kind of have the impression that powerful spirits in Tolkien affect their surroundings automatically. Sauron didn’t say “right, now I will embark on a five-year project to make the Greenwood a dark and evil place, in the following stages. Slide please.” It just happened, because Sauron was living there. Ditto Galadriel in Lothlorien. The Old Forest has a powerful Reek of Wrongness ™ despite having a very powerful benevolent being living in the middle of it, which implies it is a very nasty place indeed.
Oh, that’s neat. I didn’t know it would automatically render the trademark TM as superscript.
@19,
I’m not saying that there weren’t; I’m saying that the Hobbits got their farmland, fuel, and lumber by cutting down trees. Those fields didn’t clear themselves
Agriculture is a great enemy of forests; this is why Southern New England has much more forest now than it did two centuries ago. Forests in the Shire were either in areas that were not economically viable or protected by some means, e.g., powerful landowners or government action.
Forests in the Shire were either in areas that were not economically viable or protected by some means, e.g., powerful landowners or government action.
This is speculation. (Apart from anything else: what government? Since when has the Shire had a government?)
@21 I’d say that Tom is more uncaring of it rather than unwilling. Look at his attitude towards the Ring, very powerful but also completely disinterested. The goodness or badness of the wood simply doesn’t figure in his world view, or at least not that much. He has his house, he has Goldberry and that is as far as his perception of the world really goes.
The woods in the shire are likely managed copses, for charcoal, for woodland cropping, and building material. Agriculture is the enemy of wild woods, but it also needs woodland for fuel and material. Prior to globalisation in the 18th and 19thC, apart from the royal deer forests, most of the UK’s woodland was managed in someway to support local communities; and communities usually had some sort of woodland nearby for resource extraction. I see no conflict in the Shire having woodlands and also having massive amounts of agricultural clearing.
25: and yet he does care enough to help out travellers passing through the Old Forest. But I think trying to understand his motivations will be (by design) pointless…
Regardless, my basic point stands: forests in Middle Earth are not always friendly, benign places, and some of them are downright terrifying.
@6, jeromemartel and @13, William R Reynolds, I completely agree with you about the Hoh Rainforest. The first time I saw it was in Spring. I never realized there were that many shades of GREEN.
In Kings Dark Tower series, a story inside a story inside another story. ‘The Wind Through the Keyhole’ has an ‘Endless Forest’ that is not a very pleasant place.
But lets be honest, I think it might be easier to name the Fantasy book/series that does NOT have some kind of evil, enchanted, scary, or strange woods in it. It seems that us humans have an unnatural fear of deep woods that cross time and cultural boundaries.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned the memorable forest from Thomas Disch’s The Genocides.
IIRC, most of the deforestation in Middle-earth that wasn’t Enemy-caused is the fault of the Numenoreans using the hither shores as their own personal resource depot.
Yet another mention for Robert Holdstock and Ryhope here! BTW, at the risk of hijacking the thread, does anyone share my view that the Mythago Wood series seemed to degenerate rather badly as it progressed? Mythago Wood itself was and is one of the most astonishing fantasy novels I’ve ever read and I still revisit it from time to time; Lavondyss was still pretty good, but seemed to kind of lose the plot;The Hollowing had its moments and was even great in places, but seemed also seemed to meander off into pointlessness and then finally, Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn which was pretty dreadful (IMO). The short story collection The Bone Forest was pretty decent overall. (And yes, I know there are more and I’ll probably seek them out at some point!)
In each of the books (at least the ones I read) it seems like Holdstock was basically telling the same story from a different character’s point of view (Steven, Christian, their dad). Part of the problem is that at least 2/3 of these narrators seem to be really awful, self-absorbed jerks and the one halfway decent guy (Steven in MW) isn’t really all that much better.
What !? no mention of the forest in Uprooted by Naomi Kovik ??
@@@@@#12 So basically LOTR is an elaborate metaphor for gentrification? See also the attempt to reoccupy Moria. :-)
@33 Paramenator-X, I guess gentrification could be seen as one of LOTR’s metaphors, at least ex post facto.
The forest in Sarah Beth Durst’s ‘Queens of Renthia’ series provides both a richly developed setting (tree cities! zip line highways! canopy singers who never set foot on the ground!) and arch villain (tree spirits who thirst for human blood). Fabulous forested fun. :)
The worldforest of sentient trees on Theroc in Kevin J. Anderson’s Saga of the Seven Sons, which the green priests commune with telepathically.