The Last Yggdrasill

by Robert F. Young

It was the last tree on a lush world where otherwise only grain grew. It was huge and it was dying. To rid the world of the dying giant would take more than just two men with chain saws. So the people of New America called on TreeCo, interstellar tree-removal service.

Genres: Science Fiction

136 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1982

About the author

Robert Franklin Young was a science-fiction author, primarily of short stories over a thirty-year career, plus five novels in the last decade of his life.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was surprising. I was in the mood for something short and light and happy, so I picked up this Young novel. His stories have almost always provided me with a frothy, feel-good humor. This one isn't that. It's a kind of hopeless and depressing story of some hopeless and depressed people engaged in cutting down the last tree on a world to make room for more mechanized industrial agriculture. They drink a lot and then have laconic and morose sex with other people that they don't like. It's a good story about the importance of conservation and ecological awareness, but you just can't get a happy lift from genocide. I suppose you could draw some religious parallels if you were so inclined. It does have a nice cover that I was sure was the work of Darrell Sweet, but it's by Michael Herring.

[Wreade1872 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, more a novella than novel. This sci-fi tale has two strands too it. One is about sex, actually.. its more than that i guess. While some characters are hung up on sex everyone i can think of has some form of psychological problem, paranoia, alcoholism, depression etc.
However none of this thread really feels like it goes anywhere, or has any real connection with the main plot.

The main plot also doesn’t really land. It brings up mankind's destruction of nature but the final lesson it displays isn’t really about this, or certainly not in the same way.
There is a lesson about conservation in here but it is far more modern and subtle than ‘its probably a bad idea to kill all the buffalo’ or ‘chop down all the trees’. The final reveal simply doesn’t connect to these elements despite how they are highlighted in the plot.

The mystery also isn’t much of one and you can see it coming a mile off. Overall there just isn’t much here.

Sidenote.. the world-building doesn’t make much sense. So humans developed a faster-than-light drive and when they got out there they found earlier humans on multiple planets.. I could assume they got there using cryo or generation-ships but even that doesn’t scan as these humans are practically stone-age. If they arrived on ships of any kind you’d expect them to be more advanced.
Anyway no explanation is given and nobody expresses any surprise about it.

There’s some decent writing here but nothing really comes together in the end in my opinion.

[S.E. Martens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about intergalactic tree removal guys. It's not a set-up that really grabs me, and I wouldn't have picked it up on my own (it was a recommendation.) The tree removal company is comprised of three guys who do the removal, and a woman who owns the company. They travel to a planet that's full of wheat. Super nutritious wheat, and that's all they do. There are also some mysterious buildings that were left over by the original inhabitants of the planet, who have all died out by the time the human agriculturists took over. There's also one really giant tree left, called a Yggdrasill tree, that for some reason the people on this planet absolutely hate. They hate it with a blinding passion. They hate that the tree brings in tourists and they seem to blame it for their houses rotting - though why the tree would be the cause of their glowing houses rotting is unclear.

Tom Strong is the tree guy who has to go up to the top of the tree and he has to live in it for a couple of days while they work on it. While up there, he sees a dryad.

And that's pretty much the whole story.

The Last Yggdrasill is partly a melancholic musing on the destruction of nature, but there is also a lot of relationship stuff. Tom's ex-girlfriend, Marijane, is a television reporter who has come to interview him in the tree. I was profoundly disinterested in the relationship drama and found the characters to be very bland and boring.

There are also a couple of really obvious things happening in this story that all of the characters remain oblivious to for an absurd amount of time.

That being said, I somehow didn't hate this book. Parts of it are beautifully written, and I liked the overall message.

[D.M. Dutcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deep novella about the men and woman who gather around the last world tree to cut it down, and what that means to them. Mournful and elegaic.

Tom Strong cuts down Yggdrasils for a living. They are giant trees that tower into the sky, and this one is the last. As he climbs the tree, he sees a beautiful blond girl covered in leaves, and who speaks silently to his mind. She is the dryad of the tree, and when it dies, so does she. Men kill what they love: will Tom do so? Will the dryad be another lost love?

It's deeper than what you would think it to be. Each member of the group that is there either to kill the tree or film its death is wounded, and the tree becomes a locus of them dealing with their wounds and longing for healing. It's about how we destroy what we love, be it nature, a way of life, or passion. Young is not your typical SF writer. There is a mournful quality and strong themes of love and loss with women in his work, and this is similar.

My only complaint is that it is too short. It ends quickly, and the themes are so rich and deep that they need more room to be developed. There's a lot of "just happens" too-you wont find hard or rigorous science fiction here. But it's a thought-provoking read, and one I enjoyed greatly.