A Wall Is Also a Road

First Contact From the Alien's Side

Annalee Newitz turns the usual first-contact story around in A Wall Is Also a Road. Gardenpath, a sentient slime mold and graduate student from a civilization between the stars, arrives on Earth to study a species that has developed language and culture with no outside help. Its chosen field site is Pompeii, which means the research trip is already running toward a deadline readers know all too well.

A Scholar Finds a Home in Pompeii

Gardenpath disguises itself in a survival suit and meets Murtis, a sex worker who takes the strange newcomer in. What begins as observation becomes attachment as Gardenpath learns the routines, relationships, and dangers of Roman life. Academic recognition is suddenly competing with a much more personal question: whether studying a people is enough once you have begun to care about them.

Curiosity Beneath Vesuvius

The novel mixes ancient history with an alien point of view, using Pompeii as more than a famous disaster waiting to happen. Gardenpath's work asks how language, love, and community might look to a mind built nothing like ours. The approaching eruption supplies urgency, but the real pull is the bond between an outsider and the people it was never supposed to join.