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Seedling of Mars


Fun Guy from Yuggoth

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So I have been arguing for a while that Mars is special to Martin because Mairt  means Mars, and that in ASoIaF Mars is red because it is covered by a global weirwood network, and that the Red Comets are seeds that are being shot off of Mars to populate other planets, so imaging my shock when today I learned that Clark Ashton Smith wrote a story where Mars is covered by a global tree network that shoots Red Comet seeds to populate other planets. 

As I said, in this short story by Clark Ashton Smith (fulltext audio) the surface of Mars is covered by a single gigantic immortal, cosmic, omniscient tree whose flesh-colored roots and vines wrap all the way around the globe (the "canals" of Mars are vines/creepers, and the "seas" are foliage).  It is also described as kraken-shaped, with the tree roots being tentacles.  It described as being a god, that has a huge hill for a head--which I am guessing is Olympus Mons--that is described like a giant brain, and it has lakes for eyes

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The vessel soared to a great height, and they looked down on the realm-wide expanse of leafage. In its middle they discerned a circular node, leagues in extent, and rising like a rounded alp, from which emanated in all directions the planet-circling stems of the weird growth. Not only the size, but also certain features of the immense node, were provocative of utter dumbfoundment in the beholders. It was like the head of some gargantuan cuttle-fish, and the stalks that ran away on all sides were suggestive of tentacles. And, strangest of all, the men descried in the center of the head two enormous masses, clear and lucent like water, which combined the size of lakes with the form and appearance of optic organs!

. . .

Close at hand there rose the vast, flesh-colored wall of the central plant-head, which sloped upward like a hill toward the hidden eyes and was no doubt deeply embedded and rooted in the Martian soil. Stepping close to the living mass, the earthmen saw that its surface was netted with millions of wrinkle-like reticulations

This directly parallels the God's Eye lake and its weirwood hill being the central hub of the network, and the weirwood roots extending from it to wrap around the world.  (The foliage of the Mars god-tree is green, which doesn't make sense, it should be red)

The God's Eye lake looks like an impact crater, and that is the center of the weirwood network.  In Dorne, where the heart of falling star landed, a White Tower rose up--and in real life, Star Fall is supposed to be a gelatinous substance that falls out of the sky from a meteor, and is the basis of Lovecraft's The Color out of Space, in which an alien being falls to Earth in a meteor and spreads out from a central point, consuming everything around it, sucking the life out, and can launch itself back into space.

 

The Mars creature can see all the way to Earth--it has an all-seeing eye that never shuts.  The God's Eye is an all-seeing eye that never shuts.  In ASoIaF, Jon mentions Mars watching him through the trees.

 

The Mars creature populates other worlds by shooting mile-long seeds into space, and at the end of the story one of these falls to earth as a Red Comet, and immediately begins growing and wipes out the population of Earth. 

 

The Mars creature can make living spaceships  (Mars is the Smith, and the Smith is honored at the launching of ships) and the story opens with one of them landing on Earth and taking a group of humans back to Mars to meet with the creature.  It grows a doppelganger of the main character Gaillard out of the tree roots to communicate with the humans--and the doppelganger has a tree root coming out of his head.  Which parallels Bloodraven being a doppelganger communicating what the weirwood wants with Bran.

 

The Mars creature brought the humans to Mars as part of his plan to stir up a massive civil war on Earth, in which human civilization will be destroyed, clearing the Earth for its seed to come in at the end of the story.   Mars is drying out and the creature will die without water, so it uses mind-control to get humans to build devices that will teleport water back to Mars. 

 

The Mars creature can shoot beams of light across space all the way to Earth, and I have argued that the God's Eye can shoot beams of light out of its Eye, like Cyclops and Balor of the Evil Eye.

 

The Mars creature reveals that it achieved dominance over Mars by killing all the other creatures on the planet:

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"I am, as you may have already surmised, the sole inhabitant of this world. I could multiply myself if necessary; but so far, for reasons which you will soon apprehend, I have not felt that this would be desirable. Being complete and perfect in myself, I have had no need of companionship with other entities; and long ago, for my own comfort and security, I was compelled to extirpate certain rival plant-forms, and also certain animals who resembled slightly the mankind of your world; and who, in the course of their evolution, were becoming troublesome and even dangerous to me.

 

Which directly parallels a passage from George's story The Men of Greywater Station. where the fungus lands on a planet, and takes over every single living thing with its mind-control fungus.  The roots of the Mars tree are called "creepers" and the creepers are one of the main animals on Greywater.  The Mars creature gets the humans to kill each other, and the Greywater fungus gets humans to kill each other, and the Weirwood network gets people to kill each other.

The Mars creature was accompanied by humanoids, but it killed them off (or ate them).

 

If ASoIaF is based 10,000 years in our past, and at that time Mars was dominated by weirwoods, how does it becomes a barren planet in a few thousand years?   This story provided some options--either it just ate everything and then dried up and died.  (I have theorized that Dorne is a metaphor for Mars/weirwood network and that is why it can't be conquered, because no-one can reach it, and doran means "to dry out" and water wells are of central importance.)

Or, being just one single creature, the central brain portion could separate from the main body and fly off to another planet.  Cthulhu was, after all, a mountain that walked--that fell down to Earth from outer space, and R'lyeh was described as a space ship.

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1 hour ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Very cool. I too have come to "panGarthia" as a working theory for the deeper story.

GRRM is of course a huge fan of Clarke, and so he is likely borrowing elements for ASOIAF. Exactly how the borrowed elements are used and reconfigured, though, that's always the mystery.

More Clark Ashton Smith ideas that are used in ASoIaF:

In The Seed from the Sepulchre, there is an alien plant that falls to Earth and infects human beings, kills them, and grows out of their skull as antlers, in ASoIaF, the greenseers' wear "antler crown"/ "driftwood crown" which is actually the weirwood growing out of their head and the weirwood circle above the head of the greenseer.  The weirwood seed falls out of the sky, infects humans, and grows out of greenseers' skulls.  The alien seed destroyed an entire ancient spacefaring civilization, and I think the weirwood destroyed the Great Empire of the Dawn and Valyria.

 

In the Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, there is a fungus in a cave that destroyed an ancient civilization on Mars.  The fungus attaches to your head and eats your brain, and lures people into the cave with psychic lures.  George's story A Song for Lya is a variation on this story, (and it seems like the movie Aliens was highly influenced by this also.) 

In A Song for Lya, the cave fungus is a large red greasy mass called the Greeshka and in gaelic greiscealacan means "a red raw greasy mass"

In gaelic lige ("liya") means "grave" and in Hindi lay means "song" and "destruction"--the hive-minded telepathic cave fungus lures Lya in to eat her brain, just like the cave fungus from Yoh-Vombis (and the weirwood with Bran)  When you join the collective your individuality is obliterated.

 

 

In Vulthoom, (audio and fulltext) a white alien tree landed on Mars as a meteor:  “The Martians say that I fell from heaven like a fiery meteor” from another universe and lives underground in caverns and formed a Satanic cult. 

Vulthoom is a huge white bole, that is described as a heart, whose roots occupy the underground caves: 

“there reclined an incredible thing whose further portions and members wound away to an indefinite distance amid the machinery.  Somehow, the thing was like a gigantic plant, with innumerable roots, pale and swollen, that ramified from a bulbular bole. This bole, half hidden from view, was topped with a vermilion cup like a monstrous blossom; and from the cup there grew an elfin figure, pearly-hued, and formed with exquisite beauty and symmetry”

A little person growing out of a white tree—(the CoTF are attached to the white tree)

Vulthoom is telepathic, and can see forwards and backwards in time.  It makes a doppelganger to entice the main character to join Vulthoom.  Vulthoom sleeps for thousands of years, and then is awake for thousands of years.  Vulthoom secretes a hallucinogenic perfume that is like weirwood paste. Vulthoom wants to spread his cult to Earth, and his plan is to blast off of Mars from underground in a rocket that is secretly being built underground. 

 

"When all is ready, the ship will blast its way to the surface by means of atomic disintegrators. The very stone will melt before it like vapor. Ignar-Luth, which lies directly above will be consumed as if the central fires of the planet had broken loose."

(the launch of the white bole Vulthoom parallels the Hardhome disaster and the Doom of Valyria, which I think were both weirwood launches, both were like the central fires of the planet had broken loose)

His followers are called Aihai, and Vulthoom is associated with a three-headed dragon.

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