Pedro the Vast by Simón López Trujillo

Mushrooms, or more specifically the underground mycelial network that connects them, are having a moment. In one of the more recent Star Trek series (Discovery) – the mycelial network is magically used to power a form of instantaneous galactic travel (using the fact that everything is connected). In the post-apocalyptic game and TV series The Last of Us, the same network inhabits, powers and connects mushroom-infected zombies. So some readers of Chilean author, Simón López Trujillo’s new novel Pedro the Vast (translated by Robin Myers) might well be one step ahead of some of its reveals, but possibly not where Trujillo then goes with them.

The Pedro of the title is a man who works in a eucalypt plantation where one day a number of workers are struck down by a mysterious fungus-based condition which puts them in a coma. Pedro’s teenage son Patricio keeps this from his younger sister Catalina and tries to keep their house together. A mushroom expert, Giovanna is called in to the hospital to consult. Pedro is the only survivor but when he wakes, speaks in ways that seem to channel the perspective of the fungus. Pedro is taken in by a local priest who believes these pronouncements to be a form of prophecy.

The stories of the three main characters only tangentially interact so the whole enterprise lacks real coherence. Even the relationship between Pedro and his children is like this. He is practically an absent father when he works, leaving Patricio to manage and then after his encounter he is taken in by the cult, once again leaving the two on their own. Trujillo uses Giovanna to give some technical or scientific weight to the tale but then follows her with a group of other scientists to Patagonia for what is an interesting but completely unrelated journey.

Most interesting are the almost poetic sections of the text where Pedro is channeling the fungus. This is from the opening section:

A clearing in the woods. The perspective was as if shot from below. Like if someone had buried a pair of eyes, watering them carefully, in the steady sun, until the eyelids papering the seed had let themselves split open to reveal the baby creature, always seeking the sky through the curtain of a playhouse.

These passages make it possible to believe that these utterances could form the basis of some form of religion. But Trujillo never really answers the question why. What are the followers getting out of this? What are they doing besides worshipping Pedro?

Pedro the Vast is an interesting experiment but ultimately a frustrating novel. There is clearly mileage in the idea of sentient mushrooms that might one day control humanity. But it is never really clear if that is what Trujillo is getting at or something completely different.

Pedro the Vast by Simón López Trujillo

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6.0/10