Little Mushroom
by Shisi
translated by Xiao
2022

This is adorable and hilarious and horrifying. This is set in a post-apocalyptic world (with all the scientific explanation of Star Trek, ie, absolutely ludicrous but boy does the author and a series of scientist characters try) where the final bastions of humanity are in a handful of highly guarded cities under military rule, while plants and animals outside are all aggressively mutating and mutagenic. Get stung by an insect and within a couple of hours you’ll become a giant insect monster going on a killing rampage. The nature aspect reminds me of Scavengers Reign, and the writing is clearly intended to evoke specific visual images that sometimes comes across oddly in a written medium, but this would make a stunning animation.

The society is an extreme form of fascism that’s written as a necessary evil with the protestors dying horrible deaths for not understanding the necessity of the military department with little to no oversight that executes anyone suspected of being tainted with a mutation. The slogan of “Humankind’s interests take precedence over all else” very much includes the rights of any individual. There’s the military, the scientists, the breeding program, and everyone else. It’s a grim society, on the cusp of destruction: an extreme dystopia.

However, the book’s perspective is not from the point of view of a human. While humans are struggling for survival in an increasingly hostile world due to the mutating animals and plants, one such mutation is a mushroom who has gained sentience, mobility, and the ability to shape change into the form of a human. That mushroom, named An Zhe, ventures forth into the human city to reacquire part of itself that had been collected by a human research team. Human massacres just aren’t as traumatic to a mushroom as they are to a human and An Zhe’s calm curiosity permeates the book. What does he know about humans and morals and society? He’s just a little mushroom! Adorable!

Lu Feng, the human in charge of executing any human mutations, takes one look at An Zhe and essentially goes: huh. An Zhe is definitely odd but not in the way of a mutated human. Deeply suspicious, but to all appearances just an oddly sweet and naive human.

And thus the plot develops: the human race losing the century-long war against the increasing number of devastating disasters while desperately trying to figure out what’s causing the mutations, An Zhe trying to figure out how to fit into human society while searching for his lost “spore”, and Lu Feng developing unwanted feelings for the one person who isn’t scared of him.

It is utterly ridiculous and adorable — despite the gore, body horror, and overarching destruction — and somehow ends happily.

While this is printed in two volumes, it was originally written as a webnovel with three books and then a series of epilogues and side stories. I’d originally just bought the first volume which is books one and two (despite the cover which says “book one” on it). It does come to a good conclusion and is a natural break in the story… except that there are some really distracting loose ends (a mannequin that’s a perfect replica of Lu Feng was created, confiscated, and then never shows up again? I think not!) so I immediately ordered the second volume and then had to wait a week for it to show up.

There’s definitely some cultural commentary and common Chinese tropes that I don’t have the context for, but I still really enjoyed these books. I can’t give a blanket recommendation since the society is seriously grim dark with the aforementioned body horror and gory deaths, so readers will need to judge their own preferences, but it really is amazing how chill and even hilarious the narration can be regarding the horrors when the POV character is a self-aware mushroom.