The process of giving a fungus an STD (on purpose) to save your chest(nuts) works like this: (1) you have a tree dying from chestnut blight; (2) you introduce a second strain of chestnut blight that carries the STD; (3) the two fungal strains engage in…ahem ... parasexual behaviour in the tree, passing on the STD; (4) the original chestnut blight fungus is weakened by the STD, giving the tree a chance to fight back.
If and when the climate continues to warm, fungi are likely to become more prevalent in our daily lives, and with familiarity will come more stories. Hopefully, unlike in Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night”, we can right our climate-catastrophe-bound ship and avoid being consumed.
While it played with the backstories of known characters and tweaked the designs of certain species (both highly polarizing among fans), Discovery also brought us new technology and new aliens, including the first sentient fungal species in canon. The jahSepp were only around for a few episodes, but these fungi were not only complex and beautifully fleshed out but also expertly built, incorporating our current mycology knowledge base.
When it comes to the innovative possibilities of growing a city – particularly one on a distant world where we have total freedom to construct every aspect ourselves – perhaps the greatest gain of biogenic architecture comes not from trying to imagine a single species that does everything we might want, but thinking of how to layer different organisms together to create something multi-symbiotic.
