Tree octopuses have inspired activists, writers, artists, and researchers across generations. Some speak out specifically on the plight of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and their kin. Some incorporate fictionalized versions of tree octopuses, or other arboreal cephalopods, into their works -- either as friends or as enemies. Others have simply reported on tree octopuses for the edification of the public. Below is a list of tree octopuses appearing in the media.
DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this list is to document how tree octopuses have been and are depicted in the media, including fiction. Some spoilers for stories may occur, but I'll try to be cagey in the descriptions if possible. Some items, especially historical ones, may contain imagery, viewpoints, or information considered offensive or outdated. Items are included on this list based purely on their tree octopus content, ordered by date. Links to sites selling the media are provided only if I couldn't find an objective site with more information, or haven't reviewed it on my blog. Inclusion on this list does not constitute endorsem*nt by ZPi.
If you know of any other appearances, old or new, of tree octopuses in books, film, art, etc., email me.
Bill the Jungle Octopus (2018), a children's book by Angela Pink, is about an aquatic octopus that is forced by a pelican to move to the jungle and has to get along with his new, distrusting neighbors.
"Absolutely True Facts about the Pacific Tree Octopus" (2016), a short story by H. L. Burke, is about 8-year-old Liesel's decision between being right and doing right while on a family camping trip to the Olympic Peninsula.
Nolander (2015), an urban fantasy novel by Becca Mills, includes a species of sentient tree octopuses who live in a parallel Octoworld.
Arrival (2015), a novel by W. Ross White about a generational starship that arrives at its destination planet, where herds of four-armed cephalopods swing through the jungle canopies.
The Long Earth (2012), a collaborative novel by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter about traveling through parallel Earths in which hom*o sapiens never existed, proposes an alternate North America where, instead of tentaculating from branch to branch, tree octopuses glide through the canopy by spinning like frisbees.
"Confessor" (2010), a near-future, post-collapse story by Elizabeth Bear from the audiobook collection METAtropolis: CASCADIA, follows an investigation into the murder of a geneticist that leads to a smuggling ring on Mt. Rainier selling genetically engineered counterfeit tree-octopuses to unsuspecting international buyers. (Review.) Also published as text in Bear's collection Shoggoths in Bloom (2013).
Spooky Washington: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore (2010), a book of folklore stories by S. E. Schlosser, includes one about a mischievous tree-octopus that steals chickens, with illustration. (Review)
Pock's World (2010), a sci-fi novel by Dave Duncan, mentions its eponymous planet's greatest delicacy, talion, which is rotted tree octopus.
The Procession of Mollusks (2008), a novel by Eric E. Olson, touches on the native uses of tree octopuses. (Review)
Nation (2008), a tropical alternate-history young-adult novel by Terry Pratchett, includes an island that's home to tree-climbing octopuses (Octopus arbori) that are hard to pull off if they land on your head -- and never let them think you're a coconut, because they have sharp beaks. (British cover-art includes a suspiciously familiar tree octopus.)
The Other Side of the Island (2008), an eco-dystopic young-adult novel by Allegra Goodman, has a tree octopus named Octavio who helps the protagonist, Honor, as she learns the truth about The Corporation and its sky projections.
The Book of Summer (2008), a Christian-military-sci-fi novel by James F. David, takes place on the newly colonized planet America, where outcast Rey Mann adopts an orphaned baby tree-octopus (which he names Ollie) after he kills its mother.
Lulu Atlantis and the Quest for True Blue Love (2008), a children's novel by Patricia Martin, mentions Lulu's father being off to save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, which is described as "a worthy crusade and a worthy cause".
"A New Order of Things" (2006), a sci-fi story by Edward M. Lerner serialized in Analog magazine, includes intelligent spacefaring aliens from Alpha Centauri A known as the Unity (or "Centaurs" by humans) that are "arboreal octopi covered in green fur".
Minnie & Moo and the Seven Wonders of the World (2003), an illustrated children's book by Denys Cazet, is about two cows trying to raise money to save their farm by giving tours of seven wonders, including a Forest Octopus they solicit donations to save.
Zollocco: A Novel of Another Universe (2000), a sci-fi-comedy-adventure by Cynthia Joyce Clay, follows a woman who escapes an eco-dystopic Earth and finds herself on a planet ruled by an intelligent forest named Zollocco that protects her -- with, among other things, its tree-octopus minions -- from an interplanetary corporation that wants to sell her as a household pet.
Marc Stone #39: Les pieuvres végétales (1998), part of a French sci-fi novel series by Jean-Pierre Garen about the adventures of Marc Stone of Galactic Security and his android Ray, has Stone rescue tourists from Vénusia, a jungle planet whose all-female population is besieged by vegetable octopuses.
Vacuum Flowers (1987), a cyberpunk novel by Michael Swanwick, suggests in passing that tree squid might be common in the bioengineered blossom clusters of a future colonized solar system.
The Crucible of Time (1983), a sci-fi novel by John Brunner about an alien species of tree-octopusoids who, at the dawn of their understanding of science, learn that their planet will one day be destroyed by the collision of their star system with a cloud of interstellar debris and must, over millennia and against disastrous set-backs, develop the technology to escape into space.
"The Hour that Stretches" (from Stalking the Nightmare, 1982), a short story by Harlan Ellison, includes a plot synopsis involving the Chesapeake Tree-Climbing Octopus, described thusly:
This retiring and rarely glimpsed creature lives in the many quiet estuaries of the Chesapeake system. Early each morning the octopus leaves the water and crawls up the trunk of a shoreside tree. It makes its way precariously onto a branch overhanging the water, where it waits for its prey to pass underneath.
"Drom Lunaris" by Richard A. Lupoff is a short story (published in the Feb. 1979 issue of KPFA Folio) about an intelligent, winged camel named Sopwith who flies to the moon to escape the ugliness of Earth, finding there, among other things, a garden with singing tree octopi in the vines of its tall trees. (Blogged)
"A Night in Elf Hill" by Norman Spinrad (1968, reprinted in his The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde) is a short story about a merchant spacer who searches for a hidden city in an alien swamp where golden-fuzzed, turkey-gabbling "octopoid things" swing through the trees by their tentacles like monkeys.
"Pilgrims and Wayfarers" (1961, in Russian: «О странствующих и путешествующих») by the Strugatsky brothers, from their anthology Noon: 22nd Century, includes a species of venturesome octopuses called septipods ("септоподы", due to a reduced third left arm) that have started to explore dry land -- two even made an incursion into the forests, but were trampled by wild boars. (Blogged)
Old Growler—Space Ship No. 2213 (Science Fiction Fortnightly No. 4, 1951), a space exploration novel by "Jon J. Deegan" in which a character's grip is likened to a "tree-octopus from some swamp on Hamor" (p.19). (Another story in the "Old Growler" series, "The Singing Spheres" (1952), also likens someone's grip to a "swamp-octopus of Zonnash".)
"Sword of Fire" by Emmett McDowell (Planet Stories, Winter 1949) is a novella about alien octopuses that take over a jungle planet, ruling the native humanoids using mind-control. (Review)
"The Thaw Plan" (from The Lost Cavern and Other Tales of the Fantastic, 1948), a short story by Gerald Heard, is set long after the ice caps were melted, leaving mankind divided into two different, polar-bound species separated by a vast, equatorial belt of impenetrable jungle, home to atavistic creatures, including a briefly-mentioned tree octopus that attacks the protagonist. (Review)
"The Octopus Cycle" (Amazing Stories, May 1928), by Irvin Lester & Fletcher Pratt with art by Frank R. Paul, is a pulp story about towering octopuses, referred to as "Umbrella Beasts", that walk out of the sea into the jungles of Madagascar, from which they terrorize the locals -- and potentially the world. (Review)
Cover from Poulpe Pulps, interior art scanned by Matt Goodman.
Click to enlarge...
Drome (1927), a pulp adventure by John Martin Leahy originally serialized in Weird Tales (Jan.-May, 1927) then published as a book in 1952, takes place in a cavernous realm miles below Mount Rainier with a primeval forest inhabited by deadly tree-octopuses. (Review)
Art by Leahy from 1952 book.
Click to enlarge...
「松に藤蛸木にのぼるけしきあり」 (c. 1600s), a renku by poet Nishiyama Sōin likening wisteria growing on a pine to an octopus climbing a tree. A translation:
wisteria on pine --
a tree octopus climbs
there's a spectacle!
Halieutica (c. 100s), an epic poem on fishing by Oppian of Corycus, contains a passage about Greek octopuses' love of olive trees.
