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books - A story about Earth in far future with a civilization centered around a huge tree


I'd like to ask you to help me identify a sci-fi/fantasy book that I read probably sometime in the 90s though I don't know when it was written. Here are the plot points that I remember:



  • the story starts with a human on contemporary Earth being turned to stone (or probably something much more exotic) by some sort of experiment gone wrong,

  • he is turned back to his original form millions of years later by a lightning or some similar phenomenon,

  • the local population considers him a god or a prophet since his "stone form" was a center of a cult before he was awaken,


  • the population is not human but consists of creatures evolved from various contemporary animals,

  • one of the most important locations is a huge tree which is so ridiculously big that it contains multiple settlements.



Answer



That's The Stone God Awakens by Philip Jose Farmer. The first review on the Amazon link I've given includes all of the elements that you mention.


Stone God Front Cover The Stone God back cover


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