The Mountain in the Sea: Winner of the Locus Best First Novel Award

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It also is a delight that, while asking difficult questions, the author offers some hope for humankind, and redemptive joy in the struggles involved in facing our environmental battles. Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist hired to study the octopuses; Rustem, an AI hacker, and Eiko; formerly an aspiring programmer, now a slave worker. Este libro es CF de la buena, si bien tiene una al principio estructura confusa, no molesta, te vas adaptando rápido al igual que el autor va moldeando una historia fascinante, original, muy trabajada y estudiada. This is all about the nature of consciousness, using both the octopus consciousness and the android Evrim as mirrors to our own humanity and what consciousness means there.

The brain dwells there alone, in a blackness as total as any cave’s, receiving only translations from outside, fed to it through its sensory apparatus. Empiezan a difundirse rumores sobre una especie de pulpos peligrosa y extraordinariamente inteligente que podría haber desarrollado un lenguaje y una cultura propios. For nearly half his life, he has lived and worked outside the United States in the Foreign Service and the Peace Corps, including a stint as Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer at the U. I was attracted to Ray Nayler’s impressive The Mountain in the Sea — which goes into trade paperback at the end of May 2023 — by the fact that the work had been blurbed by two science-fiction authors whose work I greatly appreciate and admire: Jeff VanderMeer and Charlie Jane Anders.Some characters can control insect-sized assassination drones, rather like the knife missiles in the novels of Iain M Banks. Aside from the book itself, I have neither gotten nor promised anything to Ray Nayler or the publisher.

Nonetheless, it is excellent science fiction—flawed not because it could have been done better but because all great science fiction is flawed. It was easier to pretend that Altantsetseg was an individual, that all of her choices were her own, than to admit that Altantsetseg was a part of them. While this sort of ‘first contact’ is used to examine philosophical concepts such as consciousness, the same themes are simultaneously put to the test through the human interactions with varying levels of technology: drones, AI, and Evrim. Ha and Evrim find themselves in a race against time to solve the mystery of these enigmatic creatures while corporate and nation-state entities, with their own agendas, attempt to breach the highly secured area.However, it is also not one without a sense of espionage, ensuring the book also works a bit as a thriller. I DID wonder how all those pieces were going to jigsaw together, but it was done flawlessly (even though, on audio, it took my sludgy brain a bit to keep up with the jogs). Might be a case of “it’s not you it’s me”, and to be fair the book isn’t THAT bad, but in this instance I’m judging it against its own lofty aspirations - I’ve given objectively worse books better ratings, but these books also didn’t try to tell as complex of a story as this one. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn’t pause long enough to look at the fine print.

Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, the Icelandic head of the corporation obsessed with freeing the human mind from its limitations.

This is a book that allows the reader to speculate and wonder what communication with other mammals might be like. Long after you've closed the final pages, this book will still have you wondering, still have you guessing. I sympathized with Ha Nguyen and her strong sense of responsibility for everything she is involved in.

Undertones of ecological morality and conservation, overfishing, and interesting political messaging all rounded out this intriguing plot, set in what I think is fairly near-future.Because I would visit her every time I went to the zoo - and this was often, because we lived within walking distance and purchased passe - she came to know my face (it's true what the book says that they remember faces). You must be prepared for some conversational info-dumping about the nature of language and symbolism as it relates to reaching out to animals who vastly differ from our species. His review, plus the concept reminding me of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Ruin, featuring a species of sentient, space-faring octopus sealed the deal for me. Kicks off from first contact with an intelligent octopus species and the exploration of its language and culture to a broader reflection on intelligence, consciousness, and self. What struck me about The Mountain in the Sea is how it speaks to the current zeitgeist moment where AI has exploded onto the scene.