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Mountain in the Sea
*WINNER OF 2023 LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL * FINALIST FOR THE NEBULA AWARD, and THE LOS ANGELES TIMES RAY BRADBURY PRIZE
"The Mountain in the Sea is a wildly original, gorgeously written, unputdownable gem of a novel. Ray Nayler is one of the most exciting new voices I've read in years."--Blake Crouch, author of Upgrade and Dark Matter
Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future. The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed off the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where a species of octopus has been discovered that may have developed its own language and culture. The marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them. She travels to the islands to join DIANIMA's team: a battle-scarred securityagent and the world's first (and possibly last) android. The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. As Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves. But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. Or what they might do about it. A near-future thriller, a meditation on the nature of consciousness, and an eco-logical call to arms, Ray Nayler's dazzling literary debut The Mountain in the Sea is a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind's legacy.
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Community Reviews
I wanted to like this book so much- the cover, the concept, everything sounded amazing to me! Unfortunately it was more lecture than novel and I found myself really having to force myself into picking it up sometimes to finish.
There was a whole storyline that I was just unsure the purpose of it, and a lot of it seemed mismatched and almost shoehorned in. When we got to explore with the octopus and AI I thoroughly enjoyed it, but there just wasn't enough of it for me.
There was a whole storyline that I was just unsure the purpose of it, and a lot of it seemed mismatched and almost shoehorned in. When we got to explore with the octopus and AI I thoroughly enjoyed it, but there just wasn't enough of it for me.
Keep reading! At halfway through it gets good. Very very good. Lots of perspectives to tell the story.Sci-fi, octopuses, sentience, futurist doomsday. A scientist goes to Island to study octopuses, the bigger picture is that the company that hired her is only wanting that to harvest brain material.
_The_Mountain_in_the Sea_ is a novel of ideas; it takes an original look at intelligence: human, artificial, and non-human; and postulates that intelligent beings who evolved in radically different environments, with different sensory organs, and different channels of communication would have trouble recognizing intelligence in each other.
The 'alien' species in this case is the terrestrial octopus: which knows only the oceans, lives only 3 years, does not protect its young--hence cannot pass down the experience of past generations. Naylor is a master of description and builds many suspenseful moments.
The narrative rotates among 3 groups of characters:
* A marine biologist who thinks octopuses are smart, and who lands a plum assignment to study them in the wild. She is aided by a sentient android and surly security guard with a military background.
* A Japanese programmer who gets kidnapped and enslaved on an AI-piloted fishing boat.
* A Russian hacker hired by a highly secretive organization to break into the most complex computer he has ever seen.
Their connectedness only emerges in the final pages in trademark Arthur Hailey style.
There are similarities to the clumsy first-contact attempts in Ted Chiang's "The Story of Your Life" and Mary Doria Russell's _The_Sparrow_, as well as Adrian Tchaikovsky's _Children_of_Ruin_, although the path to mutual understanding is not as well developed. And the pervasive us of drones reminded use of Tom Hillenbrand's _Drone_State_, again with less effective development.
All-in-all _The_Mountain_in_the_Sea_ found fertile ground for a great story, but fell a little short of delivering it.
Fascinating exploration of what it means to be human, wrapped in an environmental thriller. Each chapter is preceded by a 'quote' from a book written by one of the characters and the source of each quote sets up the location for the chapter. Lots of characters with lots of disparate backstories, including robots and mercenaries, scientists and hackers. Oh, and octopi! This really gave me something to think about all the way through.
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