The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel
*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
It's a story told from three POVs - Ha, the scientist who is devoted to discovering more about the octopus culture, Eiko, a slave on a corporate fishing vessel, and Rustem, a computing whiz (in our current terms) who has been hired for a specific task. The main story is Ha's, but Eiko's and Rustem's add to the environment that the main story is occurring during.
The story addresses so many of the topics that rumble around in my own brain. Maybe that means I'm a bit odd, but I've always been fascinated by these kinds of questions. Why do we think that communication with another species or alien life would be in a way that is framed in our context? Why do we look at tools only as things that are used by beings with hands and therefore dismiss any species not primate? (Okay, we've started to enlarge that now...) At what point does an android become a life form? Why do we try so hard to define consciousness in a way that means that humans are the only truly conscious beings? How can we stop looking at corporate profit as society's driving point? Isn't it time we stopped being so human-centric because it's sort of short-sighted as we destroy the environment in which we thrive?
I love the author's use of octopuses to enlarge our worldview. It's a perfect example of a being that is so different from us that it might as well be alien. I love the use of the rapidly changing environment as an event that could accelerate evolution in other beings.
To me, the story was compelling and the philosophical questions are worth spending some time pondering.
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