The Tusks of Extinction

By Ray Nayler

Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novella

When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA.

Moscow has resurrected the mammoth. But someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out again.

Dr. Damira Khismatullina, an expert in elephant behavior, was brutally murdered trying to defend the world's last elephants from the brutal ivory trade. Now, her digitized consciousness has been downloaded into the mind of a mammoth.

As the herd's new matriarch, can Damira help fend off poachers long enough for the species to take hold? Or will her own ghosts, and Moscow's real reason for bringing the mammoth back, doom them to a new extinction?

A tense SF thriller from a new master of the genre.

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Published Jan 16, 2024

112 pages

Average rating: 7.46

13 RATINGS

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BOOK TALK

Community Reviews

Evan
Evan
10/10 stars
This is not a review so much as it is an observation. I read this more than a year ago, in March of 2024. It’s December 2025 and I still find myself thinking of this novella at least every month or so. I don’t feel like I understand the novella any better than I did when I read it, but the space it occupies in my brain is telling.
natalietriano
natalietriano
7/10 stars
The beginning was a little confusing and I had to re-read the blurb to get a sense of what was going on. Once I understood, I did enjoy it. It was a short read with a powerful message about extinction, conservation and poaching.
Anne Phillips
Anne Phillips
10/10 stars
I love everything by Ray Nayler.
Pferdina
Pferdina
8/10 stars
Short but very intense. Damira is a woman working to protect the last remaining elephants. She is also a de-extinct mammoth roaming the steppe.
Shahna
Shahna
6/10 stars
I was sent an audio arc.

I was drawn in by the cover but stayed for the story.
A bunch of people messing with science!
We have to stop trying to bring things back from the dead and focus on what is currently still alive.

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