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*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.
From the Publisher
Praise for The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel by Ray Nayler
ASIN : B09NTKMJ1K
Publisher : MCD (October 4, 2022)
Publication date : October 4, 2022
Language : English
File size : 5556 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
Print length : 420 pages
4.5
Reviewer: Matt Bille
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Original, brilliant, profound novel of first contact – on Earth
Review: Nayler, an author of acclaimed short fiction, delivers a first novel thatâs original, superbly written, and profound, showing extensive research and a fearless approach to the largest of themes â consciousness, sentience, and life.Weâre in a world set just far enough in the future for the creation of Evrim, the worldâs first and only sentient android (such creations were immediately outlawed). The world has been reshaped by wars but remains functional, with greater roles for international authorities (governmental and corporate) plus a powerful cyber empire based in Tibet. Transport is largely AI-driven, and advanced drones and other gadgets are ubiquitous. Nayler chillingly depicts life on an AI-driven fishing vessel where the crew are slaves, never setting foot ashore and unable to communicate. On one such ship, fisherman Eiko learns from his Vietnamese friend Son the legend of a shapeshifting sea monster at the Con Dao Archipelago. This is where Dr. Ha Nyguen has just been hired to investigate what may be a sentient octopus species. Nayler works through the factors that have kept octopuses from having a civilization: short lives, no parent-child bond, and lack of symbolic communication. The author repeatedly and effectively shows how hard it may be for humans to understand the thinking of any alien species, as theory after theory goes bust.With Ha on the remote atoll are only Evrim and Altantseteg, the enigmatic guard who commands an array of automated defenses. Also in the cast are Haâs long distance friend Kamran, the cybergenius Rustem, the DIANIMA corporationâs scientist Arnkatia Minervudotter-Chan, and a mysterious woman hidden by an AI facemask who ruthlessly manipulates people for DIANIMAâs benefit. Nayler introduces the âpoint five,â an AI companion sophisticated enough to have discussions, arguments, and pass almost any Turing test, and weâre not always sure who is actually human. One of Naylerâs fascinating explorations concerns what tips the scale to sentience: why Evrim is an autonomous intelligent being and other constructs, cyber or physical, are not.The octopuses are not what youâd expect. They are trying to understand us, as Ha and Evrim try to understand them. There are echoes here of other interesting works: Star Trek TNG (although the gap between android and human is greater than Data showed us), Alien, and the film A Cold Nightâs Death are a few. The various stories collide, literally, at a point where we find out whatâs really happening on the island, whoâs in charge, and key charactersâ real motivations, all of which come as revelations.This isnât a novel you can read casually. Naylerâs prose is inventive and highly effective without ever becoming flowery. Every paragraph is there for a reason, and the reader needs to pay attention. The technical and philosophical details are well thought out and often provocative. Excerpts from the books of Drs. Nyguen and Minervudotter-Chan give essential insights into the charactersâ thinking as well as their world. The result is a masterpiece of suspenseful and thoughtful storytelling.My last thought is that Nayler needs to keep tight control when this book is optioned for a film. A studioâs first instinct will be to make it a monster movie, which is like making Moby Dick an Ahab-vs-whale contest while ignoring the many layers that make the tale profound and unique. I wish him luck.
Reviewer: Sheherazahde
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: More exposition than plot. But itâs interesting.
Review: I prefer to read a synopsis before I read the book but I couldnât find any. This book didnât have a Wikipedia page when I looked. So I had to read the end to find out what happens. I have not read the middle. But from what I can tell of the end, not much happens. Itâs mostly long discussions about problems related to language and culture. Nayler answered a couple of my questions about octopus intelligence. They are very intelligent but not social, they have very short lives, and they die before they can teach their young anything. But they can edit their own RNA so they could evolve very quickly if they needed to.The main protagonist is Dr Ha Nguyen. She is a research scientist specializing in cephalopods. She wants to discover a cephalopod language. She is hired by DIANIMA corporation to come to the Con Dao archipelago to investigate possible octopus intelligence.She meets the security specialist Altantsetseg. A terse war veteran.The Team Leader is Evrim the worldâs first and only conscious AI android. So, a different kind of alien intelligence.The head of the research project is Dr. Arnkatla Minervudottir-Chan.The Con Dao Archipelago is also inhabited by robot monks from the Tibetan Buddhist Republic.The other main POV character is Eiko a Japanese computer programmer who was Shanghaied into being a slave on a robotic fishing boat. The boat is called the Sea Wolf. The AI computer is called Captain Wolf Larsen in reference to the novel Sea Wolf. The novel is about an effete young man who is enslaved on a fishing boat. So that is that plot line.Most of Naylerâs research seems to be in philosophy of language and biosemiotics. Which explains why he doesnât have the data on actual human linguistics. On p61 Ha asserts that if we communicated with a mix of mediums we would have had a much harder time transcribing it to writing and it would be much harder to understand. But we do communicate with a mixture of media, and we pick it up very easily as children. So easily we donât even realize we are doing it. Writing does not capture the complexity of real in person human communication. A lot of meaning and complexity is lost in translation from speech to writing.
Reviewer: William S. Morris
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: And Thanks for all the fish
Review: The start is a little dry. It takes a few pages to see where the story is going. One is initially introduced to various characters that each play a part in this story. Eventually it is brought out that the author is showing various aspects of communication, and the failings. The core story is an investigation into a group of octopuses that have lived long enough to form a society. They have developed compound tools, and a complex mode of speaking with each other. We are trying to figure out how to communicate with them, but we have a problem that we’re destroying their ecosphere. They don’t trust us. They’re entire life involves surviving since they are tasty, have no armor, and no natural weapons. Involved in this investigation is an android who has his own communication problems. There are also outsiders that are trying to hack in and possibly weaponize the investigation. The author does an excellent job of bringing out the various problems involved. This is one of the deepest science fiction books I’ve read in a very long time. After reading this book, one will have an increased awareness of one’s place in the universe. My only complaint is that the author kept referring to the Android with the plural version of the neutral pronouns. To me, this was disruptive. This is a good book, and I hope everyone takes its lessons to heart.
Reviewer: Riley
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Awesome book for the scientists in your life
Review: Bought this for my partner who is studying to be a marine biologist, and they loved it. They said it was so detailed and used words that they didn’t even know yet which made them excited, as they felt challenged. They really enjoyed it and read it in like a week.
Reviewer: michaelj
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: compelling but weak ending
Review: Started out great with several interesting threads⦠just didnât have the best follow through. Interesting concepts and I liked the structure with the quotes starting each chapter.
Reviewer: Offer Kuban
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I’m sad to say that I won’t get the chance to experience this remarkable novel for the *first* time again!From the first page until its very last one, this amazing near-future SF debut captured my attention and held it through every beat! This is an impressive work of writing, with compelling and thought-provoking questions and exploration of so many things: the meaning of humanity, the intersection of sentience and consciousness, the possibility of meaningful and supportive interaction between two species of life entirely alien to one another. The list goes on!Ray Nayler’s “The Mountain in the Sea” has such a strong narrative pulse, and a cast of characters with a life and story of their own, each of whom spoke with their own unique and natural voices. The book, in asking and imagining these deep and complex questions, paints these against an exciting, almost cinematic backdrop. It is a story filled with intrigue, scientific achievement, the wonders of nature amid or in spite of corporate greed, and the balance between merely surviving and thriving onwards.I can’t say enough good things about this novel, which I thoroughly enjoyed from the perspective of both a reader captivated by a great story, as well as by a fledgling writer taking inspiration from what is certainly great craft here.(Spoiler: Look for more about “The Mountain in the Sea” in discussion with its fabulous author, Ray Nayler, in the podcast called The Speakeasy: Conversations with the Writing Community.Oh, if anyone asks, you didn’t hear that from me. Cheers!)
Reviewer: Linda Russell Archer
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This environmental and AI thriller is difficult to put down but also as the author challenges the reader to attempt to think from outside of one’s own embodied reality, one finds oneself pausing to reflect.
Reviewer: Cathy H
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The near future. Dr. Ha Nguyen travels to a Vietnamese archipelago to investigate a potentially sentient and dangerous species of octopi. Language, communication, evolution, culture, exploitation of natural resources, corporate interests, Tibetan monks, assassinations, a lot of things have been packed into this novel. SF with big ideas.I liked The Tusks of Extinction and a book with octopi was too tempting not to read this. I liked this a lot as well. Probably one of the best books I have read this year. Again something slow-to-medium paced with more than one storyline and POVs. The slower speed was needed to understand it all. The language is pretty beautiful and meaningful, but not verbose.More octopi and more exploration of language and communication would have been great. I liked the authorâs illustrations, they turned this into a logic puzzle that I only managed to scratch at. Then there was the discussion about what constitutes consciousness and about memory and how it shapes us. Fascinating as well to think about language and communication of other species that have a totally different frame of reference and senses. What could that look like? Something else I would have loved to delve into more deeply.I really liked the three main characters Ha, Evrim and Altantsetseg. She was a special joy to read. Complex characters, as well as an overall complex story. I kept wondering if the author was trying to lead us down false paths with his several storylines.This was really good. But itâs probably one of those books that people either love or hate. I will read more by the author.
Reviewer: Oscar
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Uno de los mejores libros de ciencia ficción.Te reta a pensar cómo serÃa una sociedad inteligente y nuestra relación con ella.
Reviewer: Sunil
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A wonderful premise, but the story is dull and weirdly structured. By the time something finally started to click, the book was 70% over. It’s a book about contact with octopuses who have evolved culture, and yet by the end of the book we know not much more about them? Criminal. The author said he wanted to be realistic about how such a contact would be, but that does not make for a riveting book when set over just a few weeks(?). Add to that conscious-android cliche. The only story thread I really liked was a subplot involving a human slave ship which is run by AI.
