Ray Nayler, "The Mountain in the Sea" (MCD, 2022)

New Books in Science Fiction

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 security agent 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 (MCD, 2022) is a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.

As promised in the episode, below is the list of some of the philosophers that inspired Nayler while writing The Mountain in the Sea:

• Kaja Silverman
• Jesper Hoffmayer
• Eva Jablonka
• Terrence Deacon
• Carlo Rovelli

Frances Sacks is a graduate of Wesleyan University where she studied in the Science and Society Program.

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