The Mountain in the Sea: Winner of the Locus Best First Novel Award

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Make all your characters vehicles for plot, synopses of aforementioned octopus facts, or philosophizing about sentience and semiotics. I don’t usually use this setting.” The oscillations of the abglanz flattened the woman’s inflection. “The faces are uncanny. Most people prefer the blur.” I’ve been fascinated by octopuses (yes, that is the correct plural form, feel free to @ me) ever since doing a report on them in a grad school level course I audited a number of years ago. I really wanted to love The Mountain in the Sea. I'm sad to report that I didn't even really like it.

La doctora Nguyen viaja a las islas para unirse al equipo de investigación formado por una agente de seguridad llena de cicatrices de guerra y el primer androide de la historia. THE DRONE HEXCOPTER’S LANDING LIGHTS, their beams filled with windblown rain, panned over the ocean chop. They cut through a span of mangroves and flooded the airport tarmac. Son estos nuevos pulpos responsables de sus desapariciones? Los estudian, los analizan e intentan ver cuánto han evolucionado y si han creado una civilización.. But the book isn’t simply a mashup of other SF situations: it is also a novel of ideas – and with so much information, the reader can forgive the few times a character takes a deep breath and delivers a massive exposition-dump. A cleverer way to handle the freight of philosophical speculation about the nature of consciousness – both human and other – is the way that each chapter is prefaced by book extracts, such as one on potential marine intelligence supposedly written by Nguyen herself, entitled How Oceans Think: Así pues, mientras la doctora Nguyen intenta comunicarse con la especie recién descubierta, entra en escena una facción más importante que Dianima para apoderarse de los pulpos. Sin embargo, nadie les ha preguntado a estas criaturas marinas qué opinan. Ni qué piensan hacer al respecto..

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These external forms of solitary confinement parallel the problems that our researchers obsess over: How do we ever *know* someone else's internal experience sufficiently to assess whether they're "alive" and "self-aware," let alone communicate with them? The growth arc of the characters leads to the conclusion that the colonialist quest for knowledge-as-control must yield to empathy across the mysterious divide of self from other. In the daylight the deserted town would be composed of scabrous, peeling pastel tones. Ficus trees, their trunks painted a fading white, lined streets scattered with vegetal debris—leaves, fallen branches, seedpods, and fruit. Listen. I was nervous to start this because sci-fi isn't usually my thing, but I am incredibly glad to have been wrong here. The prose was completely immersive and approachable despite the philosophical, scientific and existential questions of the plot, and the story was fascinating, a blend of exciting genres like sci-fi, mystery, and political intrigue. Los lugareños cuentan historias de buzos y de personas desaparecidas. Otros asesinados de maneras violentas.. También hay algunos paralelismos fascinantes con aspectos como la forma en que el operador de drones, Altantsetseg, un curioso personaje usa su flota de drones, pasando por la forma en que la corporación opera en comparación con la propia inteligencia del pulpo.

Nayler’s sci-fi debut, The Mountain in the Sea, is about the discovery of intelligent life. It’s multi-layered: plot, action, and mystery intertwine with philosophy and a detailed look at believable interspecies communication. The last point is crucial: Nayler tries (and succeeds) to explain the linguistic mechanism of a being that’s alien (to us). In a way, it’s the first encounter story between humans, androids, and octopuses. I loved this novel’s brain and heart, its hidden traps, sheer propulsion, ingenious world-building, and purity of commitment to luminous ideas.” También queda claro que conocen muy bien a los humanos, tienen opiniones muy firmes sobre ellos. Vamos, lo que nos hemos buscado. The hexcopter swung into final descent. It twisted and settled with a lurch, indifferent to human comfort but efficient. The rotors cut off. The doors winged open.

Author Ray Nayler takes the latest research and findings on all things octopus and presents us with a seemingly true tale. Scientist Ha has always felt a special kinship with octopus. Joined by an AI named Evrim on a sanctuary island, the two are tasked with studying the resident octopus colony. Locals tell stories of missing divers and beachcombers. There is no silence in the living nervous system. An electrical symphony of communication streams through our neurons every moment we exist. We are built for communication. As a girl, she is heartbroken when the boy she is obsessed with does not even really register her existence, has no concept that she is her own person with thoughts and feelings; a classic case of cognitive empathy failure on his part, though a common enough experience: This was like a very long introduction to a potentially further thriller. Not that was bad, but with that kind of sysnopsis, the reader has expectations which will not be fulfilled. En la isla se lleva a cabo una investigación secreta, a cargo de la Doctora Ha (bióloga especialista en cefalópodos), Altantsetseg (especialista en sistemas) y Evrim (un androide que es el mayor éxito de la empresa, un hito en tecnología, cuasi humano y cuya creación ha generado mucha polémica a nivel mundial).