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A review by mairispaceship
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
5.0
A sci-fi story loosely based on Peter Godfrey-Smith's "Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Evolution of Intelligent Life". Which by the way is one of my all time favourite non-fiction books ever. When I say "loosely based" I really mean strongly based. Other Minds asks the question of intelligent cephalopod life from a scientific point of view, and The Mountain in the Sea takes that idea and runs- no, sprints with it.
In The Mountain and the Sea, an intelligent species of octopus is discovered capable of tool making and language (both spoken and written). It is, as the characters say, not in its stone age but in its "seashell age". But the corporation in charge of the particular patch of seas may not have the octopuses' best interests at heart...
It's a story that challenges the reader to think about a lot of things. There are intelligent AIs indistinguishable from humans, and autonomous fishing ships that take humans as slaves because they're cheaper than robots. The world's nation-states aren't the ones we know today, and in most cases a select few corporations hold all the power anyway. The book asks us to think about sentience, human history, identity and evolution in a unique and refreshing way.
Honestly, I couldn't put this down. It's maybe not the best in the genre I've ever read, but it ticked so many of my personal boxes of "I like books about this specific thing" , I couldn't not love it.
In The Mountain and the Sea, an intelligent species of octopus is discovered capable of tool making and language (both spoken and written). It is, as the characters say, not in its stone age but in its "seashell age". But the corporation in charge of the particular patch of seas may not have the octopuses' best interests at heart...
It's a story that challenges the reader to think about a lot of things. There are intelligent AIs indistinguishable from humans, and autonomous fishing ships that take humans as slaves because they're cheaper than robots. The world's nation-states aren't the ones we know today, and in most cases a select few corporations hold all the power anyway. The book asks us to think about sentience, human history, identity and evolution in a unique and refreshing way.
Honestly, I couldn't put this down. It's maybe not the best in the genre I've ever read, but it ticked so many of my personal boxes of "I like books about this specific thing" , I couldn't not love it.