FINALIST FOR THE NEBULA AWARD AND THE LOS ANGELES TIMES RAY BRADBURY
PRIZE
**
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.
