The Mountain in the Sea

[psocoptera]

The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler, 2022 novel. Near-future SF about a scientist trying to investigate the possibility of an intelligent octopus population, and a young man trapped on an AI-piloted factory fishing ship. An extremely thinky book about consciousness and responsibility and the desire to understand or connect with The Other. I really liked it, but I thought it had some first-novel problems, sometimes repetitious and ponderous. I guess it's 464 pages (per Goodreads) and thus really could not plausibly have been cut down to a brilliant novella, but I did find myself occasionally *thinking* "gosh this could have been a brilliant novella", by which I probably actually meant that it should have been a 350 page book. Recommended if you like Greg Egan or Sue Burke's Semiosis. It's up for the Nebula but I think people who liked it will probably have liked Babel even more.