I think what we fear most about finding a mind equal to our own, but of another species, is that they will truly see us — and find us lacking, and turn away from us in disgust. [p. 429]
Described on Amazon as a thriller, this is excellent SF: it's just won the Locus Best First Novel Award and has been shortlisted for the Nebula and for the Ray Bradbury Prize. It's a philosophical investigation into the nature of consciousness, a first-contact novel, a story about connections -- and yes, it is also a thriller. Three protagonists share the narrative. Foremost is Dr Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist who's fascinated by the concept of intelligence in octopuses. She arrives on an island in the Vietnamese Côn Đảo archipelago, where she is met by two unusual companions and informed that she cannot leave. The second narrator is hotshot hacker Rustem, who's been contracted by a woman in a identity-disguising digital mask to break into an extremely complex neural network. And the third is Eiko, a young Japanese man who is abducted from a brothel and forced to work on an AI fishing vessel, whimsically named the 'Sea Wolf'.
The primary focus is on Ha Nguyen, with her two companions: Altantsetseg, a Mongolian war veteran who provides security for the island, navigates a fleet of drones with her whole body, and prefers to use a malfunctioning translation device so that she doesn't have to talk to anyone; and Evrim, they/them, the world's only conscious android, whose existence has sparked a host of laws forbidding the creation of more androids. Together, they are investigating the rumours of a 'sea monster' which has been responsible for a number of deaths on the island. Ha is also negotiating her interactions with Evrim and Altantsetseg, neither of whom are straightforward characters. Oh, and there are automonks roaming the island, helping hatchling turtles find the sea, able to engage in conversation: each contains 'a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk'. They are not conscious or alive in any real sense, but they have agency.
The three protagonists are all connected to a powerful, shadowy corporation called DIANIMA, run by Dr. Arnkatla Minervudóttir-Chan: excerpts from her book Building Minds, about human brains and artificial intelligence, alternate with passages from Dr Nguyen's How Oceans Think as chapter headings. The DIANIMA corporation owns the island; it was where Eiko was due to start work before he became a slave; it created Evrim. And it has its own agenda regarding the possibility of intelligent, non-human life.
And at the heart of the novel, octopuses. Ha Nguyen's book posits the question: "The octopus is the “tribeless, lawless, hearthless one,” denounced by Homer. This solitude, along with her tragically short life span, presents an insurmountable barrier to the octopus’s emergence into culture. But this book asks the question: What if? What if a species of octopus emerged that attained longevity, intergenerational exchange, sociality?" [loc. 585] The Mountain in the Sea explores this, and the philosophical and practical issues of communicating with such a species. It's a very readable work, even when Ha and Evrim get into long discussions about the nature of consciousness and the biology of the octopus (distributed rather than centralised -- like a corporation, perhaps, or a neural network). The characterisation is vivid, the sense of otherness (from Evrim as well as the octopuses) is strong, and the lightly-sketched future seems credible. I liked it immensely, and shall be recommending it to all.
Incidentally, Dive magazine called it a 'tour de force': how many SF novels can quote that on the cover?
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