Score another win for the impulse grab: Ray Nayler was an unknown quantity for me, but The Mountain in the Sea (2022) — a robust, immersive SF novel about first contact between humans and intelligent life under the sea — fell into my cart a while back. I finally gave it a whirl and I can’t believe I waited so long.
Off the coast of Vietnam, a powerful tech company called DIANIMA has purchased and sealed off an archipelago for scientific research. The study involves a newly discovered species of octopus that appears to have much greater-than-average intelligence. A marine biologist named Dr. Ha Nguyen travels to the isolated base to join its tiny, remarkable crew: Evrim, the world’s only android, and Altantsetseg, the wickedly talented security operative whose ability to interface with and control drones and defense technology keeps the site protected. Together they study the fascinating underwater habitat that the animals inhabit, an investigation that grows all the more intriguing when the octopi show signs of trying to communicate through symbols and language. But the group’s time may be limited, as the forces of the wider world are anxious to learn the area’s secrets, and harness them for human exploitation.
The Mountain in the Sea is a stunning book, situating the reader in an unforgiving near future that all too closely resembles our increasingly dystopian present. But the archipelago at the heart of the story possesses a certain beauty, serene in its geographic remoteness and unnerving in its puzzling scientific mystery. Nayler’s core trio has a strange, cerebral throuple energy, working and speculating together as new observations and evidence fuel their research. But their thought-provoking interactions are supplemented by dark, intriguing jaunts to the wider world. One involves an AI-controlled fishing vessel that enslaves and abuses its crew; the other, a brilliant Russian hacker swept into a nebulous operation. These mysterious subplots inject a creeping sense of menace that shrewdly informs and energizes the main story, which accelerates during an intense final act. Nayler writes with an enviable blend of accessibility and literary flare, conjuring an exotic, futuristic world that reminded me at times of the work of Lucius Shepard, an author who similarly, brilliantly brought an expansive worldview to his settings. The immersive prose makes each moment captivating, but underlying it all is a subtle thematic strategy, smartly critiquing the tragic pitfalls of human technological ambition and its catastrophic effects. Overall, just a sensational piece of work.
