#ray nayler

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #5 – The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

I read Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea last year and, despite thinking it was ultimately kind of a noble failure, liked it more than enough to give his new novella a try. It didn’t hurt that the premise as described in the marketing copy sounded incredible. I can’t quite say it was worth it, but that’s really only because this novella barely cost less than the 500-page doorstopper I picked up at the same time and I need to consider economies here – it absolutely lived up to the promise of its premise.

The book is set a century and change into the future, when a de-extinction initiative has gotten funding from the Russian government to resurrect the Siberian mammoth – or, at least, splice together a chimera that’s close-enough and birth it from african elephant surrogate mothers – to begin the process of restoring the prehistoric taiga as a carbon sink. The problem: there’s no one on earth left who knows how wild mammoth are supposed to, like, live- the only surviving elephants have been living in captivity for generations. Plop the ressurectees in the wilderness and they’ll just be very confused and anxious until they starve. The solution: the technology to capture a perfect image of a human mind is quite old, and due to winning some prestigious international award our protagonist – an obsessive partisan of elephant conservation – was basically forced to have her mind copied and put in storage a few months before she was killed by poachers.

So the solution of who will raise and socialize these newly created mammoths is ‘the 100-year-old ghost of an elephant expert, after having her consciousness reincarnated in a mammoth’s body to lead the first herd as the most mature matriarch’. It works better than you’d expect, really, but as it turns out she has some rather strong opinions about poachers, and isn’t necessarily very understanding when the solution found to keep the project funded involves letting some oligarch spend a small country’s GDP on the chance to shoot a bull and take some trophies.

So this is a novella, and a fairly short one – it’s densely packed with ideas but the length and the constraints of narrative mean that they’re more evoked or presented than carefully considered. This mostly jumps out at me with how the book approaches wildlife conservation – a theme that was also one of the overriding concerns of Mountain where it was considered at much greater length. I actually think the shorter length might have done Nayler a service here, if only because it let him focus things on one specific episode and finish things with a more equivocal and ambiguous ending than the saccharine deux ex machina he felt compelled to resort to in Mountain.

The protection of wildlife is pretty clearly something he’s deeply invested in – even if he didn’t outright say so in the acknowledgements, it just about sings out from the pages of both books. Specifically, he’s pretty despairing about it – both books to a great extent turn around how you convince the world at large to allow these animals to live undisturbed when all the economic incentives point the other way, a question he seems quite acutely aware he lacks a good answer to.

Like everyone else whose parents had Jurassic Park on VHS growing up, I’ve always found the science of de-extinction intensely fascinating – especially as it becomes more and more plausible every day. This book wouldn’t have drawn my eye to nearly the degree it did if I don’t remember the exact feature article I’d bet real money inspired it about a group of scientists trying to do, well, exactly the same thing as the de-extinctionists do in the book (digital resurrection aside). The book actually examines the project with an eye to practicalities and logistics – and moreover, portrays it as at base a fundamentally heroic, noble undertaking as opposed to yet another morality tale about scientific hubris. So even disregarding everything else it had pretty much already won me over just with that.

The book’s portrayal of the future and technology more generally is broader and less carefully considered, but it still rang truer than the vast majority of sci fi does – which is, I suppose, another way of saying that it’s a weathered and weather-beaten world with new and better toys, but one still very fundamentally recognizable as our own, without any great revolutions or apocalyptic ruptures in the interim. Mosquito's got CRISPR’d into nonexistence and elephants were poached into extinction outside of captivity, children play with cybernetically controlled drones and the president of the Russian Federation may or may not be a digital ghost incarnated into a series of purpose-grown clones, but for all that it’s still the same shitty old earth. It’s rather charming, really.

#book review #the tusks of extinction #ray nayler #sff #cli fi

[libraryspectre]

I've read some weird books in my time. However.

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#HEAR ME OUT #it may be good #it MAY be good #it WILL be weird. #EITHER WAY #it is a HUGE swing #a HUGE swing #also the name what does that even mean #the tusks of extinction #i guess #ray nayler

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Christmas Haul, 2023 Edition!

I am forever and always asking for books for Christmas, and this is what I was gifted this year! (If you think you see me stacking my TBR based on my own writing projects.....yeah okay you do lmao.)

#books #book haul #christmas #do i have a coherent tagging system for this?? #i feel like i ask myself this every damn year #and every damn year i cannot recallXD #never whistle at night #an indigenous dark fiction anthology #a taste for poison #neil bradbury #the girl in red #christina henry #the mountain in the sea #ray nayler #the only one NOT directly related to a writing project is the anthology actually #but even then i will be reading it as driscoll adjacent probably #for the Vibes #it's got a BUNCH of authors i already really like in it i'm so stoked!! #and i love finding new faves by way of anthology lmao #perfect samplers

[paradises-library]

'What is exactly is the point,' a stream interviewer once asked Minervudottir-Chan, 'of an android? Why go to such trouble to make them so human, when making humans is almost free?'

Minervudottir-Chan had answered, 'The great and terrible thing about humankind is simply this: we will always do what we are capable of.'

-The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler

#the mountain in the sea #ray nayler #quotes

[illustration-alcove]

Ray Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea, with an illustrated cover by María Jesús Contreras.

#María Jesús Contreras #ray nayler #the mountain and the sea #book covers #american literature

[thebestbookrecommendations]

Book Recommendation:

The Mountain in the Sea - Ray Nayler

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy

Keywords: Ocean Exploration, Near-Future, First-Contact, AI Character

Length: Medium

Rating: 4/5

Find on Goodreads:

Find on StoryGraph:

#book recommendations #books #authors #what to read next #what to read #booklr #booktok #the mountain in the sea #ray nayler #science fiction #fantasy #ocean exploration #near future #first contact #ai #ai character #android #StoryGraph #Goodreads

[saltyseas121]

have you read the mountain in the sea by ray nayler

That is such a coincidence because I literally just got this book! I've only read a few pages and I don't get any of it so far💀

I'm going to try read it again because it looks like a really good book. It's pretty odd but in a good way♡

#ocean #sea #Mountain by the sea #ray nayler #Book

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Mountain in the Sea | Author: Ray Nayler | Publisher: MCD (2022)

#books #The Mountain in the Sea #Ray Nayler

[samkuchingdraws]

A scene inspired by the short story 'The Job at the End of the World' by Ray Nayler (you can read it here). Came across the story a while back on tor.com but only recently got some time to read it. Let's just say it felt a little too real reading it and it planted pretty vivid images in my head.

#ray nayler #the job at the end of the world #fanart #digital art #digital painting #fan art #apocalyptic #landscape painting #artblr #artist on tumblr

[blogapart3bis]

« Protectorats », de Ray Nayler

Aujourd'hui sur Blog à part – « Protectorats », de Ray Nayler Une technologie extraterrestre propulse la Terre alternative des Protectorats, titre de ce recueil de nouvelles de Ray Nayler, vers un avenir très étrange. #ScienceFiction #Nouvelles

Dans la Terre alternative des Protectorats, titre de ce recueil de nouvelles de Ray Nayler, les USA ont récupéré une technologie extraterrestre qui leur assure une quasi-hégémonie. Et qui propulse le monde vers un avenir très étrange. Protectorats n’est pas un roman. C’est un assemblage de quatorze nouvelles qui semblent toutes se dérouler dans le même univers, mais à différents points de son…

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#nouvelle #Planète SF #Ray Nayler #science-fiction #transhumanisme

[literary-illuminati]

have you read the mountain in the sea? seems up your alley and it’s very good. essentially a first contact story but entirely on earth, with a species of octopus that appears to have gained sapience and language.

Have literally never heard of it, but that sounds fascinating. And my library has a copy, so hold put in. Thanks for the rec!

#meta #the mountain in the sea #ray nayler

[gollancz]

Gollancz in the 2023 Locus Awards!

Locus magazine announced the finalists for their 2023 awards earlier this week, and we are GIDDY to see some of our books in such distinguished company!

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

The Red Scholar's Wake, Aliette de Bodard

Achingly romantic, beautifully imagined, this space opera with a sapphic love story at the centre involves pirates, sentient space ships, and is heavily influenced by Chinese and Vietnamese culture.

Eversion, Alastair Reynolds

Clever, complex, and twisty, this phenomenal book is cinematic in scope, examining selfhood, agency and identity into an adventure story that wraps around itself to pull you along into something special.

BEST FIRST NOVEL

The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler (published by our buddy imprint W&N)

Described as 'David Mitchell meets Arrival', this literary wonder explores the dangers, and necessities, of communicating with a new species - you might not like what they have to say, but can you risk not finding out? (you are also Not Prepared for how neon this bad boy is in real life good lord)

BEST PUBLISHER

Gollancz

We're always excited to be nominated for awards! Particularly now as we ramp up to our 100th anniversary and are putting together big plans over the next few years to celebrate! We love what we do, and love working with readers and authors to do it well.

BEST ARTIST

Charles Vess

Charles is a phenomenal artist, and it's great he's getting this recognition. If you've seen our stunning Ursula K. Le Guin illustrated hardbacks, that's Charles' work.

We're also delighted to see some of our authors nominated in other categories too, including Wole Talabi for Best Novelette ("A Dream of Electric Mothers") and the BSFA award-winning "Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances" by Aliette de Bodard for Best Novel.

Congratulations to everyone who is nominated, can't wait to see the winners!

#Locus Awards #SFF Awards #Gollancz #Aliette de Bodard #Alastair Reynolds #Ray Nayler #Wole Talabi #Charles Vess #Booklr

[banalhorrors]

Making memes to cope with imagining a book would be way sillier than it actually is

#the mountain in the sea #ray nayler #I’m halfway through the book and my thoughts are. hm I see what you’re doing and it is getting good but I’m not blown away

[blackscarabfilmz]

Reading "The Mountain in the Sea" cause it was the sole sci-fi Nebula nominee, the others were either fantasy or science fantasy, and I like to support sci-fi when its up for awards and it's pretty incredible so far.

Not to spoil it too much but it features an android character, and as a Star Trek fan, the quote nails down exactly how I think the fear/horror of synthetic life should be, as opposed to how it's always portrayed in media. It's not that AI or robots will take over.

“And because of that, the smile was like the shadow of your own death. Evrim’s existence implicated yours. It implied you, too, were nothing more than a machine—a swarm of preprogrammed impulses iterating endlessly. If Evrim was a conscious thing, and made, then maybe you were made as well. A construct made of different materials. A skeleton walking around, sheathed in meat, fooled into thinking it has free will. A thing that had occurred by accident. Or a thing made on a whim, to see if it could be done.”

― Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea

It's that if we can create a perfect human-like android... who's to say what a human is? What if we aren't real? What is it to be real? That's where the horror is. That's what we *should* be afraid of. Not death by robot uprising, the death of being.

#robots #ai #android #robot #synthetic life #ray nayler #the mountain in the sea #profound #quote

[morgan--reads]

The Mountain in the Sea - Ray Nayler

Summary: On an isolated island under control of an AI corporation, a marine biologist, the world’s only android, and a veteran attempt to communicate with a newly discovered octopus civilization. 

Quote: “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. That contact with another mind will puncture our species’ self-satisfied feeling of worth. We will have to confront, finally, what we truly are, and the damage we have done to our home. But that confrontation, perhaps, is the only thing that will save us.”

My rating: 4.5/5.0  Goodreads: 3.98/5.0

Review: The plot reminded me a bit of Arrival (2016). Ha, the scientist, and Evrim, the android, are attempting to puzzle out the language that the octopuses use in order to communicate with them. It’s an interesting near future concept on its own, but Nayler uses those bones to explore themes of loneliness and what it means to be human. They’re not original themes to sci-fi, but they’re done really well here. Every plot line is beautifully paced and they all come together to form a sense of hope for a better, more connected future.

#the mountain in the sea #ray nayler #book review #book recommendation #science fiction

[oneshortdamnfuse]

Quote from The Mountain In the Sea by Ray Nayler

#as soon as i saw jeff vandermeer review it #i had to have it #quotes #the mountain in the sea #ray nayler