The quotes at the beginning of the chapters (which come from the main character's book) were profound and were a big takeaway for me.

Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. As Ha and her fellow investigators work towards understanding the octopuses, they become fearful for the small population as DIANIMA and the world discover their existence. Uno de nuestros protagonistas, Ha, investiga a los pulpos de Con Dao, se vuelve rápidamente obvio que ya pueden comunicarse, que tienen un lenguaje simbólico junto un uso primitivo pero ya desarrollado de herramientas y una cultura que incluye el cuidado de jóvenes y ancianos.He works in the marine biology field for NOAA, so he has a good background for thinking about nonhuman minds.

I sympathized with Ha Nguyen and her strong sense of responsibility for everything she is involved in. And therein lies both the strength and weakness of this novel – this sort of intellectual food-for-thought is compelling enough for some of us (raises hand), but while stuff does happen, nobody would describe this as plot-driven storytelling. On the surface, it's a hard-science thriller set in a reshaped geopolitical environment, where humankind's aggressive harvesting of the oceans for protein may have put evolutionary pressure on octopuses to develop a civilization of comparable intelligence as ours. Especially because none of this is needed to make the actual story work, all it did was make me cringe to hell and back. Lo cierto es que DIANIMA está detrás de investigar el comportamiento de los pulpos en el archipiélago, pues hay evidencias de que han alcanzado un nivel superior de consciencia y una inteligencia que les hace capaces de organizarse, comunicarse, planificarse, defenderse o atacar.Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.

While this sort of ‘first contact’ is used to examine philosophical concepts such as consciousness, the same themes are simultaneously put to the test through the human interactions with varying levels of technology: drones, AI, and Evrim. Evrim, the AI, got his/her/its name from Turkish and it means evolution as it was revealed in the book later. My only minor gripe is the parts with action were not as engaging as I would have liked, but that could have just been me. At one trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I stopped by the giant pacific octopus tank while I was wearing a hat, and it unfurled itself over to check out my funny-shaped head. It packs in the discussion of many modern and relevant issues such as AI, human treatment of animals and other humans, communication, and the nature of consciousness, and while there is little new or deep in those discussions, they do stimulate.I do not want to give too much away, suffice to say it is a First Contact novel … that takes place on earth. As the novel’s version of Dr Frankenstein says: “The great and terrible thing about humankind is simply this: we will always do what we are capable of. How starkly the author speaks to us, through a mirror darkly - fictional words attributed to a fictional character, folded inside a fictional story. This is a work of genius and of a mind that has thought long and hard about things related to speech and inter-species exchange. Hatchling sea turtles are helped from beach to water by a tribe of robotic Automonks from Tibet, now a hi-tech power.

It has the clothes of a futuristic eco-punk or cyberpunk thriller, the guts of a philosophy seminar and the soul of a religious tract. The Mountain in the Sea is a novel that is about a lot of things: what it is like to be human, the malleability of memories, and the possibility that humans may be able to someday communicate well with other species unrelated to our own. Most of the Sci-Fi books I read limits the human interactions either only with higher intellects or only with lower intellects. I prefer my SF to be “lighter” or more magic realists — with the science part of the science fiction being unexplained — and there are some “hard” ideas scattered throughout the book. Ha and Evrim find themselves in a race against time to solve the mystery of these enigmatic creatures while corporate and nation-state entities, with their own agendas, attempt to breach the highly secured area.Long after you've closed the final pages, this book will still have you wondering, still have you guessing.