The Mountain in the Sea
First contact happens on Earth, with an octopus, and nobody is equipped for the conversation.
An octopus population off the Vietnamese coast turns out to be using symbols, and a marine biologist is sent to an island the corporation has emptied of people in order to find out what they are saying. Nayler runs that alongside an AI monk and a slave-crewed fishing trawler, and the three strands ask the same question: what do we owe a mind we did not make and cannot quite reach.
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Adrian Tchaikovsky
This is interesting. Again, we start with: what is the point of the book? And the point of The Mountain in the Sea is that someone discovers a fully sapient octopus civilization. That aspect is not in any way dystopian. And there is also AI, which is a proper AI.
Interview · August 2026
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