2023/151: Venomous Lumpsucker — Ned Beauman

2023/151: Venomous Lumpsucker — Ned Beauman

The diversity of life on earth was (as far as anyone knew) the most majestic thing in the universe, and human beings were (as far as anyone knew) the only living things with the capacity to appreciate that majesty, and yet human beings were also the ones who were stamping that majesty out, not deliberately but carelessly, incidentally, leaving nothing behind but a few scans and samples that nobody would ever look at. [p. 119]

Hilarious, mournful and eminently quotable, Venomous Lumpsucker is a technothriller with strong ecological and climate-crisis themes, focussing initially on the plight of the (fictional) eponymous fish -- possibly the most intelligent fish on earth, assuming its last remaining breeding ground in the Baltic hasn't been destroyed by a misdirected mining operation.

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