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Venomous Lumpsucker
A dark and witty story of environmental collapse and runaway capitalism from the Booker-listed author of The Teleportation Accident.
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it’s all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we’re never getting them back.
Karin Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with one species in particular: the venomous lumpsucker, a small, ugly bottom-feeder that happens to be the most intelligent fish on the planet. Resaint is an animal cognition scientist consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature. Halyard is an exec from the extinction industry, complicit in the mining operation that destroyed the lumpsucker’s last-known habitat.
Across the dystopian landscapes of the 2030s—a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the ocean; the hinterlands of a totalitarian state—Resaint and Halyard hunt for a surviving lumpsucker. And the further they go, the deeper they’re drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was really behind it? And why would anyone do such a thing?
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it’s all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we’re never getting them back.
Karin Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with one species in particular: the venomous lumpsucker, a small, ugly bottom-feeder that happens to be the most intelligent fish on the planet. Resaint is an animal cognition scientist consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature. Halyard is an exec from the extinction industry, complicit in the mining operation that destroyed the lumpsucker’s last-known habitat.
Across the dystopian landscapes of the 2030s—a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the ocean; the hinterlands of a totalitarian state—Resaint and Halyard hunt for a surviving lumpsucker. And the further they go, the deeper they’re drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was really behind it? And why would anyone do such a thing?
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 12, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 774 reviews
July 6, 2022
well there goes my memoir title
July 20, 2022
A novel full of interesting ideas all of which were explained in far more detail than I required. It didn't wow me. The narrator hovers above the characters and sprays witticisms in their direction and it is not my favorite prose style. The amount of back story is weighty, and mostly unnecessary. The story reads like Terry Pratchett without the heart, and without the heart what is the point?
August 17, 2023
Now winner of the 2023 Arthur C Clarke Award for best science fiction novel - a prestigious award with past winners including China Miéville (three times), Neal Stephenson, Margaret Atwood, Emily St John Mandel and Coldon Whitehead.
This is the first book I have read by the author - as excellent reviews in both the Guardian and the TLS (as well as other media reviews) have pointed out, Beauman’s writing is to a large extent in the genre of “systems novels” and at the same time rather out of kilter with an increasingly female-dominated (particularly in readers) literary fiction culture
As a one-time fan of speculative science fiction (for example Douglas Adams) but now as someone who almost exclusively reads contemporary literary fiction I found myself somewhere in between: really enjoying as well as admiring the intelligent, even visionary way in which Beauman uses insightful speculative fiction to mechanically disassemble and then reassemble the power, political and economic structures underpinning our existing world; missing the author showing a greater empathy for the fictional characters that he has placed in that structure – either via the authorial voice or by pausing the world building (and particularly the action sequences) to give us greater access to their inner lives.
The set up of the book postulates a near-future world of near ubiquitous information, social media and nano technology, one already hugely and seemingly irreversibly adversely impacted by climate change but where environmental focus has shifted to the mass species extinction being wrought by nation states and multinational conglomerates in the extractive industry. That focus was initially prompted by strong-arming by China on a tidal wave of national grief following the loss of the last Giant Panda – leading to the formation of the transnational World Commission on Species Extinction (WCSE) and the concept of tradeable extinction credits – giving the right to “wipe a species from the face of the earth” (other than for species certified as “intelligent” by an expert in which case 13 credits are needed).
While the idea of the credits was to gradually reduce supply, leading to extinction being prohibitively expensive, in practice lobbyists “had succeeded in riddling the WCSE framework with so many allowances, indulgences, exceptions and delays that the intended scarcity of extinction credits had never actually come to pass. Extinction credits were plentiful and cheap. You could almost call them democratic” and the prize is under 40,000 Euros. In fact the price is heavily rumoured to plunge even further with a change to allow for a species to be considered not extinct even if there are no living examples left if the species data (e.g. its microbiota, DNA, MRI, detailed descriptions) has first been preserved in a series of secure biobanks.
The book is set almost entirely in Europe, with the UK effectively having sealed itself off (from a now largely disinterested world) into a run-down Hermit Kingdom and where “out of sheer embarrassment” any direct references to the United States are avoided in polite company. As an aside it felt like a rare misstep for me in such a perceptive book to have a world largely denuded of UK and US influence and yet run almost entirely on neo-liberal free-market principles.
The first of the two main characters we meet in the book is the Swiss born Karin Resaint – she works as a consultant to a mining firm, her specialism being to decide if animals threatened by their operations are “intelligent” (so deciding on how many extinction credits are at risk). Karin at the book’s opening is working closely with the titular animal – a feeder fish which as a species have a highly developed collective sense of cold blooded revenge taking on larger fish which threaten or kill its members. Over time we realise that her horrors at the extinction that humanity have wrought mean she is looking for an animal that will take knowing revenge on her (on behalf of her species) and she sees the lumpsucker (and its venom) as a very likely candidate.
The second is an Aussie – Mark Halyard, who works for the mining firm co-ordinating the work of the extinction investigations and animal evaluations. Cynical where Karin is idealistic, he is also (as he seems to enjoy pointing out) logical where she allows her emotions and guilt to prevail.
Halyard - something of an obsessive gourmand in a world where climate change has made quality natural foodstuffs vanishingly and prohibitively expensive – decides to fund his love of food by privately shorting the extinction credit market (assuming it will shortly crash due to his inside knowledge that the biobank amendment will occur). He uses the money for the thirteen extinction credits that the firm asked him to buy to hedge their small risk if Resaint decides the lumpsucker is intelligent.
When a massive cyber attack wipes out the biobanks and causes the extinction credit price to rocket, and an operational mistake by the mining firm wipes out the colony of lumpsuckers, Resaint and Halyard are reluctantly sent, with different motivations, on a quest to find any remaining colonies elsewhere – a quest which takes them to: a nature reserve in Estonia whose operations were severely compromised by extinction credits not reaching their promised value and are now trying to desperately recover their operations to take advantage of the bounce back; a very odd camp of stranded UK/Hermit Kingdom workers in Finland struck down by a facially altering disease kaptcha which has evolved to defeat facial/animal recognition software; a biotech seastead with a gnat infestation; and then back to the Hermit Kingdom where a notorious Musk-like tech billionaire has effectively bought the South West as his own game reserve, accompanied by a slightly deranged cabinet minister dressed in a mermaid like exosuit.
The writing is often brilliantly pithy as well as very cleverly observed - I loved a throw away line about the environmentalists commonly quoted annual loss of ten thousand species – “you people never stop talking about ten thousand a year, its like being in f…ing Jane Austen” but this was only one of many such observations and the author is particularly strong on evolution and on comparisons between research into and discoveries in animal and artificial intelligence.
He is also very good on human cognitive processes around grieving and guilt – but in a slightly detached observer way – I never felt that I had any genuine access to his characters except potentially at the very end of the book (two closing epilogues are excellent).
And in the systems side of the novel I found that the world building worked a lot better than the actual plot – which for my tastes contained too many side quests (for example a whole other character and story line was introduced simply it seems so the author could write a wearable tech enabled or more accurately disabled sex scene) and too many action scenes with extraneous detail.
Overall though a book that I enjoyed and appreciate one that is slightly different (or at least adjacent to) my normal reading fare; one that kept me largely engaged and entertained while reading; but most of all as one that lead me to greater insight and reflection on our society.
4* for the beginning, 3* for the second half and then rounded up for the epilogue.
My thanks to Hodder Stoughton for an ARC via NetGalley
Halyard went back to browsing the latest fallout from the biobank attacks. Global stock markets, rattled by the hacking of the unhackable, were down about a third of a percent, comparable to a rogue state testing a nuclear bomb or a major economy electing a mildly left-wing government. Several of the companies involved in scanning human brains after death had released statements insisting that their own data centres were still absolutely secure, but a meme of Saudi origin was now circulating in which the architects of the Egyptian pyramids used the exact same language with the pharaohs.
This is the first book I have read by the author - as excellent reviews in both the Guardian and the TLS (as well as other media reviews) have pointed out, Beauman’s writing is to a large extent in the genre of “systems novels” and at the same time rather out of kilter with an increasingly female-dominated (particularly in readers) literary fiction culture
As a one-time fan of speculative science fiction (for example Douglas Adams) but now as someone who almost exclusively reads contemporary literary fiction I found myself somewhere in between: really enjoying as well as admiring the intelligent, even visionary way in which Beauman uses insightful speculative fiction to mechanically disassemble and then reassemble the power, political and economic structures underpinning our existing world; missing the author showing a greater empathy for the fictional characters that he has placed in that structure – either via the authorial voice or by pausing the world building (and particularly the action sequences) to give us greater access to their inner lives.
The set up of the book postulates a near-future world of near ubiquitous information, social media and nano technology, one already hugely and seemingly irreversibly adversely impacted by climate change but where environmental focus has shifted to the mass species extinction being wrought by nation states and multinational conglomerates in the extractive industry. That focus was initially prompted by strong-arming by China on a tidal wave of national grief following the loss of the last Giant Panda – leading to the formation of the transnational World Commission on Species Extinction (WCSE) and the concept of tradeable extinction credits – giving the right to “wipe a species from the face of the earth” (other than for species certified as “intelligent” by an expert in which case 13 credits are needed).
While the idea of the credits was to gradually reduce supply, leading to extinction being prohibitively expensive, in practice lobbyists “had succeeded in riddling the WCSE framework with so many allowances, indulgences, exceptions and delays that the intended scarcity of extinction credits had never actually come to pass. Extinction credits were plentiful and cheap. You could almost call them democratic” and the prize is under 40,000 Euros. In fact the price is heavily rumoured to plunge even further with a change to allow for a species to be considered not extinct even if there are no living examples left if the species data (e.g. its microbiota, DNA, MRI, detailed descriptions) has first been preserved in a series of secure biobanks.
The book is set almost entirely in Europe, with the UK effectively having sealed itself off (from a now largely disinterested world) into a run-down Hermit Kingdom and where “out of sheer embarrassment” any direct references to the United States are avoided in polite company. As an aside it felt like a rare misstep for me in such a perceptive book to have a world largely denuded of UK and US influence and yet run almost entirely on neo-liberal free-market principles.
The first of the two main characters we meet in the book is the Swiss born Karin Resaint – she works as a consultant to a mining firm, her specialism being to decide if animals threatened by their operations are “intelligent” (so deciding on how many extinction credits are at risk). Karin at the book’s opening is working closely with the titular animal – a feeder fish which as a species have a highly developed collective sense of cold blooded revenge taking on larger fish which threaten or kill its members. Over time we realise that her horrors at the extinction that humanity have wrought mean she is looking for an animal that will take knowing revenge on her (on behalf of her species) and she sees the lumpsucker (and its venom) as a very likely candidate.
The second is an Aussie – Mark Halyard, who works for the mining firm co-ordinating the work of the extinction investigations and animal evaluations. Cynical where Karin is idealistic, he is also (as he seems to enjoy pointing out) logical where she allows her emotions and guilt to prevail.
‘But the universe is bloody huge – stuff like that must happen every minute. You can’t go on strike over it. Honestly it sounds to me to like your real enemy isn’t climate change or habitat loss, it’s entropy. You don’t like the idea that everything eventually crumbles. Well, it does. If you’re this worried about species extinction, wait until you hear about the heat death of the universe.’
Halyard - something of an obsessive gourmand in a world where climate change has made quality natural foodstuffs vanishingly and prohibitively expensive – decides to fund his love of food by privately shorting the extinction credit market (assuming it will shortly crash due to his inside knowledge that the biobank amendment will occur). He uses the money for the thirteen extinction credits that the firm asked him to buy to hedge their small risk if Resaint decides the lumpsucker is intelligent.
When a massive cyber attack wipes out the biobanks and causes the extinction credit price to rocket, and an operational mistake by the mining firm wipes out the colony of lumpsuckers, Resaint and Halyard are reluctantly sent, with different motivations, on a quest to find any remaining colonies elsewhere – a quest which takes them to: a nature reserve in Estonia whose operations were severely compromised by extinction credits not reaching their promised value and are now trying to desperately recover their operations to take advantage of the bounce back; a very odd camp of stranded UK/Hermit Kingdom workers in Finland struck down by a facially altering disease kaptcha which has evolved to defeat facial/animal recognition software; a biotech seastead with a gnat infestation; and then back to the Hermit Kingdom where a notorious Musk-like tech billionaire has effectively bought the South West as his own game reserve, accompanied by a slightly deranged cabinet minister dressed in a mermaid like exosuit.
The writing is often brilliantly pithy as well as very cleverly observed - I loved a throw away line about the environmentalists commonly quoted annual loss of ten thousand species – “you people never stop talking about ten thousand a year, its like being in f…ing Jane Austen” but this was only one of many such observations and the author is particularly strong on evolution and on comparisons between research into and discoveries in animal and artificial intelligence.
He is also very good on human cognitive processes around grieving and guilt – but in a slightly detached observer way – I never felt that I had any genuine access to his characters except potentially at the very end of the book (two closing epilogues are excellent).
And in the systems side of the novel I found that the world building worked a lot better than the actual plot – which for my tastes contained too many side quests (for example a whole other character and story line was introduced simply it seems so the author could write a wearable tech enabled or more accurately disabled sex scene) and too many action scenes with extraneous detail.
Overall though a book that I enjoyed and appreciate one that is slightly different (or at least adjacent to) my normal reading fare; one that kept me largely engaged and entertained while reading; but most of all as one that lead me to greater insight and reflection on our society.
4* for the beginning, 3* for the second half and then rounded up for the epilogue.
My thanks to Hodder Stoughton for an ARC via NetGalley
September 2, 2022
Venomous Lumpsucker is a straight near-future scifi adventure, a depressingly on-the-nose satire of neoliberalism, a vaguely postmodern literary experiment, and a thoroughly depressing good time. I liked every single horribly unlikable character, and whenever I thought I had a handle on the novel’s moral arc, Beauman pulled the rug out. Recommended.
April 3, 2024
3.5 stars
short review for busy readers: semi-humorous sci-fi. Themes of endangered species and mass extinction, as well as the hell of a heavily digitalised world in which governments and billionaires still get away with anything, but worse than now. Decently written. Atomic-level nerdscape worldbuilding and info dumps.
in detail:
I am of two minds about this novel.
On the one hand, the premise is good, as is the writing and the action sequences. The science is interesting, the theme of the super intelligent fish (the venomous lumpsucker) and its extinction is well chosen and there is some good humour scattered around.
On the other hand, massive info dumps tediously explaining financial and governmental details on the atomic level for pages clog the plot and grind the pace of the story to a halt at times. There is even once where a chase it postponed to chat heavy, deep and real about details which have no immediate bearing on the current scene.
I was seriously reminded of how rabbithole-detailed male nerds can get jabbering to each other about a piece of tech hardware. After a while, I just skipped those sections and got back to the actual action-- which is decent.
So there's a lot good, but a great big whopping bad about this novel. It's not a 'must read', but very much a 'could read' for environmental sci-fi fans.
short review for busy readers: semi-humorous sci-fi. Themes of endangered species and mass extinction, as well as the hell of a heavily digitalised world in which governments and billionaires still get away with anything, but worse than now. Decently written. Atomic-level nerdscape worldbuilding and info dumps.
in detail:
I am of two minds about this novel.
On the one hand, the premise is good, as is the writing and the action sequences. The science is interesting, the theme of the super intelligent fish (the venomous lumpsucker) and its extinction is well chosen and there is some good humour scattered around.
On the other hand, massive info dumps tediously explaining financial and governmental details on the atomic level for pages clog the plot and grind the pace of the story to a halt at times. There is even once where a chase it postponed to chat heavy, deep and real about details which have no immediate bearing on the current scene.
I was seriously reminded of how rabbithole-detailed male nerds can get jabbering to each other about a piece of tech hardware. After a while, I just skipped those sections and got back to the actual action-- which is decent.
So there's a lot good, but a great big whopping bad about this novel. It's not a 'must read', but very much a 'could read' for environmental sci-fi fans.
October 4, 2022
That ending…. WOW! Finance. Extinction. Computers. Fascinating wacky characters and ongoing global crises like what a romp of a story I absolutely tore through
Maybe 4.5
Maybe 4.5
October 20, 2022
“An extinction credit could buy you bulldozing rights to any species on earth — except when the species was certified as ‘intelligent’ by experts on animal cognition like the Swiss woman on the Varuna. In that case, you had to expend not just one but thirteen extinction credits, a figure which had no superstitious or metaphysical significance, but rather was the result, like every other detail of this framework, of wranglings at the birth of the World Commission on Species Extinction. Everyone agreed that to lose an intelligent species was the gravest loss of all, and so, although such extinctions could not be prohibited outright — that would not be a nimble free market solution — they could be very sternly disincentivized.”
“But you came here to work on the cattle ranches for eight euros a day, and then you all got a disfiguring fungus, and then you had to flee the wildfires, and now you’re stuck in a camp because your own government won’t take you back, and for the last six weeks you’ve had dead gnats raining on your head. It’s fucking biblical.” “We certainly have had an eventful little holiday, Wilson said.”
I didn’t find this book as hilarious as the blurb suggests, but it is clever, amusing and extremely original. It explores the monetization of extinction; there is a market for extinction credits. In addition to the financial speculators there are eco-terrorists, scientists, a mermaid, powerful artificial intelligence and people who have really shady motives. The fact that the venomous lumpsucker, a very intelligent species of fish, has been accidentally obliterated throws a monkey wrench into a lot of plans. This was an entertaining trip and I certainly haven’t read anything else like it. John Hastings did an excellent job narrating the audiobook.
I received free copies of the ebook and audio book from the publisher.
“But you came here to work on the cattle ranches for eight euros a day, and then you all got a disfiguring fungus, and then you had to flee the wildfires, and now you’re stuck in a camp because your own government won’t take you back, and for the last six weeks you’ve had dead gnats raining on your head. It’s fucking biblical.” “We certainly have had an eventful little holiday, Wilson said.”
I didn’t find this book as hilarious as the blurb suggests, but it is clever, amusing and extremely original. It explores the monetization of extinction; there is a market for extinction credits. In addition to the financial speculators there are eco-terrorists, scientists, a mermaid, powerful artificial intelligence and people who have really shady motives. The fact that the venomous lumpsucker, a very intelligent species of fish, has been accidentally obliterated throws a monkey wrench into a lot of plans. This was an entertaining trip and I certainly haven’t read anything else like it. John Hastings did an excellent job narrating the audiobook.
I received free copies of the ebook and audio book from the publisher.
February 10, 2022
This is the most delightful book about mass species extinction that you’ll ever read. Ned Beauman employs pitch-perfect gallows humor to engage with human-caused environmental destruction in a fresh and exciting way.
I was quite charmed by Beauman’s madcap storytelling and clever writing and I lost count of the number of times I highlighted an amusing passage or chuckled to myself whilst reading this book. It’s very, very funny.
The highest praise I can give a book is that it has “readability” and Venomous Lumpsucker has this in spades – fast paced, an engaging story, smart humor, and interesting characters. This book is a winner.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.
I was quite charmed by Beauman’s madcap storytelling and clever writing and I lost count of the number of times I highlighted an amusing passage or chuckled to myself whilst reading this book. It’s very, very funny.
The highest praise I can give a book is that it has “readability” and Venomous Lumpsucker has this in spades – fast paced, an engaging story, smart humor, and interesting characters. This book is a winner.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.
July 16, 2022
I struggle with books like this, because I want to enjoy the cheekiness and satire, but I also just get so pissed.
This book was clever, creative and moderately entertaining. I definitely laughed a few times, Beauman has a sharp wit, but I certainly didn't find it uproariously funny.
The "What if" of this book is "What if humans have decided just to let animals go extinct, and how can we monetize it?" You know, a completely preposterous idea which feels totally plausible. A very fun idea of a novel if you can get past the thought that somebody is probably turning it into a business model as we speak.
This book was clever, creative and moderately entertaining. I definitely laughed a few times, Beauman has a sharp wit, but I certainly didn't find it uproariously funny.
The "What if" of this book is "What if humans have decided just to let animals go extinct, and how can we monetize it?" You know, a completely preposterous idea which feels totally plausible. A very fun idea of a novel if you can get past the thought that somebody is probably turning it into a business model as we speak.
April 11, 2023
3.5. Relentlessly funny and also relentlessly depressing.
September 2, 2022
VENOMOUS LUMPSUCKER
Ned Beauman
Enjoyment is a personal thing. Some enjoy something while others don't. I am in the minority here, but I didn't really enjoy this book.
It had huge information dumps to explain things, and seemed overly long to me, even though it really wasn't. I note that many say it was funny or witty, but personally I didn't see that. Nor could I define the absolute genre, was it science fiction or what? I went with Eco-fiction and end of the world, but that was the best I could do.
So capitalism has overrun society and the planet is failing. The law has eco laws and of course, that means nothing, so the whole thing centers on whether or not a fish can be saved.
2 stars
Happy Reading!
Ned Beauman
Enjoyment is a personal thing. Some enjoy something while others don't. I am in the minority here, but I didn't really enjoy this book.
It had huge information dumps to explain things, and seemed overly long to me, even though it really wasn't. I note that many say it was funny or witty, but personally I didn't see that. Nor could I define the absolute genre, was it science fiction or what? I went with Eco-fiction and end of the world, but that was the best I could do.
So capitalism has overrun society and the planet is failing. The law has eco laws and of course, that means nothing, so the whole thing centers on whether or not a fish can be saved.
2 stars
Happy Reading!
March 12, 2024
This book is an absolute riot. An almost letting you get depressed but pulling you from the brink each time with dark humor sort of riot, that I very much enjoyed. Even though I thought the ending was good, it didn't fully hit for me emotionally, so that's why I'm reluctant to rate it higher.
It did have me from the second chapter, where a large tumor is thrust in front of a taxi that one of our main characters, Halyard, is in and in that moment I knew this was my kind of weird! Climate activists throwing tumors made from the DNA of the last panda to have ever existed? Fuck yeah.
Venomous Lumpsucker is a book about humans about our unwillingness to be at all inconvenienced and our inability to keep looking at uncomfortable things, going for quick fixes that do more harm than good, but also about the human ego and how completely destructive it can be. The yayflies (you have to read it to get it) sequence shows all of these aspects perfectly.
We're in the near future and capitalism has done what it does best, capitalizing on and monetizing the extinction of species. The world is a completely depressing place, most food has lost its taste (so people take this drug to be separated from that fact), a lot of the world is run by algorithms and a lot of the change is driven by algorithms battling each other. Beauman does a lot of satisfying commentary and critique on neoliberalism, tech startups, billionaires and even normal people and how everyone fails the environment and consistently fails to do the right thing, the uncomfortable, inconvenient thing to save the planet and the species within.
I thought the characters were pretty great - morally bankrupt Halyard (who does really love doggos though) and recent epiphany-haver Resaint both go on a journey to save the venomous lumpsucker, from extinction. To be honest, not much happens, but the world is described so hilariously (as dark and sad as it is), from billionaire seasteaders, to refugee camp influencers, and this fungal disease called kaptcha, that the ride was just really enjoyable for me.
My perfect joke (relating to 10k species going extinct every year): Christ you never stop talking about your 10 thousand a year, it's like being in fucking Jane Austen!
I think Beauman did a pretty great job of calibrating the tone of this and I'm super interested to read other stuff by him. It's a book that makes fun of the free market and people who mentally pretzel themselves into justifying their (in)actions when it comes to, let's be honest, the almost certainly unavoidable end of our world.
It did have me from the second chapter, where a large tumor is thrust in front of a taxi that one of our main characters, Halyard, is in and in that moment I knew this was my kind of weird! Climate activists throwing tumors made from the DNA of the last panda to have ever existed? Fuck yeah.
Venomous Lumpsucker is a book about humans about our unwillingness to be at all inconvenienced and our inability to keep looking at uncomfortable things, going for quick fixes that do more harm than good, but also about the human ego and how completely destructive it can be. The yayflies (you have to read it to get it) sequence shows all of these aspects perfectly.
We're in the near future and capitalism has done what it does best, capitalizing on and monetizing the extinction of species. The world is a completely depressing place, most food has lost its taste (so people take this drug to be separated from that fact), a lot of the world is run by algorithms and a lot of the change is driven by algorithms battling each other. Beauman does a lot of satisfying commentary and critique on neoliberalism, tech startups, billionaires and even normal people and how everyone fails the environment and consistently fails to do the right thing, the uncomfortable, inconvenient thing to save the planet and the species within.
I thought the characters were pretty great - morally bankrupt Halyard (who does really love doggos though) and recent epiphany-haver Resaint both go on a journey to save the venomous lumpsucker, from extinction. To be honest, not much happens, but the world is described so hilariously (as dark and sad as it is), from billionaire seasteaders, to refugee camp influencers, and this fungal disease called kaptcha, that the ride was just really enjoyable for me.
My perfect joke (relating to 10k species going extinct every year): Christ you never stop talking about your 10 thousand a year, it's like being in fucking Jane Austen!
I think Beauman did a pretty great job of calibrating the tone of this and I'm super interested to read other stuff by him. It's a book that makes fun of the free market and people who mentally pretzel themselves into justifying their (in)actions when it comes to, let's be honest, the almost certainly unavoidable end of our world.
December 9, 2023
This was the dark horse for me this year. I picked it up in desperation, trying to find a scifi (not my strongest of the genres) that did something interesting. It was shortlisted (when I read it, and now it's won!) the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 2023, but the name and that cover...atrocious! But it sounded interesting and on the other side of it, I don't think I can properly convey just how interesting it is.
I've read a lot of books about economics, ecological collapse, satires of late stage capitalism...this one blows them all out of the water (pun intended). It's perfect satire, poking at all the absurdity of life in our society and exaggerating it without it going camp. At once scathing and whimsical, far fetched and dead on balls accurate, I think I need to own this book, if only I can get past that lurid cover! Worth a re-read, there's so much to unpack in here and such assurance in its craftsmanship.
Note: the audiobook was absolute perfection. There's something about a NZ/Aussie accent for some of this that just made it all so much funnier.
CONTENT WARNING:
I've read a lot of books about economics, ecological collapse, satires of late stage capitalism...this one blows them all out of the water (pun intended). It's perfect satire, poking at all the absurdity of life in our society and exaggerating it without it going camp. At once scathing and whimsical, far fetched and dead on balls accurate, I think I need to own this book, if only I can get past that lurid cover! Worth a re-read, there's so much to unpack in here and such assurance in its craftsmanship.
Note: the audiobook was absolute perfection. There's something about a NZ/Aussie accent for some of this that just made it all so much funnier.
CONTENT WARNING:
August 7, 2022
“This novel is set in the near future. However, to minimise any need for mental arithmetic on the reader’s part, sums of money are presented as if the euro has retained its 2022 value with no inflation. This is the sole aspect in which the story deviates from how things will actually unfold.”
So begins one of my most anticipated summer-releases of the year. A speculative eco-thriller packed to the brim with satirical humour and brilliant ideas, that does at times overexplain its message a bit.
Venomous Lumpsucker is set in a disturbingly plausible near future, ravaged by climate change and overrun by capitalist mega-corporations. With ecosystems collapsing all around, the world governments must take action in the only way they know how: by enforcing protocols and financial penalties. Enter the Extinction-credit: a price to pay when exploiting an endangered species habitat. That price increases drastically when the species in question is deemed to be “intelligent”.
What began as a protective measure, soon became a buyable freepass to wipe a species off the face of the planet. After all, it’s only 13 bucks, right?
Until one day in the 2030’s, a cyberattack skyrockets the price of Extinction-credits, finally forcing “big-corpo’s” attention their way. This kicks off our plot following an unlikely team of a nature-conservatists and a morally bankrupt mining executive in a wild goose-chase through weird landscapes of this ravaged world. She, on a mission to prove that the titular fish is intelligent, he on a mission to prove that it is not…
There’s a lot to love about Venomous Lumpsucker, especially for fans of speculative eco-fiction (which I consider myself to be as well). The world Ned Beauman creates is incredibly well thought out: mixing the familiar with the disturbingly alien. Where once were lush eco-systems now lie toxic wastelands, and political systems built on ideologies now only thrive of monetary gain. It’s terrifying because it’s plausible… Luckily Beauman balances out these moments of acute observation about our near-future with some satirical humour that brings some light to the situation.
My only big complaint with the novel is that it did, at times, overstay its welcome a bit. As interesting as Beauman’s ideas are, not all of them required a novel-length exploration. The message becomes repetitive, edging on heavy-handed and at times dissipates the plot. The same goes for some of the passages about the animals that are on the brink of extinction. As an example: there’s an extensive description of the Adelognathus marginatum; the parasitic wasp that lays its eggs inside the body of a living ant. There’s a fairly interesting metaphor in there, but a more concise reference would’ve been more powerful than the pages upon pages of back-story on this wasp that we got.
Ned Beauman’s message about greed an consumerism is clear: less is sometimes more. At times throughout the novel I wished that philosophy had been implemented a little more throughout the writing as well.
Overall, 3.5/5 extinction credits for the Venomous Lumpsucker; it’s very intelligent, but a little lippy indeed…
Recommended for fans of Jeff Vandermeer's Hummingbird Salamander.
Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
So begins one of my most anticipated summer-releases of the year. A speculative eco-thriller packed to the brim with satirical humour and brilliant ideas, that does at times overexplain its message a bit.
Venomous Lumpsucker is set in a disturbingly plausible near future, ravaged by climate change and overrun by capitalist mega-corporations. With ecosystems collapsing all around, the world governments must take action in the only way they know how: by enforcing protocols and financial penalties. Enter the Extinction-credit: a price to pay when exploiting an endangered species habitat. That price increases drastically when the species in question is deemed to be “intelligent”.
What began as a protective measure, soon became a buyable freepass to wipe a species off the face of the planet. After all, it’s only 13 bucks, right?
Until one day in the 2030’s, a cyberattack skyrockets the price of Extinction-credits, finally forcing “big-corpo’s” attention their way. This kicks off our plot following an unlikely team of a nature-conservatists and a morally bankrupt mining executive in a wild goose-chase through weird landscapes of this ravaged world. She, on a mission to prove that the titular fish is intelligent, he on a mission to prove that it is not…
There’s a lot to love about Venomous Lumpsucker, especially for fans of speculative eco-fiction (which I consider myself to be as well). The world Ned Beauman creates is incredibly well thought out: mixing the familiar with the disturbingly alien. Where once were lush eco-systems now lie toxic wastelands, and political systems built on ideologies now only thrive of monetary gain. It’s terrifying because it’s plausible… Luckily Beauman balances out these moments of acute observation about our near-future with some satirical humour that brings some light to the situation.
My only big complaint with the novel is that it did, at times, overstay its welcome a bit. As interesting as Beauman’s ideas are, not all of them required a novel-length exploration. The message becomes repetitive, edging on heavy-handed and at times dissipates the plot. The same goes for some of the passages about the animals that are on the brink of extinction. As an example: there’s an extensive description of the Adelognathus marginatum; the parasitic wasp that lays its eggs inside the body of a living ant. There’s a fairly interesting metaphor in there, but a more concise reference would’ve been more powerful than the pages upon pages of back-story on this wasp that we got.
Ned Beauman’s message about greed an consumerism is clear: less is sometimes more. At times throughout the novel I wished that philosophy had been implemented a little more throughout the writing as well.
Overall, 3.5/5 extinction credits for the Venomous Lumpsucker; it’s very intelligent, but a little lippy indeed…
Recommended for fans of Jeff Vandermeer's Hummingbird Salamander.
Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Read
February 11, 2023Kindly, whattttttttttt????
February 8, 2023
I don't think there's a way to say this without sounding patronising: Ned Beauman definitely seems to have matured as a novelist. I've read two of his other novels published ten or more years ago, The Teleportation Accident and Boxer, Beetle. Both were entertainingly madcap with some hilarious moments, but the male protagonists were very tedious and the plots didn't add up to much. By contrast Venomous Lumpsucker is a witty and insightful near-future black comedy about species extinction. The male protagonist is still a bit of an arsehole, but there's also a female protagonist so you don't get tired of him from overexposure. The setup is depressingly plausible: just as there's a useless market for carbon credits now, in the near future there's a useless market for extinction credits. This has created an extinction offsetting industry and many consultants are employed for certification of endangered species. Naturally, species continue to become extinct at an accelerating rate.
The protagonists are Mark Halyard, a mining executive who has been doing a bit of financial misconduct with extinction credits on the side, and Karin Resaint, a consultant biologist employed to check whether endangered species are intelligent. If she declares a species intelligent, the company wanting to wipe it out needs to buy more credits. Resaint has been investigating a fish called the venomous lumpsucker, which she suspects is intelligent. Halyard's white collar crimes catch up with him after the market in extinction credits is thrown into chaos. The two team up for a suitably madcap hunt for information and venomous lumpsuckers, which proves both entertaining and thought-provoking. Beauman is a very funny writer and the narrative is full of great one-liners:
Halyard and Resaint have very different perspectives on mass extinctions in the anthropocene, which leads to some excellent conversations. Halyard represents the forces of corporate rationalisation, while also being an entertainingly self-interested weasel:
At one point, the duo are kidnapped by a campaigner trying to protect endangered species:
Beauman also provides the best summary of what a smart contract is that I've ever read. This concept got thrown around a lot in my old academic job in conjunction with other tiresome buzzwords like blockchain, internet of things, etc, etc.
This description is dropped into the protagonists' encounter with unintended consequences of a smart contract, in the form of a horrible infestation of genetically modified midges. Beauman excels at visceral, horrible, and absurd details of this kind. Kaptcha, a fungal infection that obstructs facial recognition, is another good one. The details of this near future world are a good balance of amusingly strange and bleakly convincing, such as a sanctuary for endangered species diversifying into a toxic waste dump while the price of extinction credits was low. To my shame, it took me until page 140 to identify the Hermit Kingdom. A very appropriate appellation nonetheless.
Inevitably the main theme of the book is death, including suicide. This is handled well considering the often glib tone of the dialogue. Resaint is wrestling with the humanity's moral culpability for destroying the environment in pursuit of profit:
Ultimately it is capitalism and imperialism that accelerated this destructive project and now distance consumers from their environmental impact. For this and other reasons, novels about environmental destruction are difficult to end effectively. I liked the ending of Venomous Lumpsucker, which is not unlike that of Under the Blue. The whole novel really exceeded my expectations; it balances dark farce and serious reflections on species extinction very neatly. Upon reflection it deserves a fifth star for doing the topic justice while also making me laugh.
The protagonists are Mark Halyard, a mining executive who has been doing a bit of financial misconduct with extinction credits on the side, and Karin Resaint, a consultant biologist employed to check whether endangered species are intelligent. If she declares a species intelligent, the company wanting to wipe it out needs to buy more credits. Resaint has been investigating a fish called the venomous lumpsucker, which she suspects is intelligent. Halyard's white collar crimes catch up with him after the market in extinction credits is thrown into chaos. The two team up for a suitably madcap hunt for information and venomous lumpsuckers, which proves both entertaining and thought-provoking. Beauman is a very funny writer and the narrative is full of great one-liners:
The actual hors d'oeuvre, which was served an hour later because of all the commotion, was veal brain carpaccio. And Halyard was famished by then, which made it all the more frustrating that the carpaccio was almost impossible to eat. The meat, which had been cut to a width of 100 micrometres, shrivelled away to nothing the instant you touched it with your fork. It was like trying to eat the surface tension off a glass of water.
Halyard and Resaint have very different perspectives on mass extinctions in the anthropocene, which leads to some excellent conversations. Halyard represents the forces of corporate rationalisation, while also being an entertainingly self-interested weasel:
And he'd heard that these days the people you met inside were not fondly disposed towards environmental crimes, not the guards and not the prisoners either. It was never good to be the culpable human face of an ongoing mega-tragedy affecting every living being. All it would take was one guy on your wing who'd lost his village to a flood or his grandma to a heatwave back in his home country and you really would be on the shit-list next to that child murderer. And they wouldn't care about the details. "It was just a bet on the price of a financial asset!" he imagined himself screaming in terror. "Please - surely you can understand - I'm not a bad person, I just saw an opportunity in the markets!"
At one point, the duo are kidnapped by a campaigner trying to protect endangered species:
"The extinction industry has never saved a single species. It's just a performance, a fiction. It's about extracting subsidies and kickbacks, year after year. That's all. The price of credits goes up, you make money. The price of credits goes down, you make money. The suits always win and the animals always lose. A hundred thousand extinctions a year and you're just making it easier for them."
The problem was that Halyard couldn't dispute the guy's overall analysis, which was quite astute, so he would sound pedantic trying to dispute the guy's factual premises, which were deluded. Still, at least now he had a sense of who they might be dealing with.
Beauman also provides the best summary of what a smart contract is that I've ever read. This concept got thrown around a lot in my old academic job in conjunction with other tiresome buzzwords like blockchain, internet of things, etc, etc.
Like making a bargain with a witch or a goblin, signing a smart contract was not just agreeing to be bound by it, it was becoming bound by it, instantly and inescapably. The reality in which you lived changed from the moment you signed it, because in essence a smart contract added a few lines to the code of every computer system around you, constraining those systems to operate within its terms.
This description is dropped into the protagonists' encounter with unintended consequences of a smart contract, in the form of a horrible infestation of genetically modified midges. Beauman excels at visceral, horrible, and absurd details of this kind. Kaptcha, a fungal infection that obstructs facial recognition, is another good one. The details of this near future world are a good balance of amusingly strange and bleakly convincing, such as a sanctuary for endangered species diversifying into a toxic waste dump while the price of extinction credits was low. To my shame, it took me until page 140 to identify the Hermit Kingdom. A very appropriate appellation nonetheless.
Inevitably the main theme of the book is death, including suicide. This is handled well considering the often glib tone of the dialogue. Resaint is wrestling with the humanity's moral culpability for destroying the environment in pursuit of profit:
Now she imagined herself bringing her foot down and crushing the eggs into daub, looking the turnstone right in the eye as she did so. It would be the closest she had ever come to the experience of that Siberian hunter when he wounded the tiger. The murder of animals was an enormous collaborative project, perhaps the fundamental human project, like a charity drive or war effort to which everyone made their little contribution. But because most of those contributions were so fragmentary and indirect, there was almost never an opportunity to impress upon yourself upon the consciousness of your victim the way Markov did. If she bereaved the turnstone right in front of its face, if she committed such an intimate and demonstrative act of violence, maybe it would understand just for a moment what she was, what they all were. She would be measured and acknowledged. [...]
But of course the understanding itself was not enough. What she wanted was not to stamp on the turnstone's eggs. What she wanted was the turnstone to stamp on her, to grind her shell into the earth.
Ultimately it is capitalism and imperialism that accelerated this destructive project and now distance consumers from their environmental impact. For this and other reasons, novels about environmental destruction are difficult to end effectively. I liked the ending of Venomous Lumpsucker, which is not unlike that of Under the Blue. The whole novel really exceeded my expectations; it balances dark farce and serious reflections on species extinction very neatly. Upon reflection it deserves a fifth star for doing the topic justice while also making me laugh.
March 16, 2022
“If we ever get to the point where there’s only one surviving dog, I hope I’m already dead.”
So very pleased to have received this ARC, thank you SOHO Press! Venomous Lumpsucker is the mashup of genres that I’m almost always searching for, so it’s no surprise I enjoyed it. This is a book that will have a very specific audience. I doubt it will have widespread appeal, but I think it will be loved by the readers it’s intended for.
4.5 stars. The writing is dense (but not too dense), and we follow unlikable characters in an absurd, depressingly believable near future. We are clearly meant to dislike these characters, so the author isn’t condoning their behavior. Quite the opposite, actually. This entire book is like a warning of what not to do. I saw this called “laugh out loud funny”, but I don’t know if that’s accurate. At least not for me. There were funny bits for sure, but a lot of them were smiling-on-the-outside-frowning-on-the-inside funny. I do like that kind of humor, so I appreciated it. The dynamic between our two main characters made for some pretty great moments, and it got funnier the more I got to know them. As someone with a not-funny addiction to food, I feel like I related to Halyard in a way I’m ashamed to admit. For example, I was/am so afraid of getting COVID for several reasons, but since I’m mildly agoraphobic and never left my home even before the pandemic, my main fear was less that I’d give it to a loved one and more that I’d lose my sense of taste. Halyard is a real prick in many ways, but I enjoyed seeing that aspect of his personality play out in the story.
The main darkly humorous element for me was the general absurdity of it all. The book feels utterly ridiculous most of the time, and it just kept getting stranger the further along I got. Weird, crazy shit keeps happening or being revealed to us about the state of the world, and yet somehow it was all believable in the context of this future. I can’t fault the logic. I loved it.
That being said, everything about this book is technically depressing, but also very interesting. There were times I forgot that we were discussing a fictional fish and forgot that this isn’t (yet) my world. It was scary, intriguing, and presented a very honest, bleak reflection of humanity and our possible future, all while sounding like parts of science textbooks had been cobbled together around a central narrative. Ned Beauman must have some big brain juices. I can’t imagine writing something like this myself.
There are some truly insightful and quotable lines here. I plan to get myself a physical copy when it comes out, for that reason as well as loving the cover art. I think this is worth your time if this is the type of book you know would appeal to you. If you like challenging stories that focus on philosophical/moral/ethical issues, the environment, animals, conservation, science, and humanity’s role on the planet, and if you like stories written in a depressing, dense, and occasionally humorous writing style, you might like Venomous Lumpsucker. Just don’t expect to root for the humans in this one.
"The murder of animals was an enormous collaborative project, perhaps the fundamental human project, like a charity drive or war effort to which everybody made their little contribution."
NOTE: looking back over my highlights, there really are a lot of wonderful quotes, some of them genuinely funny. I want to type so many of them into this review, but 1. that would be spoiling your own experience reading this, and 2. I don’t think the publisher/author would be very happy with me for doing that. But they’re bringing me joy, inspiration, or reflection just by reading back over them. For that reason alone, I think this deserves 4.5 stars instead of 4.
TW: discussions of suicide/suicidal ideation
So very pleased to have received this ARC, thank you SOHO Press! Venomous Lumpsucker is the mashup of genres that I’m almost always searching for, so it’s no surprise I enjoyed it. This is a book that will have a very specific audience. I doubt it will have widespread appeal, but I think it will be loved by the readers it’s intended for.
4.5 stars. The writing is dense (but not too dense), and we follow unlikable characters in an absurd, depressingly believable near future. We are clearly meant to dislike these characters, so the author isn’t condoning their behavior. Quite the opposite, actually. This entire book is like a warning of what not to do. I saw this called “laugh out loud funny”, but I don’t know if that’s accurate. At least not for me. There were funny bits for sure, but a lot of them were smiling-on-the-outside-frowning-on-the-inside funny. I do like that kind of humor, so I appreciated it. The dynamic between our two main characters made for some pretty great moments, and it got funnier the more I got to know them. As someone with a not-funny addiction to food, I feel like I related to Halyard in a way I’m ashamed to admit. For example, I was/am so afraid of getting COVID for several reasons, but since I’m mildly agoraphobic and never left my home even before the pandemic, my main fear was less that I’d give it to a loved one and more that I’d lose my sense of taste. Halyard is a real prick in many ways, but I enjoyed seeing that aspect of his personality play out in the story.
The main darkly humorous element for me was the general absurdity of it all. The book feels utterly ridiculous most of the time, and it just kept getting stranger the further along I got. Weird, crazy shit keeps happening or being revealed to us about the state of the world, and yet somehow it was all believable in the context of this future. I can’t fault the logic. I loved it.
That being said, everything about this book is technically depressing, but also very interesting. There were times I forgot that we were discussing a fictional fish and forgot that this isn’t (yet) my world. It was scary, intriguing, and presented a very honest, bleak reflection of humanity and our possible future, all while sounding like parts of science textbooks had been cobbled together around a central narrative. Ned Beauman must have some big brain juices. I can’t imagine writing something like this myself.
There are some truly insightful and quotable lines here. I plan to get myself a physical copy when it comes out, for that reason as well as loving the cover art. I think this is worth your time if this is the type of book you know would appeal to you. If you like challenging stories that focus on philosophical/moral/ethical issues, the environment, animals, conservation, science, and humanity’s role on the planet, and if you like stories written in a depressing, dense, and occasionally humorous writing style, you might like Venomous Lumpsucker. Just don’t expect to root for the humans in this one.
"The murder of animals was an enormous collaborative project, perhaps the fundamental human project, like a charity drive or war effort to which everybody made their little contribution."
NOTE: looking back over my highlights, there really are a lot of wonderful quotes, some of them genuinely funny. I want to type so many of them into this review, but 1. that would be spoiling your own experience reading this, and 2. I don’t think the publisher/author would be very happy with me for doing that. But they’re bringing me joy, inspiration, or reflection just by reading back over them. For that reason alone, I think this deserves 4.5 stars instead of 4.
TW: discussions of suicide/suicidal ideation
May 21, 2023
Had to put it down at page 124. I’ve been trying to get through this for a couple of weeks now. But I just can’t. Some of the ideas are really good, the whole premise of the book is good. But there is far too much detail and most of which I felt didn’t drive the narrative forward (I’m sure the remark about Finland’s national dance being the Tango will make sense later on, maybe). And talk about being devoid of any humour (as some have said this is laugh out loud and witty). I didn’t laugh or chuckle or smile once. Most of the “humour” I found was crass or worse than a dad joke. Perhaps I’ll come back to it when I’ve nothing else to do/read. Perhaps I won’t.
August 29, 2022
literally what the fuck even was this?
October 2, 2022
This is a remarkable book. It’s full of humour and at the same time an environmental thriller with an impressive array of characters.
June 26, 2023
picked this book solely because of the title and cover and oh boy did I learn my lesson
May 10, 2023
Very clever, very funny, beautifully written, oddly comforting ( though that’s probably just me). The audiobook narration is excellent.
February 27, 2024
Nope, definitely not.
This was way too verbose for my liking, too boring, even if some of the ideas were quite interesting.
Not an author I'm willing to read more books from.
This was way too verbose for my liking, too boring, even if some of the ideas were quite interesting.
Not an author I'm willing to read more books from.
December 12, 2023
4.5 * The plot gets a bit wobbly in the second half, but other than that this is a super dark humourous story about us human's strife to ruin the environment. Written with a keen eye and a sharp tongue. And though it should be depressing because of its accuracy it is strangely funny.
September 6, 2024
4.25 out of 5 stars.
Now this is how you write satire! I can't believe this book has less than 5k ratings on Goodreads, Venomous Lumpsucker deserves way more popularity. If you love reading sci-fi, you will definitely love this!
Venomous Lumpsucker is set in the near future, in a world where numerous non-human species are going extinct at unprecedented rates. The novel grapples with the consequences of such mass extinction and biodiversity loss and with performative environmentalism, and it does so in part through the use of satire.
The writing, the wit, the humour — all of it was exactly my style. I enjoyed Venomous Lumpsucker so much more than I was initially expecting! It actually made me laugh multiple times, and that's saying a lot considering the book's depressing subject matter :')
Immediately after finishing the book, I was unsure how to feel about the ending. It felt kinda anticlimactic to me. But now, after several months have passed since I finished the book, I wouldn't wish for a different ending! Perhaps it is a bit of a fatalistic ending, but at the same time I think it is also very realistic.
[read this for my Critical Ecologies course]
Now this is how you write satire! I can't believe this book has less than 5k ratings on Goodreads, Venomous Lumpsucker deserves way more popularity. If you love reading sci-fi, you will definitely love this!
Venomous Lumpsucker is set in the near future, in a world where numerous non-human species are going extinct at unprecedented rates. The novel grapples with the consequences of such mass extinction and biodiversity loss and with performative environmentalism, and it does so in part through the use of satire.
❝Evolution was a monstrous maker, a blind heedless thing inching along in no particular direction, the whole disaster fueled by spilled blood and wasted effort, Amazon rivers of both.❞
The writing, the wit, the humour — all of it was exactly my style. I enjoyed Venomous Lumpsucker so much more than I was initially expecting! It actually made me laugh multiple times, and that's saying a lot considering the book's depressing subject matter :')
❝The endangered and the extinct, the remnants and the endlings. The only living things that really mattered to her. She would lie there, uncomplaining, as they ate her flesh.❞
Immediately after finishing the book, I was unsure how to feel about the ending. It felt kinda anticlimactic to me. But now, after several months have passed since I finished the book, I wouldn't wish for a different ending! Perhaps it is a bit of a fatalistic ending, but at the same time I think it is also very realistic.
❝Probably some little drone was already on its way to check what had happened. These days you were always under surveillance wherever you went — what a heavenly time to be alive.❞
[read this for my Critical Ecologies course]
June 14, 2022
I thought I had ended my 1H 2022 run of dystopian novels with Kim Stanley Robinson, until I stumbled across this droll little gem on mass extinctions of species. Beauman has a reputation as a satirical literary novelist, but this is the first work of his I read. It was enchantingly cryptic, rarely reaching for any easy answers or clear conclusions, but examining how a variety of different human perspectives on extinction carry their own types of conceit.
At first it seems clear that Halyard is the biggest hedonist in the bunch, until he points out that the animal-intelligence scientist serving as protagonist of the book, Karin Resaint, is a smug speciesist in her own way. As are the hackers, the billionaire hunters, even the venomous lumpsucker itself.
It wouldn't be fair to touch upon the plot even gently, as it might spoil the fun. Suffice it to say that the international action is crazy enough to belong in the Marvel Universe, while the dialog is heady, even a bit navel-gazing. The novel is a nice follow-on to Robinson's The Ministry for the Future -- where the latter is centered on carbon currency, Beauman's financial crimes are all about extinction credits, which have a way of upsetting international economies. Beauman has us guess at many puzzles he implies. Why has the UK become the new "Hermit Kingdom," for instance, and why are all Europeans embarrassed to even mention the United States?
Sure, the climax on Cornwall with the mad executioner Barka is a bit silly, but one needs to suspend most searches for profundity in this manic and frivolous book that in reality is one of the most sobering and profound nuggets of dystopian fiction out there.
At first it seems clear that Halyard is the biggest hedonist in the bunch, until he points out that the animal-intelligence scientist serving as protagonist of the book, Karin Resaint, is a smug speciesist in her own way. As are the hackers, the billionaire hunters, even the venomous lumpsucker itself.
It wouldn't be fair to touch upon the plot even gently, as it might spoil the fun. Suffice it to say that the international action is crazy enough to belong in the Marvel Universe, while the dialog is heady, even a bit navel-gazing. The novel is a nice follow-on to Robinson's The Ministry for the Future -- where the latter is centered on carbon currency, Beauman's financial crimes are all about extinction credits, which have a way of upsetting international economies. Beauman has us guess at many puzzles he implies. Why has the UK become the new "Hermit Kingdom," for instance, and why are all Europeans embarrassed to even mention the United States?
Sure, the climax on Cornwall with the mad executioner Barka is a bit silly, but one needs to suspend most searches for profundity in this manic and frivolous book that in reality is one of the most sobering and profound nuggets of dystopian fiction out there.
July 16, 2023
the first half was interesting enough to keep me engaged haphazardly but once it turned into a wild chase with no true goal it lost my intrigue
too much plot and loose ends
too much plot and loose ends
September 19, 2023
It's not often a book manages to be hilarious, terrifying, and deeply moving all at the same time.
September 23, 2023
Buch des Jahres!
Die Wunderwelt des Kapitalismus und das Aussterben von allem.
Kann man nichts falsch machen.
Die Wunderwelt des Kapitalismus und das Aussterben von allem.
Kann man nichts falsch machen.
September 1, 2024
4.5 star opening rounded down to 3 stars for the 1.5 star ending.
Started the novel as an audiobook.
This is my 5th audiobook: 10hrs 54min long. Narrated by John Hastings with a voice clear in quality, slightly English accented, and fairly pleasant listening at 1.1x speed.
In a very near dystopian future individuals, businesses, corporations and governments are issued Extinction Credits much as they are issued Carbon Credits today.
Any species can be blasted, fracked, or otherwise annihilated; the offender pays the required number of Extinction Credits, and some DNA of the defunct species, along with the technology required to reconstitute it, is stored in a Biobank...
Until a cyber attack obliterates all the Biobanks.
Karen Resaint, an animal intelligence expert, is onboard the Varuna “to evaluate, on behalf of the Brahmasamudram Mining Company, whether the venomous lumpsucker exceeded a certain threshold of 'intelligence'...that had implications for a company who might want to mine a species' breeding ground.”
Mark Halyard, an extinction credit embezzling corporate middle manager employed by Brahmasamudram Mining Company, introduces us to the smartest known fish in the sea, "A bumpy grayish fish about 5" long fully grown; it had a toad-like face with bulging eyes and a fat upper lip. Looking at it, you felt that if it were a human being it would sweat from the forehead all the time and have a shockingly cold handshake. Doesn't even look clever by fish standards, looks stupid for a fish.” On his way to a corporate sponsored event a teratoma bomb is literally catapulted at the despicable Mark Halyard, Hah!
The unlikely pair of Resaint and Halyard set out together in search of the venomous lumpsucker, motives at odds.
At 20% into the story I was still enjoying this would be 4.5 star read, but am having difficulties listening to audiobooks in general: tinnitus is such a bugaboo. So....I obtained the hardcover book from our local library and started reading again from the beginning. For me, text versions of any book are preferable for a full 5-sense experience.
As the story proceeds there are a few unique and amusing items such as kaptcha, “Finland's cattle had been ravaged by an infection called kaptcha, which had originated in Russia, and was now spreading all through Scandinavia. Kaptcha muddled the cattle's facial features, rendering them illegible to the biometric systems that tracked every cow on every ranch from birth to death.”🐮
A futuristic fun infection developed by those who launched the teratoma bomb!
However, the deluge of cartoonish fodder and clunky scene progression detracts from what otherwise would have been engaging content. Also, the dialogue devolves into clunky writing that lends itself better to the graphic novel, aka comic book. replete with speech balloons.
On top of all this clunking around, the ending was at best "experimental" and at worst a complete cop out 🔚
Started the novel as an audiobook.
This is my 5th audiobook: 10hrs 54min long. Narrated by John Hastings with a voice clear in quality, slightly English accented, and fairly pleasant listening at 1.1x speed.
In a very near dystopian future individuals, businesses, corporations and governments are issued Extinction Credits much as they are issued Carbon Credits today.
Any species can be blasted, fracked, or otherwise annihilated; the offender pays the required number of Extinction Credits, and some DNA of the defunct species, along with the technology required to reconstitute it, is stored in a Biobank...
Until a cyber attack obliterates all the Biobanks.
Karen Resaint, an animal intelligence expert, is onboard the Varuna “to evaluate, on behalf of the Brahmasamudram Mining Company, whether the venomous lumpsucker exceeded a certain threshold of 'intelligence'...that had implications for a company who might want to mine a species' breeding ground.”
Mark Halyard, an extinction credit embezzling corporate middle manager employed by Brahmasamudram Mining Company, introduces us to the smartest known fish in the sea, "A bumpy grayish fish about 5" long fully grown; it had a toad-like face with bulging eyes and a fat upper lip. Looking at it, you felt that if it were a human being it would sweat from the forehead all the time and have a shockingly cold handshake. Doesn't even look clever by fish standards, looks stupid for a fish.” On his way to a corporate sponsored event a teratoma bomb is literally catapulted at the despicable Mark Halyard, Hah!
The unlikely pair of Resaint and Halyard set out together in search of the venomous lumpsucker, motives at odds.
At 20% into the story I was still enjoying this would be 4.5 star read, but am having difficulties listening to audiobooks in general: tinnitus is such a bugaboo. So....I obtained the hardcover book from our local library and started reading again from the beginning. For me, text versions of any book are preferable for a full 5-sense experience.
As the story proceeds there are a few unique and amusing items such as kaptcha, “Finland's cattle had been ravaged by an infection called kaptcha, which had originated in Russia, and was now spreading all through Scandinavia. Kaptcha muddled the cattle's facial features, rendering them illegible to the biometric systems that tracked every cow on every ranch from birth to death.”🐮
A futuristic fun infection developed by those who launched the teratoma bomb!
However, the deluge of cartoonish fodder and clunky scene progression detracts from what otherwise would have been engaging content. Also, the dialogue devolves into clunky writing that lends itself better to the graphic novel, aka comic book. replete with speech balloons.
On top of all this clunking around, the ending was at best "experimental" and at worst a complete cop out 🔚
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