336 pages
English language
Published Nov. 17, 2023 by Soho Press, Incorporated.
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. …
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?
Virtuosic and profound, witty and despairing, Venomous Lumpsucker is Ned Beauman at his very best.
Ned foresaw mushroom kayak, dunked super hard on security properties of the smart contracts.
That's a beautiful book with a beautiful ending.
Set in the near future where extinction credits are used to buy the right to wipe a species from existence, venomous lumpsucker takes a shot at the great Eton Mess that is British politics and at the global preference for uber capitalism over any other priority. I certainly appreciated the satire that was being made of that but have seen it done better elsewhere (Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's by Jay Spencer Green.)
Despite the comical experience others had while reading this, the comedy didn't gel with me. For the most part, I was kind of bored and would have preferred more interaction with the actual lumpsuckers than we got since they were the most interesting part of the novel for me. There were some genuinely interesting ideas poked at throughout but I failed to connect with the characters and while the characters were moving around the plot didn't move much.
A sometimes funny and often sad adventure through a dark, strange and all too plausible near future.
Nette Satire auf die Kommerzialisierung von Umweltschutz.
This is a bleak and satirical look into one possible future that seems all too real, but also still kind of hilarious, as our two main characters bounce around the world looking for any remaining examples of the Venomous Lumpsucker fish while encountering every kind of corporate strangeness that the concept of "environmental credits" has spawned. (Environmental credit: a parody of carbon credits such that you need at least three of them to be allowed to cause the extinction of a species during a project; seven if its proven to above a certain intelligence threshold.)
Three words: Extinction Credit Economics
How would capitalism react to fines placed on causing extinction?
I was impressed by Beauman's understanding that you don't need to be evil to participate in the ecology's destruction. The extinction industry arseholes aren't competent or smart, just indifferent and greedy.
Making the main arsehole a bumbling Australian was a stroke of genius. especially In the audiobook, that accent makes him friendly and nonthreatening. Otherwise the tension between him and Karin would have been unbearable.
There is allot of info dumping here. I know it's not considered good writing, and it was noticeable but it didn't bother me too much and I guess it helped keep the novel short witch I appreciate.
Ned Beauman überträgt die Situation mit den CO2-Zertifikaten auf die Ausrottung von Tieren durch Firmen. Weil die Zertifikate so billig sind (warum, wird auch erklärt) nehmen die Firmen keine große Rücksicht. Auch sonst ist alles der Profitmaximierung unterworfen. Die beiden Protagonist*innen jagen nun aus sehr unterschiedlichen Gründen den letzten Exemplaren des Gemeinen Lumpfischs hinterher, eine Station bizarrer und waghalsiger als die nächste. Dabei geht es auch viel um Nischen, die sich Tiere erobern, und Evolution. Lustig, spannend und unterhaltsam. Das Ende fand ich schwach, weil sich der Autor dann doch nicht festlegen will. Toll gelesen von Stefan Kaminski, manchmal vielleicht etwas zu dramatisch.
Content warning Review contains minor plot spoilers
This book won the Arthur C Clarke award in 2023 and it's very well deserved.
Set not very many years at all in our future, the book deals with the effects of the ongoing and escalating mass extinction of species on our planet due to climate change and other manmade activities. The author uses the opportunity to make some sharp and well-placed digs at many targets, from carbon offsetting to tech billionaires, and like any good satire it's sometimes too close for comfort.
I've seen other reviews describe the plot as complicated, but I honestly didn't think that was the case at all. The eco-science concepts are well explained and make perfect sense, and the occasional important tech plot point is easy to grasp as well.
The main characters are well-rounded - there are no absolute shades of good or bad in this book, just like in real life. And the writing, although never dumbed down, is snappy and interesting and keeps you turning the pages.
Definitely recommended.
