The Tusks of Extinction

A fascinating story of a scientist and passionate elephant conservationist whose consciousness was scanned and later put into the mind of the matriarch of a group of revived mammoths, in the hope that she can teach the group how to be mammoths again in the steppes of Siberia. As the story begins, she discovers the deaths of several male mammoths from hunters. Thus, begins her own vendetta against the hunters to protect her group.

As the story develops, we learn the backstory of the scientist and the state of the world, where elephants have been hunted to near extinction for their ivory and other body parts. While mammoths are protected by the huge wilderness they wander in, they are no longer safe from hunters, unless the scientist, and the mammoth body she inhabits, can push the group into doing something they have never done before: becoming the hunter.

A story full of thrills, suspense, and a look at what a passionate person can do if given the chance the inhabit the body of her passion. But now, her choice is to decide what to do with body she has been granted.

(em português: sol2070.in/2024/05/The-Tusks-of-Extinction )

American Ray Nayler wrote one of the best science fiction books I've read in recent years: “The Mountain in the Sea”. That's why I've been waiting for the release of “The Tusks of Extinction” (2024).

It's a 105-page novella — something between a short story and a novel — about extinction, biotechnology and consciousness transplantation.

In the future, mammoths are genetically recreated in a reserve in Siberia, but as the species depends on a culture passed down for generations, they don't survive as there is no one to teach them. The solution is to transplant the consciousness of a murdered elephant human guardian, in the hope that the pachydermic culture will be useful to the resurrected species. The complicating factor is that to finance the research, mammoth hunts are offered to billionaires willing to pay millions for the privilege of killing one. And illegal hunters are also starting to go after the valuable tusks.

I have a grudge about the cliché of consciousness transference, but the book is so good that I didn't care. The dive into the minds and culture of these animals is particularly moving.

It's not as good as the previous book only because of the smaller number of pages and the more limited focus of the story. But I agree with the publicity for the book, which presents Nayler as a ‘new master of science fiction’.