The Mountain in the Sea

Near-future scifi that imagines what happens when humans both build the first real AI/android, and discover a species of intelligent octopus. A lot of discussion about what consciousness means.

There are several threads of story here, including the scientist who is obsessed with potential cephalopod intelligence, the evil corporation running the nature preserve, a guy trapped on an AI-powered slave fishing boat, a hacker charged with a mysterious research project. As you might expect, these all converge by the end, but I wanted them to have more resonance sooner. But super interesting, and also I was VERY interested in how much we'd get to learn about the symbol system that's so heavily used in the book design.

Noted on October 19, 2022