N
Ned Beauman
Venomous Lumpsucker
Synopsis
In the near future, extinction has a price. Companies buy and trade credits that let them wipe out a species, and the price depends on how clever the animal was. The venomous lumpsucker was rated intelligent, which makes it expensive, and Mark Halyard's mining company may have just destroyed the last of them. If they are gone, he goes to prison.
Karin Resaint is the biologist who assessed the fish in the first place, and she wants to find a surviving specimen for reasons of her own that have nothing to do with saving Halyard. Neither trusts the other. They go looking anyway.
The search takes them through a nature reserve used as a toxic dump, a floating city in the Baltic, and the edges of a state that does not welcome visitors, and turns up something considerably larger than one ugly fish.
Ned Beauman writes environmental collapse as farce without ever letting it stop being collapse. Winner of the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Sunday Times Science Fiction Book of the Year.
Genres
Characters
Mark HalyardProtagonist
A mining company's environmental impact executive, facing prison if the lumpsucker turns out to be extinct.
Karin ResaintProtagonist
The biologist who graded the fish's intelligence, hunting a survivor for purposes she does not share.
Arthur C. Clarke Award (2023)
Frequently asked questions
Does this book have any connection to the author's other novels?
This is a standalone work and does not require knowledge of the author's previous books to follow the plot or world-building.
What is the significance of the Arthur C. Clarke Award win for this book?
Winning the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award recognized the novel as the best science fiction book published in the United Kingdom that year, highlighting its specific approach to blending satire with speculative climate fiction.
Is there a film or television adaptation of this story?
There is no film or television adaptation of this novel.