Published in 2022, The Mountain in the Sea is Ray Nayler’s debut novel. Nayler, a short story writer and poet, has worked in the Peace Corps and US Foreign Service in Russia and Central Asia and on marine conservation projects in Vietnam.

The Mountain in the Sea is a work of speculative fiction. Set in the near-future, it centers on Dr. Ha Nguyen’s quest to establish first contact with an extraordinary octopus species rumored to have developed language and culture. Sponsored by DIANIMA, an international tech corporation, Ha teams up with an elite security officer and the world’s first android to explore the deep waters of Vietnam’s Con Dao archipelago. In the process, Ha unravels DIANIMA’s hidden intentions and the lengths the corporation’s opponents will go to stop them. The novel blends elements of cyberpunk, hard science, and climate fiction to explore themes of alienation and exploitation, corporate greed, memory, the barriers to communication, and the elusive nature of consciousness. The Mountain in the Sea won the Locus Award for Best First Novel in 2023.

This guide refers to the 2022 Farrar, Straus and Giroux Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss enslavement and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Global conglomerate DIANIMA is a leading artificial intelligence (AI) tech company headed by Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan, who authored Building Minds and created the world’s first conscious android, Evrim. Under the pretense of conservation, DIANIMA purchases Vietnam’s Con Dao archipelago and evacuates all residents from the main island. Locals have long believed in the myth of the Con Dao Sea Monster to explain mysterious deaths there. DIANIMA recruits Dr. Ha Nguyen, a cephalopod specialist, to establish first contact with a newly discovered species of octopus rumored to walk on land and communicate. Evrim leads the secret project, and Altantsetseg, a Mongolian war veteran, is their elite security agent.

Ha is the author of How Oceans Think, a scientific speculation on cephalopod communication. Evrim shows Ha video footage of an octopus pausing the usual passing-cloud images across its skin to display a sequence of symbols. Ha discerns a repeated shape: a horizontal crescent with an arrow pointing down from its center. From an aerial perspective, the crescent resembles the barrier of an octopus’s den, and the arrow appears to point outward. Ha interprets the symbol as a sign for “stay away.” On a hunch, she makes an inverse version of the symbol on the beach with rocks and seaweed, hoping her shape means “come in.” The octopus responds by repeating the same “stay away” symbol on the sand, using seaweed, a speargun, and a human skull. Evrim and Ha worry that from the octopuses’ perspective, humans are a monstrous enemy.

Ha remains isolated on the island; her only outside contact is Kamran, a companion she speaks with through a terminal that projects his image. The only other island inhabitants are a small group of Tibetan automonks (unconscious automations) who manage a Buddhist temple and a turtle sanctuary. Evrim disparages them as inferiors. Ha marvels at Evrim’s extraordinary mind and empathizes with its loneliness. Evrim, who is genderless, considers itself conscious. However, the more Evrim proves human, the more the world fears and ostracizes androids. Evrim neither sleeps nor forgets. Ha thinks the ability to forget allows humans to move on from their pasts and become better selves.

Illegal fishing vessels breach the island’s perimeter, and Altantsetseg, who controls a fleet of drones, directs them to destroy the ships. The fishing vessels were presumed automated, but the next morning, dismembered bodies float ashore. Evrim explains that enslaved humans must have been on board. Evrim buries the dead, but neither Evrim nor Altantsetseg consider the tragedy anything more than collateral damage. Ha is tempted to leave the project but follows her desire to make contact when Altantsetseg rigs a cloaked submersible and captures an octopus that is creating an elaborate display to an audience of other octopuses. The octopus, which Evrim names the Shapesinger, repetitively displays two crescent shapes to form a circle. Ha interprets it as a sign of connection and a desire to communicate with humans. She replicates the symbol using colored glass bottles in shallow water, and the octopus adds more shapes that Evrim interprets as representing an eye opening. Ha meets the Shapesinger in the water, and the octopus gives her a coral carving of a human figure.

After an argument with Evrim, Altantsetseg informs Ha that she’s under direct orders to kill Evrim and Ha if either tries to leave the island. Ha asks Kamran to call for help but confronts the reality that Kamran is merely a hologram construct that she relied on to cope with her past: She once ignored the needs of poor villagers who interfered with her cuttlefish research. She had the poachers punished, and they retaliated by poisoning the cuttlefish. Ha admits her arrogance and indifference to their desperate circumstances and her fault in the cuttlefish deaths. Destroying her terminal, she tells Evrim she’s determined to keep the octopuses safe. Evrim confides that Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan intends to create a hyperintelligent mind superior to that of humans and is committed to achieving her goal even if it means killing the octopuses to study them.

The novel interweaves two other storylines. The first concerns Rustem, a Tatar hacker assigned to break into the most complex AI system he has ever seen. He’s hired by a mysterious woman who wears a digital shield to hide her identity, later revealed as a member of a radical animal rights organization intent on hacking into Evrim’s AI framework and recoding it to assassinate anyone who gets in her organization’s way. After hacking into Evrim’s system, however, Rustem refuses to alter such a beautiful mind. He kills the shielded woman and goes into hiding. In the other storyline, a Japanese man named Eiko was abducted and is now enslaved on an AI-captained fishing trawler, the Sea Wolf. Eiko considers this punishment for his indifference to people’s suffering. He befriends Son, a native of Con Dao and fellow captive. The captives revolt, killing the guards, but the AI system refuses to feed them and blocks them from accessing the ship’s operation. Desperate to survive, the men resume their fishing duties. Son tricks the AI into heading toward Con Dao by casually mentioning how easy it is to illegally fish in the waters now that the archipelago has been evacuated.

All three storylines converge when Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan unexpectedly visits to tell the team of an impending hostile takeover of DIANIMA in which they’ll lose the island. When the Sea Wolf crosses the island’s protected perimeter, Altantsetseg sends drones to destroy the ship. Eiko and Son, escaping on a life raft, are the sole survivors. The octopuses misinterpret the fighting as an attack on their habitat and retaliate by going on land, destroying Altantsetseg’s system, and killing Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan. Hiding with Evrim in the compound’s safe room, Ha learns that the day she met Evrim, a hacker named Rustem entered Evrim’s mind to manipulate it but instead entered a code to destroy the portal, granting Evrim freedom from anyone’s control. In the aftermath, Altantsetseg reveals that she’s a secret agent for the Buddhist Republic of Tibet, and Con Dao is now a protectorate of the Buddhist Republic. The Shapesinger approaches Ha, flashing an image of Ha’s face on her mantle, and gives her an octopus beak carved with symbols. Ha still believes that genuine connection is possible. In the Epilogue, Eiko’s life raft lands on Con Dao, and an automonk informs him that the place is a refuge for everyone. Eiko and Son are saved, and Eiko helps the automonk release turtle hatchlings into the sea.