Venomous Lumpsucker | Ned Beauman

 

A dark and witty story of environmental collapse and runaway capitalism. In a near future in which tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year, a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, including biobanks housing 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.

Animal cognition scientist Karin Resaint is consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature, while extinction industry executive Mark Halyard comes from the dark side. But they are both 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. The further they go in their hunt for the lumpsucker, the deeper they are 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.