Monday, August 21, 2023

Eight books about intelligent sea creatures

James Sturz grew up in New York City, snorkeling in his bathtub and pretending the living room shag carpet was finger coral. Now based in Hawaii, he has covered the underwater world for The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, Outside, and Men’s Journal, among many publications. His fiction and journalism have been published in 18 countries and translated into nine languages. He graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University and is a PADI Divemaster, free diver, and Explorers Club Fellow. His first novel, Sasso, was set in the caves of Basilicata, Italy, very far from the water.

Sturz's new novel is Underjungle.

At Lit Hub he tagged eight books that "feature intelligent sea creatures who become part of our world, or else we enter theirs." One title on the list:
Ned Beauman, Venomous Lumpsucker

Behold the venomous lumpsucker: five-inches-long, greyish, googly-eyed, bumpy—and one of the most intelligent creatures on Beauman’s near-future version of the planet. Far nerdier than dangerous as individuals, they’re capable of killing out of revenge in schools, just because it makes them feel better. Now enter Karin Resaint, a Swiss-German animal-cognition scientist who has figured out how smart these little fish are and is determined to keep them alive as their habitat is threatened with destruction, while the Powers That Be speculate on the price of World Commission on Species Extinction credits and simultaneously try to rig that market. Which leads us to wonder who the real bottom-feeders are, and how any of us are to confront existential grief, in this rollicking, high-tech, and insidiously profound tale.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue