Venomous Lumpsucker

A darkly absurd story of environmental collapse and the end of civilization from the Booker-listed author of The Teleportation Accident.

It's the near future, and tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. But the loss is not total: DNA sequences are being digitized and uploaded to a global network of "biobanks," and so are brain and body scans, recordings of behaviors in the wild, microbiota profiles, and constellations of other data. Soon, when the technology is more advanced, the lost species will be brought back. Then biobanks are hit by a coordinated cyberattack, erasing their cloud storage systems and laying waste to physical archives.

Karen Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with the survival of one species in particular: the venomous lumpsucker, a small, ugly bottom-feeder that happens to be the most intelligent fish on the planet. Resaint is an animal cognition scientist consumed with existential grief over what humans have done to nature. Halyard is a jaded corporate "Environmental Impact Coordinator" connected to the mining operation that wiped out the lumpsucker's last known habitat.

Across the dystopian landscapes of the 2030s--the floating cities, toxic waste sanctuaries and totalitarian hinterlands--Resain and Halyard hunt for a living lumpsucker. And the farther they travel, the more indications they find of something deeper, a hidden network of power and transformation at the far limits of their understanding.

Virtuosic and profound, witty and despairing, Venomous Lumpsucker is Ned Beauman at his very best.