Sunday Times Science Fiction Novel of the Year 2022
The dazzling new novel by the Man Booker-longlisted,Granta Best of Young British novelist,Ned Beauman - a speculative literary thriller for the age of Extinction Rebellion that is as laugh-out-loud funny as it is serious in its message.
The near future. With tens of thousands of species dying out every year,our last hope is the biobanks,impregnable vaults where their remnants can be preserved forever. Until one day an audacious cyberattack obliterates every single one.
In the aftermath,a troubled conservationist and a crooked mining exec must team up in search of the venomous lumpsucker,a lost fish that they both desperately need to save. Together,they pursue it through the weird landscapes of the 2030s - a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the Baltic Sea; the dangerous hinterlands of a totalitarian state. And the further they go,the deeper they're drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was behind it And why would anyone do such a thing
Publisher: Hodder & StoughtonISBN: 9781473613553Number of pages: 304Weight: 514 gDimensions: 236 x 160 x 32 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'A comic caper about our insanely decadent world careering through ecocide,Venomous Lumpsucker is bracingly,excoriatingly funny on our idiocy and the unquantifiable loss that we enable. It's also savagely,forensically serious on the reality of mass species loss,as illuminating as it is entertaining. It reads like P. G. Wodehouse crashing into Philip K. Dick,with a touch of Iain M. Banks. Of course,it's smart and timely,but the writing is often very beautiful,and the ideas and their implications vertiginous.'- Martin Macinnes
'Venomous Lumpsucker makes the death of the natural world way more fun than it should be. This is a hilarious,terrifying novel in which Ned Beauman captures brilliantly the contradictory blend of urgency,paralysis,panic and resignation the climate emergency and its attendant mass extinctions inspire. The book left me hoping - but doubting - that Beauman is a lot less prescient than funny.'- Chris Power
'Ned Beauman is a speculative genius,and Venemous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention. Like a ravenous creature,this book eats up all the great existential crises of the present moment and spits out an insane,hilarious,terrifying future that I,for one,completely believe will come true. Most of all,Beauman grapples head-on with that world-sized heartbreak of species extinction unsparingly and bravely. This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction-novely,hyperbole,technical prowess-but with unusual humor and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. Beauman could not be a more versatile writer. I will read anything he writes.'- Elvia Wilk
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