There are two selves in the mind. One is the present self, the ship–neural activity, tacking between the elevated and the mundane. Between thoughts of the meaning of life and of how to glue a handle back on a broken coffee mug. The other is the current on which the vessel is borne: the more permanent self. The memories of childhood, learned concepts, habits and resentments–the built-up layers of previous interactions with the world. This self changes as well, but only slowly–as slowly as a river’s course if changed by shifts in environment and erosion, time wiping a sandbank away or building one up anew. We consist only of change–but some change is fast, and some comes only over years, decades, a lifetime.
A philosophical novel that explores consciousness, technology, and ecology. A scientist and an AI make contact with evolved octopuses – struggle to overcome the anthropomorphic bias of interspecies communication. This novel searches at the brink of alterity – what would a truly non-human intelligence be like and how would we communicate with it.
While there is some action and character development, certain plot points that the reader has to work for, the main energy of the book is oriented toward its philosophical substrate – its questions not just about consciousness but about the coexistence of social connection and complicity in systems of violence. The main character, Dr. Ha Nguyen, has come to a remote research station off the Con Dao Archipelago to study the octopus. She is paired with a sophisticated android by the name of Evrim.
Each short chapter is prefaced with a quote like the one above – on the nature of the mind or language or octopuses – which are presented as snippets from the works of Nguyen and Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, the android’s inventor. Once I became accustomed to the rhythm of the book, I looked forward to the snippets as much as the narrative sections.