Ha heard the insect cacophony of the jungle, the hooting call-and-response of macaques. Rain blew sideways into the pod.

“Sort of. Like a map of a place you’ve never seen before. Except you also don’t know what the symbols or shapes of the map represent. You have to figure out what they mean according to their relationships with one another.” “And most people do this with VR tech.” “Yes. And AI: they have programs that basically model the network for them—like

I’m not skeptical of what we are dealing with: I am trying to determine the level of development. In humans, there are hundreds of thousands of years between the collection of objects which have meaning to them and the arranging of stones for ritual purposes to the actual carving of symbolic objects. I’d like to know for sure whether it’s the

of this—all Ha’s hope for a breakthrough, and any hope the Shapesinger and her kind had—rested on violence. On Altantsetseg’s ability to wield violence, to direct it against the people who would destroy this sanctuary. It was easier to pretend that Altantsetseg was an individual, that all of her choices were her own, than to admit that Altantsetseg

Communication is not what sets humans apart. All life communicates, and at a level sufficient to its survival. Animal and even plant communications are, in fact, highly sophisticated. But what makes humans different is symbols—letters and words that can be arranged in the self-referential sets we call language. Using symbols, we can detach

Now moons decline and rise, Dead metaphors that looked alive. And you about to die Out past the water-clock of tides Naming and renaming your desires. You rode in wind And scarred the cheek Like the edge of an autumn leaf. I put you in your hollow ship With wine and bread to drift The wine-dark sea. You put me In my hollow ship. A memorized part of

One of the aims of The Mountain in the Sea is to explore the idea of communication with a truly alien species here on earth, one that has developed its own system of symbolic communication. Above all, I wanted to be as honest as I could about the complexities of the problem of communication between species. Being true to that goal meant doing a

What does it mean to be a self? I think, more than anything else, it means the ability to select between different possible outcomes in order to direct oneself toward a desired outcome: to be future-oriented. When every day is the same, when we are not presented with the necessity to choose between different possibilities, we say we don’t “feel

“Being with you was easy because all you are is a loop, feeding my thoughts back to myself—just an externalized version of my own thought processes, given a different shape. And it felt like it was helping, but it wasn’t. I don’t need agreement: I need resistance.”