Across its surface flowed a syntax of shapes—a steady sequence of silhouettes—ringed, scrolled, involuted, whorled. The figures danced on the octopus’s skin. The place the two octopuses had chosen was bathed in light by a beam-angle from the penetrated hull, and the patterns across the larger one’s pale skin reminded Ha of the articulated cut-out

Ancient, this shape-song. In it, rhythm of tide, of moon-ripple played out on night water. Of buoy-clang near the beach and shore of man. Of crab-scuttle and claw-clack. Of fish-dart and propeller-chug. Of whale-song in the wave. Rhythm of the struggle in the jaw of the shark, the loss of limb and spray of ink as the hero battles back against

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

But for hours, despite that, he lost himself in the work. At first he had thought of it as a maze, as he usually did. That was the common metaphor—the labyrinth. But these last few days he had come to see it for what it was: a palace. It was a palace as large as the world itself. As he wandered its corridors, searching for a way into its central

Invention is what has gotten us this far, made us the masters of this planet. But it is also what traps us. It is a compulsion. We cannot stop, no matter what the consequences.

“Several years ago,” the modulated, shifting voice began, “you volunteered to have your neural connectome mapped and uploaded.” “Right, yeah. DIANIMA project. Back when they were renting a big lab here at the institute.

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

And by then I had already broken into so many neural networks. I already knew what it’s like to be a container ship, for example. What it’s like to be a patrol drone, scanning the streets of Chelyabinsk. What it’s like to be a tow-satellite, dragging an old communications rig up out of a decaying orbit. I’d always had this … I don’t know what you’d

We give words only to the things that matter to us as a society. The things that make no difference to us are erased from our world by never becoming a part of language in the first place. In this way, each language organizes the world into a pattern. Each language decides what has meaning—and what does not. As native speakers, we are born inside