Venomous Lumpsucker

Written by Ned Beauman

Narrated by John Hastings

The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it's all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we're never getting them back.

Karin Resaint and Mark Halyard are concerned with 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 an exec from the extinction industry, complicit in the mining operation that destroyed the lumpsucker's last-known habitat.

Across the dystopian landscapes of the 2030s-a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the ocean; the hinterlands of a totalitarian state-Resaint and Halyard hunt for a surviving lumpsucker. And the further they go, the deeper they're drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was really behind it? And why would anyone do such a thing?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781696608046

Ned Beauman

Ned Beauman was born in 1985 and studied philosophy at Cambridge University. He has written for Dazed & Confused, AnOther Magazine, the Guardian, the Financial Times, and several other magazines and newspapers. He lives in London and is is at work on his second novel. Visit www.boxerbeetle.com.

Reviews for Venomous Lumpsucker

[Billie · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Venomous Lumpsucker
by Ned Beauman
Science Fiction Dystopia
Scribd Audio

In the future, just about every living animal, plant, and insect are extinct but saved as DNA samples so that 'maybe' 'one day' they could be brought back to life. So now, after paying for extinction credits to make sure samples are banked, companies can wipe out the last of any species. But a cyber hack destroys all those places the samples were saved, and now they are lost forever. Though, other than the stock prices going up on the extinction credits, nobody really cares.

Karin and Mark are two who do. Karin because she's trying to save a fish, the venomous lumpsucker, and Mark because he sold some of his company's credit hoping to make a quick buck under the table.

When I started this book, I was hoping for a dark comedy, as the blurb hinted at... Eh. There were some funnies, but not enough. And it wasn't dark. It was boring. Very disappointing. A lot of the dialogue switched into a telling; (“I went to this school,” she said, then told them about how her date stood her up. The dress she had bought was dark brown...”).

Maybe, if the story had been centered on the science fiction aspect, instead of the daily lives of the characters, and a little bit of action as they travel here and there to find the fish, the story might have worked better, but as is, it read more like a fictionalized memoir than a science fiction novel.

And the ending... Lame and not that surprising.

1 Star