The Mountain in the Sea

“I think, therefore I doubt I am,” Ha said.

The weathered surface of the chunk of exposed volcanic stone smoothed, and paled. Where before there was only stone, a horizontal slit opened. An eye. The rock slivered itself into two.

But what could be more illusory than the world we see? After all, in the darkness inside our skulls, nothing reaches us. There is no light, no sound—nothing. The brain dwells there alone, in a blackness as total as any cave’s, receiving only translations from outside, fed to it through its sensory apparatus. —Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Buildi

The best-case scenario is they retreat to someplace where they can’t be found. The worst-case scenarios are so much worse I can’t even bear to think of them. This isn’t going to be a first-contact story, where humanity achieves enlightenment because we finally realize we aren’t alone in the universe, and we all hold hands and sing around a campfire

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 mas

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 ch

She waved her gloved hand and a submersible appeared in the tank. It was smaller than the other two, no larger than a coconut, ovoid and dull, its surface an array of what looked like black eyes and larger depressions. “Not just invisible—or nearly so—but also as silent as I can get it. Its propellers oscillate randomly through a series of imitativ

“But what we did not render obsolete was the fear humans have of other minds.

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 death