The Cosmic Codex
The Cosmic Codex
Club Codex (July 2024): "Venemous Lumpsucker" by Ned Beauman
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Club Codex (July 2024): "Venemous Lumpsucker" by Ned Beauman

Read and discuss the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel
“Searching for redemption” by Brian S. Pauls; digital illustration created using Midjourney

My novelette, An Illicit Mercy, is part of a new promotion in July, Free eBooks Featuring Strong Independent Young Girls and Women.
Over 125 science fiction, fantasy, young adult, and general fiction books, available at no cost.

Book Cover
Get your FREE copy of Wait for Me
This is an intense crossover short, where two of Dawn Chapman’s favorite characters meet the main character from Tailspin

Enjoy! 
Sometimes, the hardest thing you'll ever do is tell someone you love them.
Amid intense helicopter missions, a teenager arrives at Rise Hospital, requiring life-saving yet experimental tech. Nico and Lacy are called in for their expertise, with no clue who this stranger is or how meeting him will change their lives forever. Lacy's skills as a magic healer will be pushed to the limit.
For the first time in a long time, Niko and Lacy spend meaningful time together when it matters most to their relationship. Niko realizes that if he never says those words, he might lose Lacy for good.

Club Codex is discussing Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman in July. Due to my work demands, we’re starting this book later than expected. In 2023, Venomous Lumpsucker won Beauman the Arthur C. Clarke Award “for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year.”

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From the Penguin Random House website:

“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?”

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We’ll be reading Venomous Lumpsucker through the end of July.

I plan to post my thoughts to Club Codex as I read. Join me! All you need is a free subscription to The Cosmic Codex.

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I look forward to sharing ideas with each of you.

The next Club Codex selection will be The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith by Josephine Saxton.

Questions or comments? Please share your thoughts!

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My latest novelette, “Long Night On the Endless City,” appears in Boundary Shock Quarterly 26: Tomorrow’s Crimes:
On the vast ring habitat Ouroboros, Jel and her synthetic companion Marcus search for Arja, the third member of their triad. This quest leads them to a cryptic technology cult with questionable motives. When they suffer a vicious attack, Marcus and Jel join forces with one of Ouroboros’most renowned computer and robotics experts to get to the bottom of the mystery.
This thought-provoking sf tale explores artificial intelligence, religion, and the ties that bind families together in a fast-paced story full of action, intrigue, and heart.

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