Overview

Laugh-out-loud funny, with a page-turning plot, Venomous Lumpsucker is a speculative literary thriller for the age of Extinction Rebellion. Laugh-out-loud funny, with a page-turning plot, Venomous Lumpsucker is a speculative literary thriller for the age of Extinction Rebellion. The near future. With tens of thousands of species dying out every year, our last hope is the biobanks, impregnable vaults where their remnants can be preserved forever. Until one day an audacious cyberattack obliterates every single one. In the aftermath, a troubled conservationist and a crooked mining exec must team up in search of the venomous lumpsucker, a lost fish that they both desperately need to save. Together, they pursue it through the weird landscapes of the 2030s - a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the Baltic Sea; the dangerous hinterlands of a totalitarian state. And the further they go, the deeper they're drawn into the mystery of the attack on the biobanks. Who was behind it? And why would anyone do such a thing?

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9781473613560

Table of Contents

Reviews

A comic caper about our insanely decadent world careering through ecocide, Venomous Lumpsucker is bracingly, excoriatingly funny on our idiocy and the unquantifiable loss that we enable. It's also savagely, forensically serious on the reality of mass species loss, as illuminating as it is entertaining. It reads like P. G. Wodehouse crashing into Philip K. Dick, with a touch of Iain M. Banks. Of course, it's smart and timely, but the writing is often very beautiful, and the ideas and their implications vertiginous. * Martin Macinnes, author of INFINITE GROUND * Venomous Lumpsucker makes the death of the natural world way more fun than it should be. This is a hilarious, terrifying novel in which Ned Beauman captures brilliantly the contradictory blend of urgency, paralysis, panic and resignation the climate emergency and its attendant mass extinctions inspire. The book left me hoping - but doubting - that Beauman is a lot less prescient than funny. * Chris Power * Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venemous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention. Like a ravenous creature, this book eats up all the great existential crises of the present moment and spits out an insane, hilarious, terrifying future that I, for one, completely believe will come true. Most of all, Beauman grapples head-on with that world-sized heartbreak of species extinction unsparingly and bravely. This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction-novely, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humor and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. Beauman could not be a more versatile writer. I will read anything he writes. * Elvia Wilk * Wildly funny and inventive. A suitably Swiftian satire for the extinction age. * Jake Arnott * A wild, absurdist quest; a wild satire of our absurd times. Seriously funny, playfully philosophical: a brilliant novel about nothing less than the future (or otherwise) of humanity. I loved it. * Joanna Kavenna * Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venomous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention . . . This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction novels, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humour and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. * Elvia Wilk * An endlessly inventive, witty and bleak literary thriller set in the not-so-distant future, when environmental collapse has wrecked much of our ecosystem. Running the gamut from strange culinary practices to shady corporate dealing, it'll make you laugh and make you think. * Stephen Bush, Financial Times, Best books for summer * You might be forgiven for thinking that a novel about impending ecological disaster and mass extinction won't be a barrel of laughs. Yet that combination is exactly what Ned Beauman serves up in Venomous Lumpsucker... the novel is as intelligent as it is funny. * The Times * A novel that is both funny and profound, full of extraordinary ideas and brilliant set pieces, but also generous and poignant... Venomous Lumpsucker was worth waiting for: a novel that delights, dazzles and moves in equal measure. * Alex Preston, Financial Times * [Beauman] has always had the curious knack of wrongfooting his readers with a beating heart where one has expected only cleverness... Beauman is able to push his fantastic conceits just that one uncomfortable step further... the ideas themselves are powerful, and earn their keep within the fictional frame * Nikhil Krishnan, Daily Telegraph * Brutally satirical and grimly hilarious * Daily Mail * Fascinating... An astute, whimsical send-up of the logic of contemporary capitalism, in which more and more elaborate technology is invented to counteract the very disasters that technology has spawned... Beauman has an enviable talent for crafting sentences, and an offbeat mind when it comes to analogies and metaphors. * i * Beauman writes beautifully on the level of the sentence... Beauman's world-building is impeccable, the narrative voice (part Douglas Adams, part Thomas Pynchon, part Jonathan Swift) is often appealing. * Literary Review *

A comic caper about our insanely decadent world careering through ecocide, Venomous Lumpsucker is bracingly, excoriatingly funny on our idiocy and the unquantifiable loss that we enable. It's also savagely, forensically serious on the reality of mass species loss, as illuminating as it is entertaining. It reads like P. G. Wodehouse crashing into Philip K. Dick, with a touch of Iain M. Banks. Of course, it's smart and timely, but the writing is often very beautiful, and the ideas and their implications vertiginous. * Martin Macinnes, author of INFINITE GROUND * Venomous Lumpsucker makes the death of the natural world way more fun than it should be. This is a hilarious, terrifying novel in which Ned Beauman captures brilliantly the contradictory blend of urgency, paralysis, panic and resignation the climate emergency and its attendant mass extinctions inspire. The book left me hoping - but doubting - that Beauman is a lot less prescient than funny. * Chris Power * Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venemous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention. Like a ravenous creature, this book eats up all the great existential crises of the present moment and spits out an insane, hilarious, terrifying future that I, for one, completely believe will come true. Most of all, Beauman grapples head-on with that world-sized heartbreak of species extinction unsparingly and bravely. This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction-novely, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humor and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. Beauman could not be a more versatile writer. I will read anything he writes. * Elvia Wilk * Wildly funny and inventive. A suitably Swiftian satire for the extinction age. * Jake Arnott * A wild, absurdist quest; a wild satire of our absurd times. Seriously funny, playfully philosophical: a brilliant novel about nothing less than the future (or otherwise) of humanity. I loved it. * Joanna Kavenna * Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venomous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention . . . This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction novels, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humour and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. * Elvia Wilk *

A comic caper about our insanely decadent world careering through ecocide, Venomous Lumpsucker is bracingly, excoriatingly funny on our idiocy and the unquantifiable loss that we enable. It's also savagely, forensically serious on the reality of mass species loss, as illuminating as it is entertaining. It reads like P. G. Wodehouse crashing into Philip K. Dick, with a touch of Iain M. Banks. Of course, it's smart and timely, but the writing is often very beautiful, and the ideas and their implications vertiginous. * Martin Macinnes, author of INFINITE GROUND * Venomous Lumpsucker makes the death of the natural world way more fun than it should be. This is a hilarious, terrifying novel in which Ned Beauman captures brilliantly the contradictory blend of urgency, paralysis, panic and resignation the climate emergency and its attendant mass extinctions inspire. The book left me hoping - but doubting - that Beauman is a lot less prescient than funny. * Chris Power *

A comic caper about our insanely decadent world careering through ecocide, Venomous Lumpsucker is bracingly, excoriatingly funny on our idiocy and the unquantifiable loss that we enable. It's also savagely, forensically serious on the reality of mass species loss, as illuminating as it is entertaining. It reads like P. G. Wodehouse crashing into Philip K. Dick, with a touch of Iain M. Banks. Of course, it's smart and timely, but the writing is often very beautiful, and the ideas and their implications vertiginous. * Martin Macinnes, author of INFINITE GROUND * Venomous Lumpsucker makes the death of the natural world way more fun than it should be. This is a hilarious, terrifying novel in which Ned Beauman captures brilliantly the contradictory blend of urgency, paralysis, panic and resignation the climate emergency and its attendant mass extinctions inspire. The book left me hoping - but doubting - that Beauman is a lot less prescient than funny. * Chris Power * Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venemous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention. Like a ravenous creature, this book eats up all the great existential crises of the present moment and spits out an insane, hilarious, terrifying future that I, for one, completely believe will come true. Most of all, Beauman grapples head-on with that world-sized heartbreak of species extinction unsparingly and bravely. This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction-novely, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humor and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. Beauman could not be a more versatile writer. I will read anything he writes. * Elvia Wilk * Wildly funny and inventive. A suitably Swiftian satire for the extinction age. * Jake Arnott * A wild, absurdist quest; a wild satire of our absurd times. Seriously funny, playfully philosophical: a brilliant novel about nothing less than the future (or otherwise) of humanity. I loved it. * Joanna Kavenna * Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venomous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention . . . This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction novels, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humour and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. * Elvia Wilk * An endlessly inventive, witty and bleak literary thriller set in the not-so-distant future, when environmental collapse has wrecked much of our ecosystem. Running the gamut from strange culinary practices to shady corporate dealing, it'll make you laugh and make you think. * Stephen Bush, Financial Times, Best books for summer * You might be forgiven for thinking that a novel about impending ecological disaster and mass extinction won't be a barrel of laughs. Yet that combination is exactly what Ned Beauman serves up in Venomous Lumpsucker... the novel is as intelligent as it is funny. * The Times * A novel that is both funny and profound, full of extraordinary ideas and brilliant set pieces, but also generous and poignant... Venomous Lumpsucker was worth waiting for: a novel that delights, dazzles and moves in equal measure. * Alex Preston, Financial Times * [Beauman] has always had the curious knack of wrongfooting his readers with a beating heart where one has expected only cleverness... Beauman is able to push his fantastic conceits just that one uncomfortable step further... the ideas themselves are powerful, and earn their keep within the fictional frame * Nikhil Krishnan, Daily Telegraph * Brutally satirical and grimly hilarious * Daily Mail * Fascinating... An astute, whimsical send-up of the logic of contemporary capitalism, in which more and more elaborate technology is invented to counteract the very disasters that technology has spawned... Beauman has an enviable talent for crafting sentences, and an offbeat mind when it comes to analogies and metaphors. * i * Beauman writes beautifully on the level of the sentence... Beauman's world-building is impeccable, the narrative voice (part Douglas Adams, part Thomas Pynchon, part Jonathan Swift) is often appealing. * Literary Review * An offbeat, high-wire satire of environmental capitalism and big tech * Daily Mail * Full of fun and big ideas, [Beauman's] conceptually tricksy novels crackle with comic zip, alive to the past as well as the present... His mischievous intelligence can be felt everywhere * Observer * Exhilarating . . . [Beauman's] novels do not just have propulsive plotting but the ideas are high-octane as well . . . Venomous Lumpsucker does not pause for breath . . . it could not be more timely. Yet every page has a turn of phrase, a witticism, a wry observation or smart simile that beguiles the reader into taking the serious material seriously. -- Stuart Kelly * Spectator *

Author Information

Ned Beauman is the author of Boxer, Beetle, winner of the Writers' Guild Award for Best Fiction Book and the Goldberg Prize for Outstanding Debut Fiction; The Teleportation Accident, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Award and a Somerset Maugham Award; and the highly acclaimed Glow and Madness is Better Than Defeat. He lives in London. www.nedbeauman.co.uk www.nedbeauman.blogspot.co.uk

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