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Venomous Lumpsucker

WINNER of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2023

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Venomous Lumpsucker

By: Ned Beauman
Narrated by: John Hastings
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Summary

 ***Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award***
*SUNDAY TIMES SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL OF THE YEAR*

'A novel that delights, dazzles and moves in equal measure' Financial Times

'Brutally satirical and grimly hilarious' Daily Mail

The venomous lumpsucker is the most intelligent fish on the planet. Or maybe it was the most intelligent fish on the planet. Because it might have just gone extinct. Nobody knows. And nobody really cares, either. Except for two people.

Mining executive Mark Halyard has a prison cell waiting for him if that fish is gone for good, and biologist Karin Resaint needs it for her own darker purposes. They don't trust each other an inch, but they're left with no choice but to team up in search of the lumpsucker. And as they journey across the strange landscapes of near-future Europe - a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the Baltic Sea; the lethal hinterlands of a totalitarian state - they're drawn into a conspiracy far bigger than one ugly little fish.

'A laugh-out-loud novel about mass extinction (yes, really)' Sunday Times

'Confirms his reputation as one of the foremost satirists of his generation' The Times

(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited©2022 Ned Beauman Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Thriller & Suspense Fiction Funny Witty
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Critic 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.
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.
Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venomous 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.
Wildly funny and inventive. A suitably Swiftian satire for the extinction age.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All stars
Most relevant
Satire is a great tool for exploring the absurdities of existence and of society and for exposing truths we may otherwise find it hard to look at.

This book does that with its story based around Extinction Credits, a system that is oh so close to the truth and quite possibly something that will happen in the future. This morning alone I read about housing developers here in the UK being able to buy ‘nature restoration credits’ in exchange for not building nature friendly developments or building on green land. We know where this goes, not least down to books like this.

The book itself was very funny and good value until about 2/3s through. Then it ran a little off course, as I find satirical books usually do, when there main message is well spent. Still, very worth the read just to remind ourselves the sh*t we’re in and how we got there, and maybe how we can get out…

Enjoyable for the most part. Scarily close to truth.

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Clever and engaging, this book may be satirical but sadly does not seem farfetched! Definitely funny and thought-provoking. Good audiobook version as well, the reader does accents for the different characters which is well-done and adds to the narration.

new favourite book

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So many concepts and ideas handled with humour. This is a really important and informative book that opens a (hopefully not extinct) can of worms. It reminds me of Douglas Adams in many ways. Well written and constructed storytelling.

Wonderful.

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This was such an interesting book. The fantastic narration by John Hastings just pushed this book into such a fun, exciting and laugh out loud experience.
What an incredible take Ned Beauman had on the future and our dismissal on our surroundings.

Fun and interesting

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While I appreciate this is a good book I found I drifted off several times and just gave up listening half way through. I really wanted to like it more, many people did, so don't be put off by my words.

Not for me

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