Venomous Lumpsucker (2022) by Ned Beauman

 Book Review

Venomous Lumpsucker (2022)

by Ned Beauman

   There are a couple ways I keep track of what books I want to read- the first tier is the New York Times book section, the reviews that appear in the Guardian and the publications I have in my feedly- Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, etc.  Second tier is the nominees and winners for a host of literary prizes- The Booker Prize is my number one, then the National Book Award then the secondary awards- usually just the winners.  The Arthur C. Clarke award, which was established in 1987 for the "best science fiction" book published first in the UK in the preceding year.   If you look at the past winners you've got a pretty good guide to the important stopping points in the continuing intersection of science fiction/genre and literary fiction.  Previous winners include trailblazers like Margaret Atwood- The Handmaidens Tale was the original winner in 1987, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Emily St. John Mandel, Colson Whitehead and Namwali Serpell- all authors who are widely read by the general reading audience for literary fiction.

   Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman was the Arthur C. Clarke prize winner this year.  I checked it out from the library in an e-book when I read the announcement, only to learn that I'd checked it out when it was originally released and didn't actually read it. Beauman is another science fiction/literary fiction cross-over author.  His 2011 book, The Teleportation Accident made the then Man Booker Prize longlist. 

    Like many succesful works of cross-over literary/science fiction, Venomous Lumpsucker dwells in a future that is close enough to be described with the vocabulary of the present, but different enough to evoke interest.  The world of Venomous Lumpsucker is recognizably a variation on "the not so distant future," global warming/climate change continues unabated, but the United Nations has somehow managed to set up a binding system of extinction credits to manage the competing needs of economic growth and environmental protection but you probably don't need me to tell you how that is going at the beginning of the book.

   The two major characters are Karen Resaint, a hired gun who helps companies manage the extinction process and Mark Halyard, the employee of an Indian mining conglomerate charged with their end of what Resaint calls, "the extinction industry."  The plot is set in motion by a surprise attack on a "bio-bank" used by governments and corporations to store the genetic data of now extinct species.  The bio bank is wiped out.  The value of extinction credits goes up by a factor of 10 (50,000 to 500,000) over-night, which leads to complications for Halyard, who is now caught in a semi-illicit act of arbitrage which centers on the work done by Resaint.  My feeling is that the sophistication of the set-up- which involves an university level of contemporary economics- should be enough to intrigue a potential reader if the pedigree of the Arthur C. Clarke.

  The action that follows the set up isn't particularly inventive, but the reader is carried along by the richness of the world Beauman described- down to his coy use of the term The Hermit Kingdom to describe what has happened in the United Kingdom- a transition that mostly remains off stage until the exciting conclusion of the book.