Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, June 2024
“The Ninth Tentacle” by Geoffrey Hart
Reviewed by Mina
In “The Ninth Tentacle” by Geoffrey Hart, the author turns the world upside down. We see octopods exploring by going up and out of the water. They need an air suit for outside the water. Instead of new planets, they seek new seas. The protagonist, Drifter, has a ninth tentacle, Nine, that pushes it to become an extramarine explorer. Drifter does reach a new sea but finds itself in danger, with Nine coming to the rescue. The best is the gentle humour and the evident pleasure of the author in coining terms such as octonauts, octopodal science, octonormative world, the Octopod constellation and echoing the first moon landing to “take the first steps beyond our sea, where no octopod had gone before.” My favourite line is “nonetheless, we should converse before we consume,” which is very funny in context. Read and learn a new word, “sessile.”