Extremophile

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD 2025

De: Ian Green

Narrado por: Grace Calder

Bloomsbury presents Extremophile by Ian Green, read by Grace Calder.

Charlie and Parker are punks by night, biohackers by day, living in the stuttering decay of near-future climate-collapse London.

They pay for the beer they don't steal with money from their sketchy astronomy site Zodiac Code, while Charlie's bio-bespoke augments equip the criminals, punks, and eco-warriors of London. They have to deal with disgruntled clients, scene kids who don’t dig their band, and a city that's run by corporates and criminals. Their world is split into three factions: Green – who are still trying to save the world; Blue – who try to profit while they can, and Black – who see no hope left.

When a group of extremist Green activists hire them for a series of jobs ranging from robbery to murder, Charlie – who struggles to feel anything except Black – wants to walk away. But Parker still believes they can make a difference, and urges her to accept.

As they enter an escalating biological arms race against faceless corporations, amoral biohackers, and criminal cyberpunks, Charlie will have to choose what she believes in. Is there still hope, and does she have a right to grab it?©2024 Ian Green (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Reseñas de la Crítica

A radical, explosive story full of wild hope and venomous rage. Its near future apocalypse is not just prescient and subversive, but full of life, love and thrill in a way that makes it only breaths away from the world we are now. Its voice is challenging, unrelenting, and veering between heartbreak and humour. I feel like this book was written for me, specifically, but I know it’s for us. All of us. With its queer community, found family, the dilemmas of resistance and the agony of survival, Extremophile was a song to my soul and a punch in the gut. Read it. (Hannah Kaner)

Absolute dirty-nailed cutting-edge biopunk. A world you can taste like a film of grime on the tongue. Phenomenally imaginative. (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

A thrilling ride, full of invention and excitement (Josie Long)

The novel is clear-eyed about the peril our planet faces, but leavens the mood with a sparky, iconoclastic energy

An electric charge of anger animates this gripping novel

[I can] see this taking its place in a future classics list of 21st century SF (Arthur C. Clarke, judging panel)

Extremophile is a pure shot of literary adrenaline - achingly smart, gritty, funny and a hell of a lot of fun. Green’s background in genetic research elevates his portrait of a biohacking-addicted near-future London into a compelling and deeply plausible experience. Viscerally dark but full of hope, with characters who stay with you long after the last page, it’s an explosive joyride through our wildest impulses and darkest fears. Cyberpunk brought thrillingly up to date - absolutely brilliant. (Molly Flatt)

Gibson deep fried in solar panels. (Arthur C. Clarke, judging panel)

Vivid, visceral and utterly compelling, Extremophile blasts new life into the cyberpunk genre. A heady mash-up of biology, punk, art, activism, hackers, murky morality and ultimately, hope, it had me hooked from the first page to the last. (Stark Holborn)

An impassioned, compulsive riot. Imagine an upstart William Gibson setting a thriller amid the punk parties, bio-hack labs and liminal spaces of near-future London. (Jamie Collinson)

A fast-paced action story full of violence, humour and smarts, Extremophile is also about grief, loss, hope and the climate catastrophe. Cyberpunk may be old hat, but BIOPUNX NOT DEAD! ... A cracking, action-packed slice of near future SF full of bio-hacking, punk rock and an overheating London. It also has much more depth and heart than you might imagine from that description. (Will Ashon)

Best new sci fi I’ve read in years

Excellent book.
This is Ian Green’s Biomancer to William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The author must have spent some time in an Indie scene or the punk or metal scene, or just done some really good research because it felt immersive and authentic. At times, I felt the wash in a futuristic punk world that was so different from my own, but so thoroughly set up that I felt I could understand the characters actions, and the characters actions, despite them being completely different than what I would do. Great immersion.
Great detail writing.
Fast moving plot that felt big but not epic for the sake of it or scale-maxxing.
It’s hard to wrap up a story like that without making it either Hollywood or nihilist. I think it walked a great line.

most fun listen I've had in a minute

great characters and world building,. solid writing and story line, excellent narration. not hard sci Fi but a super fun heist with a bit of saving the world thrown in

near possibilities

the story extrapolated current technological developments and societal dysfunction in well rendered visions. that are all too possible. the tech was well thought out and explained. the bio-hack punk characters were easy to to identify with and believable.. I could see my own children resorting to their nabs of hopeful nihilism

Too boring

I finished this book only because it was part of our book club, but it was very difficult to do. The language was insanely over the top, the characters didn’t move me in the slightest until close to the end, every character being to bored to explain anything was really annoying, the narrator had a nice sounding voice and differentiated the characters well but didn’t really bring any life to the characters and almost sped through some dialogue to quickly. I actually wonder if I would have enjoyed reading the book better, though the general theme didn’t grab me. There were some interesting concepts in the story that made me think but overall there wasn’t much to keep me engaged. Like I said at the beginning, it wasn’t until near the end that I started to care about the characters at all. The ending was wild and interesting and it felt like the characters finally got fleshed out enough to be distinct. Though it wasn’t good enough to carry the rest of the book. It did succeed in making me feel depressed and a little hopeless, which was probably intentional by the author.