What Would Marcellus Say?: A Guest Post by Shelby Van Pelt

Sometimes a short synopsis is all you need: A detective octopus helps a grieving aquarium employee solve the mystery of her missing son. It’s certainly unique in vessel, but the themes of coping, recovering and moving forward resonate whether you have two arms or eight. Read on for an exclusive essay from Our Monthly Pick author Shelby Van Pelt as she reflects on three years of Remarkably Bright Creatures.

Marcellus, the giant Pacific octopus who narrates parts of Remarkably Bright Creatures, has been sparking book club discussions and charming readers for three years. What a time to be an octopus, even a fictional one! I’ve seen octopus pies, octopus cookies, and eight-armed bell pepper creations at book club snack spreads. Octopus hats and octopus plushies have come through signing lines, and one time, a full-body fleece octo-onesie showed up (in Florida, nonetheless). The shelf in my office houses a “tangle” (that’s one of the collective nouns for octopuses) of crocheted cuties, and the wall behind my desk hosts several gorgeous pieces of Marcellus fan art.

It’s been an incredible three years, for me anyway. But I’ve sometimes asked myself: what would Marcellus say, if he could see his likeness rendered in orange-bell-pepper form?

Humans, he might say, in that tone of his, the one where it sounds like he’s shaking his head, even though he doesn’t, technically, have one.

But beneath his droll posturing, I think he’d be delighted at the fandom.

Like the rest of the characters in Remarkably Bright Creatures—and most of us in the real world—Marcellus yearns to be seen, to be understood. And while a cute plush octopus with googly eyes might not be anatomically accurate, the fact that it exists shows that people, increasingly, care. And if the endless stream of fascinating articles and videos that flows through my feeds is any indication, it’s clear that octopuses are becoming better understood by science every day.

Sometimes at book events, I’ll play a show-of-hands game with the crowd, and the results are quite consistent. Raise your hand if you picked up Remarkably Bright Creatures because you were excited about the octopus. Half of the hands lift. What if you said to yourself, an octopus, really? I don’t know…

And the other half of the folks raise their hands. That’s a lot of skeptics who now know more, and care more, about octopuses.

With the paperback release, I hope to keep that momentum going. I’m especially excited about the annotated chapter included in the Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition, in which I get to expand on a few of the fun facts I learned about octopuses in the very early stages of my research, as well as share other fun tidbits and sources of inspiration.

Caring a little more for our world and its creatures is always a good thing. Bring on the silly octopus hats. Marcellus would approve.