[GolfPopper]

SF author (and marine biologist) Peter Watts described something very much like this, only more advanced, in his book Maelstrom (2001):

"Achilles Desjardins had always found smart gels a bit creepy. People thought of them as brains in boxes, but they weren't. They didn't have the parts. Forget about the neocortex or the cerebellum—these things had nothing. No hypothalamus, no pineal gland, no sheathing of mammal over reptile over fish. No instincts. No desires. Just a porridge of cultured neurons, really: four-digit IQs that didn't give a rat's ass whether they even lived or died. Somehow they learned through operant conditioning, although they lacked the capacity either to enjoy reward or suffer punishment. Their pathways formed and dissolved with all the colorless indifference of water shaping a river delta."

Much of his work, including Maelstrom, is freely available on his own website:https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

[jbaber]

I thought you were going to say Starfish by Watts, which also features smart gels.

[GolfPopper]

Malestrom is the second book in the trilogy (or quadrology - the 4th book was split in two in some printings).

I didn't have a copy of Starfish handy, and I wasn't sure if gels had been mentioned there or not.

[narrator]

Another great novel about emergent intelligence was Blood Music by Greg Bear. A microorganism develops swarm intelligence.