Starfish

Read Starfish
Maelstrom and Behemoth the whole rifters trilogy a good mix of hard SF mixed with a fish out of water (sorry folks had too) story. With a world so nuts the people are made even crazier. But like now it’s people that make other people nuts. Strong characters and strong story.

Peter Watts has in this book created an underwater world which you are glad to discover and explore along with the people in it. It describes creature’s environments and personalities in such a way that you actually wish you could see for yourself.

There is of course a sinister undertone that starts to hum in the story, and diverges into several different tunes to the point where you are left uncertain to which one you should be humming along to. But this is a good thing, it keeps the suspense,… (more)

Peter Watts has in this book created an underwater world which you are glad to discover and explore along with the people in it. It describes creature’s environments and personalities in such a way that you actually wish you could see for yourself.

There is of course a sinister undertone that starts to hum in the story, and diverges into several different tunes to the point where you are left uncertain to which one you should be humming along to. But this is a good thing, it keeps the suspense, keep you turning pages waiting for a clue with anticipation and then marvel at your own surprise when all the different tunes start to harmonize....[cont'd at http://wp.me/poRYB-1p)

A recommended read...

Thoroughly enjoyed this title, and the rest of the Rifter series (Maelstrom and Behemoth). The characters are colourful, each believably quirky, or is that twisted? The environment is excellently rendered, undersea and on land, with added intensity provided by the depth of researched information woven into the story. Happy to strain my eyes sat up into the wee hours, compelled to finish each once I'd started.

Very good, but hard to get into. Lots of technology, characters who aren't particularly likable (and not really knowable), but still engage your interest, if not your sympathy.

really good read, you need to read all three books: starfish, maelstrom, and behemoth. they get progressively better, opening up more of Watt's world. some of the dialogue is a bit tedious and he gets super technical at points where i just kinda skip through it nodding in ignorant agreement.

great stuff on what happens after man made armageddon. read em all.

Wow. I have not read cyberpunk so engaging, so dark, and so well developed in years. I could not put this series (Starfish, Maelstrom, Behemoth) down - I finished them in a weekend. A week later, I still find myself going over the nuances of the world portrayed in these books.

The ideas, while comfortably within the bounds of traditional cyberpunk, show a flair for detail and an imagination that happily convinced me to suspend my disbelief almost immediately. Once I was engrossed in the world,… (more)

Wow. I have not read cyberpunk so engaging, so dark, and so well developed in years. I could not put this series (Starfish, Maelstrom, Behemoth) down - I finished them in a weekend. A week later, I still find myself going over the nuances of the world portrayed in these books.

The ideas, while comfortably within the bounds of traditional cyberpunk, show a flair for detail and an imagination that happily convinced me to suspend my disbelief almost immediately. Once I was engrossed in the world, and found myself relating to the characters, the story seemed to flow across my reader as fast as I could render the pages. His style is to describe facets of the world in detail, while leaving the broader currents* painted in broad strokes, allowing me to fill in my mental picture without losing me in the background.

Very, very highly recommended. One of my top 5 reads of 2009, without question.
*sorry, couldn't resist

STARFISH by PETER WATTS. The year is 2050. You are part of a work crew three kilometers below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, maintaining the geothermal energy generators that are critical for delivering electricity to an overcrowded world. You and your coworkers have been specially "modified" to handle work in this extreme environment. In fact, you no longer look entirely human, but then how much humanity you possessed before your body was altered is uncertain. It takes a special kind of individual… (more)

STARFISH by PETER WATTS. The year is 2050. You are part of a work crew three kilometers below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, maintaining the geothermal energy generators that are critical for delivering electricity to an overcrowded world. You and your coworkers have been specially "modified" to handle work in this extreme environment. In fact, you no longer look entirely human, but then how much humanity you possessed before your body was altered is uncertain. It takes a special kind of individual to withstand the psychological pressures at the bottom of the sea, and that kind is borderline psychotic.

If you are interested in reading this book, I have good news for you. It's free. Watts has released the book under a CREATIVE COMMONS license which means you can download it, and it's two sequels, from FEEDBOOKS.COM and other places.

I found Starfish to be an engaging bit of writing built on some pretty interesting concepts. Most of these concepts place the book squarely in the TRANSHUMANIST sub-genre of science fiction, an area of fiction I have been exploring for a month or so. I suppose my highest praise for the book is that I started it's sequel, MAELSTROM, within minutes of finishing Starfish.

I do have a couple of minor quibbles with the book.

First, there is an odd moment when one character (Acton) seems to use lines that belong to another character (Fischer). Maybe I just didn't get the connection, but Acton's dialogue, especially the characteristic "This is what you do to someone when you love them" seems to imply more of a connection between Acton and Fischer than really existed, at least "on-stage".

Second, the ending was good, but I'm not sure I got as much closure as I would have liked. If you start the next book right away, this complaint is irrelevant, but the book's final moments seem a bit odd to me. The story isn't open-ended exactly, it just left me with some unanswered questions and a vague sense that I missed something significant.

I read this book on the KINDLE II and on the IPOD TOUCH using the STANZA reader app. In fact, once I was finished with Starfish, I immediately downloaded Maelstrom on my iPod, using a link built into the Starfish e-text. This is a handy little trick that I chastised Amazon for not employing with books in a series. I'm surprised that Feedbooks has beaten them to the punch when the financial gain of creating this feature is much more obvious for Amazon. The other feature I'm surprised Amazon hasn't created for Kindle reading is the ability to subscribe to a book series with your credit card so that when a new book is released it automatically gets delivered wirelessly to your Kindle and your credit card charged for the sale price. (Or at least the ability to pre-purchase a book for a fixed amount once its release has been announced.)

The Rifter books are gripping, horrible and fascinating all at the same time. Well written prose, unique characters, well thought out speculative science and merciless in the telling of it all :D

I couldn't put them down (burned the midnight oil on my Kindle) and when I was done I was left with the same uneasy feeling I have after watching movies like Sleepers or Mystic River - I regard the movie highly, would recommend it to a friend, but I have no intention of adding it to my DVD library.

I'll… (more)

The Rifter books are gripping, horrible and fascinating all at the same time. Well written prose, unique characters, well thought out speculative science and merciless in the telling of it all :D

I couldn't put them down (burned the midnight oil on my Kindle) and when I was done I was left with the same uneasy feeling I have after watching movies like Sleepers or Mystic River - I regard the movie highly, would recommend it to a friend, but I have no intention of adding it to my DVD library.

I'll say the same thing for the Rifter books - read them, they're fascinating and right up there with some of the best hard scifi. Just don't ask me to read them again :D

Excellent. Really enjoyed the book. I have started the next in the series and will continue to read Watts. He has a knack for taking uncomfortable subjects (abuse) and weaving them as a necessary aspect of the story.

Had bad dreams a few nights, but overall, the fallout was worth the read.

Wonderful read! First time in a long time that I have had to finish as quickly as possible. Enjoyed the characters, the setting, the plot line. Couldn't wait to continue on to the next book in the series.

Review (cross-posted from www.mobileread.com)

At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean lies the Channer Vent, a a hydrothermic vent around which monstrous deep-sea fish cluster in the eternal dark. It is here, in the late 21st century, that a major corporation chooses to build Beebe Station, to tap the power generated where two tectonic plates meet. But who would choose to work down there in the dark? Answer, nobody.

Which is why it the criminals, the mentally disturbed, the perverts and murderers, the… (more)

Review (cross-posted from www.mobileread.com)

At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean lies the Channer Vent, a a hydrothermic vent around which monstrous deep-sea fish cluster in the eternal dark. It is here, in the late 21st century, that a major corporation chooses to build Beebe Station, to tap the power generated where two tectonic plates meet. But who would choose to work down there in the dark? Answer, nobody.

Which is why it the criminals, the mentally disturbed, the perverts and murderers, the abusers and the victims of abuse, who are sent down there. Among them is Lenie Clarke, one screw-up among many. With one lung removed and replaced with technology to let her breathe underwater, her body adapted to cope with the extreme pressure, she is equipped with a special wetsuit and strange white contact lenses which allow her to see in the perpetual darkness and sent down to the depths to do her duty.

It's the ones who adapt who survive. And adapting means becoming one with the undersea world, where strangely mutated giant deep-sea fish prowl outside the shelter of the base. Soon, most of the people down there are wearing their white contact lenses all the time, refusing to take off their black wetsuits, spending most of their waking and sleeping hours outside the base. Safe behind their blank eyes, the misfits remain perpetual strangers to each other, away from the world above, where they never fitted. If they do their jobs for the power company, perhaps they'll be left alone to live their strange deep-sea lives. Or perhaps not.

It's a grim, believable world, made all the more authentic by Webb's obvious knowledge of a whole range of sciences and technologies. (There are several pages of references for those who want to follow up the science). Lenie Clarke comes across as a survivor; a perpetual victim, convinced of her own inadequacy, who slowly becomes the de facto leader of the bizarre misfits around her.

I am just reading the book and noticed that for the MobiPocket version on the Gen3 the degree symbol does not work near "Ambient temperature flips from 4..."

Brilliant, Simply Brilliant