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Starfish Rifters Trilogy Peter Watts 9780812575859 Books

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Starfish Rifters Trilogy Peter Watts 9780812575859 Books

Most sci-fi looks at how humans rearrange the environment, often from the standpoint of the damage done. This book flips the premise to humans changing in response to the environment. The transmogrified rifters have had surgical modifications to adapt to working on the ocean floor. As the book progresses the group of misfits undergo surreal acclimatization, they spend more and more time in the water, they can hear each other think, they prefer darkness and bioluminescence to light. As they morph away from human, the author weaves aquatic science and creative fantasy into a haunting tale. The dystopia is relieved by empathy and imagery that tugs at the heart and mind. Unfortunately, life under the sea is only 1/2 the story. The plot explodes on land with a greedy corporation, a power hungry villain and a mealy mouth manager who basically manage to destroy the world (as well as the novel). Along with top heavy tropes that contort the story from above, there are unexplained twists like ancient DNA and some malevolent AI running computers. Easy to see how it would take a trilogy to tie up all the loose ends but the needless complexity also makes it easy to put down. The rifters is a small part of the story but it has the biggest punch. Their struggle is more immediate and the lesson more captivating proving that no matter where explorations lead, (from outer space to the ocean floor), the most challenging frontiers come from within. I might not finish this series but I would certainly read more by this author.


Tags : Starfish (Rifters Trilogy) [Peter Watts] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div>A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew--people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater--down to live and work in this weird,Peter Watts,Starfish (Rifters Trilogy),Tor Science Fiction,0812575857,English Canadian Novel And Short Story,Fiction,Fiction - Science Fiction,Fiction Science Fiction Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic,Fiction Science Fiction General,Science Fiction,Science Fiction - General,Science Fiction And Fantasy,Science FictionCyberpunk

Starfish Rifters Trilogy Peter Watts 9780812575859 Books Reviews

Really different--and a great read. Bio-enhanced social misfits recruited to run a maintenance station at the ocean floor of the Juan De Fuca rift gradually seem to morph into a partly empathic group of still-untrustful but co-dependent ... victims of an above-world plan reacting to their changing, let us say, biome. (Don't want to spoil aything.) The novel goes from presenting the damaged individuals and their scary undersea life to a truly global finale that involves the whole west coast of N. America The science aspects are good; makes a lot of earlier science fiction (whether on earth or in space) seem like cowboy stories.
Despite loving watts blindsight and echopraxia, and general creativity, I found this volume a total miss, comprised of a lot of commotion but little plot complexity or progress, and a nice psychological stage that then literally went nowhere - the main character's psychological arc never evolved or resolved or reflected, it just randomly wandered aimlessly to a meh happenstance drifting forward, to a plot conclusion that could have been arrived at a dozen different ways, or enormously earlier. The characters all seemed passive, and often oblivious, bystanders to events. As apparently the further continuations of the series take a gratuitously violent turn for the sheer perversity of violence, I'll be skipping the rest of this series.

I can only add that watts shouldn't be judged solely by this trilogy's work. Blindsight and echopraxia were literally some of the best scifi off their respective years, rich and complex and rewarding to read, and it's almost baffling that the same author produced both works. If you like watts or are getting cross recommendations, I'd overwhelmingly recommend hopping to those works instead.
Peter Watts is, if anything, consistent.. The same future dystopia reigns in every novel from the first Rifter Trilogy to Blind Sight / Echopraxia. It is a dismal, soulless mess of biological and technological dreams / nightmares with characters that can only be described as depressingly complex. The same themes appear over and over - intelligence, free will, consciousness, boundaries, purpose and reason.

Unlike many authors, Watts eschews lofty power talk from the likes of the Kremlin, UN or White House. His focus is on the middleman - those who are controlled and control others, who both take and give orders. This is a difficult perch due the inherent nuances of such a position and yet this is what he does best. In a world starved for more and more energy, the deep rifts in the oceans are now being exploited. But the cost in human sacrifice is great.

STARFISH is the story of one group of workers at the Beebe energy plant. First novels are almost always autobiographical which is the case with this novel. The author worked in the oceans protecting marine life and thus has inside knowledge of the last unexplored place on Earth. The description of the underworld is fascinating but it is the workers that grab our attention. These are greatly modified humans that can withstand the tremendous pressure of the deep and who can remain in the waters for long periods of time due to their internal machinery that allows respiration. The catch is that these individuals must fit a certain psychological baseline and that include sociopaths, pedophiles and abuse victims.

But something lurks among the insane crew, an ancient form of life (pre DNA) that threatens the world. . And once its meme enters the Maelstrom (future internet) intelligent monitoring organisms set up to prohibit viruses and malware are drawn to its very simplicity. The reader is in for a bumpy, ride to the future with word twists, technical verbal fireworks, phrases as sentences, competing thoughts and a swirl of condensed, punk writing. My Grade - A1
Most sci-fi looks at how humans rearrange the environment, often from the standpoint of the damage done. This book flips the premise to humans changing in response to the environment. The transmogrified rifters have had surgical modifications to adapt to working on the ocean floor. As the book progresses the group of misfits undergo surreal acclimatization, they spend more and more time in the water, they can hear each other think, they prefer darkness and bioluminescence to light. As they morph away from human, the author weaves aquatic science and creative fantasy into a haunting tale. The dystopia is relieved by empathy and imagery that tugs at the heart and mind. Unfortunately, life under the sea is only 1/2 the story. The plot explodes on land with a greedy corporation, a power hungry villain and a mealy mouth manager who basically manage to destroy the world (as well as the novel). Along with top heavy tropes that contort the story from above, there are unexplained twists like ancient DNA and some malevolent AI running computers. Easy to see how it would take a trilogy to tie up all the loose ends but the needless complexity also makes it easy to put down. The rifters is a small part of the story but it has the biggest punch. Their struggle is more immediate and the lesson more captivating proving that no matter where explorations lead, (from outer space to the ocean floor), the most challenging frontiers come from within. I might not finish this series but I would certainly read more by this author.