false 66479 3 Peter Watts's first novel explores the last mysterious place on earth--the floor of a deep sea rift. Channer Vent is a zone of freezing darkness that belongs to shellfish the size of boulders and crimson worms three meters long. It's the temporary home of the maintenance crew of a geothermal energy plant--a crew made up of the damaged and dysfunctional flotsam of an overpopulated near-future earth. The crew's reluctant leader, basket case Lenie Clarke, can barely survive in the upper world, but she quickly falls under the rift's spell, just as Watts's magical descriptions of it enchant the reader: "Steam never gets a chance to form at three hundred atmospheres, but thermal distortion turns the water into a column of writhing liquid prisms, hotter than molten glass."<p> Watts is investigating monsters. Gigantic deep sea monsters, surgically-altered-from-human monsters, faceless jellied-brain computer monsters--which monsters are human, which are more than human, which are less? Watts keeps the story line stripped down to showcase the theme of dehumanization. The anonymous millions who live along the unstable shore of N'AmPac come under threat (a triggered earthquake, and perhaps a disaster that's slower but even more pitiless) from their own dehumanized creations. But Watts is less interested in whether Lenie can save the dry world as in whether she can save herself. In <I>Starfish</I>, Watts stretches the boundaries of humanity up, down, and sideways to see whether its dimensions reveal anything we'd be proud to be a part of. <I>--Blaise Selby</I> 2489444 1999 Starfish (Rifters, #1) total:259|5:61|4:111|3:69|2:16|1:2| 259 990 398 51 4 1 false false Tue Dec 02 19:31:25 -0800 2008 Sat Aug 23 19:42:52 -0700 2008 Tue Dec 02 19:31:25 -0800 2008 Blindsight, so this makes me happy. I also, of course, have the rest of the Rifters series to rea...more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Sep 15 11:00:42 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 30 10:56:18 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2005 Fri Aug 22 19:02:47 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 22 19:02:47 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Thu Mar 29 11:45:29 -0700 2007 Sat Mar 31 19:49:54 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Thu May 10 19:16:46 -0700 2007 Thu May 10 19:32:15 -0700 2007 Rifters Trilogy series almost cheery by comparison), Starfish covers the lives of a dysfunctional group of surgically altered humans who m...more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Jul 23 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 22 16:51:29 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 23 16:04:05 -0700 2008
Well, suffice it to say that free downloads are not the only reason to read Mr. Watts' prose. Starfish is Crichton's Sphere, done right. ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Sep 05 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 27 17:53:29 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 05 16:30:22 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 true false Fri Oct 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 21 05:46:23 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 21 05:46:48 -0700 2009 1
Happily, Peter Watts, author of Starfish, put that editor and cynic to sleep, so t...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 08:44:53 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 25 19:41:53 -0700 2009 This is a science-fiction novel that contains "bizarre" settings that many authors haven't tried before. There are a handful of characters and as you read on, it becomes challenging to keep up what's going on with each person. The story takes place in an underwater station ca...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Jul 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 15 03:11:27 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 15 03:26:10 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Oct 22 06:21:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 06:39:49 -0700 2009
his description of the thermo vents - the crushing weight of that much water, the darkness, the isolation, the oddly fragile mu...more...]]> 4 0 false true Sat Aug 15 14:08:05 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 17 22:17:07 -0700 2009
Starfish is the first book of the Rifters trilogy, which overall should have been a duology, but hold that thought till delayed review of Book 3 (and 3.5, depending on how you view them. Hold that thought too.) It's mor...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 21:59:25 -0700 2009 Fri Nov 27 15:31:19 -0800 2009
Starfish, and subsequently the Rifters trilogy, is sci-fi written by and for scientists (and the like-minded); truly one of the better...more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jul 15 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 13 13:55:09 -0700 2008 Thu Sep 18 10:21:02 -0700 2008
Setting: Undersea is always cool and interesting. I liked the technology created for it and the w...more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Feb 27 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sun May 25 13:04:27 -0700 2008 Sun May 25 13:06:15 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Mar 22 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 26 16:03:06 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 26 16:04:15 -0700 2008 I am not really sure where to start when it comes to this book. I read it. I enjoyed it, kinda. It is really hard to explain. It is an interesting read, but it almost seems like parts are missing. It does eventually come together at the end and you understand what is going on, but it...more...]]> 4 0 false true Sat May 24 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed May 21 17:17:07 -0700 2008 Fri Nov 14 21:02:34 -0800 2008 lation decides to use the mother of all geothermal sources and puts generators
on the oceans’ spreading zones. Biotech and psychotherapy combine to produce
rifters who can live on the bottom. The best fit per...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Oct 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 02 20:29:30 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 13 19:26:03 -0700 2008 1 more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Oct 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 09:05:41 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 26 09:07:24 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 05 12:21:29 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 05 12:38:08 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=2482243