Starfish (Rifters Trilogy) | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Watts
Publisher: Tor Books
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 57098
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0765315963
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780765315960
ASIN: 0765315963
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
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Amazon.com
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." 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 Starfish, 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. --Blaise Selby
Product Description
Civilization rests on the backs of its outcasts.
So when civilization needs someone to run generating stations three kilometers below the surface of the Pacific, it seeks out a special sort of person for its Rifters program. It recruits those whose histories have preadapted them to dangerous environments, people so used to broken bodies and chronic stress that life on the edge of an undersea volcano would actually be a step up. Nobody worries too much about job satisfaction; if you haven't spent a lifetime learning the futility of fighting back, you wouldn't be a rifter in the first place. It's a small price to keep the lights going, back on shore.
But there are things among the cliffs and trenches of the Juan de Fuca Ridge that no one expected to find, and enough pressure can forge the most obedient career-victim into something made of iron. At first, not even the rifters know what they have in them—and by the time anyone else finds out, the outcast and the downtrodden have their hands on a kill switch for the whole damn planet...
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 Great Hard Science Fiction April 23, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Peter Watts takes his reader to the depths of the ocean and the very edge of the human psche. This hard science fiction book is the first in what was to be a trilogy, but turned out as one of a four part series. Watts brings the reader a fast paced and intrguing look at the future of mankind which as the reader finds hinges on the past of all life on this blue dot. I would highly recommend this book to any science fiction fan. In fact, I have just ordered the other three books in the series.
First-rate science fiction novel, definitely among the best I have ever read April 15, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
_Starfish_ by Peter Watts is one of the finest hard science fiction books I have ever read. It had many elements of what make a great science fiction novel. It extrapolated an interesting and believable though often surprising future, the science was realistic and well-explained (and in this book was discussed at some length in a final chapter on references) yet the author didn't forget that the book was a novel, not a science textbook, many disparate elements were woven together to form a great story (in this case deepwater biology, plate tectonics, microbiology, artificial intelligence, and psychological trauma), the characters were interesting and well-developed, and the book had that rare quality of making you feel very smart, of allowing you to piece together shocking and developing story elements, the author allowing you to form conclusions, neither watering down something nor going over the reader's head with too much jargon or hard to grasp story logic. Hard to believe that this is the author's first novel! Many science fiction authors don't do nearly as well after years in their profession.
I don't want to say too much about the book's plot as I wouldn't want to spoil it for the prospective reader. I will say that the plot's main setting is unusual and interesting and what originally attracted me to the book; a deep sea geothermal power station on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean (specifically, Beebe Station, located near the Juan de Fuca Ridge hydrothermal vents). The station is populated by a bio-engineered crew dubbed "rifters," people who had been altered physically and mechanically to able to live and work in such an incredible harsh environment, a realm of crushing pressure, arctic-temperature waters (except around the scalding vents), and alien darkness. The type of people able to live in such an environment is a key plot point of the book and makes for some very unusual and memorable characters.
Though Beebe Station and the rifters are dominant in the book, they are not the only story elements. Other notable characters are Patricia Rowan (a CEO of the Grid Authority or GA, which owns Beebe Station and employs the rifters) and Yves Scanlon (a psychologist who works for the GA), characters which become important later in the novel as events come to entangle the rifters in a mysterious and mounting catastrophe.
I will say the novel has a climatic ending and a sequel was clearly meant from the beginning as there were several loose ends. I am currently reading that very sequel, _Maelstrom_, and find it thus far a worthy follow-up, beginning right where the action left off and exploring further Watt's detailed and interesting (if scary) world.
Science fiction with good characters February 15, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the best "science fiction" book I have read in a long time. As a female reader, I tire of "Spaceman Spiff" stories and have leaned more toward fantasy. _Starfish_ is set in the deepest ocean, an environment as hostile as outer space. The time and place are earth in the near future, seen through a pessimistic lens. There's environmental problems, population problems, corporations have taken over everything, etc. These ideas are not original, nor are they really what the book is about.
_Starfish_'s main character is Lenie Clarke, a courageous woman with a troubled past. She arrives at the underwater outpost Beebe Station, not because it was her life's ambition, but because she has exhausted her other options. Lenie is a complex and extremely well-drawn character. The author did an excellent job creating a character that the reader doesn't identify with, but still develops a great affection for.
As her teammates join her at the station, they each explore their new environment and learn to engage with one another. At Beebe, they are in uncomfortably close quarters. Outside, they have infinite space, but in a medium that is ultimately hostile to their biology.
The conflicts are on several levels. Lenie and the other team members have inner conflicts aplenty. Lenie repeatedly confronts and challenges the deep ocean that is her new home. Finally, the story is framed by a more complex socio-political conflict that Beebe Station, even though it is thousands of feet beneath the surface, cannot escape.
This book stayed in my head for a long time after I read it. _Starfish_ deserves better than a plane trip, but a time when you can pay attention.
 So atmospheric, so dark, so good November 9, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lounging around the house, I picked this book up and started it. And then, a few pages into it, I put it down. It scared me. The world that Watts drops you into, right at the beginning, is so strong... so well created.... so evocative.... It just gives you chills... Makes you hear every echoing bang and strange creak and feel the terrible pressure overhead. I put this book down and turned on the TV, in fact.... Wanted some bright, technicolor, mindless drivel....
But then, two days later, after finding that I was thinking about it... I picked Starfish up again and..... read it straight through. I think I finished it around 3:15am last night (and got three hours of sleep before having to get up for work). This one goes in my list of very, very, very good books.
Again, Watts drops you right in the middle of it and you have to work to figure out what is happening. He assumes the reader has intelligence, which is really refreshing. Yes, there are some tidbits that we've experienced before (Sphere and The Abyss come to mind). But just tidbits. This is so much more. And pretty damn perfect. With one exception (the evil bureaucrat's speechifying explanations near the end). These few paragraphs were kind of jarring -- a simple plot mechanism, when I expected much more from such a skilled writer.
HOWEVER -- this does not detract a lot from my review. The rest of the writing was great, the characters are haunting, and the science folded into the story is fascinating. I can close my eyes and be down there, in the silty darkness with the fragile monsters...
Wow. Congratulations to Peter Watts.
I haven't been this affected by a science fiction book IN A LONG TIME!
Fascinating..... July 8, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Starfish delivers a captivating tale. I find it a plausible glimpse into our not so distant future.
I was intrigued as well as a bit terrified of Watts depiction of human beings bio engineered to live on the ocean floor. Terrified, because I placed myself within the characters shoes and I struggled to determine how I would retain my sanity constantly hearing the overwhelming pressure of the hand of the ocean trying to crush my undersea habitat and swimming in total darkness with monsters attracted by the slightest amount of light..
Watts covered all bases by coming up with a believable explanation of how people could face these undersea dangers and still remain "sane".
Add to that not one but two world ending threats as a cliffhanger and you have the makings of a great book. I loved it.
Euftis Emery
Author of Off the Chain
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