Synopses & Reviews
This is the way the world ends:
A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe—voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction—and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters whod inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement.
The resulting tsunami killed millions. Its not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage.
Unless, of course, you miss the target.
Now North Americas west coast lies in ruins. Millions of refugees rally around a mythical figure mysteriously risen from the deep sea. A world already wobbling towards collapse barely notices the spread of one more blight along its shores. And buried in the seething fast-forward jungle that use to be called Internet, something vast and inhuman reaches out to a woman with empty white eyes and machinery in her chest. A woman driven by rage, and incubating Armageddon.
Her name is Lenie Clarke. Shes a rifter. Shes not nearly as dead as everyone thinks.
And the whole damn world is collateral damage as far as shes concerned. . . .
Review
Praise for Maelstrom:
“What makes his novel exhilarating instead of depressing is the conviction and control he brings to his material—up-to-date science fiction with a seriously paranoid edge.”
—The New York Times
“Watts moves from the relentless pressure of Starfish to the frantic speed of chaos in action, never losing the tight focus on his fascinating characters in this excellent sequel to his debut novel.”
—Booklist (starred review)
Praise for Starfish:
“Like some adrenaline-charged fusion of Clarkes The Deep Range and Gibsons Neuromancer,Wattss trilogy represents a major addition to early twenty-first-century hard SF.”
—Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
An enormous tidal wave on the west coast of North America has just killed millions. Lenie Clarke, in a black wetsuit, walks out of the ocean onto a Pacific Northwest beach filled with the oppressed and drugged homeless of the Asian world, who have gotten only this far in their attempt to reach America. Is she a monster or a goddess? One thing is for sure: all hell is breaking loose.
This dark, fast-paced SF novel returns to the story begun in Starfish: all human life is threatened by a disease (actually a primeval form of life) from the distant pre-human past. It survived only in the deep ocean rift where Clarke and her companions were stationed before the corporation that employed them tried to sterilize the threat with a secret underwater nuclear strike. But Clarke was far enough away that she was able to survive and tough enough to walk home, three hundred kilometers across the ocean floor. She arrives carrying with her the potential death of the human race, and is possessed by a desire for revenge.
Synopsis
A powerful, dark cyberpunk SF novel from the author of the Hugo Award finalist, Blindsight
About the Author
Peter Watts lives in Toronto, Ontario.