Starfish

Gary K. Wolfe

There are enough provocative ideas in Starfish to suggest that Watts does his homework and thinks things through, and enough skill at scene and dialogue writing to convince us that he's a fine craftsman...
—Locus

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Set in the early 21st century, Watts's debut describes a future when the search for energy leads to the tapping of geothermal sources deep in the ocean, as in the Pacific's Juan de Fuca Rift, near Canada's Northwest coast. The maintenance workers of the dangerous underwater power plants are selected for their psychotic tendencies, which enable them to forget their previous lives on dry land, and are then surgically altered to survive the intense pressure of the sea's abyssal depths. These changes, which render the workers amphibious, also leave them less than well equipped to face the threat of powerful, archaic bacterialike creatures that proliferate at the ocean bottom and use human hosts to carry them upward to dry land, where their superior DNA could render our species obsolete. The human resistance to these life forms is described with a great deal of explicit violence and graphic language, as well as well-orchestrated paranoia that recalls the classic SF tale "Who Goes There?" Watts's characterizations aren't strong but, as in Arthur C. Clarke's The Deep Range, the underwater setting and the technology employed there function as characters in their own right, and quite vigorously. The novel's pacing is excellent, making this, overall, a good bet for beach reading. (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In the near future, energy comes from the geothermal waters of the deep ocean, but the cost of providing power for the surface has a price--the sanity of the physically modified humans ("rifters") who live in an alien and dangerous environment. Watts's first novel elegantly captures the isolation and claustrophobia of the lightless ocean depths, smoothly blending psychological suspense with high-tech sf adventure. Large libraries should consider adding this to their sf collections. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Gary K. Wolfe

There are enough provocative ideas in Starfish to suggest that Watts does his homework and thinks things through, and enough skill at scene and dialogue writing to convince us that he's a fine craftsman...
— Locus

Don D'Ammassa

An interesting, entertaining, and, best of all, promising debut novel.
—Science Fiction Chronicle

Kirkus Reviews

Near/medium-future deep-sea endeavor, from a Toronto-resident newcomer. To tap the energy of ocean-floor hydrothermal vents, the powerful Grid Authority sets up a power station in the Juan de Fuca Rift west of Seattle. Humans, physically modified to be able to live and work underwater without the restrictions of diving equipment, will maintain the facility. Of these volunteers (sex criminals, psychopaths, wife-beaters, and child molesters: their alternative is brainwashing), some can't adapt to the crushing, claustrophobic environment. Others brim with suppressed violence. Gerry Fischer takes to eating the local wildlife and never returns to the station. Lenie Clarke suspects that all the members of the group have been deliberately mentally damaged so they won't want to leave. But the Rifters develop a telepathic awareness of each other's thoughts and feelings. On the surface, meanwhile, smart gels—jelly-like intelligent neural networks—run most of the equipment and are slated to replace the Rifters, who refuse to return to the surface. The Grid Authority learns that the Rifters, and all deep-water life-forms, harbor an archaic non-DNA microorganism, ßehemoth, that would destroy all DNA-based life if it reached land. At the same time, Lenie discovers on the ocean floor a nuclear bomb operated by a smart gel; it will trigger a devastating earthquake should ßehemoth escape. Problem is, nobody at the Grid Authority understands how the smart gels evaluate information. What if the gels prefer ßehemoth to orthodox life-forms? Plenty of first-novel flaws—poor organization, drifting points of view, an inconsistently applied, tough-to-read present-tensenarrative—but fizzing with ideas, and glued together with dark psychological tensions: an exciting debut.

From the Publisher

"Gritty action and realistic science...a dark and vivid world." —David Brin

"The dark universe of the sea bottom and the rich characterization captivate to the last page. Watts makes a brilliant debut with a novel that is part undersea adventure, part psychological thriller, and wholly original." —Booklist

"A very impressive book, highly original in its setting and unusually ingenious." —Brian Stableford

"Peter Watts delivers—solid, inventive hard SF about the deep sea, but as we've never seen before. This moves like the wind." —Gregory Benford

"Peter Watts bathes a gonzo, hopeless pessimism reminiscent of Philip K. Dick or Joanna Russ in the cold, edgy light of hard science fiction à la Benford, Bear, or Tiptree. In Starfish, Watts creates in his protagonist a poetry of dysfunction which is angry and eerily redemptive, and which makes compelling, almost compulsive reading." —Candas Jane Dorsey

"I read Starfish in several large gulps. The story drives like a futuristic locomotive. It's a hypnotic read, somber and compelling. Best thing I've read in a long time. Peter Watts is an author to watch for." —Robert Sheckley