Starfish by Peter Watts

From the Publisher

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...

Locus - 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...

Publishers 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.

Locus - 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...

Science Fiction Chronicle - Don D'Ammassa

An interesting, entertaining, and, best of all, promising debut novel.

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.

What People Are Saying

Robert Sheckley
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.

Gregory Benford
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, author of Cosm)

David Brin
With gritty action and realistic science, Peter Watts brings to life a dark and vivid world.

Candas Jane Dorsey
Peter Watts bathes a gonzo, hopeless pessimism reminiscent of Philip K. Dick or Joanna Russ in the cold, edgy light of hard science fiction a 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.

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

The hatch drops open. Green incandescence spills into the room. He climbs down the ladder, diveskin sealed, only his face exposed. His eyes, already capped, are featureless glass balls. But they are not as dead as they should be, somehow. Something stares through those blank lenses, and it almost shines.

His blind eyes scan the compartment like radar dishes. They lock onto hers: "You're Lenie Clarke?" The voice is too loud, too normal. We talk in whispers here, Clarke realizes.

They are not alone now. Lubin, Brander, Caraco have appeared at the edges of her vision, drifting into the room like indifferent wraiths. They take up positions around the edge of the lounge, waiting. Fischer's replacement doesn't seem to notice them. "I'm Acton," he tells Clarke. "And I bring gifts from the overworld. Behold!" He extends his clenched fist, opens it palm up. Clarke sees five metal cylinders there, each no more than two centimeters long. Acton turns slowly, theatrically, showing his trinkets to the other Rifters. "One for each of you," he says. "They go into your chest, right next to the seawater intake."

Overhead, the docking hatch swings shut. From behind it a postcoital tattoo, metal on metal, heralds the shuttle's escape to the surface. They wait there for a few moments: Rifters, newcomer, five new gadgets to dilute their humanity a little further. Finally, Clarke reaches out to touch one. "What do they do?" she says, her voice neutral.

Acton snaps his fingers shut, stares about the lounge with eyeless intensity. "Why, Ms. Clarke," he replies, "They tell us when we're dead."

In Communications, Acton spills his trinkets onto a control console. Clarke stands behind him, filling the cubby. Caraco and Brander look in through the hatchway.

Lubin has disappeared.

"The program's only four months old," Acton says, "and it's lost two people at Piccard, one each at Cousteau and Link, and Fischer makes five. Not the kind of record you want to trumpet to the world, eh?"

Nobody says anything. Clarke and Brander stand impassive; Caraco shifts on her feet. Acton sweeps his blank shiny eyes over them all. "Christ but you're a lively lot. You sure Fischer's the only one down here who cashed in?"

"These things are supposed to save our lives?" Clarke asks.

"Nah. They don't care that much about us. These just help you find the bodies."

He turns to the console, plays it with practiced fingers. The topographic display flashes to life on the main screen. "Mmmm." Acton traces along the luminous contours with one finger. "So this is Beebe here in the center, and this must be the rift proper-Jesus, there's a lot of geography out here." He points at a cluster of hard green rectangles halfway to the edge of the screen. "These are the generators?"

Clarke nods.

Acton picks up one of the little cylinders. "They say they've already sent down the software for these things." Silence. "Well, I guess we'll find out, won't we?" He fingers the object in his hand, presses one end of it.

Beebe Station screams aloud.

Clarke jerks back at the sound; her head cracks painfully against an overhead pipe. The station continues to howl, wordless and despairing.

Acton touches a control; the scream stops as if guillotined.

Clarke glances at the others, shaken. They appear unmoved. Of course. For the first time she wonders what their eyes would show, naked.

"Well," Acton says, "we know the audio alarm works. But you get a visual signal too." He points at the screen: dead center, within the phosphor icon that is Beebe, a crimson dot pulses like a heart under glass.

"It keys on myoelectricity in the chest," he explains. "Goes off automatically if your heart stops."

Behind her, Clarke feels Brander turning for the hatchway.

"Maybe my etiquette is out of date-" Acton says.

His voice is suddenly very quiet. Nobody else seems to notice.

"-but I've always thought it was-rude-to walk away when someone's talking to you."

There's no obvious threat in the words. Acton's tone seems pleasant enough. It doesn't matter. In an instant Clarke sees all the signs again; the reasoned words, the deadened voice, the sudden slight tension of a body rising to critical mass. Something familiar is growing behind Acton's eyecaps.

"Brander," she says quietly, "why don't you hang around and hear the man out?"

Behind her, the sounds of motion stop.

Before her, Acton relaxes ever so slightly.

Within her, something deeper than the Rift stirs in its sleep.

"They're a snap to install," Acton says. "It takes about five minutes. GA says deadman switches are standard issue from now on."

I know you, she thinks. I don't remember but I'm sure I've seen you before somewhere...

A tiny knot forms in her stomach. Acton smiles at her, as though sending some secret greeting.

Acton is about to be baptized. Clarke is looking forward to it.

They stand together in the airlock, their diveskins clinging like shadows. The deadman switch, newly installed, itches in Clarke's chest. She remembers the first time she dropped into the ocean this way, remembers the person who held her hand through that drowning ordeal.

That person is gone now. The deep sea broke her and spat her out. Clarke wonders if it will do the same to Acton.

She floods the airlock.

By now the feeling is almost sensual; her insides folding flat, the ocean rushing into her, cold and unstoppable like a lover. At 4°C the Pacific slides through the plumbing in her chest, anesthetizing the parts of her that can still feel. The water rises over her head; her eyecaps show her the submerged walls of the lock with crystal precision.

It's not like that with Acton. He's trying to fall in on himself; he only falls into Clarke. She senses his panic, watches him convulse, sees his knees buckle in a space far too narrow to permit collapse.

He needs more room, she thinks, smiling to herself, and opens the outer hatch. They drop.

She glides down and out, arcing away from under Beebe's oppressive bulk. She leaves the floodlit circle behind, skims into the welcoming darkness with her headlight doused. She feels the presence of the seabed a couple of meters beneath her. She's free again.

After a few moments she remembers Acton. She turns back the way she came. Beebe's floodlamps stain the darkness with dirty light; the station, bloated and angular, pulls against the cables holding it down. Light pours from its lower surface like feeble rocket exhaust. Pinned face-down in that glare, Acton lies unmoving on the bottom.

Reluctantly, she swims closer. "Acton?"

He doesn't move.

"Acton?" She's back in the light now. Her shadow cuts him in half.

At last he looks up. "It'ssss-"

He seems surprised by the sound of his own transmuted voice.

He puts his hand to his throat. "I'm not-breathing-" he buzzes.

She doesn't answer.

He looks back down. There's something on the bottom, a few centimeters from his face. Clarke drifts closer; a tiny shrimplike creature trembles on the substrate.

"What is it?" Acton asks.

"Something from the surface. It must have come down on the 'scaphe."

"But it's-dancing-"

She sees. The jointed legs flex and snap, the carapace arches to some insane inner rhythm. It seems so brittle a life; perhaps the next spasm, or the next, will shatter it.

"It's a seizure," she says after a while. "It doesn't belong here. The pressure makes the nerves fire too fast, or something."

"Why doesn't that happen to us?"

Maybe it does. "Our implants. They pump us full of neuroinhibitors whenever we go outside."

"Oh. Right," Acton buzzes softly. Gently, he reaches out to the creature. Takes it in the palm of his hand.

Crushes it.

Clarke hits him from behind. Acton bounces off the seabed, his hand flying open; fragments of shell, of watery flesh swirl in the water. He kicks, rights himself, stares at Clarke without speaking. His eyecaps shine almost yellow in the light.

"You asshole," Clarke says very quietly.

"It didn't belong here," Acton buzzes.

"Neither do we."

"It was suffering. You said so yourself."

"I said the nerves fired too fast, Acton. Nerves carry pleasure as well as pain. How do you know it wasn't dancing for fucking joy?"

She pushes off the bottom and kicks furiously into the abyss. She wants to reach into Acton's body and tear everything out, sacrifice that gory tangle of viscera and machinery to the monsters at the rift. She can't remember ever being so angry. She tells herself she doesn't know why.

--Copyright © Peter Watts. All Rights Reserved.