(Download) "Wildlife, Natural and Artificial: An Interview with Peter Watts (Interview)" by Extrapolation ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Wildlife, Natural and Artificial: An Interview with Peter Watts (Interview)
- Author : Extrapolation
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 199 KB
Description
The publication of Peter Watts' ssehemoth: Seppuku (2005), the final volume of the Rifters trilogy, brought to a close one of the most intellectually ambitious and compelling science-fiction narratives of the past several decades. Watts' four-volume trilogy explores a six-year period of the near future (2050-2056), a time in which humanity encounters a virus that threatens the very existence of the species. Even before the virus, everyday life was already a mess: political order is barely maintained through the extensive use of surveillance and military technologies; communication systems are overburdened by computer viruses and other forms of electronic wildlife; and the environment is teetering on the edge of a man-made abyss. And, in yet another parallel to our own global circumstances, access to sufficient energy resources remains a primary imperative of government and business. In Starfish (1999), Watts introduces us to the world of the rifters, people who have been modified technologically and biochemically in order to be able to work in deep sea environments. Rifters are designed to maintain facilities that draw energy from thermal vents in the ocean floor to a world hungry for power; thanks to a mechanical apparatus that has replaced one of their lungs and other modifications to their bodies, they can endure the high pressures of the sea floor while sucking oxygen directly out of the water. Watts' memorable descriptions of the alien world of deep sea bioluminescence and deadly, paper-thin razor fish, is matched by his virtuoso exploration of the psychological struggles of the rifters with each other and their own damaged selves, in both the tin-can confines of Beebe Station and the expanses of the ocean alike. What appears at first to be a narrative focused on the consequences of psychological isolation and manipulation, opens up into a larger and more extensive exploration of the human drive for self-preservation--and for power. Over the course of the three books that follow--Maelstrom (2001), ssehemoth: B-Max (2004), and ssehemoth: Seppuku (2005)--Watts elaborates the characteristics of our near-future-to-come with great complexity, nuance and attention to detail. It slowly comes to light that the Channer Vent, where the rifters in Starfish work, is of interest as more than a source of power. It is also the home environment of a lethal virus--ssehemoth--that is simultaneously a threat and a temptation for some who hope to harness it for their own ends. The great anti-hero of the trilogy, Lenie Clark, inadvertently spreads ssehemoth far and wide in her quest to exact revenge on those who destroyed Beebe Station at the end of Starfish. The consequences of her march across North America from Vancouver to Sault Ste. Marie are disastrous. Lenie struggles with feelings of guilt and responsibility over being the "Meltdown Madonna," and the frustrations of constantly being used as a pawn in larger game whose shape and purpose are understood only belatedly. Watts' improbably confident prose (Starfish is his first novel) propels the entire narrative along on an effortless cool edge of scientific savvy and a remorseless vision of the limits and possibilities of human action.
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