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    Starfish
    Starfish
    Starfish
    Audiobook11 hours

    Starfish

    Written by Peter Watts

    Narrated by Gabriel Vaughan

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew-people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater-down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness.

    Unfortunately the only people suitable for long-term employment in these experimental power stations are crazy, some of them in unpleasant ways. How many of them can survive, or will be allowed to survive, while worldwide disaster approaches from below?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 28, 2019
    ISBN9781541400788
    Author

    Peter Watts

    Peter Watts is the Hugo and Nebula nominated author of Blindsight.

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    Reviews for Starfish

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      I read this book years ago and realize after other Watts material it’s really falls flat. Great story and premise but hits a wall with certain aspects of physiological aspects. Still a decent read
    • 4/5
      It is a fairly diverse book in which, of course, science is the protagonist, but sometimes it also raises philosophical questions, such as Consciousness, Being, Evolution, Thought, Communication, Ganzfeld Effects, Psi Fields, etc. Although Peter Watts himself is a marine biologist, he reads a wealth of scholarly books and articles outside of his field, which he then reports in his notes, this time round right at the beginning of the novel just to make sure you’re made aware that the main ideas in the novel are not a mere fragment of his imagination…original, noirish, intellectual. What more could one ask for?From Peter Watts we can always expect complex ideas that demand some attention to unravel and it makes the reader consider how real is his or her own perceptions of this thing we call "reality." The characters Peter Watts has created are some of the most unique I've read because he takes those ideas to extreme conclusions. Hard SF from the 21st century for sure. And that means something completely different from the heyday of the genre, 30 and 40 years ago. Back then, it was enough to write about realistic spaceships and understand the basics of Newtonian physics and astronomy. Today, from computer science to quantum mechanics to neurobiology, you have to be in many sciences - at least according to Peter Watts, whose SF is one of hardest to read. Science may make the familiar strange, undermine and disturb but SF novels like “Starfish” help people (at least me) re-appraise and reconsolidate some necessary structure in these suddenly new found worlds. Science and fiction are inevitably bound together if done right and this one is almost perfect.(my edition bought in 2000)This kind of novel, when done right, simply defines SF for me: it extrapolates from the frontiers of known science or social thinking to create thought experiments that act as warnings or encouragements. Asimov's "Foundation" series was a popularisation of Spengler. It is perhaps a measure of the pace of change in the real world that speculative fiction, science fiction, has a much smaller audience now than fantasy. The future overtakes it as it is being written. But nothing beats SF in my book. SF = Speculative Fiction.
    • 4/5
      Content warning for discussion of childhood abuse.I loved Watts's Blindsight and Echopraxia, but am just now getting to his first trilogy. In 2050, the world is relying on geothermal power generated at deep, undersea rifts. The men and women running the equipment, 3000 meters below the surface, are surgically modified to stay underwater for extended periods, one lung replaced by an electrolysis machine for oxygen, eyes covered by white image amplifiers. Their neural chemistry is altered to stand up to the high pressure. They live in cramped, air filled habitats at one atmosphere, habitats that probably won't be crushed by the immense weight of the ocean, though the walls creak ominously. While they work outside, in the dark, they must guard against attacks from carnivorous sea creatures, and the extreme heat venting from the rift, which could boil the flesh off their bones.Watts suggests that the people most suited to performing well in such threatening conditions are those who have been living with extreme stress their entire lives - survivors of childhood abuse, who have grown up to replicate their suffering in adult relationships as either abused or abuser. Extreme people under extreme stress is very much Watts's thing, and protagonist Lenie Clarke certainly holds one's attention.But there are more monsters around the vents than the rifters knew about going in. They, and the exploitive corporations that put them there, slowly become aware of a danger to the entire world, if only it can escape its confinement in the deeps.Watts has a PhD in marine biology, and, as usual, he provides several pages at the end for discussion of the actual science he rooted the book in. Not all of it convinces; in particular, a shortage of fossil fuel energy isn't something that we need to worry about here in 2020 - we should be so lucky.This ferocious book ends with devastation, and a promise of more to come in the next volume, Maelstrom.
    • 2/5
      I usually low rate books that are just badly written, suffering from a number of faults - poor worldbuilding, wooden characters, terrible english, telling not showing etc, - but this is not the case here. I just didn't like the characters very much, and didn't believe the author's justifications for requiring them to be so unlikable. In terms of execution and delivery this is a very competent and clever book. In the not so far distant future humankind is energy short, as ever, and one of the less polluting possibilities is deapsea geothermal. At the mid-ocean spreading zones continental plates are pulling apart, and there is easy access to sufficient temperature differentials to drive thermo-electric processes. There's also a lot of debris and maintenance required in such active zones, which isn't easy at -500m. AI and robotics haven't quite progressed to the point where autonomous detection of quickly chaning hazards is viable. However human ingenuity can solve most things, and few slightly more extreme modifications than usual result in a crew who can live underwater. But who would volunteer to be so extensively modified? And then to live in a tiny habitat for at least several months. Society's misfits is the answer, the victims and the those who's tastes run outside of the usual norms. Carefully screened by psychologists, although it's not clear what traits they were screening for... The book opens with just a crew of two, unsure of the environment the hazards and life in general. Later it grows to six. They don't really get on as such, but learn to tolerate each other. Especially once one of them discover's it's possible to adjust some hormone levels a little further than they'd been engineered to have, and by then they're more accustomed to living in the deepsea then on land, and their corporate controllers are a very long way away.Liek the book, technology moves on in leaps and jumps and from the AI comes native neural nets, home grown independent brains, trained to run many specific processes and shortly better than any wage-slave at doing so. But as usual a few things start to go wrong, and in essence this is little more than a re-telling of the common theme, be careful and extremely specific what you wish for. The future is believable, the technology and the world well described and likewise believable. Even the motivations and drivers from the corporate bosses down to the victims on the sea floor are believable. But none of it's nice. It's not pleasant reading although there's hardly any violence or sex, just a continual backdrop of creepy darkness that I never enjoyed.
    • 5/5
      Starfish draws some dark parallels. Between the possible destruction of countless lives on earth's surface, and how they rely on those working deep down on the ocean floor. Between those wielding all the power, and those whose own lives have all but been destroyed. Between giving someone the option of a life threatening job over a penal sentance.Starfish is a well paced story focusing on the underdogs of society, the rifters. Despite their pasts and bio-engineered bodies, they are more human than the people who put them under water. Starfish kept me wondering what will happen next, and it did not disappoint.I am looking forward to the next book in this trilogy.
    • 5/5
      There's a moment of absolute darkness while her eyecaps adjust to the reduced light. Then the stars come out again.They are so beautiful. Lenie Clarke rests on the bottom of the ocean and watches the abyss sparkle around her. And she almost laughs as she realizes, three thousand meters from the nearest sunlight, that it's only dark when the lights are on.Only people who are profoundly disturbed, whether abusers or victims, can stand life in the deep sea bases, building and maintaining geothermal power stations along deep sea rifts, even with their bodies adapted to cope with the extreme pressure and absorb oxygen from the water. There are many dangers, from vents suddenly spouting boiling water and attacks by huge but surprisingly fragile fish to the instability of their colleagues, but their employers are alarmed when the rifters start to adapt rather too well to their new lives, wearing their skinsuits and eycaps inside the base rather than changing back into normal clothes, keeping the lights low and even sleeping outside the base, and not looking forward to the thought of returning to the surface when their shifts are finally over. But when danger threatens from below, what are the the lives of the rifters worth compared to those above? Very exciting. Looking forward to the sequels.
    • 5/5
      Finished, and what a ride! All technobabble and psychology and integrating of several fields of science if one eerie, paranoid fiction drama that had me rooting for the psychos and fish. There are three books that come after this one, and I can't wait for that next one.

      It's easy to compare to that TV miniseries, Surface. The preoccupation with marine variety and mystery, the origin of life, and the possibility of evolution/transformation or extinction, species selection and differentiation, corporate conspiracy.... So much fine material.
    • 2/5
      A tough read if you need a character to identify with.

      But the first half or so is still great. The submerged world really came to life.
    • 4/5
      After reading Blindsight and having my mind blown, I couldn't resist following up with another one of Peter Watts's books. Starfish, part of his Rifters trilogy, didn't disappoint. Gut twisting, brainy, steely, dark, psychologically profound. (I can't believe I just discovered this guy's work!)If it's not somewhere in space then it's in the oceans, right? Starfish takes place in the opaque darkness of the ocean, near the Juan de Fuca Ridge to be precise, right off the Pacific Northwest ("N'AmPac" in the book). We meet a group of people who live on Beebe Station, a facility run by a shadowy multinational corporation called the Grid Authority (the "GA") looking for places to harness geothermal energy. They have set up bases along the ridge. Beebe sits at the bottom of the ocean along the Channer Vent, basically a deep earth furnace at the bottom of the ocean. Staffing Beebe are bio-engineered people, altered with metal and plastic, wearing artificial lungs and other implants (the white eye caps—*shudder*) that make it possible for them to exist in the extreme depths. What makes them interesting, though, is that Watts doesn't make them superheroes but society's outcasts. They have been recruited because they are psychologically scarred already, which makes them ironically suited for the stresses of deep sea isolation and the omnipresent danger. And, yeah, the dangers are everywhere. Structural integrity mishaps, monstrous deep sea creatures, earthquakes, AI simulations, but what's more terrifying is how the real terror turns out to be much more disturbingly human. (No spoilers here, sorry.)So far it seems straightforward enough, but like all good science fiction—forget it, all good literature—it's so much more than just the surface story.For the nerds out there, the science in this novel is astonishingly well-researched and authoritative, and the speculative potentials are so good, so well considered, and more disturbing than what you get in the usual dystopian sci-fi that has been baked into countless clichés in books and films.A caveat: If you're a reader who likes to cozy up and relate to your characters, then Watts's work isn't for you. Some books burn hot; this one burns on the cool side. Our "protagonist," Lenie Clarke, is one of the most impressive antiheroes ever created, full-stop. There's a hardened, prickly, and in many cases, off-putting shell to these people. Some of the supporting cast are downright repugnant. These people are aloof, hostile, an embodiment of the social dysfunction in this dismal future where corporations rule and people are cogs in the machine. (Oh wait, that sounds familiar…) Other readers said this kind of had a Blade Runner feel. A very sound comparison.I'm pretty excited this is a trilogy and I've picked up the next two books. The cliffhanger at the end of this was ridiculous. So I guess I'm binge-reading. Guilty pleasures, people.Like Blindsight, Starfish is free under the Creative Commons license.
    • 4/5
      Wow. A hard SF book that focuses on people. Excellent. And it almost stands alone, if you don't mind some ambiguity about the future of the human race.4 stars oc
    • 4/5


      Sci-fi meets Huxley's Brave New World. Both create, what may seem like, unrealistic future's, but are extremely similar (maybe better) to our present.
    • 4/5
      Almost depressingly cynical while not crossing the line into dark.
    • 5/5
      This is a favorite of mine, and an excellent example of hard, tech-focused SF. The story stayed with me a good long time after I put the book down, and the sequels could not come out fast enough for me. Sadly, I didn't think the second book of the three was up to snuff, and didn't add a lot to the story. Peter Watt's storytelling came to life again in the last book, Betahemoth. If you completely skipped the middle book, it tith me a good long time after I put the book down, and the sequels could not come out fast enough for me. wouldn't diminish things -- which is pretty damning.
    • 4/5
      Excellent hard sci-fi, catering to the Evo Devo nerds rather than the space nuts. The deep sea is deeply weird to begin with; add in some sci-fi imagination and a cadre of dysfunctional protagonists and you have a great creepy story, dark as the bottom of the Atlantic.
    • 4/5
      In contrast to his later work, Starfish was meek in its speculative elements and a bit rough in its story (what a surprise). That's not to say that there aren't a lot of things to love -* Neural networks not learning what we think we are teaching them* Humans modified and grafted with metal to survive under the ocean* Thermal vents providing a solution to the world's power crisis* Life experiences conditioning you to survive some environments (anti-socials surviving better in isolation)* Mitigating the risk of a huge quake off the California coast using a nuke* Addiction to isolationLike Blindsight, this is a mostly "one room" story from a few viewpoints. I thought some chapters were less effective than others (Gerry Fischer), but the story found its pace when it concentrated more on Lenie's experiences.So, a great story, but more of something to get through on your way to Maelstrom.
    • 5/5
      What an excellent surprise. I picked this up after reading Blindsight (also very good, though a bit more cerebral).It's a science fiction novel that is set underwater, rather than in space, and has "cyborg-like" enhancements as the only really "scifi" component - otherwise the entire premise is completely feasible (and believable). Oh, right, the artificial intelligence component is on the edge too, but perhaps it's not as far off as we think?It's sort of an exploration of human nature, isolation modification, and deep-sea environmentalism. With, of course, the obligatory "bad-guy" of big business/corporations/"them".The characters grow on you, even though we're not really supposed to like them and the story keeps you reading even though nothing really happens. It ends without resolution (a.k.a the point isn't really explained and the good guys are not even identified, let alone avenged), but it is a trilogy so maybe the next book will satisfy our need for justice.
    • 4/5
      I read this book in two sittings, unintentionally. It just sucked me in. I liked the messed up rifters, I liked the freakish deep water monsters (true to life), I liked the hopeless humanity present in all the characters. I also loved Blindsight by the same author. I think I will read all his other books now, available for free on the author's website. Oh, and I read this book on my laptop after downloading it from the site. Not my preferred method of reading ebooks, but a testament to the suck-u-in-ness of the novel. Good stuff. You should read it.
    • 3/5
      When reading I find it difficult to overcome the editor, the cynic, the person sitting there blue pencil in hand ready to pounce on clumsy characterization and phraseology, implausible premise and plotting.Happily, Peter Watts, author of Starfish, put that editor and cynic to sleep, so that for the first time in several novels I was drawn in and engaged. It is a dark, inner world into which Watts calls us, made chilling by his choice of a cool, third person point of view. I found myself immersed, indeed overwhelmed, by the pressures of the deep sea, by the pressures of living with your own psychosis let alone the psychosis of others, and Watts' use of metaphor in the outer world reflecting the inner is subtle, compelling, and utterly convincing. There were a few moments dissemination of scientific information interfered with the narrative flow, but those moments were, thankfully short and not enough to completely arrest the action. My only other complaint was the ending begs a sequel, which perhaps is the intent. As a stand-alone novel, however, Starfish does not satisfactorily conclude all plot threads. It should be noted that complaint is minor indeed.Altogether a very memorable read. I'd easily recommend Starfish and Peter Watts to anyone.
    • 4/5
      In a not-too-distant future, electrical plants are set up at the bottom of the oceans, where tectonic plates meet, to use the energy they dissipate. People working in these plants have been chirgurgically modified to be amphibious: in their chest, a device able to extract oxygen from water replaces one of the lungs, and other modifications allow them to withstand the enormous pressure existing at these depths.Only one type of persons can stand life in these conditions: criminals, violent persons, people with mental problems or who have suffered abuse in their childhood. People who don't like life in society, and who, here, manage to find some sort of equilibrium.We follow a group of people working in one of the plants, from their arrival and their progressive adaptation to the environment. Then some strange events, orchestrated by the people from the surface, begin to happen around them...I really liked this book but have trouble explaining why. Certainly the good writing style played a strong role in this, and the oppressive settings in which a small number of characters are packed together contributed to make the book gripping. The story is well-conducted, though at the end many threads are left hanging, to be picked up in the second book of this trilogy.Finally, a very important part of the book is formed by the characters and their psychology. I don't know if this part is a success or not. On the one hand it is, because I was fascinated by their behaviours and their reasonings, conditioned by what they suffered during their childhoods. On the other hand, the way in which they are described causes the reader to sympathize in a certain sense with sadistic psycopaths or paedophiles. This makes me wonder if these characters are really believable.But all in all this was a very pleasant read and I read the second book quickly after this first one. To make it better, the author has made this series freely available in electronic form!
    • 5/5
      I found Starfish at the library one day while I was killing time. I picked it up and couldn't put it down. I ended up keeping the book out of the library until I could find my own copy, but even now I have a hard time describing what it is about Watts' prose that I find so electric. Starfish is not a book without faults. However, I really do feel that its good bits outweigh the problematic ones. Set in the near future, the story centers on a group of severely damaged people hired to work deep sea vents. These people are hired because some corporate goon has determined that damaged people are the ones best able to cope with living in the deep sea, the Rift. The novel is deeply introspective and character-driven, focusing on the protagonist Lenie Clarke as she adapts to the underwater environment and the people she works with. The story is a slow-burning psychological thriller just as much as it is science fiction. Watts' writing is luscious, tightly composed, and highly evocative. He does have a habit of using technobabble; he was a marine biologist and it shows. However, I find that I don't really mind it because he manages to make it feel natural (as an added bonus he includes a bibliography for some of the ideas he plays with, if you enjoy that sort of thing).
    • 5/5
      Ugly, dark and rivetting. Future corporate Dystopia at its most seductive worst. But most of all, the story of revelation told from the bottom of an undersea trench by a crew of intentionally and unpleasantly unbalanced mental cases. This book is a shadowy psychological play about deep, ugly secrets and necessities and the uncovering of a corporate plan of cold global expediency in the effort to effect survival.
    • 5/5
      I was drawn to Watt's Starfish because I have a deep-rooted Lovecraftian fear of the deeps--the ocean--water. I most certainly was not disappointed and am proud of my luck in finding this author all on my own. The severely damaged group of rifters--made up of rapists, psychotics, the abused, et cetera--that the GA corporation has hired to man the Beebe station, 3 kilometers under the pacific ocean on the edge of a volcano, where local sea life has a bad case of giantism; I would have fit well into. Lenie Clarke's story is both dark and beautiful. Watts gives us a lot to ponder on here, from smart gels to the secret agendas of corporatism, to the activation of Lenie Clarke--revolution held within a single biological containment unit. Dont miss Watt's Maelstrom, Behemoth, and Blindsight!
    • 3/5
      Another, "What makes us human?" book. Not a lot going on. A lot of human interaction and introspection. I get the themes of the book. I just did not find the themes, characters, and plot interesting. I finished the book, but I really did not feel like I enjoyed it afterward. Just sort of slogged through it.Can't really recommend it heartily. Now, other folks have rated the book highly. I do not see it. It was just ok.
    • 5/5
      It's the mid-21st century, and humanity needs sources of energy that don't exacerbate global warming. One excellent spot for geothermal energy is the deep sea rifts where the continental plates meet. But if you have trouble finding mentally healthy people who want to be heavily cyborged to survive down there, what do you do? Get some dysfunctional folk instead!Watts capably depicts a not-terribly-pleasant future where the cyborged “rifters” cope with their lives in the deep sea and the machinations of the corporation that employes them-- and suddenly seems to consider them expendable.
    • 4/5
      Starfish is a really, really hard book to describe. It is a concept book -- there is all kind of shininess about ocean vents and marine biology in here -- but it is also a book about fucked-up people and what our society does to them. In the case of Starfish, what we do to them is exile them to the bottom of the ocean, child molesters and abuse survivors and bullies and killers, people who've been so bent up by life that they no longer fit in. Instead, they care for power plants at the bottom of the ocean surrounded by other neurotic people, and they're happier there.And, despite being a book about broken people, it is not depressing. The characters are broken, but they aren't victims. I have a bit of a problem with the victim mentality, so for me this made them utterly sympathetic.This book made me think. A lot. About a great many things. Go and read it. I really can't recommend this one highly enough.
    • 3/5
      HIs subsequent BLINDSIGHT made this a keeper.