A short life of the author
Peter Watts (b. 1958) was born on 24 January 1958 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He holds a PhD in marine biology and zoology from the University of British Columbia. He has studied deep-sea thermal vent ecologies and marine mammals. He makes all his novels available for free download on his website under a Creative Commons licence.
Life and Career
The Rifters trilogy — Starfish (1999), Maelstrom (2001), and βehemoth (2004) — about a group of psychologically damaged people modified to live and work in the deep ocean at hydrothermal vents — established his preoccupation with extreme environments, damaged psychologies, and hard biological science.
Blindsight (2006) — about a crew sent to investigate an alien artefact at the edge of the solar system, narrated by a man who has had half his brain removed, accompanied by a vampire (a resurrected predatory human subspecies), a woman with multiple personality disorder, a soldier merged with his combat drones, and a linguist with cybernetically augmented language processing — is his masterwork. The novel’s central argument — that consciousness is not necessary for intelligence, that awareness may be a metabolically expensive evolutionary accident, and that truly intelligent aliens would have no inner life at all — is one of the most disturbing ideas in contemporary SF. It was nominated for the Hugo Award.
Echopraxia (2014) was a companion novel. The Freeze-Frame Revolution (2018) was a novella about mutiny aboard a starship.
Key Works
- Blindsight (2006)
- Echopraxia (2014)
- Starfish (1999)
Collecting Watts
Blindsight (2006, Tor) brings $20–$60. His novels are also free online.