Beyond the Rift - Plaerdemavida

No cover — Peter Watts: Beyond the Rift (2013, Tachyon Publications)

240 pages

Published Nov. 12, 2013 by Tachyon Publications.

ISBN:: 978-1-61696-127-5

(1 review)

Combining complex science with skillfully executed prose, these edgy, award-winning tales explore the shifting border between the known and the alien. The beauty and peril of technology and the passion and penalties of conviction merge in narratives that are by turns dark, satiric, and introspective. Among these bold storylines: a seemingly humanized monster from John Carpenter's The Thing reveals the true villains in an Antarctic showdown; an artificial intelligence shields a biologically enhanced prodigy from her overwhelmed parents; a deep-sea diver discovers her true nature lies not within the confines of her mission but in the depths of her psyche; a court psychologist analyzes a psychotic graduate student who has learned to reprogram reality itself; and a father tries to hold his broken family together in the wake of an ongoing assault by sentient rainstorms. Gorgeously saturnine and exceptionally powerful, these collected fictions are both intensely thought-provoking and impossible to …

Combining complex science with skillfully executed prose, these edgy, award-winning tales explore the shifting border between the known and the alien. The beauty and peril of technology and the passion and penalties of conviction merge in narratives that are by turns dark, satiric, and introspective. Among these bold storylines: a seemingly humanized monster from John Carpenter's The Thing reveals the true villains in an Antarctic showdown; an artificial intelligence shields a biologically enhanced prodigy from her overwhelmed parents; a deep-sea diver discovers her true nature lies not within the confines of her mission but in the depths of her psyche; a court psychologist analyzes a psychotic graduate student who has learned to reprogram reality itself; and a father tries to hold his broken family together in the wake of an ongoing assault by sentient rainstorms. Gorgeously saturnine and exceptionally powerful, these collected fictions are both intensely thought-provoking and impossible to forget.

2 editions

Ed Landini reviewed Beyond the rift by Peter Watts

What a wild ride

4 stars

This book is a series of short stories, all of them very different. Most of them appear more as vignettes of life rather than having a nice and tidy ending and I like that.

What if we saw the typical horror story from the monster's side? Or if we needed to house humans right at the bottom of a deep sea trench, what could that look like?

There is a lot to take in and most of the stories were very entertaining without being a heavy hard-going read. If you like to read a story and think, "I've never seen it from that way" this is a worthwhile addition to your library.

And the end-notes reference a John Brunner book, which always a bonus in my, err, book.