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Maelstrom (Rifters Trilogy) Paperback – January 6, 2009

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Peter Watts (Author)
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4.5 out of 5 stars 24 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Series: Rifters Trilogy (Book 2)
  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Tor Books; 1 Reprint edition (January 6, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0765320533
  • ISBN-13: 978-0765320537
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsDark, gritty fiction
By Amazon Customer VINE VOICE on February 19, 2002
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
First off, if you haven't read Peter Watts' first novel, "Starfish", don't start with "Maelstrom". While this is theoretically a stand-alone novel, the reader unfamiliar with "Starfish" will miss out on a tremendous amount of back-story and character development. ...
As for "Maelstrom" itself, Watts has easily cleared the high bar he set with his first novel. All too often, sequels are rehashes of old conflict, but that is not the case here at all. Watts takes his already complex characters from the first novel and adds several more layers of texture; at the same time he adds just enough new characters to keep things interesting. These characters are equally well developed, and overall, Watts' writing is even sharper than in the first book.
The writing has to be sharper, because this is a much more complicated novel than the first. While "Starfish" took place in the relatively limited space of a deep ocean outpost, and dealt primarily with human interactions, "Maelstrom" sprawls across the Pacific and North America and a significant portion of the action takes place in cyberspace. Moreover, the plot is significantly more complicated. I don't want to get into it in too much detail, as doing so would ruin much of "Starfish" for those who haven't read it. But the general theme of this novel, like its predecessor, is the impact that the unforeseen consequences of exponentially growing technology can have on humans as a species and on the planet as a whole. In a dystopian setting of environmental havoc and human violence, two new scourges have emerged. One is spawned by nature, the other, inadvertently, by man. The result is a bizarre, but believable synergy that threatens the entire biosphere.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsOne of the finest Science Fiction works in recent years!
By A Customer on October 26, 2001
Format: Hardcover
(Somewhat sheepishly) I must admit that I read Science Fiction books by the ton, and have been doing so for the better part of thirty years. The "discovery" of a brilliant piece of writing such as Peter Watts' MAELSTROM is all too rare an experience.
Following his more conventional novel, STARFISH (also excellent), MAELSTROM is perhaps a work of inspired surrealism more than it is a straightforward example of "hard" Science Fiction. (This is not to take away from Watts' completely credible and coherent account of a future world devastated by the enimical effect of a nasty micro-organism that manages, by means of rapid "virus"-like replication and mutation, to infiltrate pretty much every aspect of existence.)
Watts exhibits a flexibility and richness of imagination that sets his writing apart from the dry and often academic atmosphere presented in many works of the "hard" genre.
I dislike plot summaries and hence will not offer one here. Let me note, however, that although the plot becomes a labyrinth in itself, the story-line never lags. Descriptions of both abstract theory and "actual" events are vivid and exact.
Perhaps of greatest importance, Watts draws his characters with considerable care. Emotion (and its role in memory -links to an individual's past) plays a key role in the work. The persons presented in the novel are anything but the cardboard cutouts that often haunt works of such theoretical inclination.
Quite simply, MAELSTROM is one of the finest Science Fiction novels of the last ten years and an entirely fascinating read.
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5.0 out of 5 starsExtraordinary hard SF with a dark, fast storyline.
By Edward Alexander Gerster VINE VOICE on December 12, 2001
Format: Hardcover
In this age of anthrax scares and threats of biological terrorism, this novel is not only fortuitously topical-but twice as frightening by the relevance of the subject matter. `Maelstrom' returns to the characters and story begun in Peter Watts' `Starfish,' where a disease vector from the distant pre-human past was discovered in a deep ocean rift. A secret underwater nuclear strike was employed in an attempt at the sterilization/containment of the `disease,' but Lenie Clarke has survived and has inadvertently become the Typhoid Mary carrying the potential death of the human race.

We learn much about Clarke's interior topography as she tries to make her way home, possessed by a desire for revenge against the forces that ordered her `sterilization.' Inadvertently she becomes the Meltdown Madonna, a media/web induced celebrity and urban myth rolled in one-a rage filled carrier of death.

Peter Watts fine writing has created a genre others call cyberpunk noir, but it is really much more than that. And it defies simple labeling. `Maelstrom' is dark, gritty and vivid-yet eerily redemptive in it's own way. Highly Recommended, even if you missed `Starfish.'
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4.0 out of 5 starsFascinating view of the end of the world
By booksforabuck VINE VOICE on November 26, 2001
Format: Hardcover
In the near future, planet Earth is reaching breakdown. More and more of the world's economy goes into plugging the holes created by that economy--holes in the ecology, holes created by terrorism, holes created by pharmaceutical firms creating demand for their own products, and holes created by the proliferation of worms and viruses within what used to be called the Internet and is now called the Maelstrom. Somehow, Earth muddles by, yet more and more frequently, quarantine lines are drawn and people die.
To feed North America's ever-growing demand for energy, engineers have tapped every source including geothermal energy flowing deep beneath the sea. An explosion in the deep Pacific sets off a wave of destruction that is almost too much for the battered world--an explosion designed to eliminate the greatest threat to life on the planet that has ever existed, a hungry nanobe completely lacking in predators, yet supremely capable of adapting to the new environment. And the nanobe has a vector--one of the victims of the deep-sea explosion has made it to land, spreading the disease en route to her revenge.
Within the Maelstrom itself, artificial lifeforms nearly as dangerous as the nanobe exist, evolving through trial and error at a rate of thousands of generations each second. These computer virusses both echo and adopt tne nanobe virus, discovering that its name, and the name of its vector, are passwords to the most powerful and secret systems.
Author Peter Watts has created a compelling and convincingly dark view of the future. Extrapolating today's headlines into the near future, Watts' vision rings frighteningly authentic. Intriguingly, Watts sees the potential end of DNA-based life as morally ambiguous.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsBleak beyond hope. And I loved it.

Watts kept the first installment of this series as claustrophobic as the deep sea vent it was set against, but in Book 2 the action moves to the surface as Lenie Clarke emerges... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Tghu Verd
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat book, great series!

Great book, great series! Hardcore SF and characters with great psychological depth!

Published 7 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsI love authors who can build multi-layered

This entire four-book series has been a delightful discovery. I have read science fiction for almost 50 years. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Peter Rothschild
3.0 out of 5 starsSuspenseful

Great angle on how life can be manipulated by an untold number of forces or interest groups. The beginning and middle of the story are fantastic. Read more

Published 10 months ago by WBach
5.0 out of 5 starsSome of the best Sci-Fi I've read in a long

This is a completely different sort of story than "Starfish," but equally as enjoyable. Equally as dark/gritty/messed up, but entirely different world and feel. Read more

Published 11 months ago by Weebus
4.0 out of 5 starsSuspense is high, the atmosphere possibly more oppressive

Good sequel to Starfish - the rifters start to realize there is a bomb hidden with them in the depth of the ocean. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Andreea Pausan
4.0 out of 5 starsSo that was vol. 2

...and it was also quite good. Probably a bit harder to corral the narrative, once it has to depart from the ocean depths, or at least that's my impression. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsLiked this sequel to 'Starfish' even more

Liked this sequel to 'Starfish' even more. Watts is a hell of a writer with a hell of a imagination - the story & science blow me away. Read more

Published 15 months ago by JK Huddleston
4.0 out of 5 starsvolume two of a four part trilogy

book two of a four part trilogy. lenie clark, patient zero, has escaped quarantine and is touring north america with the help of an electronic super virus. what a fish person! Read more

Published 16 months ago by m k
5.0 out of 5 starsA worthy follow-on to 'Starfish'

If you liked 'Starfish', you're going to enjoy this one too, which is easily its equal.

Published 17 months ago by J. T. Gotsick

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