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Product Description
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"No one has taken this premise to such pitiless lengths--and depths--as Watts.... In a claustrophobic setting enlivened by periodic flashes of beauty and terror, the crew of Beebe Station come across as not only believable but likeable as they fight for equilibrium against their own demons, one another, their superiors and their remorselessly hostile surroundings." - The New York Times"
Product Description
So when civilization needs someone to run generating stations three kilometres below the surface of the Pacific, it seeks out a special sort of person for its Rifters program. It recruits those whose histories have pre-adapted them to dangerous environments, people so used to broken bodies and chronic stress that life on the edge of an undersea volcano would actually be a step up. Nobody worries too much about job satisfaction; if you haven't spent a lifetime learning the futility of fighting back, you wouldn't be a rifter in the first place. It's a small price to keep the lights going, back on shore.But there are things among the cliffs and trenches of the Juan de Fuca Ridge that no one expected to find, and enough pressure can forge the most obedient career-victim into something made of iron. At first, not even the rifters know what they have in them - and by the time anyone else finds out, the outcast and the downtrodden have their hands on a kill switch for the whole damn planet.
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First Sentence
WHEN the lights go out in Beebe Station, you can hear the metal groan. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
WHEN the lights go out in Beebe Station, you can hear the metal groan. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Not that I wasn't satisfied with it as it was. Believe what the author tells you - this book plays like an underwater Blade Runner. It's glum. There's no hope. Everything's dank and dreary and there's not one character you'd like to have as a close friend. I like that in a book - feels real, like a dysfunctional crew on an off-shore oil platform (at least they're not unionized, that would be worse).
Anyway, the best thing about this book is the science, particularly the author's in-depth speculation on "how to get a human to live several miles under water". Everyone's seen the Abyss. I'm sure the author was chuckling watching Bud Brigman descend the fathoms and still survive, even with that transluscent pink oxygenated flurocarbon swill in his lungs. That scene may have been the author's impetus. Or maybe Deep Star Six.
The pyranosal RNA thing, however....not too keen on that. Seems like the author was looking for an excuse to keep the deep-sea-ers down there, and the author pulled that from his nether regions. Doesn't matter.
Anyway - I wander. Great book. Good writing. Accurate science (I'm a biochemist). Compelling and scary characters. And there will be a sequel. There has to be. I look forward to it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this thinking I was going to be getting a throwaway, trashy sci-fi read for my holiday, but I was very wrong. It's a tremendous book that I found very difficult to put down. The ideas are fascinating and compelling and I read and enjoyed the following two books in the series with just as much pleasure.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've read over a thousand books, many of them sci-fi. I don't remember most of them but I'll never forget this one. The author creates a terrific feeling in the book with good characters and milieu. The most important aspects in a good book are just character depictions and good tension, not necessarily plot but I think this book had all of it. Highly recommended alongside Vernor Vinge's works.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Splendid atmosphere, sadly weak plot & linear narrative.
It took me a while to get into this book; the beginning is monotonous and lacks pace and plot but this, (I think) is intentional, allowing the author to construct a deeply dark &... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Willy Eckerslike
Worth buying twice
I read a friend's copy and had to buy it for myself. It's a marvellous book. The plot and setting are original and gripping and the characters are fleshed out and messed up to an... Read more
Published 20 months ago by AJ Handley
Inventive and worth reading, if you can put up with the shonky ending
Starfish explores a somewhat similar setting to his later novel Blindsight. The characters are even more dysfunctional and hateable than in the later novel, and the first three... Read more
Published on 28 Jun 2008 by D. R. Cantrell
Dark Cyberpunk!
If there were to be a film made of this novel it would start "in a world....blah blah".
Lennie Clarke is an abused, disaffected, sociopath with few redeeming qualities. Read more
Lennie Clarke is an abused, disaffected, sociopath with few redeeming qualities. Read more
Published on 8 Dec 2007 by Science Friction.
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