Beyond the Rift

yet quite original and mostly thought-provoking thirteen (hard) SF short stories written/published between 1990 and 2010 are contained in a single volume here. Don't expect some merry ride with happy ending, though, but be prepared instead for an atmosphere/style as bone-chillingly cold as deep space/ocean!The writing is smart, uncompromising and precise, with occasional grittiness and violence. A not-so-minor gripe of mine, however, is that resorting not infrequently to scientific jargon may hinder full appreciation of Watts' intended message. You can come across technical terms of biochemistry, neuroscience, cosmology, what have you, like: actomyosin, adrenocortical analogs, anoxia, ATOC pulses, benthic ooze, cumulonimbus, dendrite, eumelanin, Hawking Hoop, myoelectric, perspex, phaeophytin, or ventral notochord, etc. with aliquot, photophore, and subroutine being his favourite words - a glossary would have come in handy. It's also questionable how many readers know exactly/are able to recall from their high school/college studies what, say, parietal and occipital lobes are responsible for.Contents: 1. The things (2010) 2. The island (2009) 3. The second coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald (1998) 4. A word for heathens (2004) 5. Home (2000) 6. The eyes of god (2008) 7. Flesh made word (1994) 8. Nimbus (1994) 9. Mayfly (2005) 10. Ambassador (2002) 11. Hillcrest v Velikovsky (2008) 12. Repeating the past (2007) 13. A niche (1990) + Outtro [sic]: 'En route to dystopia with the angry optimist,' in which pseudo-essay the Canadian author is reflecting on some of his themes and current state of affairs, such as the erosion of civil rights on the apropos of a humiliating incident of unjustified and harsh treatment he had to endure at the hands of US Customs thugs and prosecution representing the State of Michigan.I tend to agree with his general assessment/outlook: "[W]hat do you call a world of decent folks ground beneath the boot-heels of despots and sociopaths if not dystopia? You can trot out your folksy tales of good hearts and personal redemption, your small hopeful candles flickering down at the street level; I can't help noticing the darkness pressing down from overhead, the global dysfunction that throws the world on its side despite the angels of our better natures" (pp. 228-9).The above stories explore some of the following themes - A) encounter with alien intelligence: parasitic "communion" as a method for evolvement (1), deceit and back-stabbing are not exclusive to human realm only (2, 10 - I really dig the idea of an interstellar Bermuda triangle), while at the same time Watts expresses a sense of wonder at universe's life-affirming potential, thusly:"The rules are so different here. Most of space is tranquil: no diel or seasonal cycles, no ice ages or global tropics, no wild pendulum swings between hot and cold, calm and tempestuous. Life's precursors abound: on comets, clinging to asteroids, suffusing nebulae a hundred lightyears across. Molecular clouds glow with organic chemistry and life-giving radiation. Their vast dusty wings grow warm with infrared, filter out the hard stuff, give rise to stellar nurseries that only some stunted refugee from the bottom of a gravity well could ever call lethal" (2, p. 43).B) transhumanism: brain-computer interface/emulating human emotions/virtual reality (7, 9), bioengineered new millenium mermaids and the ethical dilemma of recruiting abused victims in hazardous environment (5, 13), on the road to total surveillance/thought police (6), transfering shocking memories (12); C) it seems the author has a chunky beef with Christian religious faith (as per Catholic dogma and institution) that manifests in mockery (11), targets hypocracy of a child-fondling priest who commits suicide to escape shame (6), or analyzes inquisitorial fervour and the shifting foundation of faith - "Sometimes it isn't the experience of redemption that makes the greatest champions, but the longing for it" (4, p. 98); D) artificial intelligence with its own agenda (2); E) sentient storm clouds as Gaia's hands of vengeance (8), so forth.While at the first look it might appear that the writer's stance is that of a reductionist materialist being trained under the current ruling paradigm ("You've been solved...You're mechanical. Chemicals and electricity. Everything you are, every dream, every action, it all comes down to a change of voltage somewhere..." 13, p. 206, and suchlike), sometimes one is under the impression as if Watts were searching for the ghost in the machine/soul (as in chapter 1 - but finds nothing even remotely close), or heavens forbid, even God: "How thinly does I spread itself across the heavens? The flesh is huge, the flesh is inconceivable. But the spirit...is -This is no mere alien. But I'm not quite ready to believe in Gods" (2, p. 33). The closest he comes to the thin line between mind and matter is the story in ch. 3, with quantum theory being tossed in.In closing let me say, and you may disagree, that one deficiency of this collection to consider could be that except for three stories (2, 10, 13), the punchlines for the rest are either weak/unmemorable (3, 4, 8, 9, 11), somewhat predictable (7, 12), or missing entirely/indeterminable (1, 5, 6).

I generally enjoyed Watts' theme of "we're just a bunch of genes" as explored in these shorts, but found the lack of dialog the main impediment to a 4 star review.In the main, Watts writes in either a protagonist first-person or third-person but focused on the protagonist's point of view, and all with a lot of introspection based on their mental state. Normally I'm good with that, but in this case it is pretty much unrelenting and where you probably wouldn't notice it just reading one or two of these stories in an anthology, it's pure concentrate here and too strong for my tastes.Indeed, apparently Watts is known as a "bleak" author - and he goes on at length about this in a "Dear Reader" section at the end of the novel that I gave up on after two pages because I found it too boring - but I didn't find them bleak in the sense of misery, squalor or oppression. Rather, that singular writing style and lack of dialog made the narrative bleak to me.In terms of topics, Watts ranges from the claustrophobia of a science station deep underwater that could easily be in our near future, to light years from anywhere some billions of years downstream from now. His focus seems to be whether us as 'meat machine' are anything more than a mechanism for genetic reproduction based on a limited repertoire of programmed responses and he probes this from human, cybernetic and purely digital perspectives. Oh, and with some aliens thrown in for good measure. There are a lot of interesting ideas here and even the complicated ones are readily accessible because Watts pretty much spells them out, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so.It is generally interesting, but the landscape is limited and there is certainly a familiarity of intent the further into the collection you get. Again, read one or two in an anthology or with some time between each short and this won't be a problem. Consume them one after the other in the space of a couple of days and the pattern becomes paramount. Also, a few of the stories approach religion in a way that readers with faith may take issue with.I'm a little ambivalent in recommending this. Most of the stories have a hard science underpinning and if you like fiction that delves into the "me" in "me", this will likely appeal. It is not so hugely expensive that price alone need put you off, and I expect most sci-fi fans will find stories to like here. But it's also not bargain basement and there is a high degree of repetition in the theme and for me, way too much prose without dialog to counterpoint the point of view. So, definitely one for the Look Inside option because there is enough of "The Things" to likely make up your mind on the style one way or another.

I have never really been able to understand why the books of Peter Watts are not more popular, and why his profile isn't a lot higher; Or actually I can, in the sense that his books are "difficult", don't have many sympathetic characters and often end badly. None of that should disqualify them from popularity, but unfortunately it probably does.This book is a collection of superb short stories (scarcely a dud among them) and is actually a good place to start. Not many laughs, I hear you say? True, but lots of other things instead.

An excellent collection of short stories. As ever with Peter Watts, they are scientifically exacting and mostly grim, but in fact the most concerning story, a harbinger of a dystopia to come, is the author's harrowing autobiographical tale of his brush with the US Border Guards...

I really like Peter Watts style, unflinching from exploring the darker aspects of humanity.He avoids cliche and reinterprets popular myths and idea, giving them a spin that really gets you thinking about our preconceptions of existence.His first three novels are available for free form his website. I highly recommend htem too if youre not too afraid of the dark

Note for Kindle samplers the first story is imo, by far the weakest in the book

Excellent, thought provoking short stories that showcase Peter Watts unique world view. The reimagining of The Thing is worth it on its own but the others provide an excellent intro to many of the themes around otherness and broken personalities that run through Watts' work.