Starfish
Page 34
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In between:
Glenn Grant took it upon himself to approach David Hartwell on my behalf when I was too chickenshit to do it myself. Major David Buck of the New Zealand Army gave me the benefit of his expertise on explosives, nuclear and otherwise. I was a bit disturbed to learn just how much thought some people have put into the effects of nuclear explosions on the seabed.
When I wanted to check out the geology of spreading and earthquake zones, I posted a question to a couple of geological Usenet groups in lieu of actual research. This netted me a lot of advice from people I’ve never met and probably never will: Ellin Beltz, Hayden Chasteen, Joe Davis, Keith Morrison, and Carl Schaefer gave me pointers and references on vulcanism, plate tectonics, and (in one case) the length of time it would take a nuclear submarine to get shot zitlike from the mouth of an active volcano after being swallowed into a deep-sea subduction zone. John Stockwell of the Center for Wave Phenomena (Colorado School of Mines) was especially forthcoming, sharing formulae and tables that described earthquakes in nice, graspable, “Hiroshima equivalents.” I’m tempted to never do my own research again.
* * *
I’m also tempted to blame all these nice people for any technical mistakes you find in the preceding document, but of course, I can’t. It’s my book. They’re my mistakes, too.
The music of Jethro Tull provided ongoing inspiration, not only during the writing of this novel, but throughout the interminable years of sufferance in academia which led to it. Also, if you want a sort of mood-setting Starfish theme song, play Sarah MacLachlans’ “Obsession” in a dark room, with the volume cranked. (I would have quoted it in the book, but I never got around to asking after the rights.)
REFERENCES
Actually, you might be surprised at how much of this stuff I didn’t make up. If you’re interested in finding out about background details, the following references will get you started. Starfish deliberately twists some of the facts, and I’ve probably made a hundred other errors through sheer ignorance, but that’s something else this list is good for: it gives you the chance to check up on me.
Deepwater Biology
The deep-sea creatures I described pretty much as they exist; if you don’t believe me read “Light in the Ocean’s Midwaters” by B. H. Robison, in the July 1995 Scientific American. Or Deep-Sea Biology by J. D. Gage and P. A. Taylor (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Or Abyss by C. P. Idyll (Crowell Company, 1971); it’s old, but it’s the book that hooked me back in grade 9. Although the fish we drag up from great depths are generally pretty small in real life, gigantism is not unheard-of among some species of deepwater fish. Back in the 1930s, for example, the deepwater pioneer William Beebe claimed to have spotted a seven-foot sea dragon from a bathysphere.
I found lots of interesting stuff in The Sea—Ideas and Observations on Progress in the Study of the Seas Volume 7: Deep-Sea Biology (G. T. Rowe, ed.; 1983 from John Wiley and Sons). In particular, the chapter on biochemical and physiological adaptations of deep-sea animals (by Somero et al.)—as well as Biochemical Adaptation, a 1983 book from Princeton University Press (Hochachka and Somero, eds.)—got me started on deep-sea physiology, the effects of high pressure on neuronal firing thresholds, and the adaptation of enzymes to high pressure/temperature regimes.
Spreading-Zone Tectonics/Geology
A good layperson’s introduction to the coastal geology of the Pacific Northwest, including a discussion of midocean ridges such as Juan de Fuca, can be found in Cycles of Rock and Water by K. A. Brown (1993, HarperCollins West). “The Quantum Event of Oceanic Crustal Accretion: Impacts of Diking at Mid-Ocean Ridges” (J. R. Delaney et al., Science 281, pp. 222–230, 1998) nicely conveys the nastiness and frequency of earthquakes and eruptions along the Juan de Fuca Ridge, although it’s a bit heavy on the technobabble.
The idea that the Pacific Northwest is overdue for a major earthquake is reviewed in “Giant Earthquakes of the Pacific Northwest” by R. D. Hyndman (Scientific American, December 1995). “Forearc Deformation and Great Subduction Earthquakes: Implications for Cascadia Offshore Earthquake Potential” by McCaffrey and Goldfinger (Science, v267, 1995) and “Earthquakes cannot be predicted” (Geller et al., Science v275, 1997) discuss the issue in somewhat greater detail. I used to live quite happily in Vancouver. After reading these items, I moved to Toronto.
The absolute coolest source for up-to-the-minute information on hydrothermal vents, however, is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Web pages. Everything’s there: raw survey data, research schedules, live maps, three-dimensional seaquake animations, and recent publications. To name but a few. Start at http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents and go from there.
Psionics/Ganzfeld Effects
The rudimentary telepathy I describe actually made it into the peer-reviewed technical literature back in 1994. Check out “Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer” by Bem and Honorton, pages 4–18 in volume 15 of the Psychological Bulletin. They got statistical significance and everything. Speculations on the quantum nature of human consciousness come from the books of Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford University Press, 1989) and Shadows of the Mind (Oxford, 1994).
Smart Gels
The smart gels that screw everything up were inspired by the research of Masuo Aizawa, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, profiled in the August 1992 issue of Discover magazine. At that time, he’d got a few neurons hooked together into the precursors of simple logic gates. I shudder to think where he’s got to now.
The application of neural nets to navigating through complex terrain is described in “Robocar” by B. Daviss (Discover, July 1992), which describes work being done by Charles Thorpe of (where else?) Carnegie-Mellon University.
βehemoth
The theory that life originated in hydrothermal vents hails from “A Hydrothermally Precipitated Catalytic Iron Sulphide Membrane as a First Step Towards Life” by M. J. Russel et al. (Journal of Molecular Evolution, v39, 1994). Throwaway bits on the evolution of life, including the viability of pyranosal RNA as an alternative genetic template, I cadged from “The origin of life on earth” by L. E. Orgel (Scientific American, October 1994). βehemoth’s symbiotic presence within the cells of deepwater fish steals from the work of Lynn Margulis, who first suggested that cellular organelles were once free-living organisms in their own right (an idea that went from heresy to canon in the space of about ten years). Once I’d stuck that idea into the book, I found vindication in “Parasites Shed Light on Cellular Evolution” (G. Vogel, Science 275, p 1422, 1997) and “Thanks to a Parasite, Asexual Reproduction Catches On” (M. Enserinck, Science 275, p. 1743, 1997).
Sexual Abuse as an Addictive Stimulus
I first encountered the idea that chronic abuse could be physiologically addictive in Psychological Trauma (B. van der Kolk, ed., American Psychiatric Press, 1987). False Memory syndrome is explored in The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse by E. Loftus and K. Ketcham (St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
Tor Books by PETER WATTS
Starfish
Maelstrom
Behemoth: B-Max
Behemoth: Seppuku
Blindsight
Praise for STARFISH
“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
“Fizzing with ideas and glued together with dark psychological tension: an exciting debut.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A powerful first novel … A savage, bitter, and often blackly comic vision of the near future … Watts has rendered a character whose emotional complexity
demands our respect.… [The ending] is both startling and oddly satisfying in its earned nihilism. A terrific debut from an author we will be seeing again.”
—Edmonton Journal
“Watts’s true enemy is human stupidity, the sort of thing that turns children into walking disaster zones, treats adults as interchangeable things, insists that unchecked fertility is a good thing, and blindly trusts that our artificially intelligent creations must share our priorities. As Watts develops that point, he tells an absorbing tale set in a bizarre world and hinging upon intriguing technology. He’s done his homework well, and it shows.”
—Analog
“With gritty action and realistic science, Peter Watts brings to life a dark and vivid world.”
—David Brin
“Peter Watts delivers—solid, inventive, hard SF about the deep sea, but as we’ve never seen before. This moves like the wind.”
—Gregory Benford
“A dark jewel of a book. [Watts’s] undersea environment is sensual and realistically detailed. His speculations about several aspects of cutting-edge science are worthy of Gregory Benford and Joan Slonczewski … [the] prose is muscular and poetic. A somber and disturbing story.”
—Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)
“An excellent first novel … a stylishly written and entirely successful mélange of hard science and character-centered story.… The sort of novel that in more innocent days people would have said is what good science fiction is centrally about.”
—Asimov’s Science Fiction
“Watts’s first novel elegantly captures the isolation and claustrophobia of the lightless ocean depths, smoothly blending psychological suspense with high-tech SF adventure.”
—Library Journal
“A tense tale of deep-sea exploration … A potent first novel.”
—Locus
“Watts has created a beautiful yet dangerous world for us to explore. The story is compelling, rich with character and nuance, and delicately flavored with a little danger. For anyone tired of the usual space opera or elf-ridden fantasy tale, Starfish is a delightful breath of … seawater.”
—The Telegram (St. John’s)
“Plenty of satisfying incidents, developments, couplings, and luminous descriptions of life in that ghostly, light-amplified world … Watts writes confidently and well. A highly interesting and thoroughly researched debut novel.”
—The New York Review of Science Fiction
“A gritty deep-sea tale … a restrained yet chilling subplot … Watts’s evocation of the nightmarish claustrophobia of Beebe Station is good, and he writes well and with authority about the weird beauty of the vents and their strange inhabitants. He’s clearly in for the long haul.”
—Interzone
“In Starfish, Watts creates in his protagonist a poetry of dysfunction which is angry and eerily redemptive, and which makes compelling, almost compulsive reading.”
—Candas Jane Dorsey
“A very impressive book, highly original in its setting and unusually ingenious in the careful combination of information from several different scientific fields.”
—Brian Stableford
“The story is murky and claustrophobic, well-imagined and well-realized. I’ll give you just a little hint about one of the scariest elements in anything I’ve read this month: Not all recovered memories are real.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Science fiction, as a genre, is obliged to consistently reinvent itself or lose freshness. One of the many virtues of Starfish is that Peter Watts has succeeded in making the deep-sea setting all his own. Read Starfish by all means, but don’t expect Captain Nemo. Expect Peter Watts. Watts is more interesting.”
—Robert Charles Wilson
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
STARFISH
Copyright © 1999 by Peter Watts
All rights reserved.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
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