Beyond the rift

by

229 pages

English language

Published Nov. 15, 2013 by Tachyon Pub..

ISBN:
978-1-61696-125-1
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OCLC Number:
840465267

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3 stars (3 reviews)

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 …

2 editions

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.

reviewed Beyond the rift by Peter Watts

Review of 'Beyond the rift' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I both listened to the audio version and read the story afterwards as part of the 2010 Best Science Fiction anthology. I thought the concept of the enormous alien organism was interesting enough to merit two stars all by itself, but I did not resonate with either of the main characters in this story. And the revelation at the end at what was going on felt to me like it came out of nowhere - I could not see how this was reasoned or intuited out.

avatar for emfiliane

rated it

4 stars

Subjects

  • American Science fiction