Books.

[dsrtao]

(Yes, I'm sick. Why else would I be posting at Pi in the morning?)

Finished: _Starfish_ and _Maelstrom_, Peter Watts. There are two glowing eyes staring at me from below the desk, reminding me of the predominant image in these books: the face of a Rifter, a human biologically and mechanically altered to be able to survive in deep ocean environments. Although I am dubious about the water flow required to extract the oxygen available at such depths, pretty much everything else rings true. The next time someone asks for "hard SF", I think I'll point them here.

Unfortunately, the future is pretty bleak. Corporations have replaced governments; the overall political climate is reminiscent of /Shadowrun/: either you work in an autocratic corp, or you live in anarchic poverty among the wreckage of old cities. For a set of books concerned with ecosystem damage, there is curiously little (read: no) discussion of farms.

Not books for the easily depressed. Otherwise, very good.

Comments

[abbergails.livejournal.com]

What kind of sick?

Keep your eye on the bird flu.

[(Anonymous)]

Electrolysis, dude. Not the extraction of dissolved O2, but the splitting of the water molecule itself (the yield of which is depth-independent). A measly 50 ml of seawater contains almost as much oxygen as you'd get in 2000 lites of air; this comes in real handy in the third book, when certain land-bound characters have to make do with stagnant dregs left sloshing around in their implants to make it through a poisonous atmosphere.

The *real* problem with the rifters paradigm isn't the amount of available oxygen at depth, but the energy required to electrolyse it. I doubt that myoelectrics would be up to the task.

[dsrtao]

Thanks, that does shift the problem.

By the way, who are you?

[(Anonymous)]

The author.

I was egosurfing. I'm not proud.

[dsrtao]

No need to apologize. It's always nice when authors come 'round to talk about their work.

I can't recall whether it was James Nicoll or Charlie Stross who led me to your books, but I'm already indebted to both of them, so what's a little more?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Okay, I think we've found your current superpower..."Summon Author".