Reading Wednesday
Jun. 17th, 2026 06:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang. In my post about this last week I perhaps failed to mention that in addition to most of the main characters being trees, the humans' palace that is invading their territory is made out of bones.
Anyway.
It's really good. Would recommend, looking forward to the sequel.
Currently reading: Starfish by Peter Watts. This has to be a re-read because there is no way I didn't read something that clearly influenced my own writing this much, but also I have no memory of when or under what circumstances I read it. Weird. So is the book, but that goes without saying. A corporation called GA has built Beebe, an underwater station that harvests geothermal energy from the Juan de Fuca Rift, and genetically and surgically modified some folks to maintain it, called rifters (or vampires by a psychologist sent to report on them, but not the same kind of vampires as in Blindsight). The rifters all have a lung removed and replaced with adaptive equipment to allow them to breathe underwater and adapt to the pressure.
Who would do this? Obviously people who have no choice and who are already fucked in the head, so our cast ranges from the severely traumatized to the severely traumatized with a history of inflicting more trauma on others. They inevitably like the bottom of the ocean more than the surface, but there are some very nasty things down there, not all of them natural.
Also this was written almost 30 years ago and absolutely describes the current state of AI perfectly.
This is obviously extremely up my street and I love it. All the trigger warnings apply, so know that going in. But it's one of the most inventive hard sf books out there and put Peter Watts on the map for good reason.
Anyway.
It's really good. Would recommend, looking forward to the sequel.
Currently reading: Starfish by Peter Watts. This has to be a re-read because there is no way I didn't read something that clearly influenced my own writing this much, but also I have no memory of when or under what circumstances I read it. Weird. So is the book, but that goes without saying. A corporation called GA has built Beebe, an underwater station that harvests geothermal energy from the Juan de Fuca Rift, and genetically and surgically modified some folks to maintain it, called rifters (or vampires by a psychologist sent to report on them, but not the same kind of vampires as in Blindsight). The rifters all have a lung removed and replaced with adaptive equipment to allow them to breathe underwater and adapt to the pressure.
Who would do this? Obviously people who have no choice and who are already fucked in the head, so our cast ranges from the severely traumatized to the severely traumatized with a history of inflicting more trauma on others. They inevitably like the bottom of the ocean more than the surface, but there are some very nasty things down there, not all of them natural.
Also this was written almost 30 years ago and absolutely describes the current state of AI perfectly.
This is obviously extremely up my street and I love it. All the trigger warnings apply, so know that going in. But it's one of the most inventive hard sf books out there and put Peter Watts on the map for good reason.
no subject
Date: 2026-06-17 01:21 pm (UTC)Never hear of it, myself.
If you have no memory, maybe you didn't?
called rifters (or vampires
Loook! The Kevin Siembieda sign!
LawsuitTM impending!
no subject
Date: 2026-06-17 05:20 pm (UTC)This novel came out when I was in college, I bought it unread, I loved it. I remember enjoying the rest of the trilogy, too. Nothing else of his has been such a success with me, but nothing else has spent so much time at the bottom of the sea.