Peter Watts (author)

This article is about the science fiction author. For the Mott the Hoople bassist, see Peter Watts (musician). For the character on from the television series Millennium, see Peter Watts (Millennium).

Peter Watts is a Canadian science fiction author and marine-mammal biologist.

His first novel Starfish (2000) introduced Lenie Clarke, a deep-ocean power-station worker physically altered for underwater living and the main character in the sequels: Maelstrom (2001), Behemoth: β-Max (2004) and Behemoth: Seppuku (2005). The last two volumes comprise one novel, published split in two for commercial considerations. Starfish, Maelstrom and Behemoth comprise a trilogy usually referred to as "Rifters" after the modified humans designed to work in deep-ocean environments.

His latest book, Blindsight, was released in October 2006 and was nominated for a Hugo Award. The novel has been described by Charles Stross thus: "Imagine a neurobiology-obsessed version of Greg Egan writing a first contact with aliens story from the point of view of a zombie posthuman crewman aboard a starship captained by a vampire, with not dying as the boobie prize." Watts is currently writing two novels: Sunflowers and State of Grace, a "sidequel" about what happened on Earth during Blindsight.

Watts has made his novels and some short fiction available on his website under Creative Commons licence. He believes that doing so has "actually saved [his] career outright, by rescuing Blindsight from the oblivion to which it would have otherwise been doomed."

In addition to his novels and short stories, Watts has also worked in other media. He was the Supervising Writer on the animated science fiction film and television project Strange Frame. He also worked briefly with Relic Entertainment on one of the early drafts of the story that would eventually, years later, become Homeworld 2. However, the draft Watts worked on bears little resemblance to the one used for the released game. More recently, he has been recruited by Crytek as a writer and art consultant on Crysis 2. Technological elements from Blindsight have been referenced in the fictional Crysis 2 "Nanosuit Brochure".

Bibliography

Novels

• Rifters Trilogy
  1. Starfish (1999) (available online)
  2. Maelstrom (2001) (available online)
  3. Behemoth: β-Max and Seppuku (2004/2005) (available online)
• Blindsight (2006) (available online)

Collections

• Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes (2000)

Short stories

• A Niche (1990)
• Nimbus (1994)
• Flesh Made Word (1994)
• Fractals (1995)
• Bethlehem (1996)
• The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald (1998)
• Home (1999)
• Bulk Food (2000) with Laurie Channer
• Ambassador (2001)
• A Word for Heathens (2004)
• Mayfly (2005) with Derryl Murphy
• Repeating the Past (2007)
• The Eyes of God (2008)
• The Island (2009)

Awards

The novel Blindsight was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 2007 (official announcement) and was longlisted (on the preliminary ballot) for the Nebula Award in January 2008 (preliminary ballot).

His short story "A Niche" tied with "Breaking Ball" by Michael Skeet for the Aurora Award in 1992.

Detention by US border guards

In December of 2009, Dr. Watts was detained at the US/Canadian border by American border guards while attempting to re-enter Canada after reportedly visiting friends. Watts was alleged to have assaulted a Customs Officer after refusing a lawful direction to return to his vehicle. Watts was reported to have been verbally abusive towards the US CBP Officers prior to choking one of the Officers. Watts was turned over to local authorities to face charges; he was subsequently released, but remains charged with assaulting an officer. According to Watts, he was assaulted, punched in the face, pepper-sprayed and thrown in jail for the night.

The following was posted on Watts' website, www.rifters.com, shortly after the incident.

If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

But that is not this universe.

External links

• http://www.rifters.com – personal website
  • http://www.rifters.com/real/newscrawl_2007.htm – old weblog
  • http://www.rifters.com/crawl – new weblog
• 2004 Interview at The Agony Column
• 2007 interview at SF Diplomat
• Peter Watts at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database