Maelstrom

Front Cover
Macmillan, Jan 6, 2009 - Fiction - 384 pages

This is the way the world ends:

A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe—voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction—and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who'd inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement.

The resulting tsunami killed millions. It's not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage.

Unless, of course, you miss the target.

Now North America's west coast lies in ruins. Millions of refugees rally around a mythical figure mysteriously risen from the deep sea. A world already wobbling towards collapse barely notices the spread of one more blight along its shores. And buried in the seething fast-forward jungle that use to be called Internet, something vast and inhuman reaches out to a woman with empty white eyes and machinery in her chest. A woman driven by rage, and incubating Armageddon.

Her name is Lenie Clarke. She's a rifter. She's not nearly as dead as everyone thinks.

And the whole damn world is collateral damage as far as she's concerned. . . .

 

Contents

MESSIAH
15
VOLVOX
19
Fables of the Reconstruction
21
Deathbed
28
Breeder
33
Cascade
37
Backflash
46
Maps and Legends
52
Warhorse
156
PHYSALIA
163
Jiminy Cricket
166
Footprints
171
An Archetype of Dislocation
176
Punctuated Equilibrium
183
Microstar
185
Matchmaker
190

Corpse
54
Bang
65
Stickman
74
An Invitation to Dance
79
Pixelpal
82
Thirdperson Limited
84
Remora
87
Firebug
89
Afterburn
94
Stockpile
98
Icarus
103
Jailbreak
110
The Next Best Thing
116
Beachhead
117
Drugstore
124
Source Code
128
Groundswell
131
Hitchhiker
133
Animal Control
135
Ghost
138
Blip
147
Womb
148
Eclipse
150
Monster
151
Heat Death
192
Blind Date
194
Necrosis
197
Snare
202
Complicity
206
Vision Quest
215
The Algebra of Guilt
221
Starfucker
225
Mask
231
Scalpel
240
By a Thousand Cuts
244
The Generals
246
Sparkler
248
Decoys
256
Crucifixion with Spiders
272
ANTHOPLEURA
285
Anemone
287
Behind the Lines
292
Spartacus
299
TursiPops
302
Terrarium
322
Soul Mate
330
SLEEPING BY FIRELIGHT
365
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Peter Watts is a former marine biologist, flesh-eating-disease survivor and convicted felon whose novels—despite an unhealthy focus on space vampires—have become required texts for university courses ranging from Philosophy to Neuropsychology. His work is available in 21 languages, has appeared in over 350 best-of-year anthologies, and been nominated for over 50 awards in a dozen countries. His (somewhat shorter) list of 20 actual wins includes the Hugo, the Shirley Jackson, and the Seiun. Peter is the author of the Rifters novels (Starfish, Maelstrom) and the Firefall series (Blindsight, Echopraxia).