Reviews

• What happens when straight-forward concepts of pulp fiction are handled by a skilful but internally twisted author? You have something akin to the collection under review. Like pulpy scifi, the ideas at the core of these tales are good. But those plots would have been worthy of being pursued if there were characters with warmth, wit and empathy to shoulder them. Instead we had extremely unpleasant characters making a hash of those ideas. Despite the author being lavishly praised by critics, I found his writing to be seriously problematic. He uses rape as a general tool for carrying forward his ideas through the characters. Sometimes the perpetrator is an alien, sometimes a family-member. Overall, I am distinctly unhappy with this book. And I wouldn't touch anything written by this author with even a pole.

• Each of these shorts deserves a novel treatment, especially The Island and the rest of the stories in the Sunflower cycle. Maybe we'll get one some day. Every one of these is brilliant (even Flesh Made Word, which PW himself has described as emo and overwrought - well, maybe, but the sinister idea behind it is worthy enough) and leaves the reader craving more, with the possible exception of the Lenie Clarke story, not that it isn't also great, but if you've read Starfish or the Rifters books then it will seem like well-tread ground. The wee essay in the back where PW defends himself against his 'dark' and 'sinister' reputation is also worth the price of the whole book on its own.

• Anyone who is unfamiliar with Peter Watts as an author and might be unwilling to dive right into the deep end with Starfish or Blindsight (and the subsequent novels that follow up in the respective worlds those two novels introduce) would be doing themselves a disservice by not taking a chance and reading a copy of Beyond the Rift. Hell, even existing fans of Peter Watts are making a mistake by not picking up a copy of this book. Beyond the Rift contains 13 of the most fascinating, diverse, and occasionally challenging science fiction stories that have been written. Those who, like myself, already own a copy of Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes (his previous collection of short fiction) will be familiar with six of the stories that are collected in Beyond the Rift, but they are the six best stories from the previous collection...especially The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald and Ambassador, which were my two personal favorites from the previous anthology. I loved those stories enough that I didn't skip over them when reading through this new collection. This particular anthology of his work starts of strong with The Things, a retelling of Director John Carpenter's The Thing (an adaptation of Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell) from the perspective of the titular Thing. I'd read this story previously, when Watts made it available on his website years ago, but it (like his other work) was well worth reading a second time. Following that was The Island, an equally strong story that was partially familiar to me as well because of samples of it that Watts had been posting on his blog as it was being written. Hell, this book would be worth having on the merit of those two stories alone, but it is so much more than that. Along with the two stories I already mentioned that exist in both Beyond the Rift and Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes are the fantastic stories Home and A Niche (which was my first introduction to Peter Watts when I read it back in the late 90s), both of which are stand alone snippets of the narrative that appears in Starfish...which could serve as an impetus to read that novel and the three that follow it. It certainly had that effect on me. Thirteen stories and not a weak one among them.

• Comme à son habitude Peter Watts signe un très bon livre. Ce livre se compose de petites histoires très réussies. Au travers de ces histoires, Peter Watts explore avec talent des questions de fond. Je conseille vivement ce livre à tous les passionnés de science-fiction.

• I didn't know what to expect when I bought this series of 1s & 0s. I'd read a piece in a sci-fi magazine about Peter Watts and his story based on John Carpenter's The Thing, but from the Thing's perspective. So I bought the e-book and read the story, it was good and left me wondering about one of my favourite movies. The rest of the stories are good, only one left me wondering what the hell went on.

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