Peter Watt Books

An excellent concept book explaining how plants grow, what they need to grow, and how people and animals depend them. The book includes some great experiments to complement the concepts.

I ordered this for my mother and she loves it. It has many great photos and is perfect for the dog lover in your family. It is small, but most books of this nature (niche) are as well. It is a cute book with great photos.

I think all these books from the "You wouldn't want to be a...." line are great. The illustrations are great, the history seems accurate and even adults will enjoy them. While some of the info may be "harsh" it none the less is true, and shows how hard and unfair it was to survive back in those days (Wild West, Gladiator, Mayflower, Aztec Slave, Cleopatra, King Tut, etc.) We have almost all of them, and we like them all!

My 8 year old likes facts and comicbook style illustrations, and whales...so this type of book is just for him.

But beware, this book describes the gruesome voyage of the Essex, which featured cannibalism...a sea captain eating his young cousin. I was nervous that my child, who is the sensitive type, would get nightmares from this book, but somehow the lighthearted illustrations take away some of the sting. In fact, he often pulls out this book to read at bedtime!

Still, be forewarned, these books are not for the squeamish. And I certainly wouldn't read them to the 4-6 set. I'd say the correct age range is something like 8-11.

comical illustrations are supported by historical events. The whole series (we have most of them) are interesting for adults and children alike.

Peter Watts takes his reader to the depths of the ocean and the very edge of the human psche. This hard science fiction book is the first in what was to be a trilogy, but turned out as one of a four part series. Watts brings the reader a fast paced and intrguing look at the future of mankind which as the reader finds hinges on the past of all life on this blue dot. I would highly recommend this book to any science fiction fan. In fact, I have just ordered the other three books in the series.

_Starfish_ by Peter Watts is one of the finest hard science fiction books I have ever read. It had many elements of what make a great science fiction novel. It extrapolated an interesting and believable though often surprising future, the science was realistic and well-explained (and in this book was discussed at some length in a final chapter on references) yet the author didn't forget that the book was a novel, not a science textbook, many disparate elements were woven together to form a great story (in this case deepwater biology, plate tectonics, microbiology, artificial intelligence, and psychological trauma), the characters were interesting and well-developed, and the book had that rare quality of making you feel very smart, of allowing you to piece together shocking and developing story elements, the author allowing you to form conclusions, neither watering down something nor going over the reader's head with too much jargon or hard to grasp story logic. Hard to believe that this is the author's first novel! Many science fiction authors don't do nearly as well after years in their profession.

I don't want to say too much about the book's plot as I wouldn't want to spoil it for the prospective reader. I will say that the plot's main setting is unusual and interesting and what originally attracted me to the book; a deep sea geothermal power station on the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean (specifically, Beebe Station, located near the Juan de Fuca Ridge hydrothermal vents). The station is populated by a bio-engineered crew dubbed "rifters," people who had been altered physically and mechanically to able to live and work in such an incredible harsh environment, a realm of crushing pressure, arctic-temperature waters (except around the scalding vents), and alien darkness. The type of people able to live in such an environment is a key plot point of the book and makes for some very unusual and memorable characters.

Though Beebe Station and the rifters are dominant in the book, they are not the only story elements. Other notable characters are Patricia Rowan (a CEO of the Grid Authority or GA, which owns Beebe Station and employs the rifters) and Yves Scanlon (a psychologist who works for the GA), characters which become important later in the novel as events come to entangle the rifters in a mysterious and mounting catastrophe.

I will say the novel has a climatic ending and a sequel was clearly meant from the beginning as there were several loose ends. I am currently reading that very sequel, _Maelstrom_, and find it thus far a worthy follow-up, beginning right where the action left off and exploring further Watt's detailed and interesting (if scary) world.

This is the best "science fiction" book I have read in a long time. As a female reader, I tire of "Spaceman Spiff" stories and have leaned more toward fantasy. _Starfish_ is set in the deepest ocean, an environment as hostile as outer space. The time and place are earth in the near future, seen through a pessimistic lens. There's environmental problems, population problems, corporations have taken over everything, etc. These ideas are not original, nor are they really what the book is about.

_Starfish_'s main character is Lenie Clarke, a courageous woman with a troubled past. She arrives at the underwater outpost Beebe Station, not because it was her life's ambition, but because she has exhausted her other options. Lenie is a complex and extremely well-drawn character. The author did an excellent job creating a character that the reader doesn't identify with, but still develops a great affection for.

As her teammates join her at the station, they each explore their new environment and learn to engage with one another. At Beebe, they are in uncomfortably close quarters. Outside, they have infinite space, but in a medium that is ultimately hostile to their biology.

The conflicts are on several levels. Lenie and the other team members have inner conflicts aplenty. Lenie repeatedly confronts and challenges the deep ocean that is her new home. Finally, the story is framed by a more complex socio-political conflict that Beebe Station, even though it is thousands of feet beneath the surface, cannot escape.

This book stayed in my head for a long time after I read it. _Starfish_ deserves better than a plane trip, but a time when you can pay attention.

Lounging around the house, I picked this book up and started it. And then, a few pages into it, I put it down. It scared me. The world that Watts drops you into, right at the beginning, is so strong... so well created.... so evocative.... It just gives you chills... Makes you hear every echoing bang and strange creak and feel the terrible pressure overhead. I put this book down and turned on the TV, in fact.... Wanted some bright, technicolor, mindless drivel....

But then, two days later, after finding that I was thinking about it... I picked Starfish up again and..... read it straight through. I think I finished it around 3:15am last night (and got three hours of sleep before having to get up for work). This one goes in my list of very, very, very good books.

Again, Watts drops you right in the middle of it and you have to work to figure out what is happening. He assumes the reader has intelligence, which is really refreshing. Yes, there are some tidbits that we've experienced before (Sphere and The Abyss come to mind). But just tidbits. This is so much more. And pretty damn perfect. With one exception (the evil bureaucrat's speechifying explanations near the end). These few paragraphs were kind of jarring -- a simple plot mechanism, when I expected much more from such a skilled writer.

HOWEVER -- this does not detract a lot from my review. The rest of the writing was great, the characters are haunting, and the science folded into the story is fascinating. I can close my eyes and be down there, in the silty darkness with the fragile monsters...

Wow. Congratulations to Peter Watts.
I haven't been this affected by a science fiction book IN A LONG TIME!

Starfish delivers a captivating tale. I find it a plausible glimpse into our not so distant future.

I was intrigued as well as a bit terrified of Watts depiction of human beings bio engineered to live on the ocean floor. Terrified, because I placed myself within the characters shoes and I struggled to determine how I would retain my sanity constantly hearing the overwhelming pressure of the hand of the ocean trying to crush my undersea habitat and swimming in total darkness with monsters attracted by the slightest amount of light..

Watts covered all bases by coming up with a believable explanation of how people could face these undersea dangers and still remain "sane".

Add to that not one but two world ending threats as a cliffhanger and you have the makings of a great book. I loved it.

Euftis Emery
Author of Off the Chain

Have not as yet received Peter and the Wolf Pop-up Book

A spectacular visual accompaniment to the music and narration! Beautiful pictures. My 2-year-old daughter asks for the music by name and sits down looking at the book while she listens to the instruments, pointing out the different animals/characters when she hears the different instruments appear. I never imagined she'd be learning words for "oboe" and "clarinet" at this point, never mind their sounds, but she is entranced and easily goes back and forth between the music, the story, and the different instruments and characters.

The artist does a very good job of illustrating the story & keeping the flavour of the Russian lifestyle. I was very disappointed that the audio cassette is only a narration of the story, and does not contain a recording of the symphony.

As a child, Peter and the Wolf was one of my favorite classical pieces ever. This is a beautiful book! I bought it for 2 of my grandchildren (8y & 2y) to go with a CD. It fits with the music very well, and my grandchildren loved it as much as I did. The cost was also very reasonable. Thanks for making this available.

I use this version of Peter and the Wolf when I teach music classes to young children. I also use a separate CD (a good one is narrated by Leonard Bernstein).The reason I like to use this edition for the younger kids is because in the end the duck actually comes out of the wolf alive, even though that's not the way it originally was written.

Peter Watts' _Starfish_ introduced the reader to a fascinating, very well-developed dystopian world, the sometimes wonderful but often frightening world of the mid-21st century. In _Maelstrom_, Watts shows how that world comes to an end.

_Maelstrom_ begins right where _Starfish_ left off. Lenie Clarke and Ken Lubin, "rifters," people modified to work at a deep sea power-generating station (practically cyborgs in some respects), are the sole survivors of an attempt to contain the deadly pathogen dubbed Behemoth, discovered at the deep sea geothermal vent where Bebee Station was located. As the reader learned in _Starfish_, the strange and extremely deadly microorganism lived at that particular vent and was isolated until humans set up shop in its habitat. Aware of the unbelievable risks posed by the microbe, the government of North America used nuclear weapons to destroy the potentially biosphere-ending benthic organism at the end of _Starfish_, hoping to destroy the vent, the station, the rifters, and anything remotely associated with Behemoth. The resulting tsunami and earthquakes - made worse by the very nature of the smart gels assigned to handle the Behemoth problem - killed millions.

Unfortunately, Behemoth was not contained. Not only had it already spread to the North American Pacific coast, it was being carried further inland by Lenie Clark. Quite angry at the betrayals and lies she had been subject to, she journeyed inland to seek answers and revenge of a sort, unfortunately sowing the seeds for North America's if not the world's demise. Wherever she went, she spread Behemoth.

Lenie Clarke became far more successful than she had any right to be, owing to an unusual concentration of forces and alignment of events in her favor, as Clarke became not only a societal force but also a force of sorts in Maelstrom, the whirling, chaotic, violent successor to the modern internet, a place dominated by increasingly intelligent and dangerous "wildlife," rogue computer programs, future descendents of today's computer viruses but much more troublesome. The author's description of the evolution of such electronic organisms and the conditions prevalent in Maelstrom in the mid 21st century were fascinating and chilling. It made me very concerned about my virus protection software on my computer (not that any modern program could hope to prevail against the monsters of Maelstrom)!

Other major players include two members of the "Entropy Patrol," two "'lawbreakers" by the name of Achilles Desjardins and Alice Jovellanos. Given enormous power to react quickly, ruthlessly, and efficiently to mounting global crises, they are information experts, able to interpret, analyze, and quickly act on mounds of data in any field, be it economics, ecology, disaster management, or any other sphere (aided by the fact that they were given incredibly enhanced intellectual reflexes and pattern-matching skills). At first the Entropy Patrol was designed to act quickly and globally in an era of quarantines, diebacks, and crop failures, acting to quickly contain diseases and invasive organisms as they spread over the world as to well as to contend with other things such as global terrorism, they increasingly came to include in their sphere other sources of concern, with the power to instantly ruin millions of lives economically or to even physically end lives with powerful weapons (as long as it served the greater good of course). More powerful than any despot or emperor ever dreamed of being, only one thing stood to keep them in check, a biochemical fix known as Guilt Trip, which prevented `lawbreakers from acting against the greater good. Derived from chemicals used by parasites to control the behavior of their host, Guilt Trip paralyzed anyone with guilt - literally paralyzing them - if they ever sought to do something against the greater good. Guilt Trip was the only way anyone would ever sleep soundly knowing people like Desjardins had such enormous power at their fingertips.

Other players included Sou-Hon Perreault, a botfly operator (botflies are remotely operated flying machines, able to hover or speed to trouble spots and bring to bear as needed a battery of sensors, instruments, and in some cases weapons) and Patricia Rowan as well (a "corpse" - or corporate executive - from the first novel).

An interesting and well-written book, it was a little dark at times though generally never truly disturbing. You can see the large amount of research the author has put into this novel (but not to such an extent that the action drags or characters come off as flat or anything).

I finished Maelstrom over the weekend. In case you didnt' know, its the sequel to Starfish and number 2 of 4 in the Rifters series. The third and fourth parts are two halves of one book that have been published separately because together it was more than 110,000 words, an obscure number in publishing that means the book can't make enough to be worth publishing alone.

Starfish was one of the more imaginative sciece fiction novels that I've ever read. If you remember the hype that surrounded William Gibson when he wrote Mona Lisa Overdrive, you might also remember how disappointing those books were. More about style than substance. Peter Watts delivers both style and substance in an elegant and beautiful writing style. His books are HARD sci fi. You'll have to pay attention but its very much worth the trip. Watts delivers what Gibson was supposed to...in spades.

Starfish was about adapted humans living in the deep sea vents, mining geologic heat to convert into energy for the world above the waters. They have been modified to be able to live underwater (I want to be one!) and they're psychotic.

Maelstrom picks right up where Starfish ended and turned up the dial about a thousand percent. Wow. What an amazing read!

If you like science fiction, you'll love these books. They are the gold nuggets that we will read a thousand books to try to find. Save yourself the nine hundred ninety nine books and go get this one.

Five stars, which I'm not sure I've ever given before.

I bought this sequel to Starfish, and to be frank, was disap-
pointed. Narration seemed disjointed, couldn't follow it very
well-may have been too cyber-punk for my tastes. I ended up skipping to the very end to read the conclusion, and it still
disappointed me. I don't think I'll keep it, either, that's how
disappointing it was to me. Too many disaparate strings of the
story just did not seem to be resolved in a satisfying way. Too
cool and too hip a story for me. Needed better editing, perhaps
not enough resolution to keep me interested very much.

I inadvertently picked up "Maelstrom" at a local library recently and found it hard to put down. Peter Watts is a splendid, hard science fiction writer whose technological descriptions rival many I've seen from the likes of Gregory Benford and Greg Bear, among others. Unfortunately, his characters are not nearly as well fleshed out as theirs, often resembling one dimensional figures whose existence merely serves to advance the plot. Nor is his writing as lyrical as theirs, which I found rather surprising since one of his acquaintances is Canada's best young writer of science fiction, Nalo Hopkinson. Yet fans of technological science fiction will undoubtedly find "Maelstrom" quite intriguing, even if it only resembles in tone and substance, genuine cyberpunk fiction.

First off, if you haven't read Peter Watts' first novel, "Starfish", don't start with "Maelstrom". While this is theoretically a stand-alone novel, the reader unfamiliar with "Starfish" will miss out on a tremendous amount of back-story and character development. ...

As for "Maelstrom" itself, Watts has easily cleared the high bar he set with his first novel. All too often, sequels are rehashes of old conflict, but that is not the case here at all. Watts takes his already complex characters from the first novel and adds several more layers of texture; at the same time he adds just enough new characters to keep things interesting. These characters are equally well developed, and overall, Watts' writing is even sharper than in the first book.

The writing has to be sharper, because this is a much more complicated novel than the first. While "Starfish" took place in the relatively limited space of a deep ocean outpost, and dealt primarily with human interactions, "Maelstrom" sprawls across the Pacific and North America and a significant portion of the action takes place in cyberspace. Moreover, the plot is significantly more complicated. I don't want to get into it in too much detail, as doing so would ruin much of "Starfish" for those who haven't read it. But the general theme of this novel, like its predecessor, is the impact that the unforeseen consequences of exponentially growing technology can have on humans as a species and on the planet as a whole. In a dystopian setting of environmental havoc and human violence, two new scourges have emerged. One is spawned by nature, the other, inadvertently, by man. The result is a bizarre, but believable synergy that threatens the entire biosphere. It was particularly interesting how Watts explored the nature of consciousness by subtly comparing the burgeoning life of a piece of code with the flawed memories of the main character.

By now you may have guessed that there is a lot of science in this novel, and you'd be right. There is a great deal that is cutting edge, and even more that is purely speculative. Watts makes use of some pretty heavy biology and AI science that may intimidate readers at first blush. It would be a mistake to avoid this novel for that reason because the science is just there to set the stage for the story. If you understand the detail of it, it definitely adds many intriguing twists; but if you only understand it at the surface level, you could still easily follow the story. That's the beauty of Watts as a writer: he's pigeon hold as hard-SF, but the SF is just a means to the end of writing incredibly complex, beautiful characters struggling with problems we can easily empathize with. Finally, Watts has included an appendix discussing the key science in some detail, and also provides a bibliography of sources he used.

"Maelstrom" is an outstanding novel set in a believable, terrifying future. It was undeniably entertaining and I tore through it at a breathless pace. It also left me thinking about technology and its impacts in some new ways. Watts is no technophobe, but he makes a strong point about the lack of responsibility in many arenas of scientific endeavor. "Maelstrom" is a must read for anyone who enjoys a great story, rich characters and a thoughtful message.

I gave this book to each of my children as they began life on their own. It is full of good, basic information about budgeting.

This book isn't expensive and it isn't without merit, but I recommend you look elsewhere. With all due respect to the authors, this book is rather gimmicky. The flow of the book is choppy and at several points the authors drop the ball by treating various subject with a degree of shallowness that is disappointing even for such a small pocket book. One example is the treatment of credit cards. They repeat the common mantras about credit cards, but the coverage of situations not to use credits cards is repetitive and there is no discussion whatsoever of point-systems that many credit cards offer--an amazing way for a person on a budget to expand their purchasing power.

I close the cover of this book feeling that I've just hung up the phone with a chatty telemarketer, somewhat impressed with their jovial presentation but feeling hardly educated by the interchange.

This books sets out very simple ideas, strategies and help for any person interested in watching their money. It is a simple planning book for budgeting that any [body] could use. Humor and straight-forwardness are the backbone of the book's help in money problem areas. It is a MUST READ!

I have read several budgeting books, and have even taken a class at my bank about budgeting. All of them left me with the message "you want more money? save some!" without giving me real guidelines on how to do it. I had a financial epiphany when I read this book. I now have a savings account with automatic payroll deduction. This account is for emergencies, fun things like travel, and what I call "sporadic predictables" like car insurance and bills I pay every 10 weeks that often catch me off guard. Then the rest of the money from my paycheck is carefully but flexibly divided into obligations (like mortgage and student loans), controllable necessities (like the electric bill and phone bill), and then spendable money. The confidence I feel now after reading this book is well worth the affordable price. I highly recommend it.

I read this short book in just a couple hours and by the end I had a working budget that is doable for my family's lifestyle. I really like the idea of having separate monthly monetary limits on personal pocket money, family allowance and personal allowance. I definitely had the Starbucks syndrome, where I spend so much money on lunches, coffee and snacks that I was frittering away thousands a year. Having only a certain amount in cash each week in my pocket for all of these little expenses has been really helpful, and I don't have write down everytime I buy a coffee. I also really like the separate savings accounts - for the must fund, rainy day fund, want fund, and other contingencies like insurance and taxes. I just put a certain amount away in a separate account each month and then just pay it when some it comes due. Perfect if you just want a quick guide to making a helpful and uncomplicated budget.

I use Exam Crams as a final round up for my studies. They rarely fail and this one is no different!

the Exam Cram books are great. I like the fact that they are a quicker read and really get to the point. Pay attention to the alerts - they accurately reflect points that came up on the exam. This book combined with testking's online practice exam (...) and I passed the test easily. Well, I studied my (...) off, but using these two resources I was well prepared.

I have studied for six Microsoft tests, reading between two and five books for each. Of all those books, this one was one of the most outstanding. This book made the difference for me in feeling unprepared for the test before I read it to scoring 800 two days after I finished it. Excellent, organized, detailed coverage. If you have a lot of hands on experience, this book is probably all you'll need. If, like me, you need additional study due to lack of experience, I'd recommend including some extra focus on DNS.