Crysis
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Crysis: Legion | 2011 | Buy |
Firefall Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Blindsight | 2006 | Buy |
| Echopraxia | 2014 | Buy |
Rifters Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Starfish | 1999 | Buy |
| Maelstrom | 2001 | Buy |
| Behemoth: B-Max | 2004 | Buy |
| Behemoth: Seppuku | 2004 | Buy |
Peter Watts is a Canadian science fiction writer with a Ph.D. in marine biology. Before he started publishing novels, he studied marine mammals at the University of British Columbia. That background shows in everything he writes. His fiction is dense with real science — neuroscience, evolutionary biology, deep-ocean ecology — and he includes extensive reference lists at the end of his books citing the research behind the ideas.
His first novel, Starfish (1999), launched the Rifters trilogy. The books are set in a near-future where modified humans called rifters live and work at geothermal power stations on the ocean floor. The protagonist, Lenie Clarke, has been physically altered for deep-sea living. The trilogy grew darker and larger in scope with each installment, moving from Maelstrom (2001) to the two-volume Behemoth (2004), which was split into B-Max and Seppuku for publication.
Blindsight (2006) is Watts’s most widely read book. It follows a crew sent to investigate an alien signal at the edge of the solar system. The novel asks whether consciousness is necessary for intelligence — or whether it’s a dead end. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The companion novel, Echopraxia (2014), explores similar ideas from a different angle, following a baseline human caught up in a conflict between posthuman factions on Earth.
Watts also wrote Crysis: Legion (2011), a tie-in novel for the Crysis video game series. He won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2010 for his short story “The Island.” He makes his novels freely available on his website under a Creative Commons license, which he credits with boosting his print sales.