Starfish (Rifters Trilogy, 1)
Civilization rests on the backs of its outcasts.
So when civilization needs someone to run generating stations three kilometers below the surface of the Pacific, it seeks out a special sort of person for its Rifters program. It recruits those whose histories have preadapted them to dangerous environments, people so used to broken bodies and chronic stress that life on the edge of an undersea volcano would actually be a step up. Nobody worries too much about job satisfaction; if you haven't spent a lifetime learning the futility of fighting back, you wouldn't be a rifter in the first place. It's a small price to keep the lights going, back on shore.
But there are things among the cliffs and trenches of the Juan de Fuca Ridge that no one expected to find, and enough pressure can forge the most obedient career-victim into something made of iron. At first, not even the rifters know what they have in them—and by the time anyone else finds out, the outcast and the downtrodden have their hands on a kill switch for the whole damn planet...
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Community Reviews
"the night is my companion and solitude my guide, would i spend forever here and not be satisfied, and i would be the one to hold you down...
into this night i wander, it's morning that i dread, another day of knowing of the path i fear to tread, oh into the sea of waking dreams..."
~Sarah McLachlan Possession*
As you might imagine Starfish is peopled with some very interesting characters, some of them actually likable. It is hard sci-fi, and as such i struggled with some of the material (like things seemed to be left unsaid which i really wanted to be said~and i don't like to consider myself dumb, but sometimes i have to give into it :() Even though it goes to the root of why i used to not be a (HUGE) fan of sci-fi, i still found the book an enjoyable, thought-provoking (quite) read, and would very much recommend it. If you found that contradictory i guess you'll just have to live with it;).
*this is the song that Watts recommends as Starfish's theme song, and that you play it in a dark room fully cranked to prepare yourself for reading the book~perhaps that is what i was missing~that or sleeping for a bit at the bottom of the sea...(that actually does sound a bit soothing)
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