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Fold Catastrophes

by Peter Watts

Speculative systems under pressure

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Speculative systems under pressure

Peter Watts’s first short-story collection since 2013 ranges across speculative technologies and ecological crises. Its scenarios include brain-computer interfaces, engineered changes to human behavior, a fleeting hive mind, and the possibility of life within stars. One story places a jump-gate-building ship inside a red-giant sun, while another considers an effort to halt a colonization of that star. The collection also includes an unpublished work and an introduction by Richard K. Morgan. Across these varied premises, human intervention—whether technological, biological, or planetary—sits alongside questions of survival and what might follow humanity.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers of science-fiction short-story collections and speculative scenarios.
  • Readers interested in brain-computer interfaces, ecological collapse, and the possibility of life inside stars.
  • Readers seeking fiction that examines humanity’s survival and its consequences.

Themes

Science and technologyHuman behaviorEcological collapseSurvival beyond humanity

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Science fiction award-winner, flesh-eating-bacteria survivor, and somewhat questionably convicted felon Peter Watts returns with his first short story collection since 2013. Including an unpublished work, Watts posits unlimited brain-computer interfaces, the possibility of life existing inside stars, the hacking of human behavior, and ecological collapse. (Also, the healing power of revenge.)

"Peter Watts: Never cheerful. Always brilliant."
--John Scalzi, author of the Old Man's War series

What if a weaponized water supply reprograms pattern recognition in the brain, provoking violent rage at the sight of the Google logo. Or an accidental hive mind creates a global agenda to resurrect itself in the scant seconds between its emergence and dissolution? A steroidal jump gate-building ship attempts to survive passage through a red-giant sun by hiding inside an ice-giant planet. When something is trying to colonize the sun, humans try to stop it. (Spoiler alert: Nobody comes off very well.)

In his newest short fiction, alongside an introduction by Richard K. Morgan, Watts (The Freeze-Frame Revolution) reserves whatever hope he has for whatever comes after humans.
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