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| | The SF Site Featured Review: Maelstrom |
 | | Maelstrom is a followup to Peter Watts' debut novel, Starfish, in which a deadly microbe from Earth's prehistoric past is discovered at the site of a deep-sea power generating station. |
 | | To contain the danger, the power authority authorizes a secret nuclear strike, which destroys the station but sends earthquakes and tidal waves to savage the coastline of a North America already staggering under a burden of out-of-control disease, teeming hordes of refugees, and environmental collapse. |
 | | Bleak as this vision is, it's balanced by the spare vividness of Watts' prose, the fascination of his speculations (particularly the parallels he draws, in his portrayal of Maelstrom's wild evolutionary development, between biosphere and electrosphere), and the subtlety of his characters, who despite their various dysfunctions and ignoble agendas remain sympathetic. |
| www.sfsite.com /04a/ma125.htm (746 words) |
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