Summary of the Rifters Trilogy

Spoiler Alert - Do Not Read if you plan to finish the series

The Boswell Science Fiction Book Club read Starfish as the June 2015 book.  At the time it was chosen, most didn't realize that Starfish was the start of a trilogy. After reading Starfish, I was intrigued by Peter Watts exploration of a somewhat post-apocalyptic Earth reeling in the aftermath of global warming and struggling to survive the mass exodus of peoples from water-sogged areas to safer lands. The concepts of underwater power generation station, humans re-designed to live underwater for long periods of time, and post-traumatic memories guiding ethical decisions were all interesting; thus I thought I'd finish the trilogy. This brief report will bring you up to speed on the Rifter World if you are interested. However, I will reveal the major plot lines of both remaining books in the trilogy.

Location Summary

• Starfish: Set almost entirely underwater on the Juan de Fuca Ridge off Northwest North America.
• Maelstrom: Set almost entirely on dry ground. 
• Behemoth: Split 50-50 between underwater and dry ground - first half underwater, second half on dry ground. 

I thought the use of earth and water as plot device was extremely interesting. The fact that Peter Watts splits the story so perfectly among these earth elements made for a fun read. Underwater plots are dark and psychological. Dry ground plots are angry, aggressive, and violent. Underwater explores the psychology of deprivation. Dry ground explores the psychology of devastation. 

Character Summary

• Starfish: Most of the main characters in the trilogy are introduced in Starfish. We meet Lenie Clarke, Ken Lubin, Patricia Rowan, the various Rifters that weave in an out of Lenie's life, and the all-powerful Achilles Dejardins.
• Maelstrom: We are introduced to refugees that take a stand, botfly pilots that monitor the world from behind computer screens thousands of miles from the action, and co-conspirators of Achilles Desjardins. Most do not survive and instead succumb to either starvation, their own neuropathy, or Behemoth.  
• Behemoth: We are introduced to two major new characters in the third book in the trilogy. First, Alyx Rowan, Patricia Rowan's daughter -- growing up underwater on Atlantis. Second, Taka Ouellette - a survivor of a family wiped out by Behemoth with serious self-doubts and actively seeking redemption for his past sins. 

Plot Summary

• Starfish: Read by the club. Starfish details the somewhat post-apocolyptic world after global warming in the mid 21st century. Corporate entities control daily life in a definite have-have-not type of society. Energy demand and the decline of fossil fuel resources has forced off-shore wind farms and underwater geothermal power generation. The "corpses", as corporate entities are called, have formed a new breed of human -- Rifters -- that are engineered to survive the crushing depths of deep sea life and able to breath underwater through bio-electric powered gill-like implants. The story focuses on the psychology of deprivation experienced by a group of Rifters housed in Beebe Station on the Juan de Fuca Ridge. Interpersonal relationships, individual personalities, and the back story are all developed. The plot leads to the discovery of what appears to be an ancient biological life form -- similar to viruses or bacteria as described -- that thrives in the heat of the deep water vents. This life form is dubbed Behemoth. Behemoth eats biological organisms from the inside out and threatens to overtake and destroy the eco-systems of earth. The corpses, in an effort to prevent Behemoth from spreading, plant a nuclear warhead on the Juan de Fuca ridge in order to annihilate Behemoth. Of course, the collateral damage of the resulting earthquake on the Pacific Northwest cities and refugees huddled along the coast is considered "acceptable" in the eyes of the corpses. After all, as we all know from Star Trek - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one; here the few are the millions that will be killed in order to save billions. This "acceptable loss" premise threads throughout all three books. Starfish ends as the bomb explodes, the earthquake is triggered, and Lenie Clarke is falling from a lifter into the ocean. After establishing her wits, she swims off toward her destiny -- and boy is she angry. 
• Maelstrom: Maelstrom tells the story of Lenie Clarke's rampage across North America. Although Lenie knows she is infected with Behemoth, her anger at the corpses for killing her friends on Beebe Station -- as well as killing millions of refugees and citizens in the post-nuclear earthquakes and tidal waves -- leads her on a cross-continent personal vendetta of revenge. At the start, Lenie spends time on the Strip - the stretch of land immediately adjacent to the Pacific hemmed in by the Olympic Mountains of Washington and the coastal mountains of Oregon. There she meets Amitav - a refuge staging a hunger strike to protest the imprisonment of the refugees on the coastal plain. Amitav becomes her first annoyance as his cult-like status among the refugees makes him authoritarian in his own way. She also encounters the bot-fly piloted by Sou-Hon Perrault. Both characters become Lenie's thought companions in the book -- Amitav because of what Lenie thinks he stands for, and Sou-Hon because she tracks Lenie across the country. We're also introduced more fully to the ways of CSIRA - the umbrella group that controls the "sterilization" activities for the corpses. CSIRA is responsible for monitoring all crises occurring around the world and ordering appropriate technological strikes to calm any biological agent situation before it gets out of control. Achilles Dejardins acts as the master "lawbreaker" for CSIRA. His skill set and pattern matching abilities has let him climb the ranks to be a senior lawbreaker. The story then progresses across the continent as Lenie evades Patricia Rowan and CSIRA time and again - helped by Sou-Hon Perrault and the genetic algorithm evolved "Lenies" that begin inhabiting the Maelstrom - the internet of the mid 21st century. These "Lenies" bring additional havoc to a virtual world that is already dysfunctional because of other evolved code segments that have rendered the internet mostly useless. During the cross-continent pursuit, we discover that Ken Lubin also survived the underwater nuclear explosion and is working for Patricia Rowan to track and capture Lenie before she infects the entire continent with Behemoth. Maelstrom comes to its climactic conclusion after Lenie and Ken reunite to work together to track down Achilles Desjardins and attempt to understand the Lenie's phenomena and the impact on the Maelstrom, the CSIRA resources, and the world. The book ends with the realization that the corpses have all escaped to an underwater city named Atlantis located this time in the mid-Atlantic trench. All in all, Maelstrom spends its pages character developing and world destroying. An already bleak view of the future deepens further into despair. But, I found the character development interesting: Achilles is a sadist that uses virtual reality to prevent himself from actually hurting anyone, a psychologically tormented Lenie tormented by what is revealed to be fake false memories inserted by the corpses during Lenie's bioengineering, and a macho Ken Lubin that gets his kicks off murdering and injuring people for reasons to be revealed gradually in the next book! 
• Behemoth Part 1: Published in two parts, Behemoth picks up the story of Lenie Clarke, Ken Lubin, Patricia Rowan, and Achilles Dejardins five years into the future. The first part takes place underwater at and around Atlantis. We learn that with Achilles Desjardins help, Lenie and Ken located the corpses underwater city and joined forces with other surviving Rifters to wage a war against the corpses for control of the city. The Rifters won the war and effectively keep the corpses captive in Atlantis, although one could argue that being thousands of feet underwater already makes the corpses captive. A semi-truce has been established with the Rifters completing outside tasks for the whole community while living in their own modified / stolen / handed over parts of Atlantis. Reasons for the war are slowly explained and we learn that Lenie Clarke has been forging a reparative relationship with Patricia Rowan, her daughter Alyx, and others inside Atlantis. A fresh-water lake has been discovered on the bottom of the ocean about 20 km away from Atlantis. During a visit to this lake, large monster-like fish are discovered - similar to the fish seen in Starfish on the Juan de Fuca ridge. This hints that Behemoth has somehow transferred from the continent into the ocean. One Rifter is attacked by the fish and is severely injured. While still alive, he is transferred to the medical bay of Atlantis where the despised surgeon begins working with AI assisted medical robots to save him. During the medical analysis, it is discovered that the Rifter is now infected with a new variant of Behemoth that their previous biological tweaks cannot defend against. When the Rifters are told, their distrust of the corpses leads a cadre of them to believe that the corpses have designed the variant and have deliberately infected them. Lenie shows all the Rifters how to tweak their neurotransmitters so that they can read the emotions of the corpses. Over time, the distrust, as well as the fact that it appears someone or some group has discovered Atlantis,  leads to a second war, vigorously opposed by Lenie, and seemingly controlled by Ken Lubin. The first part rises to its climax as Patricia Rowan drowns -- killed by the angry, distrusting Rifters -- while Lenie Clarke struggles to save Patricia before eventually saving herself. It is revealed that the corpses have not necessarily designed the new variant, and Lenie and Ken decide that the only way to understand the new variant and save Atlantis from the intruders is to return to shore and try to make sense of the world they left five years previously. 
• Behemoth Part II: Again, Peter Watts takes us out of the dark psychology of sensory deprived underwater life and returns two Rifters to the surface and all of its devastation and violence. Lenie and Ken take the Atlantis submarine to Halifax, and eventually down the coast into Maine. Ken is not happy that Lenie has joined him on the trip - it is a reluctant pairing as Ken believes she will hold him back, does not trust her to perform under pressure, and believes her psychological damage is too severe to let her operate in high-stress situations. Their first order of business is trying to determine why their communications networks to Atlantis all went off-line. They discover that most communication above water is also gone. The Maelstrom has gone quiet. We are introduced to Taka Oulette -- a mobile "physician" diagnosing illnesses plaguing the Behemoth infected citizens that are still alive. We learn that Taka's whole family is dead - that she is widowed due to Behemoth but has somehow survived herself. Taka now works for CSIRA driving a highly automated, AI-based Mobile Infirmary - an RV style hospital on wheels. Ken leaves Lenie with Taka and takes the submarine down the coast to see if he can break into the security barriers of Portland Maine. During his absence, Taka teaches Lenie about the past five years, the state of the world, the wars that have occurred, her past, and how humanity has struggled to survive - yet does indeed still survive in small pockets. Behemoth has destroyed most of the North American continent by infecting humans, outcompeting photosynthetic plants and other microbial life. Ken Lubin returns and reports that getting into the city seems like an impossible task so they will instead rely on Taka to get them into Boston.  The book takes an unexpected turn then - missiles are being shot into North America by Africa, and Achilles Desjardins brings all his Star Wars like satellite defense systems to bear on the missiles to prevent them from "infecting the continent with the new variant." A Lenie that has infected the Mobile Infirmary breaks free before Ken can stop it from uploading through the Mobile Infirmary's satellite dish. This clues Achilles Desjardins into the fact that Lenie and Ken are back on land. Take, Lenie, and Ken investigate a downed missile and discover Seppeku - the variant of Behemoth first discovered in the underwater lake. They run tests on Seppeku and determine that it is a cure for Behemoth. They use the Mobile Infirmary to synthesize more of the Seppeku and begin dispersing it throughout the area using agents they recruit from the public. Knowing that CSIRA will respond, they split up in an attempt to outlive the firestorm that CSIRA will unleash on Freeport. Fast forward a bit and we end up with the team reuniting at the Mobile Infirmary where they find Taka talking to a botfly. Of course, it's our CSIRA lawbreaker Achilles Desjardins. Achilles tells them that Seppuku is not a cure and that closer inspection will reveal it is actually more virulent. Taka confirms. The race is on to catch the agents out their dispersing Seppuku into the environment. Everybody splits up: Ken heads out on his own, Taka goes with Achilles to CSIRA, and Lenie stays with the Mobile Infirmary to try to find and treat the infected. During her time manning the infirmary, one of the agents returns very sick and Lenie places him in an isolation chamber of the submarine medical bay. The medical equipment cannot treat Seppuku so she prepares to watch him die. But, he doesn't die -- instead, he recovers fully! This shows that Seppuku is indeed a cure created by the other continents and launched into North America. It becomes clear to Ken and Lenie that Achilles knows this and he is preventing its introduction into the wild in order to keep his total control of the North American continent as the supreme lawbreaker. He has to maintain "face" in the lawbreaking CSIRA community. While Ken and Lenie brave it out in the world, Taka enters a new version of hell - the sadist in Achilles surfaces and he tortures, rapes, and kills Taka over a couple of chapters. This violent switch in personality foreshadows the end of the book. That ending is a face-to-face confrontation between Ken, Lenie, and Achilles where Achilles first attempts to kill them and then attempts to control them with threats of destroying Atlantis. Lenie lunges at Achilles and Achilles makes good on his threat to destroy Atlantis before Ken kills him. The book ends rather in a rather unsatisfying way -- Ken and Lenie sitting on the floor next to the discarded Achilles, lamenting the loss of their friends and enemies at Atlantis and waxing poetic about how now Seppuku can be launched safety into North America giving this part of the world new hope. I found the ending lacking in many ways. It simply felt barren. I wanted more. I wanted to know if Seppuku does indeed cure the continent. I wanted to know if any Rifters survive the attack on Atlantis. I want to know if Ken Lubin ever regains his sight after his severe injuries. I want to know if Lenie ever overcomes her psychosis. I was not happy with the ending, but that is what makes fiction so interesting -- it causes us to think about the characters and how their stories end even when the author doesn't provide a full closure. 

Overall, I enjoyed reading the entire trilogy. I must admit that I began losing interest about 80% into the third book. I felt the story seeming to unravel as the author stretched to complete his vision. Yet, I couldn't put the books down. I feel the author writes very well, his science is interesting and there were many themes in this trilogy that were different from many of the more commonly explored themes in the Sci-Fi I read.