"Rifters" series also has some of the most grimdark-fun & chaotic versions of the "net" that I've ever read.
I had an absolute blast with so far the first two books. Watts' mastery of psychology & neurosis & suspense is captured in an incredibly tightly confined dark scary isolated space at the bottom of the ocean. The setting here is just so exceeding. What a series (so far).
And where the AI's fail to fill the subway station with air because someone smashed the clock on the wall visible on the security cameras and no onw realized that that was what was triggering the AI to fill the room with air before the train doors opened...
Well this makes me think of personal assistants. Lots of people have their assistant email someone else's assistant to set up a meeting. If these AIs actually work properly, the scenario may not end up being terribly concerning.
Oh, sure, Watts has those, too. The problem is that in that world, the public Internet consists entirely of bots screaming at each other, and is basically unusable for anything else. Now listen to the fears about GPT spam finally rendering Google utterly useless, and tell me you don't feel the foreshocks of that future.
I do think it a little over reduces the imagery/situation, a bit. Watts' late internet has so many factors of just wrecked savage badlands, being endlessly blasted with savage e-storms. Endless bots screaming, oh yes oh yes, but also just everything under active caustic assault, all pieces of information actively being degraded, constant brownout/black outs, storms & turbulence aplenty. It's wild imagery for a hellacious information space.
Packets are like little programs sent out into the din, trying to make it through the chaos, but being injured mangled warped & hobbled at every step. Picking up all kinds of riders & viruses or just being assaulted & damaged. It's wonderfully terrible imagery.
The second book is Maelstrom, named for this howling shrieking post-internet storm. Book 2, like book 1, has, best I can tell, nothing at all like it in all existence. Amazing grimdark shit.
I... would not describe that trilogy as a fun read, though I think you were being sardonic in as much as the premises throughout are apocalyptic and nihilistic.
Whenever the CSD and the JdF fault are mentioned, I scan to see if this trilogy is mentioned, and if so, if a content warning is attached.
I have many ties thought, I would like to recommend this to people as disaster-porn,
but (not unlike Accelerando), I can't, generally,
because it is also unremittingly disturbing BDSM torture-porn.
I have wondered recently whether with the help of AI tools like Hyperwrite, one could excise that content and leave the other aspects coherent.
TLDLR if Watts isn't a hardcore devotee of BDSM, crossing over into fetishization of torture especially of women, you wouldn't know it from these novels.
A shame as the stuff about the rift itself is quite good.
I agree that the Achilles Desjardins torture porn was disturbing, but I've always interpreted it as an argument against Utilitarianism, and not BSDM porn per se. It's a more vividly disturbing version of The Ones That Walk Away From Omelas.
Watts sets up Desjardins as a Utilitarian demon, an evil that we tolerate because his specific evils are less than the overall good he provides the world.
In the end it turns out that the overall good he provided the world was a deception, and the man was revealed to have been pure villain for the entirety of books 3 and 4.
But yeah, I agree with you that I'd prefer to have not read those scenes. I'll still recommend Starfish, but not its sequels.
I am distinctly more skeptical, I find it implausible that these scenes would be given their centricity and word count and "rich detail" were they there merely a necessary evil to construct an argument or move the plot. There is no shortage of celebrated examples of literature treating the grotesque, violent, dehumanizing, painful, etc... without lingering on it. The abhorrent can be evoked without fetishization. :/
