Peter Watts

Peter Watts during his speech at the Hugo Awards 2010

Peter Watts (* 1958 in Calgary ) is a Canadian science fiction - writer with a doctorate in marine biologist . He has published five novels so far, all of which he has placed under a free Creative Commons license .

Career

Watts studied marine biology at the University of Guelph , where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1980 and his master's degree in 1983 . In 1991 he received his PhD from the University of British Columbia .

In 1999 Watts published his first novel Abyss (original title: Starfish ), which he adapted from his own short story from 1990 . Watts let the protagonist of this novel, Lenie Clarke , appear again in the three following novels. The novels can be viewed as a trilogy and are often referred to as the Rifters Trilogy . While in the English original version the titles βehemoth: β-Max and βehemoth: Seppuku were published in two volumes, they were published by Heyne Verlag in the German version in one volume under the title Wellen .

In 2006, Watts' novel Blindflug (Original: Blindsight ) followed, which is not related to his previously published works. Blindflug was nominated for the Hugo Award . In 2010 Watts finally received the Hugo Award for his short story The Island . In 2014 the successor Echopraxia was published.

Watts' works are translated into German by Sara Riffel . In 2009 she received the Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis as best translator for the German version of Blindflug .

Works

Blindflug was the first novel to be published in German. The volumes of the previously published novels of the Rifters trilogy were subsequently published in Germany and have the inscription “The author of» Blindflug «” on the cover.

• Rifters trilogy
  • Abyss . Heyne Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-52446-0 . Original title: Starfish , 1999.
  • Maelstrom . Heyne Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-52508-5 . Original title: Maelstrom , 2001.
  • Waves . Heyne Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-52565-8 . Original title: βehemoth ( βehemoth: β-Max , July 2004; βehemoth: Seppuku , December 2004).
• Flight blind . Heyne Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-453-52364-7 . Original title: Blindsight , 2006.
• Echopraxia . Heyne Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-453-52807-9 . Original title: Echopraxia . Tor Books, 2014, ISBN 978-0-7653-2802-1 .

Awards and honors

• 2007: Nomination for the Hugo Award from Blindflug for Best Novel
• 2010: Hugo Award for The Island as best story
• 2011: Shirley Jackson Award for The Things
• 2014: Seiun Award for Blindsight

literature

• Jonathan McCalmont: About Peters Watts' novel "Blindflug" . In: Hannes Riffel, Jakob Schmidt (eds.): Pandora , 3, 2008, ISBN 978-3-926126-77-1 , pp. 218–222.
• Uwe Kramm: "If you want to sound out the limits of humanity, you have to push people to the extreme!" A conversation with Peter Watts. In: Sascha Mamczak , Sebastian Pirling, Wolfgang Jeschke (eds.): The Science Fiction Year 2011 . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2011, pp. 279–298.

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Watts in the catalog of the German National Library
• Peter Watts in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)
• Works by and about Peter Watts at Open Library
• Peter Watts in the Science Fiction Awards + Database (English)
• Author's website
• Hugo Awards 2007