Peter Watts about SOMA

[MeremSolomon]

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6953 - full review by Peter Watts (the athor of "Blindsight", "Echopraxia" and the "Rifters" cycle).

If you are looking for a review of the game, this one might be the one, made by a sci-fi author and a scientist:
"He spent ten years get­ting a bunch of de­grees in the eco­phys­i­ol­ogy of ma­rine mam­mals and an­other ten try­ing make a liv­ing on those qual­i­fi­ca­tions with­out be­com­ing a ♥♥♥♥♥ for spe­cial-in­ter­est groups."

The review is not exactly new, it was posted in October, but still might be interesting for some people.

[Master]

Thank you for sharing!

Ever since the turn of the century I’ve had a— well, not a love/hate relationship with video games so much as a love/indifference one.

[Repugnant Human]

That is more interesting than any review of professional critic.

[MeremSolomon]

For people who have no idea who Peter Watts is: https://twitter.com/frictionalgames/status/638302799596548097
"Greg Egan, Peter Watts, China Mieville and Philip K ♥♥♥♥ are four big influences."

The game certainly nods to Egan's "Diaspora" (post-humanism) and Watts' "Starfish" (visuals, location, mood) (Rifters cycle). K ♥♥♥♥ is quite obvious, not sure abotu Mieville though. He's a great modern author but I don't find his books similar to SOMA.

[Repugnant Human]

But plot of SOMA is about digital life/afterlife and being sentient machine, thus Maelstrom by Watts can also be related. I would agree with discrepancy, that it's more about digital evolution and date processing, but some impact is still felt.

[Mara Huldra]

Thanks for mentioning this. I really like Peter Watt's books, especially Blindsight, awesome to hear his work (among other things) inspired this game and he even did a review.

[76561198292631324]

I look at the title of the thread and think to myself: what, someone else interested in the philosophy of Alan Watts to the degree they found something particularly matching the themes of SOMA? But knowing any other author well, especially a writer, is admirable nonetheless.