Ventus is a novel of information apocalypse set in the far future. For a thousand years the sovereign Winds have maintained the delicate ecological balance of the terraformed planet Ventus. Now an alien force threatens to wrest control of the terraforming system away from the Winds...

Jordan Mason, a young tradesman, is thrust into the midst of an ancient galactic conflict when he becomes the only human on Ventus who can locate the source of the alien threat. But will he side with the Winds, who have brutally suppressed technological development among the human colonists of Ventus? Or will he throw in his lot with an entity that may be planning to remake Ventus in its own, deathly image? Ventus incorporates ideas about nanotechnology, terraforming, and information theory in an epic tale of war, tragic love, betrayal and transcendence.

"Deeply Satisfying"

--New York Times Book Review

"The finest science fiction novel of the year 2000."

--Barnes&Noble.com editorial review

"Delightful and engaging, both intellectually and viscerally: a superb achievement."

--Kirkus

"No one has taken this premise to such pitiless lengths - and depths - as Watts ... In a claustrophobic setting enlivened by periodic flashes of beauty and terror, the crew of Beebe Station come across as not only believable but likeable as they fight for equilibrium against their own demons, one another, their superiors and their remorselessly hostile surroundings."

- The New York Times (Notable Book of the Year)

"The story drives like a futuristic locomotive. It's a hypnotic read, somber and compelling. Best thing I've read in a long time. Peter Watts is an author to watch for."

- Robert Sheckley

"Watts has expanded his focus without diminishing the obsessive drive of his plotting or his prose. [His] vision of the near future offers scant reason for hope. What makes his novel exhilarating instead of depressing is the conviction and control he brings to his material -- I have no hesitation in recommending both books to readers interested in up-to-date science fiction with a seriously paranoid edge.

- The New York Times

"A sequel of considerable merit. [Maelstrom] becomes something quite different from Starfish, and quite fascinating as well... A unique version of cyberspace rendered beautifully with literary skill and a technological sophistication admirably verging on mystical speculation... an excellent and, on balance, quite literarily-successful science fiction novel."

- Norman Spinrad, Asimov's

ßehemoth ... is the most gripping and the most thought-out [book that Watts has yet written] ... Like Greg Egan's "Reasons to be Cheerful", Watts is arguing for an entirely different way of understanding and presenting character, one that reconfigures both how personality is constructed and how actions are to be understood. This seems to me a unique and particularly science-fictional contribution ... For all Watts's dark humor, and for all the incidental thrills of his future, ßehemoth caps a series which is one of the two or three most challenging works I've read in the last decade.

- Graham Sleight, The NY Review of Science Fiction

Written in 1792 it is one of the earliest works on "the woman question". The controversial life of its author caused the earliest feminists to distance themselves from the work. Some major themes include education for girls, the debased position of women in society, the necessary equality of men and women, and the right of women to work.