Peter Watts'
Maelstrom is the sequel to
Starfish and the second book of the Rifters Trilogy. Because it's released under a Creative Commons license (Peter follows Cory's steps, and I like it!!), I converted and attached the e-book for you to this thread in
HTML, iSilo and Plucker formats. In an older
BoingBoing article I found a reference to a review by SciFi.com, saying about
Maelstrom:
Like the endlessly mutating and recombinant digital/wetware entities that live in Peter Watts' online Maelstrom, his fiction itself exhibits a wonderful Darwinian adaptability. Internalizing the lessons and modes taught by cyberpunk and fusing them with the Bear/Benford pedigree of hard SF, Watts has bred a robust, streamlined, snarling kind of science fiction which achieves both a sharp-edged verisimilitude and visionary exuberance.
[thanks for the e-mail, Peter!]