{"id":11494,"date":"2025-04-09T09:04:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T17:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=11494"},"modified":"2025-04-09T10:43:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T18:43:26","slug":"a-synopsis-of-squid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=11494","title":{"rendered":"A Synopsis of Squid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>   &#8230;Being an interview by Ollie Barder that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/olliebarder\/2025\/04\/09\/peter-watts-on-blindsight-armored-core-and-working-with-neill-blomkamp\/\">just went live<\/a> over at Forbes (or <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/sxDhF\">slightly less live<\/a> over at Archive, if you\u2019ve used up your monthly allocation of free articles). Ollie was originally drawn in because he\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/olliebarder\/\">Mr. Mecha<\/a> and was intrigued by Secret Level\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=11319\">Armored Core<\/a>\u201d short\u2015a big chunk of the piece goes behind the scenes of that particular project\u2015but the remainder delves deep into my past, and shallowly into my future.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>   True fans will find much here they\u2019ve read before: my favourite authors, my past travails as a marine biologist. I swear I\u2019ve told that old Jules Verne plagiarism anecdote more times than I have fingers and toes. On the other hand, I&#8217;ll bet none of you have encountered the Canvas Submarine and Underground Hideout stories before (even the BUG didn\u2019t know about that last one). And while you may have heard the occasional rumour, the ball gag has finally come off so I can officially talk (a little, at least) about the <em>Blindsight<\/em> series treatment I\u2019m working on with Neil Blomkamp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery alignright columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><ul class=\"blocks-gallery-grid\"><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/AwesomeAuthorPhoto-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"11495\" class=\"wp-image-11495\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/AwesomeAuthorPhoto-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/AwesomeAuthorPhoto-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/AwesomeAuthorPhoto-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/AwesomeAuthorPhoto.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\" \/><figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-item__caption\">Photo credit: Do-Ming Lum\/Tiger Mountain Creative Services<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>   A mix of the novel and the familiar, then, in a publication that doesn\u2019t generally do people like me. But if I\u2019m honest, the highlight of the piece just might be the author photo by Do-Ming Lum: a contemporary picture that doesn\u2019t hide my age, but also doesn\u2019t make me look like a decrepit goof. A picture in which I managed, just once, to not roll my eyes or mug awkwardly. A picture containing an Easter Egg that references the subject of my previous blog post. A picture which, if I\u2019m being honest, actually makes me look <em>good<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\n  I figure it\u2019s because my face is in shadow.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;Being an interview by Ollie Barder that just went live over at Forbes (or slightly less live over at Archive, if you\u2019ve used up your monthly allocation of free articles). Ollie was originally drawn in because he\u2019s Mr. Mecha and was intrigued by Secret Level\u2019s \u201cArmored Core\u201d short\u2015a big chunk of the piece goes behind [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11494"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11504,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11494\/revisions\/11504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}