An odd release, this: a “blogoir” from highly regarded Canadian science fiction writer Peter Watts. Subtitled “Revenge Fantasies and Essays,” Peter Watts is an Angry Sentient Tumor (2019) assembles about fifty posts from Watts’ long-running blog, providing a thoroughly engaging cross-section of the author’s nonfiction voice, full of scathing, insightful opinions across varied topics.
With many well-regarded novels and stories to his credit, Watts is one of those writers who inexplicably escaped my notice over the years, only coming to my attention when I received his thought-provoking novella The Freeze-Frame Revolution from Tachyon Publications. Tachyon does beautiful books, and Peter Watts is an Angry Sentient Tumor — despite its cranky title — is yet another one, embellishing each essay with nicely stylized iconography and classy interior design.
Watts’ posts are bracing, acerbic, and insightful, tackling everything from politics to publishing, religion to writing, science to science fiction. Perhaps the most powerful entries, though, are the personal essays; his reflections on the lives of his treasured cats are especially good, and proof that Watts is my kind of misanthrope, describing his pets with a loving zeal every bit as strong as his derision for the stupidities of humanity. His film reviews — of Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and (most scathingly) Prometheus — are also a treat.
Needless to say, Peter Watts is an Angry Sentient Tumor was exactly the kind of print nonfiction I’ve been looking for in these recent months of trying to wean myself off from the more the toxic doomscroll of the internet — even as, ironically, I raced out to add his blog to my RSS feed.
