Peter Watts is a Canadian sci-fi author and biologist. In addition to several accolades for science fiction, he has won minor awards in fields as diverse as marine mammal research and video documentaries.
Watts’s work is available in 22 languages, has made it into 32 Best-of-Year volumes, and has been nominated for over sixty awards in a dozen jurisdictions. His (somewhat smaller) list of 23 actual wins includes the Hugo, the Jackson, and the Seiun.
Peter Watts holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science from the University of Guelph, Ontario. He also earned a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver from the Department of Zoology and Resource Ecology.
Watts went on to hold several academic research and teaching positions and worked as a marine mammal biologist. He began publishing fiction around the time he finished graduate school.
Peter Watts spent the first two decades of his adult life as a marine biologist. After fleeing academia for science fiction, he became known for appending technical bibliographies onto his novels; this confers a veneer of credibility.
His debut book, Starfish (1999), was a NY Times Notable Book, while his sixth, Blindsight (2006)—a philosophical rumination on the nature of consciousness with an unhealthy focus on space vampires—has become a core text in diverse undergraduate courses ranging from philosophy to neuro-psych. It also made the final ballot for a shitload of domestic genre awards, including the Hugo, winning exactly nothing.
Watts has made some of his novels and short fiction available on his website under a Creative Commons license.
Peter Watts married fellow Canadian author Caitlin Sweet. They live in Toronto, Canada.
Photo credit: rifters.com
