because they are also unedited indulgences by the author in his own sadomasochistic fantasies of sexual violence (specifically, to women), and they are in effect sexual torture-porn.
Content warnings make sense, and I do know what portions you are talking about, but they really are a fairly small part of only one of the books (IIRC the third one?).
I wouldn't describe the entire series as torture-porn just for that, personally, though I would agree that the work would be better if they were removed or at least toned way down.
Have you read Behemoth? Recently? Blindsight is one of my favorite books of all time but Rifters is dark, even by whatever standards a reasonable person might consider "adult".
Desjardins' character isn't written for the reader to get off on. But I see exactly why a reader who didn't expect to do so would rather blame the author than recognize the mirror into which he's been surprised to find himself looking. The projection is trivially obvious and the lack of insight that allows it to be aired this way in public should be embarrassing.
I mean, I agree that it's probably not a projection of Watts' secret fantasies. But "un-recommendable" is still pretty close to true. I literally had this discussion about this series yesterday.
"I'm embarrassed about my taste in science fiction" isn't really something I know how to address.
I don't recommend the Rifters trilogy either - in this more or less emulating its own author, these days - nor have I bothered rereading it in by now well over a decade. It was interesting, I'm glad I read it, but what was there to be found I have long since taken away, and even when Watts comes up on the topic of his later work, his earlier doesn't really even occur to me. It's something I read most of 20 years ago that held my interest for a while with some of its ideas about artificial and archaic life and some of its character drama, but - no real critique, this, I read a lot of things - otherwise just didn't make all that much of an impression.
Typically the fashion in which that manifests is that I simply do not start any conversations on the topic, because it never occurs to me to do so. I'm not here to psychoanalyze the commenter who chose otherwise this evening. But if that were me, it would be interesting to me to reflect on why I had chosen to start the conversation I did, in a context where its subject was not at all relevant beyond a trivial coincidence of authorship.
You didn't start this conversation, nor so far as I can tell impute your own perspective on a work to its author. Indeed the second person appears at no time in the comment to which you here reply, or at any time when I was describing my perspective on a commenter who, were it not by now sufficiently explicit, is not you.
It does annoy me when the work is misunderstood in this way, because the technique in use is subtle. Watts doesn't show you what Desjardins does, so that a pervert would get off on it - indeed nearly none of the infamous torture scenes is actually very explicit at all, the gory details left mostly in implication, because Watts is interested not in what Desjardins does to his victims but why he does it. That's why he spends his time showing you how Desjardins thinks, instead. It would be interesting to me to talk about that, because I think it successfully depicts something essential about the nature of sadism, which is worth understanding if for no other reason than in self-defense.
Certainly it would offer more interest than evident in the matter of the discussion thus far. That people commonly mistake moralistic vacuity for substantive discussion I do recognize and acknowledge, but I believe I will never for the life of me grasp the appeal.
I stand by my description, my assertions about Watt's own personal investment, and more to the point, the appropriateness of a warning.
As in another example of otherwise memorable and contemporary scifi, _Accelerando_,
the BDSM slash sex & violence slash misogyny tropes are utterly unnecessary to the plot.
They're an indulgence, and they narrow the prospective audience to those unbothered by, or excited by, such things. Everyone else deserves fair warning.
Stand by what you like. Content advice would be reasonable if you had managed to leave it there, but your gratuitous and idiosyncratic airing of grievances interested me, especially when that required going so far out of the way as to start a conversation on the subject, only so that you could warn everyone of how much attention they mustn't pay to all those terrible...half dozen or so short scenes, in the span of three long novels. (And Stross too, now, comes in for similar ignominy. Do you keep a mental catalog of this stuff, or something?)
It's obvious you have a strong investment in blaming everyone else for your own unsettled and, plainly, deeply disquieted emotions on this topic. I wouldn't expect to see that change now and if I'd been inclined to take it personally, I would not have engaged in the first place. I hope you eventually figure out whatever it is that's troubling you so badly around this. In the meantime, kindly repay me the courtesy of engaging no further here.
Peter Watts' Rifters books (hence the domain),
are however full of memorable compelling ideas,
totally un-recommendable,
because they are also unedited indulgences by the author in his own sadomasochistic fantasies of sexual violence (specifically, to women), and they are in effect sexual torture-porn.