Once again it's time to trot out a variety of citations that will hopefully serve as a valuable educational resource, even though they're primarily intended to cover my ass against nitpickers.

If you have come late to this saga, you may not find the following references as complete as you'd like. Any real-world science elements introduced in Starfish and Maelstrom were cited at the end of those books; I don't repeat those citations here, even though many elements persist into ßehemoth. (I do, however, cite related research that has come out since Maelstrom was released, especially if it makes me look especially prescient in some way.) So if you're looking for my original sources on smart gels, "fine-tuning", or the Maelstrom Ecosystems, you'll have to go back and check the other books. You still may not find everything you're looking for, but you might at least make my Amazon numbers look a little less dismal.

Atlantis: There Goes the Neighborhood

There is a place in the middle of the North Atlantic where the currents stop dead, an eye in the middle of that great slow gyre revolving between Europe and North America1. It seemed like a reasonable spot to hide from lethal particles potentially borne on wind and water, so I put Atlantis there. The surrounding topography took some inspiration from a 2003 report on abyssal mineralogy2. Impossible Lake was inspired by the ultrasaline lens of heavy water described in the ground-breaking documentary series "Blue Planet"3. The failure of the Labrador Current and the Gulf Stream is increasingly likely in view of increased melt water discharge from the Arctic (e.g., 4,5). And I know they don't actually figure into the plot anywhere, but Lenie Clarke worries about them on her way to the surface in Chapter One so it's fair game: giant squids now outmass the whole human race, and they're getting even bigger6!

ßehemoth

We continue to discover life increasingly deep in the lithosphere. At last count, deep crustal rocks beneath the Juan de Fuca Ridge—yes, the very ridge from which ßehemoth escaped at the end of Starfish—have yielded evidence of heretofore unknown microbial lifeforms7. Water samples from boreholes 300 m below that seabed show depleted levels of sulphate: something down there is alive, unclassified, and consuming sulphur. There's no evidence that it would destroy the world if it ever reached the surface, but then again there's no evidence it wouldn't, either. I can always hope.

That hope is a faint one, though. Patricia Rowan was right to argue that ßehemoth, by virtue of its ancient origins, should be an obligate anaerobe8. To even make it out onto the seabed would require either a very convenient mutation, or a deliberate tweak. Damn lucky the plot called for one anyway.