His first novel
Starfish (1999) reintroduced Lenie Clarke from his short story "A Niche" (1990); Clarke is a deep-ocean
power station worker physically altered for underwater living and the main character in the sequels:
Maelstrom (2001),
βehemoth: β-Max (2004) and
βehemoth: Seppuku (2005). The last two volumes constitute one novel, but were published separately for commercial reasons.
Starfish,
Maelstrom, and
βehemoth make up a trilogy usually referred to as "Rifters" after the modified humans designed to work in deep-ocean environments. His novel
Blindsight, released in October 2006, was nominated for a
Hugo Award. The novel was described by
Charles Stross: "Imagine a neurobiology-obsessed version of
Greg Egan writing a first contact with aliens story from the point of view of a zombie posthuman crewman aboard a starship captained by a vampire, with not dying as the booby prize."
Echopraxia (2014) is a "sidequel" about events happening on Earth and elsewhere concurrent with the events in
Blindsight. Watts has made some of his novels and short fiction available on his website under a
Creative Commons license. He believes that doing so has "actually
saved [his] career outright, by rescuing
Blindsight from the oblivion to which it would have otherwise been doomed. The week after [he] started giving
Blindsight away, sales tripled." In addition to writing novels and short stories, Watts has also worked in other media. He was peripherally involved in the early stages of the animated science fiction film and television project
Strange Frame. He also worked briefly with
Relic Entertainment on one of the early drafts of the story that would eventually, years later, become
Homeworld 2. However, the draft Watts worked on bears no resemblance to the one used for the released game. More recently, he has been recruited by
Crytek as a writer and art consultant on
Crysis 2. Technological elements from
Blindsight have been referenced in the fictional
Crysis 2 "Nanosuit Brochure"; the creative director of
BioShock 2 has cited Watts's work as an influence on that game. , Finland ==Personal life==