Status
Available
Call number
Series
Publication
Tor (New York, 2006). 1st edition, 1st printing. 384 pages. $25.95.
Description
Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist�??an informational topologist with half his mind gone�??as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member MoonshineMax
A book of absolute brilliance. I read in one review that ‘if you like your Science Fiction sciency and your aliens alien then this is the book for you, and it is indeed. But yet its more than that. It is a philosophical journey into what consciousness is, a scientific journey into the potential
The sciency bit at the end is also worth a read in it’s entirety online, as it is really fascinating stuff.
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means of true space travel and a gripping book in its own right. I nearly marked it down for its tough as nails start, but once you get past the first 30 pages or so, you’ll find it hard to put down, and you’ll understand and love those 30 pages as well. Massively recommended to all and sundry for a truly un-anthropological first-contact story, and a truly believable world.The sciency bit at the end is also worth a read in it’s entirety online, as it is really fascinating stuff.
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LibraryThing member slybrarian
If you're looking for a cheerful book to read on a sunny afternoon, "Blindsight" is not for you. On the other hand, if you're in the mood for a mix of hard science fiction, horror, and existential crises, you may find that it's a real treat.
"Blindsight" is the story of the crew of Theseus, a
There's Amanda Bates, a soldier linked directly to her array of combat drones, and Isaac Szpindel, a biologist likewise so connected to his laboratory that it is an extension of his own body and senses. Susan James, the linguist, has deliberately-caused Multiple Personality Syndrome and is home to four distinct personalities. The final member of the crew is their commander, Jukka Sarasti, a genetically engineered member of a reborn species that went extinct when mankind invented right angles: a vampire. Even Siri himself is altered because of brain surgery to fix epilepsy, which left him a high-functioning autistic. He's there because the rest of the crew barely fits into the category of 'human' anymore, a necessity when the skills required to complete the mission are so specialized that only the post-human can have them. It's something that's echoed through society as industry becomes increasingly automated and the only jobs left are those that require augmented brains and bodies, one idea of many that Watts touches on.
The book is in many ways like a rollercoaster. The first half is mostly setup, as Watts constructs piece by piece the universe and the mystery of what waits for the crew, and is engaging despite the relative lack of action: like the characters themselves, readers are drawn in by the pieces of the puzzle and by curiosity about what will come next. Then everything starts slotting into place and the story expends all of the pent-up tension in a accelerating rush towards the final conclusion.
Along the way, the book discusses human nature and what it really means to be a person; the interaction and difference between intelligence and consciousness; and whether self-awareness is really worth it or an evolutionary dead end, or if free will even exists at all. Watts, a biologist by career, backs up his idea with several pages of footnotes drawn from the latest research. Even if you don't disagree with his conclusions - or perhaps the characters' conclusions, because despite his best effort Siri Keaton is no unbiased observer and interjects his own values - they're intellectually interesting. Sometimes parsing out the techno-jargon can be hard, but its worth it.
"Blindsight" is the story of the crew of Theseus, a
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spacecraft sent to make first contact with an alien intelligence approaching the solar system in 2087. It is narrated by Siri Keaton, a 'synthesist' who's job it is to observe the rest of the crew and report back to Earth what he sees. His sole purpose on the mission - or sole intended purpose, until the mission commander gets other ideas - is to translate what they find into terms the typical person can understand.There's Amanda Bates, a soldier linked directly to her array of combat drones, and Isaac Szpindel, a biologist likewise so connected to his laboratory that it is an extension of his own body and senses. Susan James, the linguist, has deliberately-caused Multiple Personality Syndrome and is home to four distinct personalities. The final member of the crew is their commander, Jukka Sarasti, a genetically engineered member of a reborn species that went extinct when mankind invented right angles: a vampire. Even Siri himself is altered because of brain surgery to fix epilepsy, which left him a high-functioning autistic. He's there because the rest of the crew barely fits into the category of 'human' anymore, a necessity when the skills required to complete the mission are so specialized that only the post-human can have them. It's something that's echoed through society as industry becomes increasingly automated and the only jobs left are those that require augmented brains and bodies, one idea of many that Watts touches on.
The book is in many ways like a rollercoaster. The first half is mostly setup, as Watts constructs piece by piece the universe and the mystery of what waits for the crew, and is engaging despite the relative lack of action: like the characters themselves, readers are drawn in by the pieces of the puzzle and by curiosity about what will come next. Then everything starts slotting into place and the story expends all of the pent-up tension in a accelerating rush towards the final conclusion.
Along the way, the book discusses human nature and what it really means to be a person; the interaction and difference between intelligence and consciousness; and whether self-awareness is really worth it or an evolutionary dead end, or if free will even exists at all. Watts, a biologist by career, backs up his idea with several pages of footnotes drawn from the latest research. Even if you don't disagree with his conclusions - or perhaps the characters' conclusions, because despite his best effort Siri Keaton is no unbiased observer and interjects his own values - they're intellectually interesting. Sometimes parsing out the techno-jargon can be hard, but its worth it.
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LibraryThing member clq
I picked Blindsight up thinking I'd be reading an immersive sci-fi story. At least I got the immersive part right. I guess it is, technically, also a sci-fi story in so much that the plot takes place in space, but labelling this book as sci-fi would be doing it a disservice.
This really is a heavy
So many things are explored in this book, and there are trains of thought that are ethically, emotionally and (for me at least) intellectually challenging. Several times I had to re-read segments, not because I had missed something, but because I just hadn't understood the point or the impact of what I just read. And when I did finally understand, that didn't always make me less confused or unsure of what was going on. This is a book that will keep you guessing and keep you thinking, not only about what is happening in the book, but also about things that go beyond the book itself.
In the end I have no idea whether I'd call Blindsight an inaccessible sci-fi story, or a somewhat accessible work of philosophy. I'm also not sure whether I liked it, or whether I loved it. The sci-fi in this book is solid, but is overshadowed by the great number of thought-inspiring avenues this book ventures into. I can't help but think I might have liked to go a bit further down some of these avenues, not to see them be resolved, but just to explore them a bit more. On the other hand, it's possible that the book very consciously stopped just short of where I would have liked it to go, and instead of "simply" being able to think about things, I also have to continue guessing as to what exactly the author wanted to make me think about.
It feels wrong to say that I enjoyed this book, but I'm very happy to have read it. The feeling Blindsight gave me is comparable to that of working on a very complex problem: solving it can be frustrating, but once it's solved I feel great. Having finished this book I feel like I've almost worked through most of the problem, but without the satisfaction of having resolved it.
Which, considering the book itself, seems about right.
This really is a heavy
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book, and keeping up with it is tough. Normally I put this down to lazy/pretentious writing and/or bad storytelling, but in this case it turns out to be more of a mutual agreement between the book and the reader. Yes, you have to struggle to get your head around it, but once your head is around it you realise that the struggle really was the only way to get where the book needed you to be. There is no black or white in this book, no simple characters, no easy answers. The characters are a collection of beings who are all very different, not only from each other, but also from what they once were, and what others may think they should be. The reader only ever sees these characters through the eyes of the narrator, Siri, who should in theory be the most reliable storyteller available. But is he?So many things are explored in this book, and there are trains of thought that are ethically, emotionally and (for me at least) intellectually challenging. Several times I had to re-read segments, not because I had missed something, but because I just hadn't understood the point or the impact of what I just read. And when I did finally understand, that didn't always make me less confused or unsure of what was going on. This is a book that will keep you guessing and keep you thinking, not only about what is happening in the book, but also about things that go beyond the book itself.
In the end I have no idea whether I'd call Blindsight an inaccessible sci-fi story, or a somewhat accessible work of philosophy. I'm also not sure whether I liked it, or whether I loved it. The sci-fi in this book is solid, but is overshadowed by the great number of thought-inspiring avenues this book ventures into. I can't help but think I might have liked to go a bit further down some of these avenues, not to see them be resolved, but just to explore them a bit more. On the other hand, it's possible that the book very consciously stopped just short of where I would have liked it to go, and instead of "simply" being able to think about things, I also have to continue guessing as to what exactly the author wanted to make me think about.
It feels wrong to say that I enjoyed this book, but I'm very happy to have read it. The feeling Blindsight gave me is comparable to that of working on a very complex problem: solving it can be frustrating, but once it's solved I feel great. Having finished this book I feel like I've almost worked through most of the problem, but without the satisfaction of having resolved it.
Which, considering the book itself, seems about right.
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
Each generation has to re-tackle the major themes of science fiction anew, because the human world that aliens contact is changing all the time. You have but to look at, say, David Brin's 'Forge of God' to see that it was a situation where aliens were contacting the Earth of the mid- to late 1980s.
But there is so much more to 'Blindsight' than just first contact with aliens. The world Peter Watts has built (his afterword to the novel seems to hint that there are some connections with the world of an earlier trilogy of his, 'Rifters') is way in advance of ours in terms of genetic manipulation, personality restructuring, space colonisation and virtual worlds. Oh, and Watts has found a use for matter transmission that is restricted to sending single sub-atomic particles from a to b.
Having said that, Watts' Earth is only really sketched through the eyes of his characters; and we see comparatively little of it, mainly in passing. That's not really the point. And the aliens remain a puzzle, right up to the end where their belligerence is laid bare for all to see. And that is how it should be. Alien life is going to turn out to be more unknowable than we can imagine; Peter Watts gives us some pointers towards that.
But 'Blindsight' isn't even really a novel about aliens. Rather, he takes a group of characters from our world on a journey to find aliens who were responsible for manifesting an encounter with the unknown on Earth, the sudden appearance of 62,000 alien probes that burn up in Earth's atmosphere and in that short time very possibly found out much more about us than we did about them. The crew that is sent to try to find the beings responsible for that act is comprised of a number of individuals, all of whom are in some way or another damaged; the bulk of the novel is taken up with exploring those personalities and finding (for the most part) the humanity limping along inside the, even though many readers might reject those personalities as barely human. There are a couple of exceptions - the extinct evolutionary line of human vampires, which disappeared way back in our prehistory, have been genetically re-engineered back for their predator's skills in organisation and strategy. 'Human' hardly describes them (most of the time).
In the end, this is hardly a novel of first contact; rather, it's about us, about humanity at its weakest, when we are so damaged as to hardly seem human for one reason or another; and how, despite that, we are still human despite everything. Along the way, we have to get to grips with some serious science (as someone once said of another novel from another hand, "this isn't just Hard Science Fiction, it's bl**dy DIFFICULT science fiction!"). And then, just when you've resigned yourself to a long critique of the human condition, the action roars back with a vengeance - I had to read the last fifty pages or so in a couple of fairly breathless sittings because the story pulled me along. And all the science stuff fell into place, because it is important.
Anyone who thinks science fiction is merely escapist adventure needs to read this book.
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Even when the first contact is set in the future, our view of that future hinges on how we view that future based on the concerns and emergent technologies of our own day. Arthur C. Clarke's '2001' was set in a very 1960s vision of a Big Science power block future. And the same applies to 'Blindsight'.But there is so much more to 'Blindsight' than just first contact with aliens. The world Peter Watts has built (his afterword to the novel seems to hint that there are some connections with the world of an earlier trilogy of his, 'Rifters') is way in advance of ours in terms of genetic manipulation, personality restructuring, space colonisation and virtual worlds. Oh, and Watts has found a use for matter transmission that is restricted to sending single sub-atomic particles from a to b.
Having said that, Watts' Earth is only really sketched through the eyes of his characters; and we see comparatively little of it, mainly in passing. That's not really the point. And the aliens remain a puzzle, right up to the end where their belligerence is laid bare for all to see. And that is how it should be. Alien life is going to turn out to be more unknowable than we can imagine; Peter Watts gives us some pointers towards that.
But 'Blindsight' isn't even really a novel about aliens. Rather, he takes a group of characters from our world on a journey to find aliens who were responsible for manifesting an encounter with the unknown on Earth, the sudden appearance of 62,000 alien probes that burn up in Earth's atmosphere and in that short time very possibly found out much more about us than we did about them. The crew that is sent to try to find the beings responsible for that act is comprised of a number of individuals, all of whom are in some way or another damaged; the bulk of the novel is taken up with exploring those personalities and finding (for the most part) the humanity limping along inside the, even though many readers might reject those personalities as barely human. There are a couple of exceptions - the extinct evolutionary line of human vampires, which disappeared way back in our prehistory, have been genetically re-engineered back for their predator's skills in organisation and strategy. 'Human' hardly describes them (most of the time).
In the end, this is hardly a novel of first contact; rather, it's about us, about humanity at its weakest, when we are so damaged as to hardly seem human for one reason or another; and how, despite that, we are still human despite everything. Along the way, we have to get to grips with some serious science (as someone once said of another novel from another hand, "this isn't just Hard Science Fiction, it's bl**dy DIFFICULT science fiction!"). And then, just when you've resigned yourself to a long critique of the human condition, the action roars back with a vengeance - I had to read the last fifty pages or so in a couple of fairly breathless sittings because the story pulled me along. And all the science stuff fell into place, because it is important.
Anyone who thinks science fiction is merely escapist adventure needs to read this book.
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LibraryThing member dukedom_enough
I just read [[Peter Watts]]' [Blindsight]. Or did I? It's one of those books whose ending recasts much of what went before, so I really should read it a second time.
For this review, one reading of this superb novel (currently up for the Hugo Award) will have to do.
In the late 21st century, alien
An excellent writer, Watts maintains the noir mood of the book throughout, with convincing characters living through impossible stress. He is terrific with descriptive one-liners that capture the immediate situation, and are often quite funny: a recovering, badly injured character must study situation updates because "death was no excuse for falling behind the curve."
One test of a hard SF story: is there a technical appendix expanding on its scientific speculations, and does it leave me wanting to read the references? Yes to the first, and yes to at least 1/3 of the 100+ references. You should also check out his web site on the book.
Peter Watts combines cutting-edge neuroscience with hard-SF speculation to produce a story about the relation between consciousness and life, and the possible characteristics of alien intelligence, wrapped up in a satisfyingly dark, haunted-house story which moves very quickly to an unhappy ending for pretty much everyone. If you like to read stories where things start out bad and then get worse, try [Blindsight].
For this review, one reading of this superb novel (currently up for the Hugo Award) will have to do.
In the late 21st century, alien
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probes visit Earth, leading to a rushed expedition beyond the boundaries of the solar system. The beings encountered by the crew of the Theseus are extremely alien - but also alien, to the reader, is the crew itself, who are modified beyond the "baseline" human norm by genetic engineering and implants. The meeting, in the darkness of interstellar space, cannot have a happy end. Meanwhile, human society on Earth has its own ominous shadows. The human norm itself has changed a lot since our day; virtual reality is accessed with such ease that being in the actual, physical presence of other humans is becoming rare - why bother? An excellent writer, Watts maintains the noir mood of the book throughout, with convincing characters living through impossible stress. He is terrific with descriptive one-liners that capture the immediate situation, and are often quite funny: a recovering, badly injured character must study situation updates because "death was no excuse for falling behind the curve."
One test of a hard SF story: is there a technical appendix expanding on its scientific speculations, and does it leave me wanting to read the references? Yes to the first, and yes to at least 1/3 of the 100+ references. You should also check out his web site on the book.
Peter Watts combines cutting-edge neuroscience with hard-SF speculation to produce a story about the relation between consciousness and life, and the possible characteristics of alien intelligence, wrapped up in a satisfyingly dark, haunted-house story which moves very quickly to an unhappy ending for pretty much everyone. If you like to read stories where things start out bad and then get worse, try [Blindsight].
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LibraryThing member HollyW
This book is nothing less than a tour de force. It's definitely a harder SciFi than I usually pick up, but I saw it on the recommended shelf at one of my favorite bookstores, Elliott Bay in Seattle,and it definitely caught my eye.
Six months or so later, and I picked it off of my bookshelf to read.
It's fascinating to me when things in my life overlap. I've been thinking a lot lately and readin online about the concept of awareness and consciousness, and Blindsight definitely hits that concept right on the head and drives it home for several hundred pages. It's not an optimistic book, but it will make you think, and then make you think about thinking, and I think that is always a good thing to be said, maybe the best thing, about any book.
3.5 of 5 stars. I liked it, but the technicality made it a bit too inaccessible to merit 4 stars. I don't give out many 5s.
Six months or so later, and I picked it off of my bookshelf to read.
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It's a fascinating mix of a book: very technical, to the point that I had to reread sections and frequently still felt like I only really understood 80% of what was said; not a page-turned in the sense of action or traditional suspense, but it definitely nags on your brain when you put it down and makes you want to know what happens next. It's SciFi - First Contact, aliens, futuristic society, etc.etc, but deep down it is so much more about philosophy, about what makes us human, about what this means, and ultimately whether it matters or is even a good thing.It's fascinating to me when things in my life overlap. I've been thinking a lot lately and readin online about the concept of awareness and consciousness, and Blindsight definitely hits that concept right on the head and drives it home for several hundred pages. It's not an optimistic book, but it will make you think, and then make you think about thinking, and I think that is always a good thing to be said, maybe the best thing, about any book.
3.5 of 5 stars. I liked it, but the technicality made it a bit too inaccessible to merit 4 stars. I don't give out many 5s.
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LibraryThing member paulusm
Found this to be a bit needlessly cryptic at the beginning (bit like William Gibson), but picked up the pace and some clarity as it went on. Some really interesting ideas about extended cognition and sentience / free will embedded in an action story with aliens and explosions.
LibraryThing member jobbi
It has the deep-space horror and disturbingly inhuman aliens of Alastair Reynolds combined with speculations on human consciousness worthy of Greg Egan, all the while moving along at breakneck speed. A superb book.
LibraryThing member MikeFarquhar
Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts, which is one of the nominees for this year's Hugo Award.
A hundred or so years down the line, humanity is transitioning into a post-human form, as the ideas of self and identity expand to encompass people melded to machinery, those who have transcended
Humanity then is somewhat jolted when suddenly the Earth is struck simultaneously by a huge number of artefacts that turn out to be alien probes, taking a snapshot of the planet. Further investigation traces their origin to a trans-Neptunian object in the Kupier Belt, and a ship is despatched to investigate, crewed by a motley group of specialists. En route though the object is destroyed, and the crew wake up far further than they were expecting to have traveled, where they encounter a huge, gothic, organic sprawl of a starship, which soon starts talking to them - after a fashion - and christens itself Rorschach. Hilarity ensues.
The novel's focal point character is Siri Keeton, a man who as a boy had such crippling epilepsy that he had a lobectomy. To replace the half of his brain that was removed he acquired machinery, circuitry hardwired into his brain, which allows him to analyse patterns in people's behaviour and draw inferences almost on a subconscious level; the price he pays though is an almost total lack of natural empathy. Keeton has been sent along as a nominally dispassionate and detached observer for what will be Man's First Contact with an alien intelligence. The remainder of the crew include a vampire in command - cold, clinical, he sees everyone as prey, and has to continually hold his instincts in check; a psychologist and linguist who carries four integrated personalities in her brain - the Gang of Four - capable of synesthestic and synergystic thought at rapid speeds; a biologist, and a soldier chosen for her ability to see unorthodox solutions and her extended bond with her grunts - mechanical killing machines.
The book splits naturally into two parts; the first part details the crew's approach to Rorschach, as we get to know them, and feel the tension growing as the scope of their mission falls into place in front of them. The second covers what happens once the crew start to interact meaningfully with Rorschach, as things fall apart. As the crew become more enmeshed with the alien intelligence, they come to question the very nature and evolutionary significance of intelligence in general, forced to conclude that their vaunted intellectual achievements may in fact count for nothing - and may in fact be a hindrance in the right - wrong - environment.
Watts' themes are weighty, and his characters are relentlessly assaulted, both physically and philosophically, by their encounter with the strange intelligence of Rorschach. He has some neat ideas - not least that Rorschach's drones think and react so fast that they can move in the gaps between the natural saccades of the human eye, effectively rendering them invisible to human sight - but much of his writing is sparse and technical. That is in part a function of the point of view character...a narrator who lacks empathy naturally does not provide much in the way of a human hook for the story. The contrast between the different levels of humanity is part of the point, and while it is well made, at times I felt it was almost too alienating. It's worth it in the end because Watts follow through on the strength of that idea to attempt to go to the heart of what human consciousness both is, and what it is for.
His conclusions are not uplifting, but they are powerful. Blindsight is a powerful hard SF novel of ideas that asks big questions, and uses the Rorschach concept to reflect back an idea of what it is to be human out of some genuinely alien aliens.
Not the easiest novel to read, but well worth persevering with.
A hundred or so years down the line, humanity is transitioning into a post-human form, as the ideas of self and identity expand to encompass people melded to machinery, those who have transcended
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physical forms to live as disembodied consciousnesses in huge AI mainframes, multiple personalities co-existing co-operatively in a single body, and even a revived form of an ancient offshoot of humanity - Homo sapiens vampiris. Following a brief expansion phase that saw Man spread to the Moon and Mars, human culture is turning inwards again, as people explore and play with the concepts of just what makes a human 'human'.Humanity then is somewhat jolted when suddenly the Earth is struck simultaneously by a huge number of artefacts that turn out to be alien probes, taking a snapshot of the planet. Further investigation traces their origin to a trans-Neptunian object in the Kupier Belt, and a ship is despatched to investigate, crewed by a motley group of specialists. En route though the object is destroyed, and the crew wake up far further than they were expecting to have traveled, where they encounter a huge, gothic, organic sprawl of a starship, which soon starts talking to them - after a fashion - and christens itself Rorschach. Hilarity ensues.
The novel's focal point character is Siri Keeton, a man who as a boy had such crippling epilepsy that he had a lobectomy. To replace the half of his brain that was removed he acquired machinery, circuitry hardwired into his brain, which allows him to analyse patterns in people's behaviour and draw inferences almost on a subconscious level; the price he pays though is an almost total lack of natural empathy. Keeton has been sent along as a nominally dispassionate and detached observer for what will be Man's First Contact with an alien intelligence. The remainder of the crew include a vampire in command - cold, clinical, he sees everyone as prey, and has to continually hold his instincts in check; a psychologist and linguist who carries four integrated personalities in her brain - the Gang of Four - capable of synesthestic and synergystic thought at rapid speeds; a biologist, and a soldier chosen for her ability to see unorthodox solutions and her extended bond with her grunts - mechanical killing machines.
The book splits naturally into two parts; the first part details the crew's approach to Rorschach, as we get to know them, and feel the tension growing as the scope of their mission falls into place in front of them. The second covers what happens once the crew start to interact meaningfully with Rorschach, as things fall apart. As the crew become more enmeshed with the alien intelligence, they come to question the very nature and evolutionary significance of intelligence in general, forced to conclude that their vaunted intellectual achievements may in fact count for nothing - and may in fact be a hindrance in the right - wrong - environment.
Watts' themes are weighty, and his characters are relentlessly assaulted, both physically and philosophically, by their encounter with the strange intelligence of Rorschach. He has some neat ideas - not least that Rorschach's drones think and react so fast that they can move in the gaps between the natural saccades of the human eye, effectively rendering them invisible to human sight - but much of his writing is sparse and technical. That is in part a function of the point of view character...a narrator who lacks empathy naturally does not provide much in the way of a human hook for the story. The contrast between the different levels of humanity is part of the point, and while it is well made, at times I felt it was almost too alienating. It's worth it in the end because Watts follow through on the strength of that idea to attempt to go to the heart of what human consciousness both is, and what it is for.
His conclusions are not uplifting, but they are powerful. Blindsight is a powerful hard SF novel of ideas that asks big questions, and uses the Rorschach concept to reflect back an idea of what it is to be human out of some genuinely alien aliens.
Not the easiest novel to read, but well worth persevering with.
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LibraryThing member KevlarRelic
This book blew my frickin' mind. This is the reason I love science fiction.
LibraryThing member ronploude
Despite its great reviews, I just couldn't get into this book. Maybe it's due to the time of day that I've been reading it, 10 to 12 midnight. At that time of the day, I'm not my sharpest so the far-out concepts in Peter Watts' book are hard to make sense of. Also, it's not that good a read that I
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want to steal time from my day to read. With many books in my collection needing to be read, I don't feel like pushing through with something that I'm not enjoying, so today I gave up. Show Less
LibraryThing member mossjon
I struggled through two hundred pages of this hard science fiction novel. I finally just gave up. I couldn't relate or connect to the main character. The supporting characters were also two dimensional. Some of the science was intriguing, but the prose struck me as scientific shorthand, forcing my
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mind to connect dots for jargon unfamiliar to it. The lone vampire character seemed like a completely random wild card element. Show Less
LibraryThing member JenneB
Okay, I gave this book TWO second chances because I had heard great things about it, but I eventually gave up.
It's certainly a gutsy choice to have a person with no empathy as your main character, but it's pretty hard to get readers to care about someone who has only a vaguely intellectual interest
So as a result, we know that one guy is a vampire, and another guy has some kind of prosthetic senses, and there's a military woman and another woman with a multiple personality. We don't really get to know much else about them, or at least not by page 183.
The other problem I had with this book was that it was hard to picture exactly where everyone was and what they were doing in whatever scene. Most of the action takes place in a spaceship, and you never get a clear idea of how it's set up, plus there are all these sort of virtual-reality things going on at the same time, and the vampire guy tends to hide out in his room and you don't really know where that is, and I think there are supposed to be some kind of tents that the people live in? On a spaceship? I don't know.
Anyway, it's not that a book has to be easy to read; I like books that are complicated, but I think it's the mark of a good writer that you shouldn't have to be wondering where the aft thruster maintenance room is instead of just being engrossed in the story.
It's certainly a gutsy choice to have a person with no empathy as your main character, but it's pretty hard to get readers to care about someone who has only a vaguely intellectual interest
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in other people. Especially if the story is told in the first person by this character. So as a result, we know that one guy is a vampire, and another guy has some kind of prosthetic senses, and there's a military woman and another woman with a multiple personality. We don't really get to know much else about them, or at least not by page 183.
The other problem I had with this book was that it was hard to picture exactly where everyone was and what they were doing in whatever scene. Most of the action takes place in a spaceship, and you never get a clear idea of how it's set up, plus there are all these sort of virtual-reality things going on at the same time, and the vampire guy tends to hide out in his room and you don't really know where that is, and I think there are supposed to be some kind of tents that the people live in? On a spaceship? I don't know.
Anyway, it's not that a book has to be easy to read; I like books that are complicated, but I think it's the mark of a good writer that you shouldn't have to be wondering where the aft thruster maintenance room is instead of just being engrossed in the story.
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LibraryThing member dulac3
Wow. This was a tough one. It was a very good hard sf book that I don't think I'll be coming back to anytime soon. As others have said: "abandon hope all ye who enter here." A well written, excruciating exploration of the human "problem" where it turns out that it really is a problem. How do you
Our primary filter for information is Siri Keeton, a man with literally only half a brain. Due to a childhood trauma he was essentially lobotomized and given computer processors to make up for what was removed. Siri obviously lost a lot during the process, but "gained" the ability to be the ultimate "Chinese Room" for humanity...for all that was worth. His whole life he has been trying to understand even 'baseline' humans and his facility with doing so, with looking at the human enigma on the surface and from the outside, and parsing it correctly has led him to become a professional conduit between these baseline humans and the posthuman entities they have created and made to work for them. He is a uniquely appropriate narrator for this tale as his very mode of existence showcases Watts' entire argument in microcosm; and interestingly his entire development as a character is the reverse of the development of the story and even of the universe itself. Siri's story starts and ends as a very lonely one, but for very different reasons.
Another fascinating element of the tale is the fairly unique use of vampires as an off-shoot sub-species of humanity originally destroyed due to humanity's self-awareness and then brought back by high science to be our servants. These are probably the most frightening vampires I've yet come across in fiction, not only because of the pseudo-scientific "plausibility", but primarily because of what we eventually discover about them in the story's conclusion.
I will say very little about "Rorschach", the alien entity with whom humanity attempts to communicate in this tale of first contact, except to say that the Lovecraftian enigma of its seeming indifference to human existence is truly chilling in its implications. Far more than any dreaming Cthulhu, Rorschach is an entity whose strangeness is truly to be feared.
All in all this was a rewarding, though deeply uncomfortable, read.
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take a book whose central premise seems to be that the development of self-awareness in human evolution was a wrong turn that wasn't meant to happen at all? That it was in fact contrary to the entire development of intelligence throughout the rest of the universe that only occurred due to a fluke in the evolution of a competing species? Talk about being alone in an uncaring reality. Watts manages to take Lovecraft's primary hobby horse and make it work in a way that is truly frightening in its utter nihilism. This isn't a scary universe because Watts tells us so (as it would have been had Lovecraft wrote the tale), it's scary because he shows us so. Our primary filter for information is Siri Keeton, a man with literally only half a brain. Due to a childhood trauma he was essentially lobotomized and given computer processors to make up for what was removed. Siri obviously lost a lot during the process, but "gained" the ability to be the ultimate "Chinese Room" for humanity...for all that was worth. His whole life he has been trying to understand even 'baseline' humans and his facility with doing so, with looking at the human enigma on the surface and from the outside, and parsing it correctly has led him to become a professional conduit between these baseline humans and the posthuman entities they have created and made to work for them. He is a uniquely appropriate narrator for this tale as his very mode of existence showcases Watts' entire argument in microcosm; and interestingly his entire development as a character is the reverse of the development of the story and even of the universe itself. Siri's story starts and ends as a very lonely one, but for very different reasons.
Another fascinating element of the tale is the fairly unique use of vampires as an off-shoot sub-species of humanity originally destroyed due to humanity's self-awareness and then brought back by high science to be our servants. These are probably the most frightening vampires I've yet come across in fiction, not only because of the pseudo-scientific "plausibility", but primarily because of what we eventually discover about them in the story's conclusion.
I will say very little about "Rorschach", the alien entity with whom humanity attempts to communicate in this tale of first contact, except to say that the Lovecraftian enigma of its seeming indifference to human existence is truly chilling in its implications. Far more than any dreaming Cthulhu, Rorschach is an entity whose strangeness is truly to be feared.
All in all this was a rewarding, though deeply uncomfortable, read.
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LibraryThing member AlanPoulter
Forget 2001 and its progeny, this is *the* novel about alien contact.
Both the aliens *and* the humans depicted in it seem both totally realistic but are 'alien' in different ways.
It is not an easy read, but it is a rewarding one...
Both the aliens *and* the humans depicted in it seem both totally realistic but are 'alien' in different ways.
It is not an easy read, but it is a rewarding one...
LibraryThing member Aerrin99
This book is odd and both interesting and difficult in turns. It was worth the read, but I wouldn't say I precisely /enjoyed/ the read.
Set in a future where humanity has resurrected vampires (which have specific genetic abilities and differences that set them clearly apart from humans) and can send
Watts does interesting things with the human brain and things that might be possible with technology. He's a biologist and it shows - in fact, there's a lovely essay at the end of the book detailing (with lots and lots of scientific citations!) what bits of his speculation are already becoming fact.
Here we have a linguist with several selves in one body who can process situations and languages with amazing speed. We have scientists with their consciousnesses grafted onto their tools and machines so that they can not only experience their work remotely, but via other senses, such as taste and smell. We have a synthesist - our protagonist, such as he is - who remains outside the action in order to properly communicate and interpret it for the folks back home. A man who remains so outside /everything/ that he seems almost a sociopath with emotions learned and grafted on.
We also have a vampire heading the mission, and no one quite knows what to make of him. The crew can never forget that they're his rightful prey, and they can never quite manage to trust him because his mind exists on entirely different levels - levels that process multiple realities at once. They think his judgment is probably good, he's probably right-- but what if he's not?
Because under his command they're interacting with a giant menacing spaceship which puts out radiation and causes hallucinations every time they go near. Reality is hard to parse. Intention is even harder to figure out.
Laid out like that, Blindsight sounds like a fantastic ride full of interesting ideas and truly alien aliens. And it is. The problem is that it's also trippily written. I spent a lot of time unsure what was happening, and while some of this is stylistic (see above re: hallucinations), some of it was just plain /frustrating/.
There are some interesting thoughts about the nature of humanity and emotions and technology, but I was bogged down by the amount of time I had to spend on details like 'what is actually occurring.' It wasn't helped by the fact that while I found all the characters interesting in theory, I was attached to none of them in practice.
Blindsight is probably a decent read if you're attached to hard sci fi or really want a dose of interesting eventually-possible-ideas from the biology field. Otherwise, I don't know that I found it worth the effort.
Set in a future where humanity has resurrected vampires (which have specific genetic abilities and differences that set them clearly apart from humans) and can send
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someone off to a virtual-reality 'Heaven' while storing their body in a giant warehouse, Blindsight follows the actions of the crew sent to make first contact with the unknown beings who dropped by for an electronic peek several years earlier.Watts does interesting things with the human brain and things that might be possible with technology. He's a biologist and it shows - in fact, there's a lovely essay at the end of the book detailing (with lots and lots of scientific citations!) what bits of his speculation are already becoming fact.
Here we have a linguist with several selves in one body who can process situations and languages with amazing speed. We have scientists with their consciousnesses grafted onto their tools and machines so that they can not only experience their work remotely, but via other senses, such as taste and smell. We have a synthesist - our protagonist, such as he is - who remains outside the action in order to properly communicate and interpret it for the folks back home. A man who remains so outside /everything/ that he seems almost a sociopath with emotions learned and grafted on.
We also have a vampire heading the mission, and no one quite knows what to make of him. The crew can never forget that they're his rightful prey, and they can never quite manage to trust him because his mind exists on entirely different levels - levels that process multiple realities at once. They think his judgment is probably good, he's probably right-- but what if he's not?
Because under his command they're interacting with a giant menacing spaceship which puts out radiation and causes hallucinations every time they go near. Reality is hard to parse. Intention is even harder to figure out.
Laid out like that, Blindsight sounds like a fantastic ride full of interesting ideas and truly alien aliens. And it is. The problem is that it's also trippily written. I spent a lot of time unsure what was happening, and while some of this is stylistic (see above re: hallucinations), some of it was just plain /frustrating/.
There are some interesting thoughts about the nature of humanity and emotions and technology, but I was bogged down by the amount of time I had to spend on details like 'what is actually occurring.' It wasn't helped by the fact that while I found all the characters interesting in theory, I was attached to none of them in practice.
Blindsight is probably a decent read if you're attached to hard sci fi or really want a dose of interesting eventually-possible-ideas from the biology field. Otherwise, I don't know that I found it worth the effort.
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LibraryThing member guy-montag
It's fiction with actual science, which is awesome. But it's like reading a bad dream - the opposite of enjoyable and leaves you feeling 'ugh'. It takes on the horror side of fiction, but fails to be cathartic or interesting in doing so.
It's pretty close to being edifying, and the science concepts
If you come across the book, just read the Notes and Reference section in the back of the book - you'll get all the interesting science parts without the dull and dreadful story.
It's pretty close to being edifying, and the science concepts
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touched upon within are great, but the story itself is lacking, and meandering to the point of confusion at times. At points, one questions the logic of why certain actions are taken, for instance, deciding to explore the surface of an artifact that is actively hostile - astronauts with a death wish? When smart people do dumb things, out of character, it kills the immersion. If you come across the book, just read the Notes and Reference section in the back of the book - you'll get all the interesting science parts without the dull and dreadful story.
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LibraryThing member CharityBradford
Wow! This is going to be a different kind of review for me. I can honestly say I'm not sure I understand what happened in this book, but I kept reading because I felt some underlying "thing" driving me to the end.
First, the problems:
I never felt grounded in Watts' world. Terms to describe the
I could never picture any of the characters. Not physically anyway.
The main character and narrator had half of his brain removed as a child and it happened to be the side that processed emotions. Thus I never connected emotionally with the MC. Or anyone else for that matter.
So why did I keep reading to the end?
The plot was compelling enough that I just had to know what the heck was going on and I hoped there would eventually be some kind of explanation I could understand. Here, let's try this.
What I think might have happened in the book (possible spoilers, but I'm not sure):
Siri (MC) had seizures as a child, so his parents had half of his brain cut out and replaced with inlays to fix it. Society (this is on earth) had developed to a point where most people were full of wiring and electrical gadgets built in that the was normal.
To be useful, you specialized in specific inlays or upgrades. If you didn't want to be useful you just plugged your brain into Heaven to create your own realities while your body rotted in a vault. (I wish more of THIS had been discussed.)
Anyway, Siri was the synthesizer--meaning he gathered info through observation of "topography" or body language, compiled it and sent it back to whoever hired him. He doesn't even have to speak the language of those involved he is so good at this.
So, there is a threat and he's sent out into space with a small crew to do something. None of them really know what. They wake up from cryosleep and spend most of the book observing this thing. The ongoing question boils down to sentience versus intelligence. What is the norm of the universe?
People and aliens die. The vampire broods, spazzes out, is possessed by the ship (if he was ever his own person to begin with is debatable). Everyone is played. Heaven is unplugged by radicals. In the end, Siri goes crazy or becomes human again. The end.
Oh, and the title? Blindsight has something to do with your brain stem. Its the part of you that sees what the rest of your brain doesn't believe is possible. That shadowy movement you catch in the corner of your vision that disappears when you focus on it kind of thing.
First, the problems:
I never felt grounded in Watts' world. Terms to describe the
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society were never explained. I guess he thought I was smarter than I am? This was almost as annoying as when authors explain everything as if I were stupid. Here is another example where there is a fine line marking how we gauge the intelligence of our readers. (I do read hard sci fi and enjoy it. The trick is giving me just enough info to follow the science--I don't feel like I got it here).I could never picture any of the characters. Not physically anyway.
The main character and narrator had half of his brain removed as a child and it happened to be the side that processed emotions. Thus I never connected emotionally with the MC. Or anyone else for that matter.
So why did I keep reading to the end?
The plot was compelling enough that I just had to know what the heck was going on and I hoped there would eventually be some kind of explanation I could understand. Here, let's try this.
What I think might have happened in the book (possible spoilers, but I'm not sure):
Siri (MC) had seizures as a child, so his parents had half of his brain cut out and replaced with inlays to fix it. Society (this is on earth) had developed to a point where most people were full of wiring and electrical gadgets built in that the was normal.
To be useful, you specialized in specific inlays or upgrades. If you didn't want to be useful you just plugged your brain into Heaven to create your own realities while your body rotted in a vault. (I wish more of THIS had been discussed.)
Anyway, Siri was the synthesizer--meaning he gathered info through observation of "topography" or body language, compiled it and sent it back to whoever hired him. He doesn't even have to speak the language of those involved he is so good at this.
So, there is a threat and he's sent out into space with a small crew to do something. None of them really know what. They wake up from cryosleep and spend most of the book observing this thing. The ongoing question boils down to sentience versus intelligence. What is the norm of the universe?
People and aliens die. The vampire broods, spazzes out, is possessed by the ship (if he was ever his own person to begin with is debatable). Everyone is played. Heaven is unplugged by radicals. In the end, Siri goes crazy or becomes human again. The end.
Oh, and the title? Blindsight has something to do with your brain stem. Its the part of you that sees what the rest of your brain doesn't believe is possible. That shadowy movement you catch in the corner of your vision that disappears when you focus on it kind of thing.
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LibraryThing member crazybatcow
This is a terrific exploration of intelligence, or what humankind understands intelligence to be, and the potentiality of meeting aliens that exist in a manner inconceivable to us.
The concepts are DEEP. Are we really human if we're hitched to computers. Can our brains hold more than one functional
The vampire component is sort of beside the point - it's just one more alien (meaning foreign to human) in a book that is exploring the nature of being alien. (Even those characters that are human are explored for their "alien" characteristics).
Don't read this if you're expecting action (there is little action) or if you're not in the mood to explore the nature of alien-ness because you'll be disappointed. That being said - this book is very engaging and very hard to put down once you get into it.
The concepts are DEEP. Are we really human if we're hitched to computers. Can our brains hold more than one functional
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personality? Are there aliens so smart and fast that to them we'd look like imbeciles? If there are aliens, what are the chances that we'd ever find them, ever understand them, ever "know" them?The vampire component is sort of beside the point - it's just one more alien (meaning foreign to human) in a book that is exploring the nature of being alien. (Even those characters that are human are explored for their "alien" characteristics).
Don't read this if you're expecting action (there is little action) or if you're not in the mood to explore the nature of alien-ness because you'll be disappointed. That being said - this book is very engaging and very hard to put down once you get into it.
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LibraryThing member voodoochilli
Great fun read. Don't be put off by the fact that it has vampires in it - it is very sci-fi and not fantasy at all. Intelligence plays a large part in this book with vampires with 100 IQ more than humans, the lead protagonist has half brain half computer and the AI units who are smarter still.
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What's more there are aliens that I wont describe here for fear of spoiling. Book can be downloaded free of charge on the authors website. Show Less
LibraryThing member fm4d
I've divided this review into two parts - first describes the literary qualities - story, language, atmosphere, etc. The second one is about the ideas that are to a degree related to the story but also very strong on its own. Feel free to weight each of those parts differently and therefore arrive
The literary qualities
Nothing really interesting is going on in this department, its average at best. Maybe even bellow the average. The problem is not in the story - its really good, thought-out, without any clunky parts, but nearly everything else is.. alien to the standard experience, which does not necessarily means wrong but it makes it really hard to delve into the story and into the reading flow. In points:
- first 1/3, maybe even more, is confusing, rather boring and not making much sense
- there is something wrong with the form the book is written it, its not really a book that you can get immersed in, that puts you in the flow and allows you to get completely overwhelmed with it. It feels more like a literature of fact, like a transcript of a court session or something like that.
- I've found the technical jargon of the spaceship quite overwhelming, but i suppose that is because English is not my first language.
To sum it up I've been missing all the enjoyment of a good book in this one, from the literary side. It simply felt as if the language, story, characters were just a vehicle to convey all the points, all the information author wanted to.
The data
Function over form, that's what this book evokes in me. Peter Watts has some very interesting views on the human nature, consciousness, evolution, sociobiology etc., all more-or-less based in scientific research and they absolutely dominate every other aspect of the book. Both story and characters are simply proprieties to demonstrate these views and to present all the information in a way that is more comprehensible to us humans. Our brains were designed in such a way that it is much easier to comprehend information in a form of a story - we are primed for stories in every possible way. Our lives are stories we create for ourselves, our goals and desires are to a large degree created by the stories that circulate in the society and so on. Its much more cognitively taxing to think in the abstract terms. And it works, when the intended information and concepts begin to appear in the story everything gets more much interesting and the last ~100 pages are a brutal storm of incredible ideas well worth it. I was already interested in the topics that Watts covers here but he managed to make everything much more concrete, more pronounced and he stirred my interest, so I am more likely to pursue those information.
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at your own rating.The literary qualities
Nothing really interesting is going on in this department, its average at best. Maybe even bellow the average. The problem is not in the story - its really good, thought-out, without any clunky parts, but nearly everything else is.. alien to the standard experience, which does not necessarily means wrong but it makes it really hard to delve into the story and into the reading flow. In points:
- first 1/3, maybe even more, is confusing, rather boring and not making much sense
- there is something wrong with the form the book is written it, its not really a book that you can get immersed in, that puts you in the flow and allows you to get completely overwhelmed with it. It feels more like a literature of fact, like a transcript of a court session or something like that.
- I've found the technical jargon of the spaceship quite overwhelming, but i suppose that is because English is not my first language.
To sum it up I've been missing all the enjoyment of a good book in this one, from the literary side. It simply felt as if the language, story, characters were just a vehicle to convey all the points, all the information author wanted to.
The data
Function over form, that's what this book evokes in me. Peter Watts has some very interesting views on the human nature, consciousness, evolution, sociobiology etc., all more-or-less based in scientific research and they absolutely dominate every other aspect of the book. Both story and characters are simply proprieties to demonstrate these views and to present all the information in a way that is more comprehensible to us humans. Our brains were designed in such a way that it is much easier to comprehend information in a form of a story - we are primed for stories in every possible way. Our lives are stories we create for ourselves, our goals and desires are to a large degree created by the stories that circulate in the society and so on. Its much more cognitively taxing to think in the abstract terms. And it works, when the intended information and concepts begin to appear in the story everything gets more much interesting and the last ~100 pages are a brutal storm of incredible ideas well worth it. I was already interested in the topics that Watts covers here but he managed to make everything much more concrete, more pronounced and he stirred my interest, so I am more likely to pursue those information.
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LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
Really interesting, chock full of ideologies, debates, and fascinating new technologies. It's great scifi. The only problem is that I completely disagree with the main premise of the book, which turns out to be that sentience is in fact a *problem* rather than Our Specialness. It's a cool twist to
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the usual first contact with alien life scenario, but unfortunately it makes no sense to me. I just don't get it. Yeah, a consciousness means that you second guess decisions and are slower to make them, so from an evolutionary standpoint it may not be the best ability to have. Maybe when we get into space, the very fact that we know we exist will be the death of us. I am so fine with that. If the other option is life without awareness, I don't care that it makes me less likely to survive a space battle. I thought I was arguing this against Watts until near the very end of the book, and even then I'm not sure what his stance on the issue is. If you're looking for a mind fuck, go for this novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member JohnGorski
I'll start out by saying that Blindsight is written in a characteristic style that I find truely annoying: the author addresses the reader from a contrived setting that assumes the reader has knowledge of, but which, of course, he cannot - because it is a setting wholly of the author's creation.
Having said that, once the story took hold and the situations were explained I found Blindsight compelling. The intertwining of the themes of first contact and what is consciousness/intelligence is very innovative. The characters are well developed and the alien is ominous.
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Jargon and situational events are thrown around as easily as yesterday's news leaving the reader wondering what's going on but not in a good way. Eventually, it all clears up. Much modern Sci Fi is written this way and I think it's because it's less work for the author: he doesn't have to explain as much and some of the knottier science issues can drift into the fiction half. This is probably why it took so long (4 separate tries) for me to get into this story.Having said that, once the story took hold and the situations were explained I found Blindsight compelling. The intertwining of the themes of first contact and what is consciousness/intelligence is very innovative. The characters are well developed and the alien is ominous.
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LibraryThing member cfink
Good stuff by Peter Watts. Blindsight is a solid scifi book for those who like hard science fiction: stories that are based at least in part on hard science.
Blindsight focuses on a first contact scenario. The location, the ship, and the aliens are all unique, and first rate. The experience is scary
The narrator is a strong character, and manages to convey a good sense of the time (2082), and the conditions. At the same time, the reader is rarely left in the dark about the goings on.
Blindsight focuses on a first contact scenario. The location, the ship, and the aliens are all unique, and first rate. The experience is scary
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and tense throughout. The ending is a bit boring, but how do you end a book like this?The narrator is a strong character, and manages to convey a good sense of the time (2082), and the conditions. At the same time, the reader is rarely left in the dark about the goings on.
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LibraryThing member SandyMarshall
This book had too much technical description (which I mostly ignored) and not enough story (which I mostly liked) for me. I particulary don't like when there is a lot of dialogue and I can't figure out which character is speaking.
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novel — 2007)
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2007)
Sunburst Award (Shortlist — 2007)
SF Site Reader's Choice (2006)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (Finalist — 2007)
Seiun Award (Nominee — 2014)
Nagroda SFinks (2009)
Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (Winner — 2010)
Prix Aurora Award (Finalist — 2007)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2006-10-03
Physical description
8.63 inches
ISBN
0765312182 / 9780765312181