Questions About Echopraxia (Firefall, #2)

by Peter Watts (Goodreads Author)

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Echopraxia, please sign up.

Answered Questions (10)

This question contains spoilers... (view spoiler)

Peter Watts

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

This question contains spoilers... (view spoiler)

Alan

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[I've just seen this while searching for an answer myself. I think I know what the author intended after reading several Q&A sessions but wanted further confirmation. However, I'll give the answer a go.
Essentially, the Bicameral's plan was to infect the human race with the Portia material effectively turning them into a much more advanced and vastly more intelligent but non-sentient species. Most likely a hive-mind like themselves but better.
The see the universe in an almost religious light and believe in a God of sorts. But this is where I'm not certain, they either see sentience as a virus of God, i.e. a miracle that violates the natural perfection of the universe, and want to eradicate both sentience and God, or else the reverse, that sentience is God's gift to be treasured.
I got the strong indication that it was the former, but possibly not? The could have altered the sample of Portia that they gave to Brukes to instead simply improve humans, maintaining their consciousness (albeit by creating a new one that sat on top of the improved brain (which might explain the other voice that Brukes starts to hear in his head)) and simply allow them to compete against vampires who were about to throw off their shackles.

In fact no, definitely not, Watts explicitly started that the Bruke-Portia hybrid is definitely non-sentient, it just has access to all Brukes neurons, i.e. his memories, and so is simply another Chinese-room, fabricating it’s answers from Bruke’s experiences.

Like I said, I think it's the elimination of consciousness and they recognised that Portia was far superior even to them, and that baselines would have eventually moved to eliminate them so they took their chance.

Valerie was in cohorts with them, not to help them, but only to tag along so she was in a position to alter the Portia virus that Brukes carried, to free vampires of the right-angle and extreme territorial disabilities. Hence why Portia (through lightning fast control of Brukes) killed her immediately after she used the biopsy/gene sequencer. Though I'm not sure how altering Portia in Brukes would affect Vampires… Maybe it would have otherwise simply infected Vampires as it did Brukes and turned them, perhaps instead she altered it to make Vampires immune apart from curing them of their afflictions?

I'm not sure as neither the Vampires (definitely) or the Bicamerals (at least as I understood it) are fully non-sentient. In fact the vampires are definitely conscious just in a very different, more fluid (a rapidly varying dreamlike state is how Watts described it) and have a very strong individualism. I dunno, it's up to you.

Gudluk! (hide spoiler)]

flag

This question contains spoilers... (view spoiler)

Stas Malyshev They split the ship, leaving the main drive (see the picture in the book, the big bulky thing) behind and taking the rest of it (the long tube, the ha…moreThey split the ship, leaving the main drive (see the picture in the book, the big bulky thing) behind and taking the rest of it (the long tube, the habitable spikes, etc.) to the Icarus. (less)

flag

Does this book complete the story/series?