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Firefall (Blindsight + Echopraxia)

(Firefall #1-2)

Peter Watts (Goodreads Author)

3.79 · Rating details · 731 Ratings · 60 Reviews

This is the Omnibus edition of Blindsight and Echopraxia .

FIRST CONTACT: 13 FEBRUARY 2082.

The day sixty-five thousand objects burned briefly around Earth: an unexplained moment of surveillance by an alien intelligence. We called it Firefall.

Two months later, we sent the Theseus reconnaisance mission into deep space. Somewhere past Jupiter, we lost contact.

For the la ...more

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Hardcover, 720 pages

Published September 25th 2014 by Head of Zeus

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Mar 13, 2018 Claudia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, z-to-a-watts

Note: links inserted in the review contain minor spoilers.

I’ve had my fair share of sci-fi works, with mind-blowing ideas and, at times, with worlds and concepts hard to imagine. But this duology was the most dense and tough I had read so far.

Blindsight

02/13/2082: Earth is surrounded by 65,000 alien objects, named Fireflies which after a little while, burned in atmosphere. Humanity is caught off guard and reactions are all over the spectrum. The quest in pursuing why/who/what sent them be ...more

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Sep 15, 2014 Gavin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be, horror, sci-fi

Firefall is an omnibus edition of Blindsight and Echopraxia. While my review of Blindsight is and ever shall remain "The most mind-numbingly horrifying thing I've ever read.", Firefall was something quite different.

Before I even start reviewing Firefall I want to say that nobody alive works as hard as Watts: http://www.rifters.com/ and that it's completely worth tracking down the two prequels to this piece, The Colonel and Orientation Day

Set parallel to the Theseus mission out to Big Ben, Firefa ...more

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Jun 01, 2018 Jules rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“I am naked as I type this. I was naked writing the whole damn book”. I have to comply with the protocol when writing the review too.
- “Living fourteen thousand years didn’t make me a genius, I just had time.
- Time... You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, you can’t weight it, you can’t... measure it in a laboratory. It’s a subjective sense of... becoming what we are instead of what we were a nanosecond ago, becoming what we will be in another nanosecond. The whole piece of time is a landscape exi “I am naked as I type this. I was naked writing the whole damn book”. I have to comply with the protocol when writing the review too.
- “Living fourteen thousand years didn’t make me a genius, I just had time.
- Time... You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, you can’t weight it, you can’t... measure it in a laboratory. It’s a subjective sense of... becoming what we are instead of what we were a nanosecond ago, becoming what we will be in another nanosecond. The whole piece of time is a landscape existing, we form behind us and we move, we move through it, slice by slice.
- Clocks measure time.
- No, they measure themselves; the objective referee of a clock is another clock.
- All very interesting, but what has it go to do with...”
- This book? “Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain, and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but he got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind, and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy, He thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off, and a tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across the thousands of generations. And after a while everyone was seeing tiger in the grass even if there weren’t any tigers because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learned to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because neutral selection favors the paranoid. Even here in the twenty first century you can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now. We are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.
And it came to pass that certain people figured out how to use that. They painted their faces or they wore funny hats, they shook their rattles and waved their crosses and they said: << Yes, there are tigers in the grass, there are faces in the sky, and they will be very angry if you do not obey their commandments. You must make offerings to appease them, you must bring gold and grain and altar boys for our delectation or they will strike you down and send you to the Awful place.>>
And people believed them by the billions, because after all, they could see the invisible tigers.”
- I can see what you mean; every slice of our history is marked by chickenshits and tigers.
- “At some point in our evolution we started to make decisions consciously, and we’re not very good at it.
- Identity changes by the second; you turn into someone else every time a new thought rewires your brain. You’re a different person than you were ten minutes ago.”
- That was my line, Steve, I am the smart guy and you play the apprentice.
- I wrote those lines. You are just standing there naked taking credit for them. “You’re a stick-man, frozen in some perverse rigor vitae. I stand between the Wizzard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain. All kinds of animals come here, occasional demons too.” You are the demon that steals my ideas to post them sometimes on Goodreads.
- What do you want me to tell them, about sci-fi stuff, rewiring the brain in every way you can’t imagine? It’s not just the mundane sensory stuff; it’s not just feeling colors and tasting sounds. They can literally see time. Sci-fi is overrated, proving you can’t think outside the box is trending now; every time someone says “think outside the box” what he really means is “think bigger boxes”. Empty space scares us, dark always put fear into man, we build boxes and call them homes, and we invent names like stratosphere and call it Earth. We put mirrors inside our boxes and we look at ourselves, how we work, what consciousness is. We cannot imagine what is outside our tridimensional box. But you could get an idea by reading this book. ...more

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Aug 25, 2017 Tomi rated it really liked it

Ensimmäinen puolikas, Blindsight, 5/5. Toinen puolikas, Echopraxia, ehkä 3/5. Ei jotenkin yllä ideoidensa ja draamallisen jännitteensä puolesta samalla tasolle. Vaikka huippukohtiakin toki on. Samanlaista whoa-efektiä ei kuitenkaan aiheuttanut.

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Nov 30, 2016 imyril rated it liked it · review of another edition

Blindsight is rather hard science fiction (for a first contact novel featuring vampires in space, um) that - as good scifi should - asks difficult questions, in this case about humanity, consciousness and emotion. I found it interesting and thought-provoking rather than enjoyable - good brain food, but don't expect a light at the end of the tunnel or much else in the way of sustenance for the heart.

More thoughts on Blindsight.

Like Blindsight, Echopraxia may be one of those books that will sit be ...more

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Apr 14, 2018 Alexander rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Utterly astonishing. This book has dared tread to places I’ve never even considered existed and managed it all with nail-biting tension. Watts explains concepts that are by their very nature post-human, post-homunculus, but does so in ways which are engaging and understandable for us basic humans. Where he got his ideas, I will never understand, regardless that he spells them out in detail in the post-script! Completely unique and masterful in scope and design.

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Apr 20, 2018 Dave White marked it as never-finished

Full of great ideas, but would it kill to make it a bit more approachable? People on the internets are prising it for it's inovative ideas, but also mention how it took them 3 reads to appreciate it. Aint nobody have time for that.

I'm torn tho, reading about the book seems like such an interesting experience and yet when I open the actual book my mind just automatically starts skipping paragraphs.

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Jul 17, 2017 Melanie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, sci-fi

Joy of joys! This book finishes at 88%, and the rest is acknowledgements and notes. Thank goodness, but this was a slog.

Or rather, Echopraxia - the second book in the duology - was a slog.

The compendium of Firefall is made up of Blindsight and Echopraxia. The two cover the fallout of first contact.

In Blindsight, we travel with the crew dispatched to investigate the source of the objects which alerted Earth to the undeniable fact of alien life. Siri Keeton is our narrator, and he's there strictly Joy of joys! This book finishes at 88%, and the rest is acknowledgements and notes. Thank goodness, but this was a slog.

Or rather, Echopraxia - the second book in the duology - was a slog.

The compendium of Firefall is made up of Blindsight and Echopraxia. The two cover the fallout of first contact.

In Blindsight, we travel with the crew dispatched to investigate the source of the objects which alerted Earth to the undeniable fact of alien life. Siri Keeton is our narrator, and he's there strictly as an observer, he is to have no actual impact on the mission, simply to record the details and 'translate' events into something understandable to the masses upon their return. They are in the depths of space, encountering the unknown and doing what they can to build some kind of relationship with whatever it is they've found. But nothing is as it seems. And I mean nothing.

Now, I quite enjoyed this book once it got going. There were some really interesting parts, and some cool themes explored. Was it blow-my-mind amazing? No. But it was enjoyable, and upon reaching the end I was looking forward to the next dose, particularly because most people seemed to think that the second was better than the first.

In Echopraxia, it's 25 years later, back on Earth, and with a whole new set of characters. To be honest, I never really understood what the plot was. Stuff just seemed to...happen. I was pretty confused a lot of the time, and it got to the point that I was reading just to finish rather than out of any real desire.

The shift in everything was difficult, and while the first book had a clear story - real, proper first contact -, this one didn't. Now, maybe I missed some vital line of dialogue somewhere, but I don't think I did. I think the story was just a bit of a mess. And I use the word 'story' in the loosest sense of the word.

There were positives. Expansions on the world introduced in Blindsight and some other pretty cool stuff, but on the whole a disappointment and the reason this book's been dragged down in my rating.

Will I read anything else by Peter Watts? Maybe, but I think it would have to have some killer reviews to entice me. ...more

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May 25, 2015 Nathan Griffiths rated it did not like it

So this was an omnibus of two books (Blindsight and Echopraxia) which tell seperate but related stories of first contact with aliens in a near-ish future. The first part of the omnibus (Blindsight) was as dense and sometimes impenetrable as other reviews had lead me to expect - however the overall story of the spaceship & crew encountering a genuinely disturbing and quite original alien entity did engage me and there were a few thrills and chills in there that kept me reading.

However. The s ...more

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May 16, 2017 Ashley rated it it was ok

Dnf. Only managed to get through the first book.
Started out interesting and new but faded into a drama more than an alien exploration. Rape and victim blaming trigger warning and possible stockholme syndrome where the victim tries to save his rapist which is even worse because in this society people don't have sex physically, they have sex virtually so. Yeah. Didn't want to drag myself through the second half.

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Sep 15, 2014 Kate rated it liked it

Firefall comprises two novels - I've just finished reading the first, Blindisght, and here is its review http://forwinternights.wordpress.com/...

I couldn't finish part 2, unfortunately.

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Nov 22, 2014 Winter Sophia Rose rated it it was amazing

Dark & Gripping! Loved It!

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Jul 08, 2017 Mel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites

Oh, where to start? Reading this double hard SF offering made me giddy with glee! If you don't have at least a passing interest in the sciences and emerging tech, you will probably hate this. If your eye was drawn to a mention of zombies and vampires, stop right there. There is absolutely nothing for Twilight and Walking Dead fans here. Move on.

In Blindsight, the first of two novels incorporated into Firefall, Watts draws on current and nascent: biology, neuroscience, propulsion, particle, mate Oh, where to start? Reading this double hard SF offering made me giddy with glee! If you don't have at least a passing interest in the sciences and emerging tech, you will probably hate this. If your eye was drawn to a mention of zombies and vampires, stop right there. There is absolutely nothing for Twilight and Walking Dead fans here. Move on.

In Blindsight, the first of two novels incorporated into Firefall, Watts draws on current and nascent: biology, neuroscience, propulsion, particle, materials sciences and astrophysics to create a 'first contact' marathon. It is packed with detailed ideas, conjecture and invention. The research is obvious and the scope is staggering.

How about the characters? Damaged, dangerous and as human as their neural modifications allow! None is really what they seem or even believe themselves to be. I'm not sure that any are truly likeable but they are intriguingly tragic, particularly Siri; and the complicated dynamics between the hapless crew chosen to voyage and intercept whatever intelligence has revealed itself to a startled earth, make for a fascinatingly tense narrative.

The authors says: "one of Blindsight's take home messages is that life is a matter of degree - the distinction between living and non-living systems has always been an iffy one".

The second novel, Echopraxia, deals with the same event set against a backdrop of conflict, pandemics, zombie outbreaks (it's OK....it's all seriously handled and involves both deliberate and viral zombification; these are not the slavering, lumbering, rotting variety!) and a civilisation on the verge of collapse; this time an apparently accidental or hurriedly premature expedition sets out to discover the fate of the first ship which has long been silent and presumed lost, fate unknown. Here, hive minds, the nature of God, sentience versus consciousness, free will and adaptation are the dominant themes.

This time the strange crew and wonderfully paced tension are provided by another heavily modified gang, save for the main protagonist, Brüks, the most identifiably human and unmodified character. A retired biologist with a guilty secret, apparently caught up in the adventure by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Did I mention Vampires in space? Yes? Good and again, don't worry; there isn't a bulb of garlic or a wooden stake in sight. These vamps are truly terrifying but there is nothing supernatural about them.
This time some of the crew do make it back to a dying world. But they have in no sense escaped the very alien threat they encountered beyond the Oort.
And in the end, what of man, his broken planet and his monsters? Last line to the author: "the game [evolution] is never over; there's no finish line this side of heat death".
Six stars! An outstanding read. Epic. ...more

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Aug 09, 2018 Brian S rated it really liked it

OVERALL RATING: 4 stars (8 out of 10)

Overall, a very interesting and enjoyable science fiction read.

I think the first book, Blindsight, had the more original, imaginative, and compelling sci-fi elements to it, but the characterizations and overall plot fell a bit flat for me. I think the very nature of the characters, particularly the main protagonist, does not help since he is by his very nature not a very relate-able person. I also found the pacing and writing quality to be a bit inconsistent, ...more

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Nov 01, 2017 John Gray rated it really liked it

The first book, Blindsight, is excellent, told from the point of view of a truly unique character, Siri, who is chosen to go on a first contact mission on board a ship called Thesus. Peter Watts knows his stuff (which prompted me to undertake some fascinating reading to catch up) the science is hard and cutting edge, yet never overpowers the story being told. The aliens involved are properly exotically alien too, fully original in a way I'd never considered before.
The next book, Echopraxia, is ...more

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Feb 21, 2018 Tom Henry rated it it was amazing

First off, two stories in one omnibus edition, stories that are linked together through father and son (but set within a few years of each other), both separate, extraordinary journeys from Earth to space and back again: fusing together diverse characters (melding hunters and their prey into an unlikely galactic search team), pitting them against an unknown, unquantifiable threat, and then watching the whole thing unravel. Is there intelligent life out there? You bet, and even the dead can't sav ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Spinwallah rated it it was amazing

I had previously read echopraxia without reading blindsight. stupid move. so I bought this and read it properly. its amazing. it is so tough and my intellect was often foundering. despite this I found it to be totally engrossing, banged through it. hard sci fi with lots of horror. its a first contact novel as good as annhilation

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Dec 28, 2017 Dinko rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I seriously dislike the weird style of this omnibus. Confusing jargon and the slightly shallow story didn't help either. I have read Blindsight twice in attempt to recheck if I have missed anything -- don't walk my steps and steer clear of it.

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Mar 27, 2018 Vivienne rated it really liked it

At first I found this a really tough read and it took me a while to figure out what was actually going on! It is ultimately about humanity, what is it that makes us human and questions why. Moments were a real head fuck. Not for the faint hearted or those who are psychologically stable.

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May 26, 2018 Johanna rated it really liked it

A view on the future with some very interesting points about human evolution both in the past and in the future.

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Oct 27, 2017 Chris Aldridge rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 17, 2017 Dirk Janssen rated it liked it

It's no easy reading, but at least it is dark in a lovecraftian sense. The vampires are genuinely scary.

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Jun 21, 2015 James Kemp rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to James by: Charlie Stross

This is an epic science fiction first contact piece that left me wondering about sentience, consciousness and whether I could trust anything I saw, heard or felt. It is certainly the best book that I have read so far in 2015.

The book is an expansion of a previous novella, which is about half of the story. It's set in an advanced human spaceship travelling out to make contact with some suspicious anomalies in the outer solar system a few years after a massive extraterrestial probing of Earth, th This is an epic science fiction first contact piece that left me wondering about sentience, consciousness and whether I could trust anything I saw, heard or felt. It is certainly the best book that I have read so far in 2015.

The book is an expansion of a previous novella, which is about half of the story. It's set in an advanced human spaceship travelling out to make contact with some suspicious anomalies in the outer solar system a few years after a massive extraterrestial probing of Earth, the firefall of the title. The mission is lead by a vampire (Peter Watts has a novel take on vampires, and they're not the traditional blood drinking horrors, although they are still monsters). The viewpoint is from Siri Keeton, a man with half a brain who works as a Chinese Room to help explain the technicalities to the others.

Far out from Earth the Theseus finds a strange entity in the orbit of a brown dwarf. It communicates with them, although the linguists believe that it doesn't understand. An interesting side note the linguists are a set of personalities run inside a single brain, having multiple personalities is no longer a disorder, merely a useful quirk. Many expeditions into the electromagnetic storms inside the thing to explore lead us into the gaps in our consciousness and an exploration of what it means to be human.

The second part of the story starts back on Earth, with another viewpoint character, Dan Bruks, a field biologist specialising in parasites. Into the desert that he has been living in and sampling comes a storm of combat zombies lead by another vampire. They are out to attack the temple of the Bicameral Order, a cult that have grown tailored tumours in their brains to go beyond science to create their own religion. Bruks flees into the Bicamerals, and he's one of only two baseline humans in the temple. A tailored virus fells most of the Bicamerals and Bruks escapes with Jim Moore (the other baseline human and a soldier), the vampire Valerie and a number of the Bicamerals to a spaceship in orbit.

While the bicamerals heal Bruks wonders why he has been caught up in all of this. He seems out of place and superseded by the augmented humans. Even Moore has implants that change him, when combat is needed he switches off his conscious control and his body fights. Again there's an underlying theme of what humanity is and where it ends. Several times we see the apparent end of things, only to find out the senses are lying to Bruks and what he thought he saw wasn't what happened. This could be frustrating, but it is very well done, and there is reflection and understanding as part of the story. Bruks has a couple of other characters to talk to, and none of it seems forced or an info dump.

At the end of the ebook version there are author notes for both parts of the story, and also a load of references if you want to read more of the things that influenced the story and how it developed. ...more

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Jan 05, 2017 Down With People added it

i love this vampires so very very much

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Mar 04, 2015 Cryptid rated it it was amazing

So now I've finished reading through Blindsight and Echopraxia cover to cover for the second time... and I still think it probably has the best synthesis of sci-fi themes and good writing I have ever encountered anywhere in the whole storytelling world - yes, there were some other really cool sci-fies that left me in a terrible state of perpetual awe that I never really recovered from... like Greg Egan's Orthogonal trilogy for example... and there's a lot of catching up to do in the realm of so So now I've finished reading through Blindsight and Echopraxia cover to cover for the second time... and I still think it probably has the best synthesis of sci-fi themes and good writing I have ever encountered anywhere in the whole storytelling world - yes, there were some other really cool sci-fies that left me in a terrible state of perpetual awe that I never really recovered from... like Greg Egan's Orthogonal trilogy for example... and there's a lot of catching up to do in the realm of so called "classics" for me, but the most of what I have read till now consisted of some really interesting themes and speculations with not much of a writing style to speak of (Egan, Asimov, Clarke, etc. - which is mostly for the best as things would probably get really scary complicated really fast if these guys were to get more poetic) or pretty much the other way around (mainly Bradbury - Also for the best... really simple but full of emotion and mesmerizing words).
Somehow, Peter Watts manages both in his own quite specific way... The story is pretty mysterious and doesn't give you any quick answers - you just have to wait and pay attention. The language ranges from downright vulgarity to physics or biology metaphors - and is always interesting to figure out.
I've actually personally met some positive (whole) number of people who claim they pretty much hate it and nobody at all who likes it - the future presented in this book feels very anti-utopic (almost Gothic horror like) while being evidently far better off than our little present here in quite a few aspects. Also the narrator of the first book is a clinical sociopath (while not actually being especially interested in killing or world domination) and the main protagonist of the second one is actually just a usual baseline human being mostly trying to not get stomped on by any nearly post-humans, something-sort-of-gods or resurrected superinteligent vampires... one can get a bit lost in there while the book officially admits some noncomprehensiveness of vampire (or even better alien) logic to mere (or almost) baseline protagonists and than makes some fucking great points about it (which is another reason why it's actually amazing and not terribly unlikable)... yeah... ending my rant here... too tired. Just imagine you're Siri Keeton and you've woken up after a few months of hibernation somewhere deep in the Oort and everything else should come quite naturally... ...more

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Dec 12, 2014 Brainycat rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Fans of the Rifters trilogy and fans of [post,trans]humanist scifi

Shelves: a-long-story, dark-and-dystopic, in-a-time-not-too-far-away, read_in_2014, little-green-instellar-critters

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 0
bombs: 4
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 2
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

Peter Watts makes scifi exciting for me again. This omnibus reads like a single epic; much like his beloved Rifters trilogy, the action in the latter book picks up Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 0
bombs: 4
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 2
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

Peter Watts makes scifi exciting for me again. This omnibus reads like a single epic; much like his beloved Rifters trilogy, the action in the latter book picks up right where it left off in the former book. Reading this book felt, to me, like Charles Stross meets Rifters and the Rifters win. We've got near-light speed travel, wildly augmented humans bashing headlong against the outdated confines of Abrahamaic morality and gloriously alien intelligences that are actually alien in the way the think, communicate, perceive and breed.

After all that, though, the series winds down into some familiar territory. The last few chapters of this merry-go-round don't hold as many surprises as much as they carefully tuck us gentle readers into a bed of nails with a blanket of stinging nettles. Anyone who's read Rifters will know how good at Mr. Watts is at putting an apocalypse together, and this time around he didn't have to drag up any archeobacteria. This apocalypse is the scariest kind, the perfectly plausible way humans will happily act in their own shortsighted interest to the detriment of the species, ecosystem, etc.

I think some parts of Firefall get a little bit preachy - but that may be a side effect of what happens when people try to communicate when they're lightyears apart. There aren't any "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die" soliliquies but there are a lot of paragraphs where people try really hard to explain Their Big Idea. That being said, these are interesting ideas in interesting circumstances and I didn't mind the verbiage as much as I would have rather kept the pace of the story moving a little faster.

I really hope Mr. Watts writes some stories around his vampires; I think they're the best incarnation of humanity(ish) to come out of the posthumanist canon yet.
...more

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Jun 10, 2016 Guy Haley rated it really liked it

From SFX #254.

Human obsolescence beckons.

Firefall is by turns brilliant and merciless, a science-fictionalised philosophical argument that human sentience is neither inevitable nor necessary, and that freewill is an illusion. Dressed up, naturally, with aliens and spaceships and such. Originally two books, it’s released here in the UK in one volume.

Blindsight (original publication date 2006) is set at the tail end of a post-singularity 21st century. The catalysing event is the unexpected survey ...more

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Apr 26, 2015 Charles rated it really liked it

I just started reading this today. Its an 750-page combined version of Watt's "Blindsight" and "Echopraxia". I had mine shipped-over from the UK more than a year ago, but its now available in the States.

I first thought, I was just going to read the second part, "Echopraxia". After reading the Forward, I decided to start at the beginning, because it was a long time ago that I'd read "Blindsight", and I only vaguely remember it. I remember some tropes like vampires, AI, and 'real' Newtonian spacef ...more

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Oct 09, 2014 Chris rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 19, 2015 Stephen rated it did not like it

The good

There are some really interesting concepts in the world Peter has built. I wont give them away but they definitely kept me reading long past the point where the plot and characters had completely lost any hook.
The main character had a really cool condition and seeing how he managed it was fascinating. Unfortunately the best interaction he had involved some conflict quite early and it was mostly downhill from there. His relationship gave good insight into him but when he fails to really d ...more

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“We all come into the story halfway through, we all catch up as best we can, and we're all gonna die before it ends.” — 9 likes

“The strident emotional belief that children made you happy, even when all the data pointed to misery. The high-amplitude fear of sharks and dark-skinned snipers who would never kill you; indifference to all the toxins and pesticides that could. The mind was so rotten with misrepresentation that in some cases it literally had to be damaged before it could make a truly rational decision—and should some brain-lesioned mother abandon her baby in a burning house in order to save two strangers from the same fire, the rest of the world would be more likely to call her a monster than laud the rationality of her lifeboat ethics. Hell, rationality itself—the exalted Human ability to reason—hadn’t evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will. Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart. Fossil feelings. Better off without them, once you’d outgrown the savanna and decided that Truth mattered after all. But Humanity wasn’t defined by arms and legs and upright posture. Humanity had evolved at the synapse as well as at the opposable thumb—and those misleading gut feelings were the very groundwork on which the whole damn clade had been built. Capuchins felt empathy. Chimps had an innate sense of fair play. You could look into the eyes of any cat or dog and see a connection there, a legacy of common subroutines and shared emotions.” — 5 likes

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Preview — Firefall (Blindsight + Echopraxia) by Peter Watts

Firefall (Blindsight + Echopraxia)

(Firefall #1-2)

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