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Blindsight

(Firefall #1)

Peter Watts (Goodreads Author)

4.02 · Rating details · 27,188 ratings · 2,396 reviews

It's been two months since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since - until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who to send to meet the alien, when the alien doesn't want to meet? Send a linguist with multiple-personality disorder, and a ...more

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published October 3rd 2006 by Tor Books

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Sep 01, 2011 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi-modern, new-dimensions

what is Consciousness? how did the silly human race evolve beyond the herd instinct, beyond our reptile brain? how, and why? what is the purpose of our individuality, what is the need for our sense of self, what use is Human Connection, why are we even equipped with Empathy? for some naive, kinda-sorta spiritual folks (like myself), these things may explain the existence of God. but that's rather besides the point of the question. does empathy help us in the long run, does the ability of humans what is Consciousness? how did the silly human race evolve beyond the herd instinct, beyond our reptile brain? how, and why? what is the purpose of our individuality, what is the need for our sense of self, what use is Human Connection, why are we even equipped with Empathy? for some naive, kinda-sorta spiritual folks (like myself), these things may explain the existence of God. but that's rather besides the point of the question. does empathy help us in the long run, does the ability of humans to connect with each other truly offer anything besides constant discomfort and potential danger? is a psychopath who does not experience empathy somehow less than human? how would a highly developed species that has somehow evolved without empathy or individuality react to a species like ours - one that is contantly talking to itself, connecting, empathizing, exploring, throwing itself and its messages out into the void, to seek, to find, to understand, to know?

exploring all of those questions is the purpose of Peter Watts' superb Blindsight. the novel is about one of those Ambiguous Threats Appearing in the Outskirts of Known Space. future Earth is a fucked-up Earth, no surprise there. humans regularly 'ascend' into a fake-sounding cyberheaven. vampires - apparently an extremely predatory offshoot of the homo sapien, complete with an anti-Euclidean mental bias that explains their phobia of crosses - have been revived and now serve the human race (the inclusion of vampires may sound cheesy, but believe me, it is one of more absorbing things about the novel). there is some deadly construct called the Icarus Array located somewhere near the sun, stationed there to "protect" us. sex is an outdated activity (perhaps the sole unconvincing part of the novel). genuine human contact rarely takes place face-to-face. your usual Cold Techno-Dystopia. the Ambiguous Threat is noted shortly after a startling "Firefly" effect occurs over the earth - an effect that appears to be the Ambiguous Threat's way of taking long-distance pictures of human shenanigans.

so the silly humans decide to fling a crew of misfits out into the void to engage with said Ambiguous Threat. there's a woman who has compartmentalized herself into 4 different and distinctly individualistic personalities. there's a military type armed with slaved drones whose biggest flaw/greatest attribute is her ability to empathize with her enemies. there are a couple guys who project their consciousness through machinery, all inputs mediated by that machinery - all the better to study the world around them. there is the ship's captain, a sociopathic vampire mentally bonded to his ship's computer brain. and then there is our hero - a sort of minister of information, missing half a brain, trained to avoid all forms of true connection, unwilling to engage in basic empathy. this fascinating crew finds much to be fascinated with when confronting the Ambiguous Threat. for one, a spaceship that looks like it's from Dante's Inferno. aliens from, well, the Alien films, with some upsetting Predator type invisibility to boot. hallucinations and corresonding loss of self within those hallucinations. strange communications that sound full of villainous bravado - except those communications feel oversimplified, threatening in the most obvious of ways, purposely dumbed-down...to what end? the Ambiguous Threat appears capable of automatically healing its own hull, controlling thousands of asteroids at once, and harnessing the power of a gas giant... yet seems oddly powerless, even uncaring. things don't add up. despite all the crew sees and analyzes, the Ambiguous Threat has a rather terrifying lack of signifiers.

the author is clearly a highly intelligent sort, PhD and everything, and the novel is full of Exra Hard Science Action. but i think folks are really mislabeling Blindsight if they consider it to be genuine Hard Science Fiction. to put it in the corniest of terms: this is a novel about the human condition. look at the dystopic details of this future Earth, review the cast of characters... Blindsight is built on examining all of the different options for humans and nonhumans to connect or not to connect, all the ways that individuals can reach across their individual sense of self to connect with another person's reality. the nature of the Ambiguous Threat and the root of our protagonist's problems are disconcertingly connected: a rejection of individuality; an inability to connect with others. the novel is elegantly constructed so that form follows meaning rather than narrative. this may be frustrating to folks who eschew literary novels in favor of genre fiction. that's understandable... "narrative tension" is definitely lost by the constant switching back and forth between parallel storylines. on the one hand, the protagonist's past life of non-communication and deliberate avoidance of empathy (shades of Dying Inside); on the other hand, the mission into the void (which itself is rife with pointed character flashblacks). but for Watts to have structured Blindsight in any other way would have been to lose the point of it all. the novel is not really about a dark space adventure. it is about the importance of empathetic connection, its value and its dangers, how it condemns us with one hand and lifts us up to a higher place with the other.

oh, and one last thing... if that last sentence makes you think that this is one of those enriching spiritual journey type of books, think again. this awesome novel is about as bleak and pessimistic as they come. an important warning to keep in mind before approaching: this dog bites! ...more

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Sep 16, 2018 carol. rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: fans of hard sci-fi, first contact

Shelves: hugo, should-buy, sci-fi

This is a very dense book, packed with ideas. Although Watts mentions he's a biologist by training, you wouldn't know it, between all the astronomical events, the neurological side effects of radiation and methane exposure, and the philosophy of consciousness, it feels like half a college curriculum in here. It also is not an easy book. I ended up waiting to finish it on a free day, where the book and I could spend as much time as we needed. In this way, it reminded me a great deal of Miéville's This is a very dense book, packed with ideas. Although Watts mentions he's a biologist by training, you wouldn't know it, between all the astronomical events, the neurological side effects of radiation and methane exposure, and the philosophy of consciousness, it feels like half a college curriculum in here. It also is not an easy book. I ended up waiting to finish it on a free day, where the book and I could spend as much time as we needed. In this way, it reminded me a great deal of Miéville's Embassytown.

The narrative is fragmented into pieces, alternating between a linear description of a sort of first-contact event, and fragments of Siri's life, primarily from his youth and from his only romantic relationship. This is a future Earth where most people have been genetically engineered before birth. As they age, more and more people are choosing to join Heaven, a type of virtual reality for their consciousness, allowing their bodies to be stored elsewhere once they commit. Siri was an epileptic, and had half his brain removed to prevent further seizures. It left him with a curious sense of distance, which he developed into a skill, becoming a professional Synthesete. When an alien invention surveys Earth, a group of people are sent to the most likely place the aliens are lurking. Siri is part of that team as a professional observer.

It's a complicated story, and while Watts does eventually provide many of the explanations (details on Heaven, details on vampires), it a faceted kind of story; you have to hold all these images in your mind and hope that they'll coalesce at some point. They mostly do, although there's a few spots when I think Watts has a few too many pieces to make into a coherent pattern. I was hoping for some sense of 'ah-ha,' but am instead left with a sense of both stretchy-ness and 'hmm.'

I will say that the first contact bits turned out to be absolutely fascinating, as well as the ideas of magnetic atmosphere and methane gases causing issues. His discussions on game theory and first contact are depressing as hell.

Of the Goodreads reviews, I would point you towards mark monday's, who addresses the philosophical angle Watts seemed to be heading toward. Lightreads also has an uncharacteristically long, but characteristically brilliant, review that includes a nice note of what the reader is in for, as well as a long segment of Watt's writing. I happen to agree with Lightreads, that I'm guessing it would read best if one is conversant with some of the -ologies in the book. Off the top of my head, linguistics, astronomy, philosophy, evolution, neurology, biology, and physics all play parts in the story.

I particularly enjoyed Watt's general insights and elaborations at the end of the story. In a way, they are mini-essays that are the foundation of the book, including 'Sleight of Mind' (hacking the brain), 'Are We There Yet' (the space travel insight), alien anatomy and physiology, and 'Sentience/Intelligence,' all of which are heavily footnoted, usually with articles or journals. I laughed at footnote #130: "This validates me, and I wish it happened more often. ¹³°

130: I am by nature insecure. I blame bad parenting." ...more

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Jul 21, 2011 Terry rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, horror, canadian

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 all hope 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 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 dev 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 all hope 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 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.

Also posted on Shelf Inflicted ...more

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Paddy Much like Terry has mentioned above, it’s a fascinating, if bleak look at the Universe - or more aptly, ourselves. I finished “Echopraxia” over the we ...more
Nov 17, 2020 04:23AM

Terry Hi Christoff, I certainly wouldn’t want to bring back a race of vampires from the dead, but mankind doesn’t always have the best track record for doin ...more
Nov 17, 2020 04:53AM

Apr 26, 2017 Lady Luna. ✨ rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, okay-shelf

👽3.5/5👽

**So this review will be extremely short**

“He wasn't just grasping at the limb, I realized as I joined them. He was tugging at it. He was trying to pull it off.
Something laughed hysterically, right inside my helmet.”

Okay so I have decided hardcore sci-fi isn't my thing, I get confused with all the descriptions and literally had to google half the words in this book. The writing was a little tedious, 100 pages in and I still didn't have a clue what was going on and nearly put ...more

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Nov 12, 2009 Greg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Greg by: Raja

Shelves: speculative-fiction

You know you're in for trouble when the dedication of the book says:

"If we're not in pain, we're not alive."

One of the quotes before the novel starts is:

"you will die like a dog for no good reason"

And the quote that starts the first chapter is one by Ted Bundy!

But still, it's a sci-fi book about consciousness...how could I not love it?

-----------------------------------------

I've always loved Science Fiction, and not just because books about the future are inherently cool. The reason I've always ...more

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Jul 13, 2014 Becky rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, disappointing, vampires, ebook_kindle, 2014, reviewed, politicalish

Yeeeaahhh... I'm kinda not sure what I just read or how I should feel about this book. So, I'm going to revert to my usual fallback position of "random typing to see what words show up" and call it a review.

Look ma, no consciousness! O_o

So, one the one hand, I can see how certain types of readers would think this book is brilliant and love it. This is smart, hard sci-fi, dealing with matters of humanity (as most SF does) and asking some really interesting questions about what sentience is and what makes human consciousness and intelligence unique. On that level, I think this book was great. Smarter than me, for sure, but I can appreciate that. I ain't mad atcha, book!

Unfortunately, on just about every OTHER level, for me, this was a big letdown. I think that a lot of that is due to my expectations. This is one of the reasons why I like to go in to a book without knowing anything about it. Blind, if you will. (See what I did there?) But with this one... I was at the point of giving up on it and so I broke down and got some perspective on the book from others reading it. That didn't work out for me either, though.

Based on the discussion (and the genres on the book page, to be fair), I really thought that this was going to be a SF Horror book, complete with a comparison to the movie Event Horizon - a comparison that I don't see at all. I kept waiting for the book to get super depraved and horrorish... and I waited in vain. There was a tiny portion of the book where it seemed that it could go that way, but I blinked and almost missed it.

So, my expectations for what this book actually was definitely hurt my enjoyment, but having no expectations at all wasn't any better because I was bored and confused and really struggling with understanding the narrative and structure and what was actually being relayed.

I don't think that I'm a stupid person, nor a lazy reader. I do read mostly for enjoyment, but I also read to learn and experience new ideas, etc. I am willing to work to earn a payoff. But for me, this book was all work, and no payoff. I came out of this book thinking that it could have been much cleaner and much more structured and would have been a better book for it. I don't mind the multiple storylines or flashbacks or the characters who don't use pronouns or anything other than present verb tenses. I'm fine with those things, though the dialogue is super technical and confusing before adding those quirks in. Just sayin'. What I'm referring to regarding the structure is mainly the beginning, where every little mini-chapter gives us a little drop-you-in-the-moment snippet of infodump, some in first person, some in second person, all in faith that the reader will be a patient one and stick with it despite having no idea what the hell any of it means.

But, you know, as I type this, I kinda think that I'm actually starting to appreciate it a little more because I'm realizing that all of what I just said about the confusion really just puts the reader that much more into the story directly. BUT- it's one of those books that you'd likely have to read at least twice to really fully appreciate.

It really did require almost insane levels of patience for me to complete it. So much of the book is just info and tech specs and observation, and try as I might to find it interesting, it bored me for a huge chunk of the book. The last 10% or so brought it all together, and looking at the WHOLE, it's a much more cohesive story than it seemed to be as I was reading it.

*Sigh* So I've come full circle. It's brilliant, but damn frustrating. Yup. That about sums it up, so I'm giving it 2 stars for the frustration and one additional for the retrospective brilliance. ...more

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May 30, 2007 Jenne rated it it was ok

Shelves: didnt-finish

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 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 ...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: transhumanism, horror, space-opera, sci-fi, mindfuq, fanboy-goes-squee, worldbuilding-sf, top-one-hundred

This is one of those novels that make me feel like it's a wonder to be alive. Of course, that's a subjective statement implying consciousness, and therefore I am an evolutionary throwback who is spinning his wheels. And because I read this book and feel that the logic is unassailable, I still happen to think this novel makes me feel like it's a wonder to be alive.

Notice, of course, that this is the inverse of a depressive reasoning, and this is intentional, because this novel makes me feel like This is one of those novels that make me feel like it's a wonder to be alive. Of course, that's a subjective statement implying consciousness, and therefore I am an evolutionary throwback who is spinning his wheels. And because I read this book and feel that the logic is unassailable, I still happen to think this novel makes me feel like it's a wonder to be alive.

Notice, of course, that this is the inverse of a depressive reasoning, and this is intentional, because this novel makes me feel like it's a wonder to be alive.

If I were a computer, I might call this a halting state. If I were a man with half a brain, I might never have had this problem to begin with.

I think that's rather the point. I love this novel. It goes way beyond a simple entertainment factor and pushes me hard into the abyss of philosophy, and as I laugh and flail my arms about, thinking about the lovecraftian horror that's building an artifact ten times larger than jupiter in our solar system, I wonder if I'll ever leave this book again.

Indeed, I'm thinking about rereading it right away.

All of the characters are beyond fascinating. Check out anyone's review for this book and you'll see what I mean. Was I skeptical about a vampire captain of a spacecraft? You better believe it. On the other hand, Watts pulled this off with so much panache that the bloodsucker is now living in my brain. How did this happen? I've read way more than my fair share of vampire novels. This is almost the diametrical opposite of all of those. It's not only the evolutionary standpoint. It's the way he's given the vampire truly superhuman mentation a-la quantum computer AI's allowing for massive superposition computations. I laughed for ten minutes when I discovered why intersecting right angles tended to blow vampire minds.

Of course, it's not that cut and dried, either. His character was well rounded and as alien as everyone else. It's kind of the point. Only the most alien among us are the most qualified to parley with the truly alien. It's reasonable in context and execution.

I can't say that the real alien was more fascinating that the narrator or the vampire, and that's actually something because the alien was freaking awesome.

I absolutely love the ongoing discussion about consciousness, as it relates to the characters, and how it relates to the planet-busting sociopathic alien. It's treatment was probably the best I've ever read, in any format. It was certainly a lot more entertaining than any other.

The only other sci-fi novel to come close to the philosophical bent of this one was Anathem by Stephenson, but that's about as close to a comparison as I can get. Neither novel intersects much, whether by tone, action, or subject.

I can't believe I hadn't read this Hugo runner up of 2007 until now. Sometimes I feel as if I've been living under a rock. This novel is and will be an ongoing classic of literature. It should be on your real bookshelf if you say you love science fiction.

...more

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Dec 11, 2018 Jokoloyo rated it really liked it

Recommended to Jokoloyo by: Stuart

This is not an easy read. The book is a hard science fiction with a lot of ideas, maybe too much for some people that has no special interest in one or two of the science that mentioned in this book. It sure gave me some things to check in internet, like blindsight (it is a real life phenomena), and other science stuff appeared in this book. This book is also discuss about behavioral and consciousness, oh just read other reviews for details, I am not good discussing heavy subjects.

My only concer ...more

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Jul 15, 2018 Manuel Antão rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Epiphenomenal Consciousness: “Blindsight” by Peter Watts

“I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain.”

In “Blindsight” by Peter Watts

What if: There is only one consciousness that we all share? (Universal Consciousness)
What if: People are caught in the illusion of separation? (Encouraged by the limitations of the five senses)
What if: ...more

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Apr 07, 2017 Twerking To Beethoven rated it liked it · review of another edition

BR with Pizza, spaghetti, mandolino, Luciano Pavarotti and you can't even sing who happens to be a way quicker reader than ole Twerk.

I learned an awful lot of new words while going through this book, mostly because I found myself being forced to in order to even follow its most basic level of dialogue. Hands up, you bastids, who knows what "malapropism" means? Ha! Gotcha. I do now, but that's because I googled that shit along with heaps of funny words that I have now forgotten.

In the really tec ...more

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Jun 05, 2007 Alex rated it liked it

Shelves: 2007hugonominees

I'm still having a hard time figuring out what I think about this book. I don't believe that it is well written, but I also don't believe that it is a bad book. Let's start with the first one. I've had a brief note up here for a while about this book that pretty much defines why I don't think it's well written. Take a look at this quote:

"There have always been those tasked with the rotation of informational topologies, but throughout most of history they had little to do with increasing its clar I'm still having a hard time figuring out what I think about this book. I don't believe that it is well written, but I also don't believe that it is a bad book. Let's start with the first one. I've had a brief note up here for a while about this book that pretty much defines why I don't think it's well written. Take a look at this quote:

"There have always been those tasked with the rotation of informational topologies, but throughout most of history they had little to do with increasing its clarity."

Italics his. Oh, the irony of the italics. His problem is that he really relies on jargon an awful lot to make his descriptions, and for people who don't use that same terminology, it can be like slogging through mud to understand what he's saying. In the first third of the book, I thought this was going to be the worst of the nominees, just because I couldn't understand half of what he was saying. In the rest of the book, once he's done with setup and back story, it gets better. But it never fully goes away, and the fact that the setup and back story are so unreadable - and yet so important - is a pretty huge problem.

Now on to my second point. I believe this is actually a good book. The characters are distinct and interesting, the world he created is believable, even if the "vampire" concept is a little out there. But most importantly, he did science fiction with aliens and he did it right. This is something that he even cites in the acknowledgments, but when you're doing aliens, you need to make them unrecognizable. This is a huge challenge, but you have to conceive of a species that evolved in a completely different environment, coming up a completely different path and becoming something completely unlike humanity. Or anything else on Earth for that matter. Talking cats don't count.

His aliens are the most plausibly non-human I have ever seen. I'm giving this book it's score largely based on that. I want to give it four stars just because of that, but the poor writing and the fact that it feels a little unfinished at the end make it hard to do that. It has a great second act, one that doesn't quite live up to its potential for me, but a worthy hugo nominee all the same.

Even though I'm giving this book a lower score than the others, this may be the winner in my opinion. The aliens may not make it rise above other books in terms of the writing, but in a science fiction contest, I believe they do.

NOTE: After reading Glasshouse, my personal award goes to that novel and not this one. Stross managed to do everything right in that one.

...more

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Sep 15, 2008 Adam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literature-disguised-as-science-fic

Crank up some Xenakis and Penderecki and abandon hope all ye who enter here. A book as monolithic and labyrinthine as the alien artifact at the heart of it. A grim yet psychedelic book which probably earns Watts place as the new James W. Campbell. A dystopia and a first contact story bent into odd shapes like a bristling metal sculpture. Disturbingly, as hallucinatory as most sections of this book are, Watts seemed to have scientific rational for most of it. A stunning look at consciousness, ide ...more

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Dec 28, 2008 Lightreads rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, fiction

Yes, it is not quite as good as I’d been told, but orders of magnitude more brilliant than anyone had conveyed. Which statement will be very puzzling to anyone who hasn’t read the book, but just take my word for it: it makes perfect sense. And yes, this book will deservedly win this year’s Hugo, if the rumblings are right. Sorry, Temeraire, you’ll have another shot, I’m sure.

So. The actual review. Summarizing this book is quite difficult without being far too parsimonious or far too verbose. It ...more

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Aug 07, 2014 David rated it it was amazing

Recommended to David by: Gendou

Shelves: science-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is not an easy-reading book. It is complex, uses realistic technical jargon, and some rather esoteric psychological concepts. I enjoyed this book because of the wide range of interesting concepts that Peter Watts introduces in the story. The aspect of blindsight--the ability to sense one's environment without conscious awareness--is central to the story. Sometimes the human characters are subject to blindsight, but more importantly, the aliens they investigate act completely in blindsight. ...more

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Jul 11, 2013 Stuart rated it it was amazing

Shelves: dystopian, distant-worlds, hard-sf, alien-contact, galaxy-spanning, favorites

Blindsight: Mind-blowing hard SF about first contact, consciousness
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
This is ‘hard SF’ in the truest sense of the term - hard science concepts, hard to understand writing at times, and hard-edged philosophy of mind and consciousness. It aggressively tackles weighty subjects like artificial intelligence, evolutionary biology, genetic modification, sentience vs intelligence, first contact with aliens utterly different from humanity, and a dystopian future where ...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Doyle rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

I spent a majority of this book being lost. Not so lost in the ludicrous amounts of science jargon as I was confused by the "who/what is this?" Though the author sacrifices story and pacing at every convenience to flex his brain and show off all the cutting edge science theory he reviewed to prepare for writing this, my main bitch is simply not being able to follow even basic conversations held between characters. Every character/space ship/astral body in this book has a name, and possibly an ad ...more

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Jun 09, 2015 Michelle Morrell rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, x-read-2015, hugo-award-nominee

In order to expand my reading, I've been making an effort to put more hard scifi into my rotation, to get out of the "fluff rut" I've been in, riding books that are easy to consume but ultimately unsatisfactory. So, after many rave reviews (and a Hugo nomination), I chose Blindsight.

A shower of sparks streak from the sky, flashing the entire planet in what is obviously an outside intrusion, an alien snapshot. A crew of genetically modified people are sent to find first contact before it finds t ...more

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Sep 26, 2018 George rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Was there ever a book with a more fitting title?

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Sep 07, 2009 Kara Babcock rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2014-read, canadian-author, science-fiction, hugo-nominee, posthuman, from-library, vampires

I’ve had this book on my to-read list for several years now, and I feel like the me who added this book would have liked it more than the me who ended up reading it. One of the nice things about having Goodreads to help me track my reading, what I’ve read and what I want to read, is that sometimes I can remember why I’ve put something on my list. In this case I can’t, specifically, except maybe that I heard about Peter Watts or Blindsight somewhere, maybe io9, and it seemed like something I coul ...more

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Oct 22, 2020 Gabi rated it really liked it

Shelves: series-to-follow, hugo_nominees, locus_nominees

Whew! That was something.
I think I can safely say that this was the most complicated book I've ever read. I can now easily take on Joyce's "Ullyses", it will be a stroll in the park.

The concept here is brilliant. The questions about consciousness, intelligence and sentience are mindboggling. Yet it all is presented on such a high scientific level and in such a complicated narration structure that I can't blame readers who emotionally gave up on it. Because of this I deduct one star, cause I thin ...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Guillermo rated it really liked it

"How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of conciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." -Thomas Huxley

Blindsight is a very imperfect creation. It sputters and starts, it rears it's head, looks around, drops a poop on your lawn and asks you to just figure it out in your spare time please. I'm going to piggy back a little bit on some of the great reviews I just read (especially Ma "How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of conciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." -Thomas Huxley

Blindsight is a very imperfect creation. It sputters and starts, it rears it's head, looks around, drops a poop on your lawn and asks you to just figure it out in your spare time please. I'm going to piggy back a little bit on some of the great reviews I just read (especially Mark. Wow. Just wow.I think I lost my eyebrows reading that. he really nailed it) and repeat the sentiment that you know you are in a great deal of trouble when one of the first quotes is Ernest Hemingway informing you that "you will die like a dog for no good reason", or the preceeding heart warming dedication to Lisa, stating "if we're not in pain, we're not alive".

You're in trouble.

One of the best services that science fiction provides is to act as a mirror by showing us "the other". That way, we can understand ourselves and look at each other in a way we perhaps hadn't thought of. We often take for granted the real majesty of our existence and conciousness and think there just wouldn't "be" another way to "be", right? Wrong. The "other" in this book is so bizarre, so beyond our comprehension, that it makes sense. The other doesn't really even
feel like communicating with us, not because its a machine, or a hive mind, or any of the other usual sci fi tropes, the things aren't even concious! Steven Pinker describes conciousness as consisting of 3 different aspects: 1. Self knowledge - the ability to understand yourself in a mirror. 2. Access to information - you can tell me what you had for breakfast, the content of your daydreams, and whether or not your stomach hurts. 3. Sentience - what is it like to do whatever it is you're doing right now? Your subjecive experience, phenomenal awareness. The creatures in Blindsight have no such thing.

What is most troubling and/or thought provoking is that our species did not need this to become successful on this planet. Why did conciousness arise? For what purpose if it wasn't evolutionarily necessary, which I dont think it is.

Blindsight officially blasted my mind and the fact I can still say this several months after reading it, is testament to its insidious nature.

It's why I read science fiction.
...more

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Jun 27, 2007 Rob rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: self-styled xenobiologists

Shelves: 100-paperbacks, recommended, science-fiction, first-contact, 2007, 2013

...I absolutely tore through this book. An utterly fascinating read; well-done in both its science and its style. Watts makes some clever choices in structuring his narrator (and consequently, the narrative) without it coming across as a gimmick or some other bit of contrivance. So we have this faithful guide working in our favor and a good entry point for the story.

And then he slowly unfurls idea after idea that link together into a shillelagh to bash your brain in. At one moment near the end, ...more

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Oct 09, 2017 RG rated it really liked it

A real clever and thought provoking read. Deals with a tonne od subjects, consciousness, identity, philosophy, gender, death way too many topics to list. I loved the heavy science element and the characters. Its a first contact novel with a twist. I think the only negative for me, is that it occasionally got lost in its own cleverness which made some of the plot a little scattered or uneven to follow. Not one yo usually be obsessed with heavy scifi novels, but this is one the better ones i read ...more

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Oct 29, 2020 Oleksandr Zholud rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is one of the strongest hard SF novels of the 21st century (so far). I read is as a part of monthly reading for October 2020 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group for the book was nominated for Hugo in 2007.

On a surface it is a first contact novel: something alien signals late XXI century Earth with thousands of meteorites burning in our sky. The planet by that time has almost reached singularity, so a strange crew is gathered, headed by a vampire. It is not a fantasy as one can guess This is one of the strongest hard SF novels of the 21st century (so far). I read is as a part of monthly reading for October 2020 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group for the book was nominated for Hugo in 2007.

On a surface it is a first contact novel: something alien signals late XXI century Earth with thousands of meteorites burning in our sky. The planet by that time has almost reached singularity, so a strange crew is gathered, headed by a vampire. It is not a fantasy as one can guess from the end of the previous sentence but the idea that such mutation has been real in the past and allowed for hibernation among other things.

The narrator is Siri Keeton, a man, who due to serious developmental issues, had half of his brain amputated as a kid that allowed him to develop into a synthesist (”Explaining the Incomprehensible to the Indifferent."... "More like bridging the gap between the people who make the breakthroughs and the people who take the credit for them."). Other members of the team are no less odd.

The story starts in the middle, the first paragraph sounds quite incomprehensible:
It didn't start out here. Not with the scramblers or Rorschach, not with Big Ben or Theseus or the vampires. Most people would say it started with the Fireflies, but they'd be wrong. It ended with all those things.

During the first third of the novel this incomprehensibility doesn’t diminish much, which makes reading it quite a challenge. I actually have read it like a decade ago, so even after recalling in general terms what is “the big idea”, the novel was still full of surprises for me.

The book is filled with ideas from biology, linguistics, psychology and dozen other disciplines to a brim, or even more. Reading it is like eating a soup concentrate, it just too rich to enjoy. And non-linearity of the story doesn’t help. I even thought to lower my final rating of the book because in pure literary ways it is quite weak, but its wealth of ideas overweighed at the end.
...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Simeon rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Why do putatively brilliant scientists insist on explaining simple shit to one another? Their sole purpose appears to be strolling out at key intervals of the story and expounding on pop science.

"Oh hi, did you know that according to Game Theory the most efficient cooperative strategy is reciprocal altruism?" Game theory may not be common knowledge, but it's hardly arcane either. The UK actually has a TV show built around it.

Similar bleeding edge opinions on consciousness, neurology, and lingu ...more

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Jul 21, 2011 Alan Baxter rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction

The benchmark by which all first contact stories should be judged

I first read this book a while ago and recent conversations with a friend triggered me into reading it again. It blew me away the first time and it blew me away again on a second read. Honestly, I could read this book several times and get more from it on every go.

Peter Watts’ knowledge of biology is excellent – he has a doctorate in Marine Biology – but it doesn’t stop there. His knowledge and exploration of biology, anatomy, psyc ...more

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Feb 21, 2014 11811 (Eleven) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, reread

I bumped this up a star after the second read. It's not the author's fault that I'm too dumb to appreciate this in its full five star entirety. Some (a lot) of this was far over my head but I can honestly say I've never read anything like it.

Hard sci-fi and horror haven't crossed paths like this since Who Goes There?. Some of that was also far over my head until John Carpenter turned it into THE THING and then my dumb ass was like 'oh yeah, that's terrifying.' If you are a fan of this genre comb ...more

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Jul 03, 2016 Teleseparatist rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, owned, can-lit

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Moments that deserved four stars scattered among moments that deserved book throwing. Two stars it is.

Two jokes: 1) if free will doesn't exist, does it mean it's not my fault I read this and not Watts's that he wrote it?
2) For a novel that supposedly argues that sentience and self-awareness is not worth the cost, the book does a lot of navel-gazing and self-referentiality. (It even has the narrator berate himself for infodumping in the middle of an infodump.)

I like science fiction and I can eve Moments that deserved four stars scattered among moments that deserved book throwing. Two stars it is.

Two jokes: 1) if free will doesn't exist, does it mean it's not my fault I read this and not Watts's that he wrote it?
2) For a novel that supposedly argues that sentience and self-awareness is not worth the cost, the book does a lot of navel-gazing and self-referentiality. (It even has the narrator berate himself for infodumping in the middle of an infodump.)

I like science fiction and I can even have fun with hard science fiction (as pretentious as that name sounds), but in case of Blindsight there were several obstacles to me deriving enjoyment from the novel. Firstly, it drew precisely on the sort of "science" (cognitive studies and evo psych) that I'm most skeptical about (and the Dawkins fanboy moments... just really didn't work for me). Secondly, instead of using that science as an integral part of the narrative, it combined practical application of theory in thought experiment with massive infodumps, many of which made little sense because the people of the future probably wouldn't need the explanation (and yet some really advanced ideas are namedropped without explanation while some pretty self-explanatory concepts are explained. Go figure). Thirdly, the characters are cliched vehicles for thoughts. I think Sarasti has his moments, as do Amanda and Susan, but the cheap mess of the protagonist's family life... The two fridged women who only exist to attempt to make him feel things and be self-aware. The super special girlfriend and the mother whose abuse is that she wants him to love her. Was this really the best the author could come up with? Fourthly, the worldbuilding feels disjointed and tertiary to the science and philosophy. Is there a reason we should believe humans would be so willing to give up having sex in person but cigarette smoking and coffee drinking would still look pretty much the same (and in space at that)? And for what I suppose is meant to be a post-gender (and default post-racial, although Jewish people seem to exist) future, rape seems to be a common metaphor. (Probably because of evo psych and its perverse fascination with rape.) Animals also seem to have pretty much disappeared. And that ending... I've seen too many iterations of "vampires wage war against humanity" to consider that so completely natural in any way, for a super-intelligent species, without an additional incentive, just because of predator-prey relationship. That can be changed even in less intelligent species and predation is not only genes/biology/instinct, it's a learned behaviour too. (I'm sure a psychologist - or perhaps an animal psychologist - could explain the reason why that makes little sense more convincingly.)

But then, this to me reads like grimdark science fiction. Alas, I'm not a big fan of grimdark for the sake of grimdark and I don't think the more predatory the behavior the more natural it is.

Maybe the fault is mine. I read the description and I expected a book that might be hard science fiction, but that doesn't take itself too seriously. And this book did. ...more

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Jan 09, 2020 Erik rated it it was amazing

Blindsight, set almost entirely beyond the Oort cloud on the ship Theseus, tells a first contact story that’s a mixture of philosophy, narrative confuscation (ala Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun), dystopia, and horror. It is crafted with 100% authentic, locally sourced, GMO/pesticide/herbicide-free science fiction

-It has real actual science. Like powerful magnetic fields that induce Cotard’s syndrome. And references concepts like mitochondria and ATP and von Neumann machines. This is in contrast wit Blindsight, set almost entirely beyond the Oort cloud on the ship Theseus, tells a first contact story that’s a mixture of philosophy, narrative confuscation (ala Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun), dystopia, and horror. It is crafted with 100% authentic, locally sourced, GMO/pesticide/herbicide-free science fiction

-It has real actual science. Like powerful magnetic fields that induce Cotard’s syndrome. And references concepts like mitochondria and ATP and von Neumann machines. This is in contrast with most recent sci-fi Hugo nominees, like Six Wakes or Revenant Gun or Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy, which have no science and are, to be blunt, inane.

Blindsight, though, is smart and science literate and reading it requires actual thought. Wild, I know. But 2006, when Blindsight was published, was a different time, before the internet and cellphones transformed us into social cyborgs networked into a distributed intelligence.

-It explores ramifications of social change, like what happens when AI and robotics render the vast majority of human beings redundant. In Blindsight’s case, many of them willingly entomb their bodies in a cryogenic crypt while their minds inhabit a Matrix-esque virtualscape called Heaven. Those who do not (i.e. the entire crew of Theseus) become half-machine cyborgs in order to stay relevant.

-It has real actual aliens. UNPOPULAR(?) OPINION TIME: Star Wars & Star Trek are fun, but shallow. With few exceptions, aliens in pop sci-fi are either humans in costume/makeup or exotic beasts. Boring. NOT IN BLINDSIGHT THOUGH. These aliens are true aliens and discovering their nature gives Blindsight flavorings of a science mystery/detective novel.

-The core theme is philosophical in nature, in particular the question: What is consciousness good for? The entire book is meticulously crafted around this question, such that, in hindsight, I see how nearly every detail (e.g. the scene involving Cotard’s syndrome) ties in to the theme. That I strongly disagree with the book’s apparent conclusion about consciousness is no mark against the book’s quality. Good writing doesn’t merely reinforce your own beliefs but forces you to defend them from intelligent critiques. Even, perhaps, to abandon those beliefs if you find you cannot defend them.

In short, great book. Philosophical, science-literate, intelligent, insightful. Also, it has vampires. ...more

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“Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life me understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.” — 108 likes

“Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains — cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes evermore computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.” — 92 likes

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