From the Bookshelf of The Sword and Laser…

Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

Peter Watts

Start date: April 5, 2011

Finish date: May 2, 2011

Discussion: 2011 Reads

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2011 Reads

GO: Good Omens coming to TV
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last updated Mar 06, 2019 08:32PM

Ready Player One Casting
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What Members Thought

Oct 27, 2018 Silvana rated it did not like it

Shelves: kindle-google, reading-with-friends, sci-fi, disappointing, mine-mine-mine, dnf-i-just-cant, z-sff-2018-reading-challenge, huh-what

DNFed at 59%. A convoluted mess to me.

29 likes · Like · see review

Apr 12, 2011 Adrienne rated it it was ok

Shelves: library, science-fiction, first-person, sword-and-laser

This book failed to grab me in the beginning and then continued in that vein for the rest of its 380-some-odd pages. A lot of my dislike of the book is due to my own personal preferences, not the book itself; I thought the writing was fine and the dialogue was great, but that wasn't enough for me.

First of all, the main character, Siri, is unable to feel emotion. That makes for a narrator that I typically don't mesh so well with. It also made for a cast of characters that I couldn't bond with, be This book failed to grab me in the beginning and then continued in that vein for the rest of its 380-some-odd pages. A lot of my dislike of the book is due to my own personal preferences, not the book itself; I thought the writing was fine and the dialogue was great, but that wasn't enough for me.

First of all, the main character, Siri, is unable to feel emotion. That makes for a narrator that I typically don't mesh so well with. It also made for a cast of characters that I couldn't bond with, because Siri couldn't either.

The book is also filled with science jargon. (Okay, what did I expect, though? It's marketed as a hard science fiction novel.) Unfortunately, I spend all day reading and thinking in science jargon and therefore don't really want a whole lot of it in my books. Again, my own personal preference.

Finally, there was a vampire. That just seemed like something the author tossed in to up the book's cool factor, but it didn't work for me with the current trend of vampire/werewolf/supernatural/etc characters.

And as for the science, I have a few gripes (as usual). Thankfully, they were both rather minor parts of the book, but they annoyed me nonetheless. They are slightly spoilery, but nothing major plot-wise.

1. No one in their right mind sends out any sort of signal at 21cm. Yes, it's an important wavelength (and near and dear to my heart) but any transmission would be overwhelmed by 21-cm emission from all 10^66 neutral hydrogen atoms in the Milky Way. Argh!

2. The "quantum particle with 20 times the mass of Jupiter" (?!?!). I'd like to see how that thing works. Are all the wavefunctions of the subatomic particles that make it up coherent? And it seems to have a weather system of some sort?! Also, apparently Theseus "collapsed the wavefunction" by showing up in the same area BUT there was already another ship there! Gahh! Even if said quantum particle could actually exist, presumably its wavefunction would already have been collapsed by Rorschach observing it. Science grumble! ...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Tom rated it did not like it

Shelves: hard-copy

If you read a book because its thought provoking rather than entertaining, then you'll probably enjoy this. Me? Even when I read hard sci-fi (this is about as "hard" as sci-fi gets)- I'd like there to be at least one character that I can identify with... at some level. Not one to be found here.

Thought experiments seem to be the main endeavor in this story (ever hear of the Chinese Room experiment? Neither did I before reading this. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_... ), not plot or cha ...more

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