Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

by Peter Watts

2006. Borrowed from CLPK on 8/7/25 after reaeding half in a borrowed hard cover copy also from CLP, to read for the Second Foundation gathering on August 10. Really good, if a bit challenging for me See my notes and meeting notes on the ASUS HDD here: C:\Users\14124\Documents\Art, History, Literature\Literature\Speculative\Second Foundation\2025-08-10 2d Foundation - Peter Wwtts And as posted to Goodreads here:

Ewww,

by Elizabeth Bear

Imagine you are Siri Keeton.

about to discover just how wrong the universe can really be.

“hard” science fiction.

also a poet—

easy?

Imagine you are Siri Keeton.

How Siri creates empathy. See passim. What lessons for understabding the aliens? Question

Imagine you are a machine.

Only a fool would resurrect a monster without safeguards in place.

When Cruncher took a rare turn at the helm—

you just—imagine how your targets behave.”

“You think we’re nothing but a Chinese Room,” Rorschach sneered.

Yup. HAha

Imagine

Imagine

an artifact that embodies the very notion of torture, something so wrenched and disfigured that even across uncounted light-years and unimaginable differences in biology and outlook, you can’t help but feel that somehow, the structure itself is in pain.

Now make it the size ...

“Hostile,” Szpindel said at last. “Friendly. We learned those words for life on Earth, eh? I don’t know if they even apply out here.”

“It says it wants to be left alone,” Szpindel said. “Even if it doesn’t mean it.”

but—no. I shouldn’t.” “Shouldn’t what?” “Bring up, well, old hurts.”

“There are all kinds of abuse, Siri. Words can hurt more than bullets, sometimes. And child abandonment—”

“He didn’t abandon me.” He left me with you.

“He abandoned u...

She hated him because he hadn’t had the good grace to grow unnecessary?

back then people wanted to spend time with their families.

To, to choose to stay working when it isn’t even necessary, that’s—” She shattered and reassembled at my shoulder. “Yes, Siri. I believe that’s a kind of abuse.

I just thought—well, really, I thought you ought to know. Take it for what it’s worth.”

when it came right down to it she was only talking to herself.

“What about life inside the structure?” “Anoxic atmosphere. Probably rules out complex multicellular life.

“It’s got to be a habitat for something. Why any atmosphere at all, if it’s just some kind of terraforming machine?”

something obviously saw us coming. It yelled at us, as I recall.

like stones chucked into a haunted forest.

simile nice

We’d seen Rorschach’s walls move, slow lazy waves of peristalsis rippling along its gut.

treacly invaginations in progress,

Ultimately, every one of them had died or disappeared.

We’d tried everything. “We can go in ourselves,” James said. Almost everything.

Rorschach kills you whether you’re meat or mechanical.”

“And completely asymptomatic for three hours or more. And even after that it would take days for us to actually die and we’d be back here long before then, and the ship could patch us up just like that.

“I’ve discussed it with the rest of the gang, Isaac. We’re all agreed.” “All agreed? You don’t have a working majority in there, Suze.

Haha

“Doesn’t matter,” Sarasti said. “We don’t vote here.”

“Prepping Scylla.

Platelet boosters, dimenhydrinate and potassium iodide for everyone

“We’re a long way out, Siri. Can’t wait fourteen months for feedback from your bosses,

I already knew why Sarasti was sending me into Rorschach, and there was more to it than observation.

Three valuable agents in harm’s way. A decoy bought one-in-four odds that an enemy would aim somewhere else.

NIV: 6 `The Spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person. 7 Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with(U) you. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=i%20sam%2010&version=NIV,KJV

“Our integration may have actually occurred quite recently. Some experts think we can still revert to multiples under the right circumstances.”

Alter carried baggage over a century old, ConSensus told me.

MCC was MPD, a disorder rather than a complex,