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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
I put this one off for too long. And for good reason. Blindsight has been touted as one of the hardest-to-parse science fiction novels ever, tackling a plethora of ideas, both technological and philosophical, with a cast of characters who could easily be described as psychopathic and/or insane, and a narrative hook centered around the idea of intelligence and consciousness. It's every bit as harrowing as it sounds, but thank god Peter Watts had enough rebellious whimsy in him to at least make it fun and put a scientifically plausible vampire in the story. No, really—Sarasti brought just the right amount of fantasy to break the surface tension in Watts' lofty psychological stronghold.
It helps that our main character, Siri Keeton, is also compelling enough on his own, so long as you can get behind the idea of a narrator who had half his brain ripped out and replaced with computer processors, who has lost his ability to empathize without mimicry, and acts mostly as an observer. His perspective may be a tad dry and analytical, but his account is authentic to who he is, and it's hard not to relate to the interpersonal challenges he faces despite being able to read people and process subliminal data like a savant. When Earth is snapshotted by 65,000 alien objects burning up in the atmosphere, thus taunting humanity into an interstellar goose chase, Siri is put on board because his detached perspective and cerebral augmentation makes him a crucial asset in understanding and giving an honest report of the situation (wink wink nudge nudge).
If I had to describe the general experience of Blindsight to someone, I'd say it's almost like if William Gibson wrote a space opera grounded in real science. Blindsight could definitely be considered cyberpunk adjacent due to its focus on characters who almost all have some sort of neurological or physical augments—apart from Siri, we have cyborg biologists who can possess machinery, an enhanced soldier who controls a whole army of automaton grunts, and a linguist with multiple self-inflicted personalities (who were actually a pain in the ass to keep track of). Sarasti, our vampire ringleader, even communes with Theseus—the AI-captained spaceship, which is honestly a whole character in itself with mysterious motives—by plugging a cable directly into his brainstem. The Gibson comparison comes with the clause that Watts' prose mostly comes off as Gibson-esque out of necessity to describe the sheer amount of far-flung tech surrounding our characters. When it comes down to sentence structure and flow, they are quite distinct, but they do have a similarly gritty tone and perhaps even a similar sense of humour.
One of my favourite concepts in all of Blindsight, though, has to be that of Heaven as a digital space where people essentially opt into medically induced comas where their bodies are kept physically alive but their consciousness roams the datumplane (stealing that word from Hyperion). The real kick is that individuals in Heaven become so disconnected from their physical selves as they get lost in the infinite realms of Heaven that when they do materialize themselves for an audience, they appear as an abstract mirage of floating lights, mirrors and data, although they retain their voice and most of their personality.
The sheer density of ideas really is the central strength of Blindsight. I won’t pretend to fully grasp everything Watts is trying to say about consciousness here, but it is presented in a compelling (and, more importantly, entertaining) enough manner to warrant further thought. The characters were all conceptually unique, but personality-wise they were quite dry. Siri and Sarasti were the only real highlights, and I love how Watts plays with your sympathy and fear of/for both characters. It is also really hard to follow what is physically happening a lot of the time. Watts is describing things most people have never and will never see in their lifetime, and he doesn't hold the readers hand or even so much as try to paint a clear picture; he dives straight into the micro level details, which makes for a visceral but spatially disorienting experience.
Despite its overwhelming nature, Blindsight has earned its reputation as a classic—partially due to the amount of unreliability in the narration and the amount of blind spots that Watts has left up to interpretation, which inspires a lot of speculation and incentive to re-read. The more this book simmers in the back of my mind, the more I love it; it is just so bold and well crafted, with steady pacing that really sneaks up and grabs you by the ankles in the last third or so. I can already tell that a second read will yield much more fruit.
It helps that our main character, Siri Keeton, is also compelling enough on his own, so long as you can get behind the idea of a narrator who had half his brain ripped out and replaced with computer processors, who has lost his ability to empathize without mimicry, and acts mostly as an observer. His perspective may be a tad dry and analytical, but his account is authentic to who he is, and it's hard not to relate to the interpersonal challenges he faces despite being able to read people and process subliminal data like a savant. When Earth is snapshotted by 65,000 alien objects burning up in the atmosphere, thus taunting humanity into an interstellar goose chase, Siri is put on board because his detached perspective and cerebral augmentation makes him a crucial asset in understanding and giving an honest report of the situation (wink wink nudge nudge).
If I had to describe the general experience of Blindsight to someone, I'd say it's almost like if William Gibson wrote a space opera grounded in real science. Blindsight could definitely be considered cyberpunk adjacent due to its focus on characters who almost all have some sort of neurological or physical augments—apart from Siri, we have cyborg biologists who can possess machinery, an enhanced soldier who controls a whole army of automaton grunts, and a linguist with multiple self-inflicted personalities (who were actually a pain in the ass to keep track of). Sarasti, our vampire ringleader, even communes with Theseus—the AI-captained spaceship, which is honestly a whole character in itself with mysterious motives—by plugging a cable directly into his brainstem. The Gibson comparison comes with the clause that Watts' prose mostly comes off as Gibson-esque out of necessity to describe the sheer amount of far-flung tech surrounding our characters. When it comes down to sentence structure and flow, they are quite distinct, but they do have a similarly gritty tone and perhaps even a similar sense of humour.
One of my favourite concepts in all of Blindsight, though, has to be that of Heaven as a digital space where people essentially opt into medically induced comas where their bodies are kept physically alive but their consciousness roams the datumplane (stealing that word from Hyperion). The real kick is that individuals in Heaven become so disconnected from their physical selves as they get lost in the infinite realms of Heaven that when they do materialize themselves for an audience, they appear as an abstract mirage of floating lights, mirrors and data, although they retain their voice and most of their personality.
The sheer density of ideas really is the central strength of Blindsight. I won’t pretend to fully grasp everything Watts is trying to say about consciousness here, but it is presented in a compelling (and, more importantly, entertaining) enough manner to warrant further thought. The characters were all conceptually unique, but personality-wise they were quite dry. Siri and Sarasti were the only real highlights, and I love how Watts plays with your sympathy and fear of/for both characters. It is also really hard to follow what is physically happening a lot of the time. Watts is describing things most people have never and will never see in their lifetime, and he doesn't hold the readers hand or even so much as try to paint a clear picture; he dives straight into the micro level details, which makes for a visceral but spatially disorienting experience.
Despite its overwhelming nature, Blindsight has earned its reputation as a classic—partially due to the amount of unreliability in the narration and the amount of blind spots that Watts has left up to interpretation, which inspires a lot of speculation and incentive to re-read. The more this book simmers in the back of my mind, the more I love it; it is just so bold and well crafted, with steady pacing that really sneaks up and grabs you by the ankles in the last third or so. I can already tell that a second read will yield much more fruit.
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The novel follows the adventures of a Synthesist (someone who observes systems and describes them in ways other people can understand) on board the first manned vanguard on its way to investigate what appears to be an alien incursion into the solar system. The book takes place through flashbacks and contemporary events on board the Theseus, orbiting over a gas giant out in the Oort cloud, hovering next to a strange interstellar taurus-shaped spaceship with scads of radioactive and magnetic fields. It's an interesting but difficult read. A few quick thoughts:
* This is hard SF, with lots of science and science-y sounding mumbo jumbo throughout the book. Space travel and physics play a role, but the key area of science discussion is brain chemistry, psychology, biology, and evolution. All at once.
* The main character sees himself as a Chinese Room, an amusing bit of philosophical thinkery devised to refute the Turing test. In this context, Siri sees himself observing systems without understanding them. This includes his interactions with other people as well.
* The novel spends a lot of time pondering consciousness and the brain, asking what we are if not just meat machines. It suggests (rather grimly) that perhaps consciousness is an evolutionary byproduct of our ever-larger minds that actually gets in our way. It slows us down, and a system that simulated consciousness without being conscious would be better. (This is, by the way, the thought experiment of the philosophical zombie.)
* Watts solves the space travel problem by supposing that we discover both gene splicing and that vampires are a long-forgotten branch off our own evolutionary tree. We discover them, revive them, and take the bit of their genetics that lets them lie dormant for centuries, splice that into our own people, and we have long-distance space travel.
* Among the phenomena our characters encounter on the alien ship are "scramblers," starfish-like man-sized creatures with arms that look like human spinal columns and orifices at the end of each limb. Oh, and they're covered with tiny eyes that double as processing power for their body-sized brains.
It's an interesting book, but dense with science and description in a way that makes it pretty inaccessible.
* This is hard SF, with lots of science and science-y sounding mumbo jumbo throughout the book. Space travel and physics play a role, but the key area of science discussion is brain chemistry, psychology, biology, and evolution. All at once.
* The main character sees himself as a Chinese Room, an amusing bit of philosophical thinkery devised to refute the Turing test. In this context, Siri sees himself observing systems without understanding them. This includes his interactions with other people as well.
* The novel spends a lot of time pondering consciousness and the brain, asking what we are if not just meat machines. It suggests (rather grimly) that perhaps consciousness is an evolutionary byproduct of our ever-larger minds that actually gets in our way. It slows us down, and a system that simulated consciousness without being conscious would be better. (This is, by the way, the thought experiment of the philosophical zombie.)
* Watts solves the space travel problem by supposing that we discover both gene splicing and that vampires are a long-forgotten branch off our own evolutionary tree. We discover them, revive them, and take the bit of their genetics that lets them lie dormant for centuries, splice that into our own people, and we have long-distance space travel.
* Among the phenomena our characters encounter on the alien ship are "scramblers," starfish-like man-sized creatures with arms that look like human spinal columns and orifices at the end of each limb. Oh, and they're covered with tiny eyes that double as processing power for their body-sized brains.
It's an interesting book, but dense with science and description in a way that makes it pretty inaccessible.
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I definitely did not feel like I was smart enough for this book. I couldn’t tell if this was written pretentiously, or I just didn’t get it. However the parts I liked, I loved, but parts also left be very confused with no idea what was happening. I almost felt like I was reading book 2 of a series.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes