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charlieglynn's review
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
fleen's review
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
undesirablealien's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
peerio's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 first book, 3.5 for the second. Really good, difficult story about how the mind works (or doesn't), consciousness and free will, disguised as a SF novel. The afterword with 150 scientific references explaining everything makes me want to read it again soon, so I'll probably understand what happened better!
dearestdorian's review
2.0
If you like books with never-ending dialogue and under-explained technical detail, then this is the one for you.
jmkemp's review against another edition
5.0
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.
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.
siddharthageorge's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
stachuman's review against another edition
5.0
Was it only excuse to write it as SF novel - just to present all the theories?
zhengsterz's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Science fiction book about how genetically altered humans and vampires encounter aliens and the subsequent fall of civilization at the hands of this superior alien race.
First half had a protagonist in Siri Keeton, a man who acts as a translator between higher order humans and baselines humans, forced into this field by childhood disfigurement which we later learn was a result of his father's involvement in clandestine military activities which impacted his development in the womb. He is sent on the suicide mission to meet with the alien ship and ends up being the only survivor beeming back his finding to earth on his transit back.
Second half follows Daniel Bruks, a guy who refuses to get augments and is a baseline. Manipulated by the very end by the higher order beings around him to join them on a trip to find out what happened to the original crew, he ends up being infected by something alien allowing him to even best a vampire by the end of the novel, once they end up back on earth.
First half was better with a more endearing crew, writing style was not really that nice, really cool ideas about vampires.
First half had a protagonist in Siri Keeton, a man who acts as a translator between higher order humans and baselines humans, forced into this field by childhood disfigurement which we later learn was a result of his father's involvement in clandestine military activities which impacted his development in the womb. He is sent on the suicide mission to meet with the alien ship and ends up being the only survivor beeming back his finding to earth on his transit back.
Second half follows Daniel Bruks, a guy who refuses to get augments and is a baseline. Manipulated by the very end by the higher order beings around him to join them on a trip to find out what happened to the original crew, he ends up being infected by something alien allowing him to even best a vampire by the end of the novel, once they end up back on earth.
First half was better with a more endearing crew, writing style was not really that nice, really cool ideas about vampires.
alexgsmith's review
Blindsight
In the year 2082 sixty-five thousand objects of unknown origin fall through the atmosphere of Earth, burning. A ship and crew are hastily assembled and dispatched toward the estimated source, and what follows is one of the most original and compelling first contact stories I’ve ever read. The crew is composed of the bleeding edge of humanity; people that have willingly partitioned their brains into distinct selves, people so augmented they can see x-rays. A literal vampire captains the ship, an extinct predator brought back from the pleistocene, hyper-intelligent and controlled by their dependence on drugs that mitigate the seizure inducing effect of intersecting right angles (or the ‘crucifix glitch’).
One of the things I enjoy about science fiction is how through the alien, both in the sense of the futuristic and the other, it can explore reality in ways that may otherwise be difficult. Talking about this book is difficult without spoiling too much of the story, but it asks excellent questions about the nature of consciousness and what it means to be human. Dense with ideas but still very readable for such hard sci-fi, and while some language did stick out a bit awkwardly, overall it’s a definite recommendation from me.
Echopraxia
Echopraxia is set around the same time as Blindsight and follows events on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system. While the story in Blindsight served to explore and embody the ideas of that book, I didn’t find the same complementary relationship in Echopraxia. Here the plot seems more to be a way of jumping from idea to idea with nothing seemingly particularly fleshed out or cohesive to me; it was actually a bit confusing overall, really. There’s definitely some interesting stuff here that somewhat builds on Blindsight in terms of free will and the nature of existence, but I’d probably suggest picking up Blindsight standalone.
In the year 2082 sixty-five thousand objects of unknown origin fall through the atmosphere of Earth, burning. A ship and crew are hastily assembled and dispatched toward the estimated source, and what follows is one of the most original and compelling first contact stories I’ve ever read. The crew is composed of the bleeding edge of humanity; people that have willingly partitioned their brains into distinct selves, people so augmented they can see x-rays. A literal vampire captains the ship, an extinct predator brought back from the pleistocene, hyper-intelligent and controlled by their dependence on drugs that mitigate the seizure inducing effect of intersecting right angles (or the ‘crucifix glitch’).
One of the things I enjoy about science fiction is how through the alien, both in the sense of the futuristic and the other, it can explore reality in ways that may otherwise be difficult. Talking about this book is difficult without spoiling too much of the story, but it asks excellent questions about the nature of consciousness and what it means to be human. Dense with ideas but still very readable for such hard sci-fi, and while some language did stick out a bit awkwardly, overall it’s a definite recommendation from me.
Echopraxia
Echopraxia is set around the same time as Blindsight and follows events on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system. While the story in Blindsight served to explore and embody the ideas of that book, I didn’t find the same complementary relationship in Echopraxia. Here the plot seems more to be a way of jumping from idea to idea with nothing seemingly particularly fleshed out or cohesive to me; it was actually a bit confusing overall, really. There’s definitely some interesting stuff here that somewhat builds on Blindsight in terms of free will and the nature of existence, but I’d probably suggest picking up Blindsight standalone.
They clenched around the world like a fist, each black as the inside of an event horizon until those last bright moments when they all burned together. They screamed as they died. Every radio up to geostat groaned in unison, every infrared telescope went briefly snowblind. Ashes stained the sky for weeks afterwards; mesospheric clouds, high above the jet stream, turned to glowing rust with every sunrise. The objects, apparently, consisted largely of iron. Nobody ever knew what to make of that.