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crownh8 's review for:
Blindsight
by Peter Watts
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.