Blindsight

Super great stuff. Really gets pretty out there with some of the concepts and elements Watts uses but pulls it off super well in a grounded way. Vampires, cyborgs, and aliens all play pivotal roles in this story and all of it works super well when it really shouldn't. It's also extremely depressing at times, but I love that in a story, especially sci fi. Buy this. Now.

This is a first contact novel that's as interesting for the philosophical and literary questions it raises as it is for the narrative. The book follows the adventures of the crew of a space ship sent to meet an alien object entering the solar system. Several of the twenty-first century crew are extraordinary: the narrator, whose autism has been partially repaired and whose job is to clarify events for the folks back home; a brilliant predator from an extinct race; and a linguist with multiple personalities. Besides the efforts to communicate with the intruder, flashbacks into the narrator's life are also included. The book also examines a future on where the human race is able to create a kind of spiritual heaven here on earth. Readers concerned with structure will wonder at what the author is driving with this mixed bag of crewmembers and an alien with whom communication seems particularly difficult. Often events and conversations occur which lead the narrator to draw conclusions which he does not share with the reader, which may lead the reader to wonder if he is following the story as intended by the author. Moreover, the philosophical question that the author raises is not immediately apparent. Eventually it will be revealed and what has gone before will fall into place. The literary question is whether the nature of the philosophical question should be cloaked for so long. To reveal the question early on will enable the reader to understand characters and events as they unfold. To delay confuses the reader but leads to the thrill of discovery as the puzzle is revealed. The author has chosen the latter course and so I'm not even able to reveal the main philosophical question without spoiling the tale. If you require science fiction with plenty of action rather than character development and philosophical inquiry, this book may seem a little slow to you. Much of the action seemed to me like an H.P. Lovecraft story with a lot of talk about the feeling of horror, without ever revealing what the horror is. On the other hand, if you don't mind feeling confused as the price of considering a question about man's nature that is seldom asked, you should enjoy this novel. (By the way, some will even ask if this question is even philosophical rather than scientific.)

Having read a fair share of science fiction in my life, I had grown more and more disillusioned with the genre. Could it be that all the sense of wonder was just a factor of reading SF during my formative years? Could it really be that all ideas in SF had already been expressed and that every new work would just be a rehash of old ideas? Blindsight very effectively reinvigorated my faith in the genre: There are some concepts presented in this book that still has me thinking, more than a month after I read the book. The fundamental idea of the book is NEW (to me, at least). It also doesn't hurt that the prose is razor-sharp. Highly recommended.

Blindsight tells of an expedition to investigate the apparent arrival of aliens in the Solar System. A ship, crewed by four strangely enhanced humans and commanded by a genetically recreated vampire, arrives in the far Oort cloud, and discovers an unusual and environmentally hostile object. Attempts to communicate are ambiguous -- it seems to contain intelligent actors, but it offers no real information, and warns them off. Naturally, the humans refuse to leave, and we are treated to attempts to land on the alien "ship" or "device" or whatever -- again met with ambiguous but mostly hostile responses. All this is interesting, but it hides the real interest of the book. The story is told by Siri Keeton, who is essentially autistic, and who "translates" the observations of the oddly altered specialists on the mission to terms that "normal" humans back on Earth can understand. So we learn something of the nature of these enhanced people: one is a vampire, one is a military genius of sorts, one has a cybernetic sensorium, and one, a linguist, has (on purpose) multiple personalities. In addition we learn of Siri Keeton's personal life: a mother who has retreated to a simulation, an often absent "spook" father, a love affair with a woman who specializes in tailored brain chemistry alterations. The eventual point of all this, and of the eventually realized true nature of the aliens, is speculation on the nature of concsiousness. Is consciousness real? Is it really useful? Is it necessary for intelligence? How much of the world around us do we really perceive and how much do our brains "simulate" for us? What our our brains capable of? How would predators think differently? Is real communication with aliens possible? Fascinating stuff throughout, wonderful "big idea" SF.

First of all, you've got to love a novel with footnotes and a bibliography. I just wish I had the resources, not to mention enough gray matter, to ferret them all out, and see if they all exist. Or understand the joke, for those that don't. Anyway, I digress. Watt's books make you think, and usually not happy thoughts. But it's not a far leap to see the world(s) his characters live in. I don't think I would have liked knowing any of the characters. But life is like that. I mean seriously, would you live in a building wehere you had neighbors like Seinfeld's? But reading about them (and Lennie and her compatriots) is a toally different kettle of fish. I learned a lot of biology reading his books. And now, I am willing to add Blindsight to the list of books that I keep in the back of my mind for those times when someone asks, "why do you read that stuff"? Its not just what you learn, and what you think, but also how you feel. Its complicated. Trust me.

Let's start with the cool factor, because that's what made me buy this the moment it came out. There's a protagonist with half his brain (the half that enabled empathy, apparently) removed, who makes his living reading other peoples' thoughts and intentions through close observation. Imagine a younger, colder, more focused Sherlock Holmes and then take away the drama queen tendencies, the social skills, and the cozy Victoriana; the part that's left might feel a bit like Siri. There are the intricately damaged altered-brain characters you might expect from Watts if you've read the rifters books. There's the space vampire who out-baddasses every other vampire I've ever encountered in a novel, and I know from vampire books. No gothy romantic hero here -- just a creature who has out-evolved you so thoroughly you can't even get your head around it. Now let's talk about the ideas. Blindsight takes on the evolutionary benefits of sociopathic behavior, and the ethics of torture, the puzzle of sentience, and what it means to intentionally develop a simulacrum of empathy and conscience (and whether it's worthwhile to do so). These ideas have been explored elsewhere, but I've never seen it done so well. Blindsight isn't *about* aliens or vampires or the future of technology. It's about us: our moral choices, our short cultural attention spans, the mental shortcuts we use so we can function, and what happens when our reach exceeds our evolutionary grasp. But I must digress, because it probably sounds like I'd describing something dry and obvious and preachy. Didactic fiction drives me up the wall. Heavy-handed exposition and self-important authorial philosophizing will make me drop a book faster than anything but bad dialogue. This book is none of that. Watts packs in so many thought-provoking ideas and so much straight-up SMRT that I'm still blinking, and he does it seamlessly, while keeping everyone in character, and without letting up on the pace at *all*. (I should mention that the book includes something that would, in any other book, be three-page infodump. Watts frames it so skillfully that it serves as an emotional climax instead. I goggle at the skill required to pull this off.) It's completely engaging from the first page to the last, and it's completely readable. It's not reassuring or fuzzy, but it's not a self-indulgent emo fest either. It's not flawless, but its successes overwhelm its shortcomings. It's very cold, very dark, supersharp, ambitious as hell, intellectually satisfying, and astonishingly light on its feet -- and I stayed up till three am on a worknight to finish it in one eight-hour gulp. If any of that sounds like your thing, buy this book. Maybe if enough of us do so, more publishers will realize that there really is a market for books like this.