Dear God, there are many days left in the year as there are books I need to review to complete a half cannonball… Let’s see how I go.
Blindsight
This is hard, depressing science fiction at its best, and one that certainly left a mark on me when I first came across it about 10 years ago. I hadn’t really thought about giving a re-read until recently when I was sitting at Book Club one evening and it was time to play the game of pass-the-phone-around in order to collect suggestions for future meet-ups.
And I got stuck. I do not know whether or not I was in a Sci-fi rut or if my stressed-out mind had ground itself shut, but couldn’t think of anything. (I was even too busy to sign up to support the Hugo Awards this year, leading to a broken five-year streak.)
So I was sitting there frantically flicking through my e-book reader, trying to find something to suggest, when I realised I never heard anyone mention Peter Watts before. After a quick ask around, it turns out at least one person was familiar, but surprisingly, for such a long-running book club, no one had ever suggested one of his books.
I felt that needed to be rectified. And that led to one of the more chaotic meetups I’ve had at Cafe Express*
Primarily, Blindsight is a story about first contact. IN February 2082, 2^16 alien probes–the Fireflies—suddenly appeared simultaneously across the surface of the earth, effectively scanning the whole planet. This left the entire human populace rather shocked and perhaps feeling a little bit exposed; basically, everyone and everything had been surveyed.
A number of years after this ‘Firefall’ event, a special team was put together and sent out on the high-tech spacecraft Theseus to investigate a superjovian planet located far into the Kuiper Belt—an object that may be linked to the Fireflies. This team consists of a collection of not seasoned astronauts but transhumance specialists; remember, this may be our first contact. From least to most odd, we have a combat specialist with a past, a man with cybernetically induced synesthesia, and a linguist with artificially induced Dissociative Identity Disorder.
And a Vampire.
Then there is our main POV: Siri Keaton, a man with only half a brain. After a bad case of childhood epilepsy, Siri was subject to a hemispherectomy, which, even for such an extreme form of surgery, has had some rather …atypical side effects.
Within the Oort Cloud, the crew of the Theseus encounters an alien vessel they end up naming Rorschach. Now, I think I’ve said many times before that I enjoy aliens that are completely and utterly alien, and Rorschach definitely fulfils that criteria. The crew initially think they’re able to communicate with it, but it slowly dawns on them that Rorschach may not actually be conscious. But it seems smart. And scarily manipulative. And in an atmosphere that puts me strongly in the mind of movie Alien, consciousness is the idea that Watts starts playing with: if it acts intelligent and conscious, should we actually assume it is intelligent and conscious? And is consciousness even effective or necessary?
Enough to give Rene Descartes a case of the brain scramblies. And enough material to make your book club go off like a frog in a sock.
But that’s not all. While not everything in Blindsight is super 100% biologically accurate, one thing Watts really excels at is coming up with inventive, very plausible-sounding explanations for many of the phenomena described in his book. My favourite is his mostly hard-biology-tuned explanation for vampirism and the not-exactly outlandish reason (but certainly a hilariously cynical one) as to why vampires exist in this scenario. And why you might want to put one on a space vessel. (No, really, his explanation as to why vampires are vulnerable to crucifixes is amazing. And I say that as a biologist)
This gave us even more fodder for our meet-up. Opinions were pretty split about the consciousness question, and most people liked the vampire. Surprisingly, they also rather liked Siri’s dad and really didn’t like his mum. So its obvious that this is a novel that generates discussions., even if it is not an easy-going book or a happy one. But despite this, it can also be surprisingly funny—especially if you have a sense of humour as dark as the Boötes Void.
So for fans of mostly hard sci-fi, Blindsight is definitely worth checking out. You can even get it for free of Watts’ own website; he may have been in a couple of disputes with his publisher.
And where are usually wouldn’t pick a reread for a book review, I think this blog maybe just as guilty as passing by Peter Watts as my book club? The only mention I could find of what’s on this site let me back to a book review I did while back concerning some platypus-focused, shape shifting, boy-on-boy smut… I think he deserves a better than that!