Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

384 pages

English language

Published Nov. 11, 2006

ISBN:: 978-0-7653-1218-1
Goodreads:: 48484

(2 reviews)

Blindsight is a hard science fiction novel by Canadian writer Peter Watts, published by Tor Books in 2006. It won the Seiun Award for best translated novel, and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The novel follows a crew of astronauts sent out as the third wave, following two series of probes, to investigate a trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt comet dubbed "Burns-Caulfield" that has been found to be transmitting an unidentified radio signal to an as-yet unknown destination elsewhere in the Solar System, followed by their subsequent first contact. The novel explores themes of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology and game theory as well as evolution and biology. Blindsight is available online under a Creative Commons license. Its sequel (or “sidequel”) Echopraxia came out in 2014.

2 editions

uhhuhthem reviewed Blindsight (Firefall, #1) by Peter Watts

interesting concept, flawed execution

3 stars

I loved the attempt to describe an alien that is fundamentally /alien/. trying to find a scientific basis for having vampires in the story was... interesting. the "climax" of the novel made no sense, although in its favour, I guess that made it a surprise. the casual and incredibly pervasive misogyny was tiresome, and seems to be on the part of the author rather than just another characteristic to make the protagonist unlikable (it wasn't necessary), considering that there are relatively few slurs in the novel but four misogynistic ones, and one of those is slung by the author in his endnotes at three scientists whose work he thinks insufficiently deals with their areas of research.

part of me wants to know how the core ideas spin out in the sequels but the much bigger part of me wants to avoid anything else by this author.

Marek reviewed Blindsight (Firefall, #1) by Peter Watts

The uncertainty of first contact, amid the uncertainty of human contact.

4 stars

Content warning Mildly spoilery review, no details

I have only just encountered Watts's work. This book is a crashing tangle of ideas, drawing from evolutionary biology, to (most particularly) cognitive science and philosophy of mind of the late 1990s.

A ship, whose crew are all variously transhuman in diverse ways, are sent to communicate with first contact. The newcomers, however, are deeply mysterious, alien in the realest sense. The result a disorienting experience in which none of the available main characters are quite someone you can wholly empathise with, and we remain uncertain throughout of just what the encounter will involve for the crew or humanity generally.

My perception overall is this book, with its extensive references and sources section, is the kind of thing you might get if Michael Crichton wrote space opera (though perhaps more disciplined and sharper). It is jam packed with well executed ideas. Ultimately, I found it quite difficult to get through in parts simply because of just how utterly out of their depth everyone was, and how desperate and hopeless the contact mission would seem to be. I suspect this is indeed Watts's intent.

While it was nice to see the richness of the cognitive science being drawn on, my own theoretical commitments also mean that none of what is in play with regards to human cognition is really tenable though. That's a very niche complaint that most of the world won't have. A little more broadly is the easiness of the some of the evolutionary psychology though - some of which is I think a little problematic.

Overall, though, this is a very solid, well written space opera thriller, if a little grim.

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