Blindsight
Written by Peter Watts
Narrated by T. Ryder Smith
4/5
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About this audiobook
Editor's Note
Loaded with ideas…
This is hard science fiction at its finest, loaded with jargon and philosophical concepts about the very notion of self and identity, taking place at the moment of first contact with an alien species at the edge of our solar system.
Peter Watts
Peter Watts is a former marine biologist, flesh-eating-disease survivor and convicted felon whose novels—despite an unhealthy focus on space vampires—have become required texts for university courses ranging from Philosophy to Neuropsychology. His work is available in 21 languages, has appeared in over 350 best-of-year anthologies, and been nominated for over 50 awards in a dozen countries. His (somewhat shorter) list of 20 actual wins includes the Hugo, the Shirley Jackson, and the Seiun. Peter is the author of the Rifters novels (Starfish, Maelstrom) and the Firefall series (Blindsight, Echopraxia).
More audiobooks from Peter Watts
Reach for Infinity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Echopraxia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Echopraxia - Booktrack Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for Blindsight
1,042 ratings74 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title to be an amazing book for Sci-Fi enthusiasts. The complex narrative may be challenging for those not familiar with the genre, but the thought-provoking content and memorable ending make it a worthwhile read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastically cynical hard sci-fi, overflowing with ideas. Some of the most memorable are barely relevant to the plot. Themes of first contact, alien lifeforms, body modification, consciousness, communication. Wrapped in a gripping and highly focussed plot. Hope the later books live up to this one.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good hard sci-fi adventure story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If you've ever bemoaned starting from zero with each new book, hearing the same sci fi tropes explained for the hundredth time and just want a book that throws you in the deep end, this is it. With shades of Hyperion and The Expanse, this single book has packed in the world building of a trilogy and expects you to keep up.
Although the book is dense and narratively complex in a rewarding way, it stumbles a bit toward the end and doesn't tie things up in a nice bow. High hopes for the sequel. - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I liked it at first, and I still like the description of the aliens and their ship. The strangeness and all.
But. There are zero likable characters, the flashbacks are totally unnecessary and serve only to show how unlikable the protagonist is, and my biggest problem is the ending. The ending is like the author showing his middle finger and grinning smugly. I know it's hip to be edgy, nihilistic, and all, but it's not my thing. I grew tired of the monologues about things the author seems to find meaningful.
And the vampire...I thought the concept cool, but in the end he too was totally non-relevant. I found it hilarious the he had a regular Finnish name, though. The Finnish translation by J. Pekka Mäkelä was very good.
Rating as a book: 3/5
How I liked the story: 1/5 - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5it has a SEVERE case of no likable characters, but i still appreciated what it had going on.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Despite its great reviews, I just couldn't get into this book. Maybe it's due to the time of day that I've been reading it, 10 to 12 midnight. At that time of the day, I'm not my sharpest so the far-out concepts in Peter Watts' book are hard to make sense of. Also, it's not that good a read that I want to steal time from my day to read. With many books in my collection needing to be read, I don't feel like pushing through with something that I'm not enjoying, so today I gave up.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is basically the DSM in fiction form, plus vampires ... in spaaaace.
It has some interesting concepts but it's hard to follow which character is which or visualize the shape of the ship. The superintelligent but unconscious aliens have parallels to the artificial intelligences we're starting to develop, too. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jargon-loaded sci-fi book with a bouncing, complex narrative steam. I wouldn’t recommend if you’re not a super sci-fi person. It was a task
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The end gave me shivers, tough to follow but when your brain is able to come up with a bit of imagery for the text you're reading or listening to, it really stands out as a thought provoking book and something you won't soon forget.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing book!! If you're a Sci-Fi enthusiast, you'll love it!!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A cracking, compelling story coupled with honestly challenging questions about the nature of consciousness and sentience, society and evolution... this is SF at its best.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It was good, finished far too suddendly, it reminded me a lot of Destination Void by Herbert, all in all a not that bad book
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Found this to be a bit needlessly cryptic at the beginning (bit like William Gibson), but picked up the pace and some clarity as it went on. Some really interesting ideas about extended cognition and sentience / free will embedded in an action story with aliens and explosions.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is an entry into the very small club of Science Fiction books that successfully portray a first contact scenario with a truly inhuman alien. The jargon is occasionally confusing, but the mysteries remain compelling up until their explanations unfold and the action kicks off. Around the edges of that story is an exploration of what it means to be human, and how that might change as both technology and medicine transform people’s bodies and minds. The human cast of this story has been transformed through various degrees of genetic alteration, cybernetic implants, surgically-produced multiple personalities, and even a partial lobotomy. Oh, and there’s even an honest-to-goodness vampire in this story, with a reasonably plausible scientific explanation behind him.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was a tough read, and although personal matters definitely interfered with my concentration, I think it would have been tough regardless. I don't read much hard sci-fi, and there were a lot of points (especially early on) where I wished the author were giving readers just a little bit more help putting the pieces together and offering connections. The read became more engaging as I got into the second part of the book and characters became a bit more familiar, to the point that I ended up reading the second half of the book basically in one sitting as the momentum picked up more and more.
This is one of those rare books I may try to read again someday, but I doubt I'll go on to the sequel. Some of Watts' writing is so fantastic that it alone is worth the ride here, and there were scenes/discussions/themes that truly drew me in, but on the whole, I'm left with more of a general feeling for the novel than a true understanding of what I just read, and reading the book was a bit more work than pleasure. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Extremely intelligent book that delves into first contact. One of the most visceral and compelling books I have ever read.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This sort of reminded me of the 2nd and 3rd book in the Annihilation trilogy - lots of amazing ideas, but I had a really hard time following some of the narrative and it made me want to see a movie or tv version of it.
There are some really deep, thought-provoking ideas about intelligence, language, consciousness, identity and more but the 1st person perspective and the pacing was so strange that the ideas never flew off the page like I wanted them to and I spent the entire read mildly frustrated.
Also, vampires. And digital heaven. And really crazy world building, maybe I'm not smart enough to comprehend all the science-fiction and science in here.
Weird one. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Most unsettling book I've read this year.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've divided this review into two parts - first describes the literary qualities - story, language, atmosphere, etc. The second one is about the ideas that are to a degree related to the story but also very strong on its own. Feel free to weight each of those parts differently and therefore arrive at your own rating.
The literary qualities
Nothing really interesting is going on in this department, its average at best. Maybe even bellow the average. The problem is not in the story - its really good, thought-out, without any clunky parts, but nearly everything else is.. alien to the standard experience, which does not necessarily means wrong but it makes it really hard to delve into the story and into the reading flow. In points:
- first 1/3, maybe even more, is confusing, rather boring and not making much sense
- there is something wrong with the form the book is written it, its not really a book that you can get immersed in, that puts you in the flow and allows you to get completely overwhelmed with it. It feels more like a literature of fact, like a transcript of a court session or something like that.
- I've found the technical jargon of the spaceship quite overwhelming, but i suppose that is because English is not my first language.
To sum it up I've been missing all the enjoyment of a good book in this one, from the literary side. It simply felt as if the language, story, characters were just a vehicle to convey all the points, all the information author wanted to.
The data
Function over form, that's what this book evokes in me. Peter Watts has some very interesting views on the human nature, consciousness, evolution, sociobiology etc., all more-or-less based in scientific research and they absolutely dominate every other aspect of the book. Both story and characters are simply proprieties to demonstrate these views and to present all the information in a way that is more comprehensible to us humans. Our brains were designed in such a way that it is much easier to comprehend information in a form of a story - we are primed for stories in every possible way. Our lives are stories we create for ourselves, our goals and desires are to a large degree created by the stories that circulate in the society and so on. Its much more cognitively taxing to think in the abstract terms. And it works, when the intended information and concepts begin to appear in the story everything gets more much interesting and the last ~100 pages are a brutal storm of incredible ideas well worth it. I was already interested in the topics that Watts covers here but he managed to make everything much more concrete, more pronounced and he stirred my interest, so I am more likely to pursue those information. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is very good sci-fi.
Really made me question the meaning of consciousness and sentience in a way that I'm still doing.
Definitely a 'big ideas' book, not a plot and characters one, though they weren't distracting.
atmospheric. creepy. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I picked Blindsight up thinking I'd be reading an immersive sci-fi story. At least I got the immersive part right. I guess it is, technically, also a sci-fi story in so much that the plot takes place in space, but labelling this book as sci-fi would be doing it a disservice.
This really is a heavy book, and keeping up with it is tough. Normally I put this down to lazy/pretentious writing and/or bad storytelling, but in this case it turns out to be more of a mutual agreement between the book and the reader. Yes, you have to struggle to get your head around it, but once your head is around it you realise that the struggle really was the only way to get where the book needed you to be. There is no black or white in this book, no simple characters, no easy answers. The characters are a collection of beings who are all very different, not only from each other, but also from what they once were, and what others may think they should be. The reader only ever sees these characters through the eyes of the narrator, Siri, who should in theory be the most reliable storyteller available. But is he?
So many things are explored in this book, and there are trains of thought that are ethically, emotionally and (for me at least) intellectually challenging. Several times I had to re-read segments, not because I had missed something, but because I just hadn't understood the point or the impact of what I just read. And when I did finally understand, that didn't always make me less confused or unsure of what was going on. This is a book that will keep you guessing and keep you thinking, not only about what is happening in the book, but also about things that go beyond the book itself.
In the end I have no idea whether I'd call Blindsight an inaccessible sci-fi story, or a somewhat accessible work of philosophy. I'm also not sure whether I liked it, or whether I loved it. The sci-fi in this book is solid, but is overshadowed by the great number of thought-inspiring avenues this book ventures into. I can't help but think I might have liked to go a bit further down some of these avenues, not to see them be resolved, but just to explore them a bit more. On the other hand, it's possible that the book very consciously stopped just short of where I would have liked it to go, and instead of "simply" being able to think about things, I also have to continue guessing as to what exactly the author wanted to make me think about.
It feels wrong to say that I enjoyed this book, but I'm very happy to have read it. The feeling Blindsight gave me is comparable to that of working on a very complex problem: solving it can be frustrating, but once it's solved I feel great. Having finished this book I feel like I've almost worked through most of the problem, but without the satisfaction of having resolved it.
Which, considering the book itself, seems about right. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5“I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain.”
In “Blindsight” by Peter Watts
What if: There is only one consciousness that we all share? (Universal Consciousness)
What if: People are caught in the illusion of separation? (Encouraged by the limitations of the five senses)
What if: Fear and insecurity give rise to the need to think of ourselves as the creators of our consciousness? (Perhaps we tune into consciousness like a radio tunes into a station).
"Consciousness" is body-mind. It is implied in the very meaning of the word "consciousness", the "con-" or "com-" signifying "together" or "altogether". What this "together" refers to is the senses and sense impressions. Body-mind is sensate consciousness, and is called therefore "mortal self in time" or "ego-nature". It is particularistic and therefore associated with "point-of-view" or perspectivising consciousness, like a searchlight or the beam of a flashlight stuck in one direction. This, and its self-understanding, is reflected in the famous symbol of the Enlightenment of a pyramid surmounted by the all-seeing eye such as symbolised still on the Great Seal of the United States, but is called by Blake "Single Vision & Newtons sleep" or "Urizen" or Urizenic Man. This is the "point-of-view" consciousness structure and is typically what we call "consciousness" or "mind". It is the perspectivising eye of da Vinci, but it is sensate. To be stuck in sensate consciousness is the human condition of narcissism. There is yet the awareness "before", "behind", "beyond", or "beneath", or implicit or tacit or however you want to describe it. The body consciousness, or mind, is only a function of the greater awareness. It is not sensate and is not dependent upon the body organisation for its function. By contrast with "point-of-view", it is "overview". In contrast to particularism, it is holistic, and perceives wholes rather than parts, and is often characterised as "oceanic feeling" or "oceanic awareness" and with non-locality. It is the “itself” that is referenced in the Zen Koan "show me your face before you were born". It is called by the neurologist Iain McGilchrist, "the Master", while the body-mind or body-consciousness, which is point-of-view and ego-nature, is called "Emissary". In those terms, the so-called "measurement problem" in physics is associated with the consciousness, which is body-mind, while the issue of "non-locality" (or synchronous effect or transluminal effect) is associated with the Awareness. In traditional Hermetic philosophy (alchemy), the body-mind was called "lead", and the awareness was called "gold". And the idea was to transmute the former into the latter through certain exercises, performances, or operations of a symbolic or metaphorical nature.
Most scientists explicitly abandoned Cartesian Dualism centuries ago. But as John Searle pointed out 25 years ago, most of them still implicitly accept a Cartesian distinction and are hung up on trying reconcile two things are not two. So materialists tend to separate the world into two kinds of phenomena and assign one of them to reality and the other to illusion. When we eliminate the ontological difference that is implied in this account, things become a lot clearer. Similarly for forms of idealism. Consciousness is subjective in exactly the same way that digestion is. The nutrients in the food we eat are only available to us because the processes that extract them are internal to our bodies. Similarly the brain is internal to us and thus its processes are only directly accessible to us.
The confusion about consciousness arises from two sources. The crypto-Cartesianism that still prevails and see mental and physical phenomena as ontologically different when in fact they are only epistemologically different. The problem of materialism is that it ignores the reality of structure. Clearly, the universe is made of one kind of stuff, but that stuff is made into a load of different things with many layers of complexity, with each layer displaying emergent properties. The only way to deal with this is to accept structure anti-reductionism alongside substance reductionism. In other words, structure is real.
The second source is the insistence on dealing with conscious states in the abstract form "consciousness". Of course we are still arguing about the features of this abstraction. We have the same problem with all abstractions. Digestion becomes incomprehensible if we treat it as an abstraction as well. Conscious states are defined by David Chalmers as easy problems. His Hard Problem simply doesn't exist because it’s based on an abstraction mistaken for an entity. There is no "consciousness" there is only a sequence of conscious states. And these are wholly generated by the brain - whose substance can be reduced, but whose structure cannot.
Searle also showed how we can have epistemically objective knowledge of ontologically subjective domains. The value of money is entirely subjective, for example, but objectively to anyone versed in European money, a 5€ counts as money of a certain value. This is an epistemically objective fact that has no basis in reality, only in the collective intentionality of people who use European money. Conscious states are ontologically subjective, but this does not preclude us from having epistemically objective knowledge about them.
These are problems for which there have been solutions available for a generation. The solutions are by no means simple, I'm just referencing the main ideas here, and the resulting philosophy although largely settled is far more open to possibility, changed, and the unexpected that any form of scientific materialism. The trouble is that philosophers are more interested in arguments than in solutions. If they solve problems then they are out of a job, so they continue to generate arguments. Douglas Adams summed this up very nicely when he lampooned them in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The conceptual impasse of Watts really only arises because he refuses to abandon Descartes. That's the first step to a better worldview. “Blindsight” was, for me, equal parts brilliance and frustration. Watts obviously spent a huge amount of time with his investigation, and brings these details together relatively seamlessly SF-wise (which is no mean feat with so much crap being published in the SF area nowadays), but the overarching theme (consciousness is, evolutionarily speaking, epiphenomenal) left me puzzled. The tone of Watts' novel is resonant with a certain philosophical emptiness and the accuracy of his scientific extrapolation is stunning; unfortunately, the central hypotheses of the book strained my credulity. In this sense, my beef may be more with the premise than the book itself, which is no fault of Watts. A requisite for consciousness is a matrix, or form, or pattern, upon which consciousness can build. Curiously that necessary maquette seems quite arbitrary, and is usually wrong. It is a genetically inherited assumption about the nature of reality. But once encumbered with that genetically-installed assumption, there is no pathway to an intellectual breakthrough.
To recap, an individual’s consciousness is simply one of the many Brain Operating Systems, based upon genetically-installed assumptions about the nature of reality. And is usually, and always wrong. The free book on the internet explaining it all runs to nearly a million words. It is tough going for those not familiar with the problems, and involves learning new concepts. The problem of consciousness is mostly down to a semantic error in the use of the word 'conscious'. If someone is hit over the head and is knocked out they may on recovering announce that they are now 'conscious'. It is clear that that's an empirical statement with a clear biological meaning. Descartes introduced an error in separating mind from body and gave rise to use of the word 'conscious' in a completely different (and I would argue meaningless) sense. So we have discussions about whether advances in AI will produce consciousness - utter nonsense of course, you might as well be arguing about whether a robot can have a pulse. The word conscious in this sense doesn't have a meaning.
Bottom-line: “Blindsight” is a work of Hard SF of the highest caliber worthy of the capital H (even with its flaws). Those who lament the lack of hard sf being published (especially deep, broad, quality, hard SF) in the last few years will find sweet relief here.
SF = Speculative Fiction. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Peter Watts is one of the more brilliant living science fiction authors, and "Blindsight" is an excellent addition to his work. This book has one of the more interesting takes on first contact with alien life I have read in a while, as well as quite a few interesting things to say on the topic on sentience.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Each generation has to re-tackle the major themes of science fiction anew, because the human world that aliens contact is changing all the time. You have but to look at, say, David Brin's 'Forge of God' to see that it was a situation where aliens were contacting the Earth of the mid- to late 1980s. Even when the first contact is set in the future, our view of that future hinges on how we view that future based on the concerns and emergent technologies of our own day. Arthur C. Clarke's '2001' was set in a very 1960s vision of a Big Science power block future. And the same applies to 'Blindsight'.
But there is so much more to 'Blindsight' than just first contact with aliens. The world Peter Watts has built (his afterword to the novel seems to hint that there are some connections with the world of an earlier trilogy of his, 'Rifters') is way in advance of ours in terms of genetic manipulation, personality restructuring, space colonisation and virtual worlds. Oh, and Watts has found a use for matter transmission that is restricted to sending single sub-atomic particles from a to b.
Having said that, Watts' Earth is only really sketched through the eyes of his characters; and we see comparatively little of it, mainly in passing. That's not really the point. And the aliens remain a puzzle, right up to the end where their belligerence is laid bare for all to see. And that is how it should be. Alien life is going to turn out to be more unknowable than we can imagine; Peter Watts gives us some pointers towards that.
But 'Blindsight' isn't even really a novel about aliens. Rather, he takes a group of characters from our world on a journey to find aliens who were responsible for manifesting an encounter with the unknown on Earth, the sudden appearance of 62,000 alien probes that burn up in Earth's atmosphere and in that short time very possibly found out much more about us than we did about them. The crew that is sent to try to find the beings responsible for that act is comprised of a number of individuals, all of whom are in some way or another damaged; the bulk of the novel is taken up with exploring those personalities and finding (for the most part) the humanity limping along inside the, even though many readers might reject those personalities as barely human. There are a couple of exceptions - the extinct evolutionary line of human vampires, which disappeared way back in our prehistory, have been genetically re-engineered back for their predator's skills in organisation and strategy. 'Human' hardly describes them (most of the time).
In the end, this is hardly a novel of first contact; rather, it's about us, about humanity at its weakest, when we are so damaged as to hardly seem human for one reason or another; and how, despite that, we are still human despite everything. Along the way, we have to get to grips with some serious science (as someone once said of another novel from another hand, "this isn't just Hard Science Fiction, it's bl**dy DIFFICULT science fiction!"). And then, just when you've resigned yourself to a long critique of the human condition, the action roars back with a vengeance - I had to read the last fifty pages or so in a couple of fairly breathless sittings because the story pulled me along. And all the science stuff fell into place, because it is important.
Anyone who thinks science fiction is merely escapist adventure needs to read this book. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm not a big hard sci-fi fan. I usually avoid it. Much of the jargon is over my head and the characters are usually kind of in the background and not very deep. I picked this up on audio thinking that the blurb sounded interesting - vampires and sci-fi sounded like it was either going to be great or crash horribly.
So I was pleasantly surprised by some of the deep characterization in this one and also that I liked the vampire. It really is amazing how intelligent some of these writers are. There were a number of different categories that Mr. Watts seems to be highly knowledgeable in and at least half the time I understood him with my lowly bachelors in computer information systems. That's not a bad ratio compared to some of the other hard sci-fi I've read in the past.
I do have to say I was left lost on a couple of things and even did some googling to get more closure. My wife, who read this book at the same time (on audio also) is now listening to the 2nd book so I'm hoping she'll have some answers for me. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Forget 2001 and its progeny, this is *the* novel about alien contact.
Both the aliens *and* the humans depicted in it seem both totally realistic but are 'alien' in different ways.
It is not an easy read, but it is a rewarding one... - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I really liked this book. Some of the ideas in it still have me thinking.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rather hard scifi (considering it's a novel about first contact featuring vampires in space, um) that - as good scifi should - asks difficult questions about humanity, consciousness and emotion.
I found this interesting and thought-provoking rather than enjoyable, but am struggling to write a review that doesn't turn into one of several essays. Good brain food; don't expect much in the way of sustenance for the heart. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This messed with my mind. The plot's okay, the characters are okay, but the main selling point here is the weirdness, and this book has plenty. It will make you think, and then it will make you think about thinking.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book suffered in my estimation because I read it in close proximity to Solaris, a book that is a vastly superior depiction of contact between humanity and an alien. That being said, Blindsight is a solid work of science fiction, and if I hadn't followed it up with what is perhaps the best depiction of otherness the genre has ever produced, I would have been impressed with how different and alien the aliens of Blindsight are. It only suffers slightly from too many ideas thrown in to one book syndrome, and only a few of the ways humans responded to the alien presence made no sense. In this genre, that puts you solidly above average.
In response to planet earth being photographed by aliens humanity responds by sending a warship. Why a warship? Who knows. Likewise it makes little sense why the people sent on this mission take the most aggressive course of action repeatedly against what they think is a technically superior species. I just chalk it up to that being what humans do in books like this.
In the crew that humanity sends no one is fully human. One has intentionally generated multiple personality disorder, one is a cyborg (am I remembering that right? It's been a few months), one has been augmented to control robots like they are part of her own body, and one is a hyper intelligent vampire. The narrator has the ability to analyze things objectively without feeling emotion due to childhood brain surgery. So like I said, there are a whole lot of ideas bouncing around here at the same time. It would have been nice to have at least one fully human character in the narrative to see how your average human would respond to the situations that occur, but Blindsight seemingly eschews the idea of science fiction as a way to explore the human condition in favor of cramming in lots of ideas about transhumanism.
There are some cool ideas here, like the one about how all the signals humanity sends out into the universe could be interpreted as an attack by aliens that think and behave differently from ourselves, but this book didn't feel like a complete work. Things happen, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes just because, and then it ends. Like I said, it's solid. Read Solaris, then read a bunch more Lem, then wait a couple of months, then if you still want more stories of alien contact then maybe give Blindsight a try.