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Blindsight

by Peter Watts

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: Firefall (1)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
2,9841434,620 (3.88)1 / 117
Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight
Two months since the stars fell...
Two months of silence, while a world held its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist??an informational topologist with half his mind gone??as an interface between here and there.
Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied
… (more)

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Group TopicMessagesLast Message 
 Centipede Press: ISO: Blindsight2 unread / 2astropi, November 2021

» See also 117 mentions

English (140)  Spanish (1)  Finnish (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (143)
Showing 1-5 of 140 (next | show all)
Blows your mind especially when don’t have any pre-familiarity with philosophy of mind and speculative theories in neuroscience. ( )
  nitrolpost | Mar 19, 2024 |
it has a SEVERE case of no likable characters, but i still appreciated what it had going on. ( )
  ansate | Feb 5, 2024 |
Wasn't a huge fan, but it was alright. Probably won't read the rest of the series. The creatures moving during eye saccades (?) was very interesting though. ( )
  cactuscat | Dec 31, 2023 |
I really want to give this book more. I really do. But I can’t honestly do it for a fraction of whole story concerning only Siri Keeton. There is too many other things that irregularly spread throughout the book that won’t come out as a whole. I think this book is compressed too much.

But the story of Siri Keeton... this is difficult. Idea of Chinese Room applied to social interaction feels so close to home that it really really hurts. And this book don’t show the way out of there. It is totally depressing and hopeless. ( )
  WorkLastDay | Dec 17, 2023 |
Fantastically 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. ( )
  thisisstephenbetts | Nov 25, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 140 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review

» Add other authors (11 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Peter Wattsprimary authorall editionscalculated
Bear, ElizabethIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pringle, ThomasCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Shimada, YoichiTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
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Epigraph
Try to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. It's not real. It's just a dream.
- Ted Bundy
This is what fascinates me most in existence:
the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.

– Philip Gourevitch
You will die like a dog for no good reason.

– Ernest Hemingway
Dedication
For Lisa
If we're not in pain, we're not alive.
First words
It didn't start out here.
Quotations
Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Les animaux vivant en meute mettent toujours en pièces les plus faibles d'entre eux. Tous les enfants le savent d'instinct.
On oubliait facilement l'IA quantique au cœur de notre vaisseau. Elle restait discrètement fondue dans le décor, nous nourrissant, nous transportant, imprégnant notre existence comme un dieu discret, mais tout comme Dieu, elle ne prenait jamais nos appels.
Il est beaucoup plus facile de vivre en se sachant vandale que meurtrier.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (2)

Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight
Two months since the stars fell...
Two months of silence, while a world held its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist??an informational topologist with half his mind gone??as an interface between here and there.
Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary
Sentient contact?

Conscious thought avails you not

Scramblers are coming

(amweb)

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Average: (3.88)
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