462 pages
Polish language
Published Oct. 24, 2018 by MAG.
Peter Watts bierze główne mity opowieści o Pierwszym Kontakcie i roznosi je na strzępy. Powstaje wstrząsająca i hipnotyzująca powieść, popis talentu pełen prowokujących i niepokojących pomysłów.
Oto 3 wydanie powieści, która szturmem zdobyła zarówno umysły krytyków jak i serca czytelników na całym świecie.
Ślepowidzenie nominowane było do nagród Hugo, Campbella, Sunburst, Locusa i Aurory.
It had some very interesting ideas but the book style and jargon is hard to read. I had to use LLM to accompany my reading just to understand the plotline
I might do a more thorough review later, with spoilers, once I'm on my computer
I read this a while ago and re-read it. It's a challenge to read, dense with invented jargon and hard to follow just because of how weird everything is. It's probably the most nihilistic book I've ever read, and the characters are not at all sympathetic. Nevertheless, having half understood it from reading it too fast 10 years ago, it has stuck with me since then, and held up even better the second time and I'm giving it a rare 5 stars.
The first time I read it, it was more emotionally impactful - more horror than sci Fi and in ways I was not at all expecting. The second time I felt like I could at least wrap my head around it completely.
Coming back in the age of LLMs certain concepts about what …
I might do a more thorough review later, with spoilers, once I'm on my computer
I read this a while ago and re-read it. It's a challenge to read, dense with invented jargon and hard to follow just because of how weird everything is. It's probably the most nihilistic book I've ever read, and the characters are not at all sympathetic. Nevertheless, having half understood it from reading it too fast 10 years ago, it has stuck with me since then, and held up even better the second time and I'm giving it a rare 5 stars.
The first time I read it, it was more emotionally impactful - more horror than sci Fi and in ways I was not at all expecting. The second time I felt like I could at least wrap my head around it completely.
Coming back in the age of LLMs certain concepts about what intelligence and sentience actually are start seeming a lot more relevant. Some of the ways the main character is unable to relate to other people reminds me of some of the dangerous Internet subcultures that have grown prominent in the past few years. It feels alarmingly more relevant than the first time despite not being at all about any of these things.
The characters are not like conventionally sympathetic but I think you have to approach the book with a willingness to empathize with a broader range of people than most books ask you to - not in the sense of being bad people but of being people who relate to the world differently than most people depicted in fiction.
The vampire thing is unnecessary and out of place, you could have the exact same story and not call them that
Two books I've read that I would say are most similar are Annihilation and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (not the movie though)
Really interesting regarding self-awareness, identity and cognition as well as evolution. Especially so towards the end. Also some real surprises and tensions. Some of the ideas were obscured by unnecessarily jargon-y language or long-winded descriptions of spaceship engineering that did not help me imagine the things described. Perhaps that is part of the idea when you let the ship "jargonaut" be the narrator.
Some very interesting ideas about aliens, intelligence, and the self but not in a form I can say I actually enjoyed reading. This is probably a polarizing book.
Wow! What an experience. This book checked off some boxes for me: consciousness, transhumanism, first contact, deep dive into existential questions. But some of it went over my head, and I had a hard time following some plot points. I haven’t read the notes at the end yet, which might help.
I'm going to delay writing a full review other than to say that I really enjoyed this book and, more importantly, it has got me thinking and I'm not sure what I think yet!
