Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

by Peter Watts

384 pages

English language

Published March 19, 2006

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

(165 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 story 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.

4 editions

Daniel Darabos reviewed Blindsight by Peter Watts (Firefall, #1)

Review of 'Blindsight (Firefall, #1)' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

It's free on the author's website! Fantastically generous! Thanks a lot!

It's also a great book. It feels like someone's first book: it is stuffed full of ideas one must have collected over a lifetime. (I've checked now and it's far from Peter Watts' first book. He must have saved up a lot of ideas!)

I think the hard sci-fi "first contact" is my favorite genre. I'm always so thrilled! Almost always I'm let down at the end though. The author has not really met aliens. I'm still just reading a human's thoughts.

But Blindsight did it for me. The interactions are very clever. The whole plot is so clever, half of it I didn't understand. I've discussed it with a friend who recommended it and together we have been unable to figure out the answer to a lot of questions. I'm pretty sure there are answers, but this is still a slight negative. Even so there's so much in the book that I am fine without those answers.

I love the technical details, like the initial radio conversations with the alien station or the alien prison break. The focus of the story and the best part of the book though is the meditation on the role of consciousness. Vampires, AI, brain surgery, aliens. All that is about consciousness. Consciousness is what makes humans what we are. We never stop to think about intelligence and consciousness separately, until we read Blindsight. This topic will stay with me and makes for very interesting conversations.

Lord of Candy reviewed Blindsight by Peter Watts (Firefall, #1)

Review of 'Blindsight (Firefall, #1)' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I am not worthy.

I read the omnibus of both titles back to back and my mental capacity as a roach just isn't up to the task. Anyone who can write this much detail, thought, future forecasting, deep thought of the human condition and those conditions if they could be extrapolated into some form of meta-human just BLOWS MY MIND.

I am also not sure if I can be more additive to other reviewers. We have a not-so-far-in-the-future event that for a moment galvanizes humanity. A humanity on the brink of losing its humanity maybe for good reasons, maybe for selfish--but we're changing and we can already see that beginning of change in today's science.

This moment, an exo-solar event around the world and we seek its source. With a motley crew that reminds me of a Suicide Squad goes to find what they can. What they find is.. wait for it.. alien. If you've ever ready any of[b:Old Man's War|51964|Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1)|John Scalzi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487044882s/51964.jpg|50700] you quickly figure out that if the universe does have alien life. Be prepared for it to be really alien. This alien even in its way out their protozoan incarnation is insane in its capacity.

As we analyze and try to understand it we are faced with understanding ourselves and Watts is unforgiving in his methods of peeling back the human condition and physicality with a near book of bibliography rooting so much in the possible and probable it'll scare you.

The narrator or the view of the narrative is from a character who tries as best he can, due to biology and specialty to sit on the outside of events reading everything's soul from the surface. His attempts at dissecting the events and characters before him seem spot on at the beginning but as the events unfold his own faculties are misdirected, cracked, and strained to the breaking point--maybe beyond.

As an aside, this book tiptoed into a horror like moments, well written and giving me a few deep nights of the heeby-jeebies. I have enough stress in my life and usually steer clear of fright so it caught me by surprise a few times in the visceral or inversely disconnected moments that make you want to turn on the lights and not be alone.

This book wants me to be smarter and I'm thankful for the waterline it gave me. Intelligent, characters that will make you think, ideas that will have you searching the net--highlighting and wondering days later. It's not an easy read, it's smart sci-fi-bio-psyc and I hope intrepid reader you'll enjoy it if not stand in awe at its creative capacity.

jonathan.brodsky reviewed Blindsight by Peter Watts (Firefall, #1)

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

good post human sci fi. It gets a bit difficult to follow at points because the characters inhumanity is core to the story line, and the real analogs for the things they are don't map right.

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

Review of 'Blindsight (Firefall, #1)' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Excellent hard-sf, it's heavy on (real/realistic) neuroscience. It strands you in the middle of things to figure out what's going on and revealing things slowly.

This is one of those books whose ideas keep coming back to you. What does it mean for something to possess intelligence? Is a very complex ~markov chain bot trained with the all the world's content intelligent? Are humans any different? Is a virus (or a self-replicating robot) life?

Also, has the funniest acknowledgement section.

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

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

If you pick this book up on my recommendation you might end up hating me for it, but I'm going to recommend it anyway. But you have been warned. I'll try to keep this spoiler free, but it's a rather hard sci-fi story looking into such difficult subjects as consciousness, sentience, self, and creating aliens that aren't just Homo sap. in funny make-up, and it was a bit difficult to get into. It's slow, lots of back story and indirect world building, and although I accept them looking back, there are still important bricks in that edifice I just dislike a lot.

There were times I didn't want to put this book down, times I thought it was stupid, times I thought it was brilliant, and times I wanted to throw it against the wall, which would have been stupid since I was reading it as an e-book. I won't …

Jim Rion reviewed Blindsight by Peter Watts (Firefall, #1)

Review of 'Blindsight (Firefall, #1)' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A cracking, compelling story coupled with honestly challenging questions about the nature of consciousness and sentience, society and evolution... this is SF at its best.

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

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Steen Christiansen reviewed Blindsight by Peter Watts (Firefall, #1)

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Flabbergasting and mind-bending first contact novel about consciousness, intelligence and the evolutionary tragedy of human minds.

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

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Hard to read, but very interesting book, with fresh perspectives on a lot of things.

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

Review of 'Blindsight (Firefall, #1)' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Boldly inventive future-building, tackling transhumanism, truly strange aliens, group dynamics and resurrected vampires. If you can read only one book with those four elements this year, make it this one.

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

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

short review in ukrainian:
http://www.tivasyk.info/2010/08/blog-post_17.html
----->8-----
звісно, ім’я канадця пітера вотса невідоме пересічному українцеві. та й непересічному — зайнятому своїми сучукрлітськими справами — також. і це нормально: аж надто багато у світі пишеться й видається всього, тож будь-який менйстрім — це лише невеличкий шматочок жувальної гумки, штучно надутий рекламою та нерозбірливою аудиторією до розмірів величезної повітряної кулі. тим часом якщо трішки поцікавитися, виявиться, що вотс приймав участь в роботі над ігровими проектами homeworld 2 та crisis 2.

blidnsight — фантастична повість з дещо незвичним сюжетом: у віддаленому майбутньому на околицях сонячної системи люство реєструє невідомий об’єкт явно іншопланетного походження, найімовірніше космічний апарат, але велетенських розмірів… чи має він команду, і що собою являють прибульці? на розвідку людство посилає команду, кожного учасника якої важко навіть назвати людиною… але саме від них залежить, яким буде перший контакт. все просто? стривайте, автор готує сюрприз, вартий читання.

книжка доступна вільно на сайті rifters.com в …

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

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Echoes of Frank Herbert's 'Destination Void' brought forward to encompass modern neurology. This was a fascinating read and the final turns brought some very interesting ideas into play.

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

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Some absolutely fascinating ideas. Sentience as unnecessary sends shivers down my spine, and I adore it that he created a biologically plausible race of vampires. And, boy howdy, are they ever not sexy, sparkly vampires. Despite that, I can't say that I enjoyed it as a novel. I'm not driven by cool speculative ideas in books. I go for characters. This isn't a book that I'd normally pick up in a bookstore, but I bought it to spit in the eye of the thugs who beat Watts up at the border. Watts' pharmaceutical company Powerpoint presentation about the vampires is absolutely hilarious, and do browse through that whether or not you take the plunge of the novel: www.rifters.com/blindsight/vampires.htm

Daniel Andrlik reviewed Blindsight by Peter Watts (Firefall, #1)

Review of 'Blindsight' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Peter 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.