Could our egoistic nature be a fluke, a byproduct of a specific set of circumstances, something that ultimately would hold us back in the interstellar arena? It’s a dark and somewhat nihilistic area of exploration, but Watts does it compellingly and with unique verve. Watts juxtaposes the nature of human intelligence against that of an alien mind far more intelligent in its processing power, but utterly without self-awareness, posing the difficult question of whether intelligence and consciousness are necessarily intertwined. And this is, first and foremost, a meditation on consciousness. Watts has a probing scientific intellect, employing complex lofty jargon and relishing in tangents on the nature of consciousness. Like the best hard sci-fi, Blindsight is an exploration of ideas first, and a story second. Their voyage brings them into contact with a strange alien intelligence and they must wrestle with a messy first contact. Onboard is a transhuman crew, including our narrator Siri Keeton, a “Synthesist” who has had brain surgery and cybernetic enhancements allowing him to impartially “read” and interpret people as a form of surveillance, as well as a linguist with four distinct personalities, and a vampire commander, among others. A ship, Theseus, is sent into the Kuiper belt to investigate. In the year 2082, Blindsight sees a strange cosmic event hit Earth: a coordinated grid of “Fireflies” burn up in the atmosphere whilst broadcasting on the electromagnetic spectrum, alerting humanity to the probable existence of alien intelligence. Firefall is actually an omnibus edition of two novels: Blindsight and Echopraxia, and I’m going to review them separately on the grounds that I’m going to read them separately, and also they’re considered adjacent to one another, rather than following on. When I finally found a book that was available it was Firefall by Peter Watts. Clearly I’m stumbling further into niche territory. More and more I’m finding books I’d like to read that are difficult to procure. I was limited to places that would take a book token (as I had a book token) and I found about a dozen books that interested me, all of which were either prohibitively expensive or unavailable. I found a lot of options and most of them were impossible to get. It’s not too often I delve into genre territory these days but I like to explore when the mood strikes and find something that sounds promising-literary prose style with strong imagination. I fancied getting back to a bit of weird/sci-fi/horror fiction.

Blindsight peter