Blindsight Discussion?

A few of you mentioned wanting to talk over Blindsight, which seems only fair since I talked it up and everything; so I thought I'd float the idea of having a discussion on Sept 23. I'll put up a post and you can either put up a post too (and I'll link to them here) or comment or whatever--I figure we can keep it informal and see what happens.

For those of you who have either inexplicably missed all of my raving about sci-fi author Peter Watts or Blindsight, here's a refresher:

Here's the Publisher's Weekly review:

"Canadian author Watts (Starfish) explores the nature of consciousness in this stimulating hard SF novel, which combines riveting action with a fascinating alien environment. In the late 21st century, when something alien is discovered beyond the edge of the solar system, the spaceship Theseus sets out to make contact. Led by an enigmatic AI and a genetically engineered vampire, the crew includes a biologist who's more machine than human, a linguist with surgically induced multiple personality disorder, a professional soldier who's a pacifist, and Siri Keeton, a man with only half a brain. Keeton is virtually incapable of empathy, but he has a savant's ability to model and predict the actions of others without understanding them. Once the Theseus arrives at the gigantic and hideously dangerous alien artifact (which has tellingly self-named itself Rorschach), the crew must deal with beings who speak English fluently but who may, paradoxically, not even be sentient, at least as we understand the term. Watts puts a terrifying and original spin on the familiar alien contact story."

As one of the Amazon reviewers put it, you have to love a novel that comes with footnotes and a bibliography.

I loved it. It wasn't as dark or disturbing as his Rifter's saga, which I'll admit I haven't finished reading although now I'm going to have to. As the PW review put it, he explored the connection between sentience and intelligence by engineering a first-contact story between a thoroughly enigmatic alien and a shipful of people so modified they're barely human themselves.

On the 23rd--just in case a few of you have been tantalized but haven't had a chance to read it yet--I'll post a review and then we'll see what happens. Sound good?

Posted by Andrea at September 7, 2008 9:50 AM under Books

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