“I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain.” In “Blindsight” by Peter Watts What if: There is only one consciousness that we all share? (Universal Consciousness) What if: People are caught in the i...
I'm still feeling the aftershocks of this novel. This is a book dense with ideas. It's as if someone took Michael Crichton's silly book Sphere and made a really interesting and intelligent piece of speculative fiction within the same thematic territory: what if we encountered a truly alien species? ...
Crap! And to think I hemmed and hawed about reading this book. I loved this book. I was stuck at home, sick with the flu, and I read this fantastic story in two sittings. Heck, I worry that my delirium has affected my judgment, but I feel right now (still sick) that this is the best science fict...
A First Contact story chock-full of interesting ideas about consciousness, psychology, biology, language, the works. This is definitely hard SF for someone like me, but the ideas don't overwhelm the story about a small crew of oddly assorted humans and a vampire sent to deep space to find out what e...
Reading Peter Watts is like reading a synopsis of the latest issue of PopSci. His range of hard SF topics is so broad, moving easily through biochemistry, astrophysics, paleogenetics, linguistics, whatnot, that you almost need the latest SF lexicon to keep up. The mindset is something like: "Esc...
I posted a review on this one months ago but it seems to have fallen into a blackhole and I have no backup. This was a very difficult book for me due to the prose style. I just found it a little rambling, unclear and unfocussed. I kept losing track of where the current scene is taking place and whic...
what is Consciousness? how did the silly human race evolve beyond the herd instinct, beyond our reptile brain? how, and why? what is the purpose of our individuality, what is the need for our sense of self, what use is Human Connection, why are we even equipped with Empathy? for some naive, kinda-so...
Wow. This was a tough one. It was a very good hard sf book that I don't think I'll be coming back to anytime soon. As others have said: "abandon all hope ye who enter here." A well written, excruciating exploration of the human "problem" where it turns out that it really is a problem. How do you tak...
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