Review & Discussion Guide
Siri Keeton underwent a partial lobotomy as a child to treat severe epilepsy, afterwards he needs to relearn how to be, and his best friend believes that person who Siri was is dead, and that the Siri of now is a different person. Even Siri refers to the reason his mother chose to leave as "she couldn't stand to look at the thing who'd replaced her son." Do you think that physical and chemical transformations of one's brain can change who someone is?
In Blindsight, vampires are a triumph of technology, a resurrected race "stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics." What do you think of Watts' interpretation of vampires/vampirism? What do you think of the application in the context of this novel?
Siri's ex had a "fetish" for "first-person sex." In Blindsight, as well as in other futuristic novels, there is a trend towards the isolation away from physical intercourse, be it backlash from anti-biotic resistant disease or a result of shifts in technology use and integration, or something else altogether. What do you think of this prediction of fetishization of traditional intercourse? Did Siri cheat on Chelsea by using a skin based on her?
Do you think that "technology implies belligerence"? That technology tramples over ways of life and competition?
If something like the virtual reality Heaven existed, how do you think society would respond? Do you think it would become, as Siri describes them, "the Tribe That Just Didn't Give a Shit"? Do you think that "tribe" already exists?
Watts has created a distinctly non-human biology for the aliens, borrowing from some of the more 'alien' multi-celled lifeforms on our own planet. Does he convince you of his alien systems? What do you think of the alien biochemistry, their communication, their attacks? Do you think the aliens have any concept of individuality?
What is the role of language in humanity and personality in Blindsight?
Siri and Susan identify the intelligence speaking to them from the Rorchach as a "Chinese Room" - a cipher tool mimicking language comprehension. Do you think the aliens truly understand the language they use to communicate with the crew of the Theseus?
What do you think of Siri's parents? Jim, a half-absent father, called away on assignment, and Helen, uploaded into her own private reality and resentful of her husband? Was Jim a neglectful, abusive father as Helen claims? Do you think that Siri read's his mother correctly? What about the fight Siri remembers where Jim assaults Helen? Was Helen abusive of Siri by giving him that medication?
Susan James is a single body, single brain, that contains four distinct partitioned identities. How truly separate are her identities, her memories? What about the fifth identity that arises? How is Susan similar or different from persons with Multiple Personality Disorder?
On the Rorschach, are the crew hallucinating or seeing things that are actually there? Was the Rorschach manipulating the crew all along? For what end?
What do you think Siri will find when he returns home? Will there be a home left?
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