Blindsight

By Peter Watts

Hard Science Fiction

Blindsight by Peter Watts is a hard science fiction novel about extraterrestrial first contact in the far future AND BEFORE YOU CLICK OFF THE PAGE SAYING YOU AREN'T INTERESTED,

hold on. 

Stick around, for a moment. 

Because I too, didn't really find appeal in humanity's first contact with extraterrestrials 

(even if it is SUPER COOL)
(actually writing that out loud kind of shifted my views, first contact novels were always cool)

Lots - LOTS - of media don't do aliens well. I will admit, alien first-contact novels are not something I am overly well-versed in, so I don't have much to compare it to. Most first contact media are summarized with either a resounding "we made contact with aliens, they want to kill us", or "we want to make contact, the antagonist doesn't want us to, we made contact anyways and now we're all friends" and while that plot is typical of many different genres outside of science fiction, what usually happens is the actual extraterrestrial first contact sections of the first-contact media are supplanted by unnecessary romantic side-plots or leave the aliens as vague unmentioned beings who are never addressed along with Earth's implied societal reaction. 

Blindsight was a new experience for me. I had not read an abundance of hard sci-fi (hard sci-fi is defined as science fiction with a specific attention to detail directed towards making sure it is realistic and logical) or sci-fi in general, and even less of books about aliens (probably only one other I can name off my head). Holding this in mind I regardless found Blindsight to be personally enjoyable.

Now, what is the plot of Blindsight? Alien's first contact doesn't really tell you much. Well.

Sometime in the future humanity has casually perfected cryosleep travel (if you want to go anywhere in space, you are frozen to stop aging briefly because space travel takes a very, very, very long time), uploading your mind to the internet, AI, and integrative cybernetics, and so on.

One day, a bunch of small probes enter Earth's atmosphere, all simultaneously snap a picture of the entire Earth in a giant selfie, and leave. Earth detects a small, unidentified planetary body outside the solar system emitting the same signal as the probes, tries to radio it, and it goes dark. Earth eventually tracks a similar signal some ways out of the solar system and decides to send a small expeditionary force in an attempt to make peaceful first-contact with the first known instance of extraterrestrial life.

This task force/group of our story characters are:

A living translator with multiple personalities, each of which are physically independent of one another and confined to separate parts of the brain

A human computer, who prizes metal over flesh, who acts as a biological tool compartment.

A pacifistic soldier in the bleak event that war is declared.

A synthesist (don't worry, I didn't know what that was either), with half his brain missing whose role is to recontextualize and reframe the world around him into easy-to-understand chunks. (Also, this is our main character).

The captain, who is a resurrected vampire.

Upon arriving at the signal, the crew finds a massive empty asteroid (I think it was an asteroid at least, had lots of tunnels) orbiting an uninhabitable planet being skimmed by large drones. And thats all I will say. Because Blindsight is part of a series, and one of the main parts of the book is figuring out the mystery of how first contact is going to be established when there is no one there.

The rest of the review will be me covering some cool details that I thought were interesting while reading through the novel. There are mild SPOILERS, but nothing too significant; primarily just worldbuilding.

1. Vampires are real. They are an ancient sibling to humanity and there are a few neat tidbits about them. a), they evoke a primal fear in those around them from, b) they are not afraid of crosses, they simply are incredibly perceptive and sensitive to visual stimuli. 90 degree angles on crosses essentially cause hyper-sensitivity and hurt for them to look at, so they need drugs to repress their perception.

2. Heaven is a cyber-hellscape. Heaven is a digital simulation that people upload their brains into when they are about to die, allowing them to live eternally in an isolated digital afterlife that they completely control. This leads to theological and political divide as people paying for an afterlife or circumventing death is a divisive topic. 

3. There is a difference of societal expectations and perceptions on the worth of the individual and the purpose of being human. The majority of the characters have undergone some form of brain surgery or medical procedure to replace parts of their body for the sake of efficiency and utility. 

If any of these plot points sound relevant to you, then give Blindsight a try. Its the first part of a series called Firefall (which I have not read in its entirety), but I found it to be rather enjoyable overall. It doesn't overly describe or go into how every piece of technology works down to every screw and bolt, which I think is good as it keeps the reader engaged.

=========================================================================

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

SERIOUSLY
IF YOU ARE READING THE BOOK PROBABLY DON'T READ PAST THIS POINT

=========================================================================

I will be briefly talking about the aliens of Blindsight, and talking about them for a few sentences. So don't read if you want to read the book.

...

...

...

...you've gone to read the book (or are just really curious)?

okay good

I think the aliens in Blindsight are really interesting, in terms of their culture, communication, and physiology. The aliens are, well, alien; they aren't just humans in space, and having their intentions are initially difficult to understand compliments the ability of the main character as a synthesist (making hard things easy to understand) and the plot point of the missing Rosetta Stone; why won't the aliens contact humanity again, and how can humanity reach out to them? 
I like how they are a hive mind (kind of like a brain), where each individual alien is the equivalent to a synapse whose goal is to propagate and remain as efficient as possible. They are pretty much just a sentient nervous system. Each one stores all of their knowledge in themselves and when they're ready to share information they just tear each other apart and pass the information down to to the rest of them. Strangely, the aliens slightly mimic humanity in their views on efficiency; both aim towards the idea of progress and being the most efficient one can be above all else. In fact, the aliens become hostile to Earth and initially went dark because they were exposed to language, media, advertisements, and thought these were useless forms of communication that did nothing but waste energy. Why would another organism want to waste another organisms energy? Parasitism, viral infection, sabotage. Ergo, humanity is a threat.
I also like how the aliens physically hide from the crew. As their whole body is just a nervous system, they just move really, really fast for a split second whenever a person's eye is stuttering. The human eye doesn't see one continuous image when seeing, it sees a bunch of snapshots all blended really close together to create sight. The aliens simply "jump" whenever one of these snapshots are taken; in short, it allows invisibility but only for one person who is looking at it because different pairs of eyes are taking snapshots at different times (If any of this is wrong, I apologize. I'm not an expert on eyes and their function.). I think this is pretty cool. That's it. Just wanted to divulge how cool I thought the aliens were.


Thanks for listening to my ramble!