Blindsight by Peter Watts

Blindsight by Peter Watts

For a while, it was de rigeur on Reddit's "printSF" sub to basically recommend Blindsight in response to anything. Then the sub realized it was verging on self-parody, and it backed off, and I don't see it mentioned so much anymore. But I was intrigued enough that when I got an Amazon gift card, I used it to pick up a nice "Tor Essentials" edition of the book.

Originally published: 2006
Acquired: January 2021
Read: July 2021

It seems to me that it somewhat follows in the tradition of Solaris, it being interested in a group of scientists investigating an alien life-form beyond our comprehension that ultimately lose themselves. It's an interesting book with a big concept, asking "what is intelligence?" and positing that you might be able to have intelligence without self-awareness. This is followed in two ways: there are the aliens, but there's also our main character, who is hyper-aware of others but not so much himself.

I liked a lot of what was happening, and found myself frustrated by other parts of it. The interpersonal dynamics on the spaceship crew didn't always ring true; I feel like things the book asserted were true about the characters were not often demonstrated in practice. The concepts were interesting, but at a certain point—around the two-thirds mark—I started getting a bit lost, and I never really recovered my footing. The whole thing ended up feeling a bit... sterile? Which I think is partially by design, but still... It's the sort of book I appreciated more than I enjoyed, though it's also the sort of book I feel like I might get more out of on a reread. But when does one ever have the time to reread books!