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Blindsight
Blindsight | Peter Watts
Two months since the stars fell... Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown. Two months of silence, while a world holds its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed, and the fainter one she'll do any good if she is. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesistan informational topologist with half his mind goneas an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge. You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. But you'd give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them...
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review
Leniverse
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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Pickpick

Excellent first contact story with aliens that are truly alien, and a future humanity that is barely recognisable. Science heavy to the point where I at times had no idea what I was reading, but still compelling. Utterly mechanist and behaviourist in its outlook, which only proves that you can disagree with a book's central premise and still find it great reading.

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HeyT
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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HAPPY #BOOKSPIN DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE!

I don't have these two in front of me but if I remember correctly they are too egregiously long. I'm still working my way through my backlog but things are starting to pick up so I'll get to these before too long.

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Twainy
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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Pickpick

🎧 I listened to this (reread) before Perdido Street Station. They felt oddly similar. Really! (I have a previous review here for my first read through & it stands)

A lot of science. A future Earth, first contact story. Another story where I didn‘t character connect but the story was great with a fantastic reveal.

I can easily see a 3rd read through in my future!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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murfman
Blindsight | Peter Watts
Pickpick

This is a dense, slow, frustrating little book. It is also containing one of the greatest reveals that I can recall in sci-fi. The book forces you to step so far outside of what we consider to be our comfort zone, not just personally, but culturally, and as a species as a whole. It is undoubtedly on someone's Sci-fi Must Read List, and it is on mine now as well.

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Twainy
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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Pickpick

🎧 OMG this book starts with a Ted Bundy quote 🤨

Hard science? Yes
Super inventive premise? Yes
Space opera? Yes
Character Study? Yes
First contact story! Yes
Chock full of science fact? Yes
Vampire story? Well there is a vampire.
Happy ending? Not really but there‘s a book 2.

This book won‘t be for everyone. It‘s all of the above so read with caution. I enjoyed it but it‘s a bit dry in parts.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

29 likes1 stack add
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Angitron
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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Pickpick

Damn. Well...this was something. I really love “big ideas” SF, so this hit the spot. But man oh man, it is DARK! I listened to this on audiobook, and sometimes it was hard to envision what was happening setting-wise, which was frustrating. And at times it could be a bit dry. But the main question - is consciousness a crutch of the human species, rather than a sign of superior evolution? - is horrifying. Which makes for a really fascinating read!

16 likes1 stack add
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Erofan
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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Pickpick

The book is amazing! One drawback - too many scientific terms. Do aliens exist? No one knows, someone believes in their presence in the Universe, someone refutes any existence of other intelligent life. What if people simply can't comprehend the existence of something else? What is mind and consciousness? Too many questions! The theory put forward in the book is interesting! Definitely worth reading this novel!
Thanks for the book, @Violetta 😘

Lreads This sounds really interesting! 3y
68 likes1 stack add1 comment
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TheSpineView
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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OriginalCyn620
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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#IfYouLikeThis #Alien

I haven‘t read this but it sounds good!

Klou We chose the same one, I just haven't posted it yet 😂 great choice!! 😉😉 4y
OriginalCyn620 Great minds, Kyra! @Klou 4y
Klou @OriginalCyn620 yep 😉😁 4y
rjsthumbelina Well, that just got added to my TBR! 4y
35 likes1 stack add5 comments
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uwasif
Blindsight | Peter Watts
Pickpick

Proper sci fi, packed full of interesting ideas, doesn't just project present issues and circumstances onto the future but rather has off the wall imaginations.

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jmofo
Blindsight | Peter Watts
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So late on this... @Ddzmini tagged me & it‘s my first so here goes:
Movie: Shaun of the Dead? (honestly, I prefer tense movies over scary movies)
Candy: CANDY CORN! 🍬🌽 for life, although I am glad it‘s not on store shelves year round. Book: We Have Always Lived in the Castle but Blindsight really had me on the edge of my seat Decorations: 💀 Supernatural books: sure! Witches: Why not?!? Scary Pet: a massive sea creature friend (not pet)

JoScho I love candy corn too and try to stock up after Halloween when it is on sale. I give it to my students all year long! 6y
jmofo @JoScho how do you feel about rogue shapes, like the pumkin shaped candy corn? I like the looks of them but the can be a bit much quicker than the good ole corns. 6y
JoScho Agreed. Now don‘t get me wrong-I will eat them if they are available but yeah they are a bit thick. They are very cute though! 6y
Trashcanman 👁️👁️ 6y
Ddzmini Candy corn so many of us love it 😍 😝 6y
17 likes5 comments
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SpikeyOrphan
Blindsight | Peter Watts
Mehso-so

Good book but very difficult to follow at points. About as hard as "hard sci-fi" gets.

1 like1 stack add