yuletide and Blindsight, by Peter Watts

[silverflight8]

(well, I composed this entry back in October, so I might as well post it before it becomes December, good grief. November is a month that is exhaustingly busy. Hello, flist, my old friends! I've come to talk to you again

Comments

[apgeeksout]

Thanks for the rec - I had not heard about it before (out of the loop is where I live sometimes!) but it sounds right up my street!

[silverflight8]

I hope you enjoy it! It's an awesome book.

[davesmusictank]

Sounds like another book to put onto my ever expanding wants list.

[silverflight8]

I swear my TBR pile grows exponentially, but this book is at least easily available online! It's a great book; I hope you enjoy reading it.

[inverarity]

Like you, I thought this book was mind-bending and full of big and sometimes disturbing ideas. I really liked his SF vampires, too. It's put Watts on my "to read more of" list, but somehow I just haven't gotten around to any of his other books yet.

My review here.

[silverflight8]

I feel like there almost wasn't enough space to explore the vampires. I wanted to know stuff like how the vampires managed to do stuff so fast (consciousness again?), more about how they survived on earth (there's tantalizing hints about how they go dormant for long periods of time so they don't exhaust their prey, and moreover each have a really really big territory each, which devalues empathy), more about basically everything about them.

I just heard he has a sequel out, Echopraxia! I have to track that down.

[inverarity]

Whoa, did not know about the sequel. I need to track it down too.

[silverflight8]

Yeah, I had no idea either! It looks like it's not a direct sequel with Siri though, sadly.

[redheadedfemme]

I just finished this book myself. Most of the physics and biology flew right over my head, but it's every bit as good as you say. I also love how the book ends: the last section implies that Siri's an unreliable narrator, and it drags you right back to the beginning, where you're almost impelled to start the book over, to see if he's as unreliable as you suddenly realize he might have been.

It was nominated for the 2007 Hugo for Best Novel, and I think it should have won.

[silverflight8]

I hear you on the unreliable narrator thing! But I feel like some of the views that Siri expresses are still, I think, reflections of Watts, especially the stuff around consciousness (or well, this is what struck me, because when Siri and Cunningham were going on about consciousness, the back of my mind was going "NO NO NO"). The afterword and bibliography were what made me think that, mostly. I am still going back to read bits of it, because some of it was very confusing and there was just so much packed in--like when there were flashbacks to Siri's life on Earth I mostly skimmed them because I wanted to get back to Rorschach, but they're legitimately fascinating in and of themselves.

Yes, it won quite a lot of awards! I am horribly out of the loop of sf and have been for a long time, so I can't argue one way or the other whether it should have won in 07 (I am not even sure I read any of the books running for the 07 Hugo, heh) but it's definitely a really great book.