Blindsight

By: Peter Watts

Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith

Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold.

After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.

©2006 Peter Watts (P)2008 Recorded Books LLC

good book worth the read(listen)

This was a good book and we'll worth the read. the narrator did a pretty good job at keeping my attention.

Greatness!

Listening to this was a phenomenally tripped out experience. I wish there had been a little more of some characters and less of others. What a genius writer Watts is, he can articulate what super AI might behave like; it’s always cool to imagine the future.

A bit tricky to follow, but very interesting

This is a very solid piece of hardcore sci fi. The themes are very abstract and complex, so I could imagine this will be hard to follow for a lot of casual readers. That said, the actual storytelling is engrossing and compelling. He does a very good job of creating a truly alien experience, and I felt a mild level of anxiety/fear/disorientation in a way that felt just right with the storyline.
The narration is good, albeit a bit flat throughout. I think that is mostly intended as the character narrating is supposed to be fairly 'robotic', but it did make it difficult to stay awake at times. It was a solid effort.

Dead-on addition to my favorite niche subgenre

First-contact "hard" sci-fi featuring an extraterrestrial entity whose alien-ness is so extreme it feels like it's lapses into the psychedelic, sometimes with actual extreme hallucinatory episodes. I love stories like this having just finished Jeff Vandermeer's "Area X." and the Three Body Problem trilogy a while before that. This book stands confidently beside those stories and a few others.

Special appreciation goes to the narrator's AMAZING performance of the character Sarasti. Rarely is the delivery of one character's lines such a believable departure from the rest.

Great!

Very good!

I'm often frustrated by the misuse of scientific terms like "sentience" in science fiction, but not a real criticism to the story.

Ending was jaw dropping.

Not spoiling anything but I can't believe the ending happened the way it did. Absolutely jaw dropping.

Interesting listen

Half the time I didn’t know what was going on. The story is very disjointed. I have no idea why movies & books love to segment past events and slowly spoon feed them to you. It’s like hey are you enjoying the book? You are? Ok let me fix that for you with another story about Chelsea lol.

The good? Very eloquent. The author has a nice way of narrating and writing. He is very talented & the way he describes things shows off his God given talent. Also the writing is very sophisticated with words like “blindsight”.

I hate to only give this 3 stars. But the story itself is just way too disjointed to go any higher. It was entertaining and kept me interested though.

You’ve waited too long to not listen

Absolutely the best science fiction book I’ve ever read. The only one I listen to over and over. Do yourself a favor and listen.

In love with this story

It’s a good book, with amazing narration and lots of pieces that had me thinking on them long after I had finished listening to it. Good enough I used my next credit on Echopraxia. T Ryder Smith could bring any book to life and his performance on the Quantum Evolution series is what lead me to this wonderful cosmic reflection on the ego, self, and consciousness.

It was aight

A little too convoluted but I will keep investigating the authors work in the future