Echopraxia

By: Peter Watts

Narrated by: Adam J Rough

It's the eve of the 22nd century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence. Daniel Bruks is a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational. He's turned his back on humanity, but awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out. He's trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call The Angels of the Asteroids.

©2014 Peter Watts (P)2014 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Narration

Adam’s narration, while completely adequate, seemed a bit too “chipper” given the setting’s tone. Also, some character’s impersonations seemed almost satirical, or cartoonish (Moore for example).

Absolutely fantastic follow up to Blindsight

Peter Watts does it again. Blending elements of cyberpunk, scientific biology, hard sci-fi future tech, and philosophy, Echopraxia explores what it is to be a human, and what we have to do to learn to become more than that.

Unfortunately hung by its own petard

I really wanted to like this book. It's rare to see a story that portrays both science and religion as equally important and valid. The author did that part extremely well and I respect them for it. In addition the idea of all the more fantastical elements mentioned in the blurb set in a setting with spaceships is always a fun one to check out. The voice actor definitely put in the work to produce a quality product as well.

Unfortunately almost none of those fantastical ideas actually lived up to what they were described as in the actual book. Several parts of the book's descriptive blurb don't happen until at least a third of the way through the story. In essence the book is significantly more grounded then it sells itself as.

Finally, the primary POV character complains about how humanity has been reduced to naval gazing instead of actual scientific research. That's...basically what most of the book is. Every paragraph is packed full of metaphors and deep philosophical musings about the nature of the universe. To the point where it slows the story down to a crawl. This is exacerbated by the large amounts of purple prose. The author feels the need to overdescribe most things and, again, uses so much metaphor that sometimes I had a less clear idea of what he was talking about at the end of the description than at the start. All of this gets in the way of things like character building. We know the main character fairly well since we spend so much time wandering the labyrinthine corridors of his brain. Other characters are somewhat cursory and are definitely flavored by the viewpoint of the POV character.

Overall, bad advertising, too much philosophizing and descriptions, and a lack of connections to most of the cast undercut a very interesting concept from the author and a great performance by the voice actor.

Makes you think

Some concepts went over my head but the ones I caught blew my mind. Definitely will reread in the future.

A fittingly mind bending sequel to Blindsight

Watts is an absolute master of hard sci-fi and takes it in strange and wonderful new directions. Echopraxia is a very different book from Blindsight, but for me it inspired the same level of self reflection and mind opening possibilities, and I thoroughly enjoy Watts’ style of slightly manic torrent of facts and concepts. Echopraxia paints a terrifying yet eerily beautiful possible future for human consciousness.