Blindsight

De: Peter Watts

Narrado por: T. Ryder Smith

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

Half brilliant, half incomprehensible

This book is not your typical first contact book. It has some innovative ideas, but it suffers from stream of consciousness writing, and half the time you don't know what's happening. I think to really get it you'd need to read it twice. But I personally wouldnt take the time to do it. Perhaps it's not suited for an audio book because you'd have to rewind too many times to follow. There is some fascinating discussion of intelligence and consciousness and how they are linked. Many worthy passages but overall the writing is too scattered to deserve more than 3 stars. Great performance, though.

Intentionally heavy

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The story was interesting, the technical creations were detailed and the biology tidbits were methodical.

Which character – as performed by T. Ryder Smith – was your favorite?

Favorite character was Yuko, but was it really Yuko?!?

Was Blindsight worth the listening time?

Not sure if this was worth it. I liked the story, plot moved along ok, but such a dark take on everything. The book almost depressed me.

Any additional comments?

There were many times I felt as though the author was making things more complicated than they needed to be. You know when you meet somebody who questions the motives of everybody, or has a really strong opinion about something that just doesn't matter than much? (like, will only eat one brand of cheese because the cows that produced the milk all come from a line of cattle bread from royalty stock 200 years ago). I have a feeling that the author is one of these people. Every single human character in the book had a horrible childhood or other such trauma, and were all damaged. Even though the main plotline was about experiencing alien life for the first time, there was no excitement or optimism, it was all dread and despair. Basically, unless it was intentional, I think the author need some therapy and a hug.

I Concur

Any additional comments?

There are previous reviews written by: James 04-04-09 and Old Hippy 11-17-08. Please read their submissions. I have been reading and listening to SciFi since I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old. Sincerely without bragging, I feel I do know SciFi. (I'm 61 now). This is not for a novice science fiction reader. In my opinion it helps greatly to have the history of many reads and perhaps many years of SciFi to cope. I'm going to look into more of his writings. In other words,,,,"Yeah, it was a good story" ;-)

Best sci-fi i've read in a while

Would you consider the audio edition of Blindsight to be better than the print version?

no

What was one of the most memorable moments of Blindsight?

too many to count

Any additional comments?

A brilliant, speculative, and very densely written work. I had to re-listen to the first several hours twice - but it was entirely worth it.

Real thought experiments in modern science

Perfectly narrated, true hard science fiction centered on Neuroscience. There are even notes on the subject matter in the second book if you care to delve. Listen carefully and you'll find yourself questioning assumptions you never identified as such.