Review: Blindsight

Blindsight by Peter Watts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a very captivating mystery sci-fi - the story really pulls you in, trying to figure out what is going on. That is, chronologically, you get told what is happening, but not what is behind it all - only glimpses, hints, foreshadowing. There is an alien - that is clear from the cover - but what kind? what is it doing? What does it want? I like that this is the kind of story in which the alien is completely different from human it is, not only morphologically, but even logically - a completely alien mind.

It has a very dark beginning, right off the bat, it does not seem like it's going to be a nice story. And as you dive deeper into it, you see it's not. Towards the middle, I started to realize that it has gone from "hard sci-fi" to something more like "horror sci-fi" - it most reminded me of "Event Horizon" (the movie, not the book, I never read the book). I don't think there will be gateway to hell here, but that's what it feels like.

But then you get a lot of discussion of neuroscience, neurological syndromes, "fun facts" about the brain its inner workings, about intelligence, sentience, consciousness - it becomes a full-fledged discussion of philosophy of the mind! In fact, I think the "hard sci-fi" part is not really about the space travel or computers or electronic technology at all - it's exactly about the neuroscience part of it. It is very different, and very interesting.

It ends with a kind of twist about the alien, and then a plot twist about what is happening on Earth. The one about the alien is very interesting, and makes you think; the one about Earth is just weird, feels like it was just tacked on to the story at the last minute. Although I saw that there is a second book to the series, I felt that the story had enough closure that I will not be picking up the next book of the series.

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