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Availability:
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Monday, Nov 9
At a glance
- Condition
- New
- Model
- 1250237483-localization
- Dimensions
- 5.35 x 0.95 x 8.2 in
- Weight
- 2.31 lb
- Publisher
- Tor Books
- Publication date
- April 21, 2020
- Edition
- Reprint
Description
Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half- derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist―an informational topologist with half his mind gone―as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. Read more
Specs 10
| Publisher | Tor Books |
|---|---|
| Publication date | April 21, 2020 |
| Edition | Reprint |
| Language | English |
| Print length | 384 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1250237483 |
| ISBN-13 | 84 |
| Item Weight | 2.31 pounds |
| Dimensions | 5.35 x 0.95 x 8.2 inches |
| Book 1 of 2 | Firefall |
No specs match.
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Top Amazon Reviews
Hard Sci-Fi with brilliant characterizations
'Blindsight' is a hard sci-fi novel well written enough for everyone to enjoy. Unique characters keep the mood while detailed descriptions set the atmosphere. First let me introduce you to the eclectic cast: Theseus - a ship with AI whose "body parts" (such as hatches) have reflexes. She's the Captain of the expedition. Siri Keeton - Half of Siri's brain was removed when he was young, a dramatic cure for epilepsy that left him incapable of emotions such as empathy. Through observation, he can almost psychically predict the actions and thoughts of others. He's known as a Synthesist. Isaac Szpindel - The crew's biologist, a mostly human looking cyborg Susan James - The crew's linguist with surgically induced multiple personality disorder (known as The Gang, including Susan, Sascha, Michelle (Meesh) the Synesthete, and Cruncher) Major Amanda Bates - The crew's "security", a professional soldier who's career defining moment involved consorting with the enemy. She shaves her head. Jukka Sarasti - A sociopathic, genetically engineered vampire with the ability of conjoined intelligence with the Captain. Robert Cunningham - Another biologist, also a cyborg, who doesn't use pronouns and chain smokes. After an event called Firefall on Earth, when thousands of probes fell from the skies, Theseus was sent out into space to follow the trail back to the source of the probes. The crew comes out of "the crypt" where they have been kept inert and death-like for the trip, near Big Ben - a failed disc-shaped, black star. Orbiting Ben's chaotic field is an alien vessel unlike anything ever seen before. Then the ship makes contact, speaking their language and calling itself the Rorschach. Susan and "The Gang" communicate with Rorschach until, unbelievably, Susan cuts off communication, announcing that it's not a sentient presence they are speaking with. So what exactly is Theseus and the crew dealing with? Sarasti, working with the Captain, decides to send the crew over to the alien ship though from every aspect they have viewed it from, the Rorschach seems uninhabitable, uninviting, and possibly unfriendly. What they find, or what they don't find, will keep you reading right up to the very end. Between Scramblers, vampires, constructs, and AIs, the crew has their hands full. The story is told in first person by Siri, and though it sometimes seems to slide to a different POV, its simply Siri using his talents as a Synthesist to project their thoughts through translating their speech and behavior. Believe it or not, Watts makes the concept work. There's even a first person glimpse from Theseus's POV. Siri also uses flashbacks to his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chelsea to give us deep glimpses into who and what he has become after his childhood surgery. Within the book, intriguing issues of sentience and intelligence are brought up. What defines sentience or consciousness for that matter? Free thought? Self-awareness? Speech? Higher brain? Brain stem? Reproduction? What separates a dandelion from a human? The story is rich and complex without losing any entertainment value, even when delving deep into these subjects. The book is 362 pages, with acknowledgments following. There's also a section titled Notes & References, covering vampirism, human sight, "telematter", sun types (the "superJovian") Scrambler anatomy and physiology, Sentience/Intelligence, and misc notes. This section includes bibliography footnotes. I think it would be fantastic if they made a movie from this book. I highly recommend it, whether you're a fan of hard sci-fi or not. Enjoy!
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Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2008 by Schtinky
Would recommend to the right audience
Format: Kindle
Blindsight is the kind of book I respect almost more than I enjoy, though I did enjoy a lot of it. Its biggest strength is the ideas underneath everything: consciousness, intelligence, evolution, identity, and the uncomfortable possibility that self-awareness may not be as essential as humans assume. Peter Watts writes with a dense, cold precision that rewards slow reading. I found myself rereading sections, not because the book was confusing in a bad way, but because the material felt worth unpacking. The prose feels authentic to the narrator’s detached perspective, and the first-contact elements are genuinely unsettling. The intelligence at the center of the story feels truly alien, not just human thinking in a stranger form. Where the book worked less for me was on the emotional side. Some character threads felt predictable or distant, and the ending left me more intellectually impressed than emotionally satisfied. Some ambiguity fits the themes, but I still felt like a few pieces of connective tissue were missing. Overall, Blindsight is dense, intelligent, and profound. It is not always gripping, but it operates at a level most science fiction does not even attempt.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2026 by Charles Shaw
Ignore the cover art, don't bother with the synopses. Just read this masterpiece and prepare to have your assumptions challenged
Blindsight. A science fiction book written by a scientist? Or a philosophical examination by a philosopher? The two are not mutually exclusive in good science fiction, and Blindsight is a striking example. I didn't know what to expect when I picked this book up. I understood that it was nominated for the Hugo award, so it intrigued me. It was recommended to me during a discussion about genetic memory. But when I first read that central to the book were not only extraterrestrials, but vampires in space, I was skeptical - was I going to get Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy captained by the Vampire Lestat? To my delight, and occasional horror, I was instead administered Arthur C. Clarke with a diabolical dose of H.P. Lovecraft. Put simply, this is not an optimist's viewpoint of the future. Watts examines sentience; consciousness, awareness of self, that incomprehensible aspect of humanity which separates us from other forms of life. Watts wants to convince you that sentience IS comprehensible, an evolutionary accident, a fluke, even a flaw, and he drags you kicking and screaming into his dystopian reality. Your self-awareness is not only a lie, it's a burden to your survival. It's stark I know, but that's because the psychology of the book reflects the terrifying reality of his topic. He speaks to the reader, involves the reader, does not let the reader sit as a passive observer to the events of the story. He assaults their very existence, calling them - us - "...stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal existence on the veldt - denying even the possibility of agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your parents." In other words,you may not like his viewpoint, you may disagree with him philosophically and morally, but those efforts are shallow rationalizations. A predictable human response, one that we've expressed in the face of the inconvenient reality throughout history - from denial of the Holocaust to the rejection of human-induced climate change. Humans don't like uncomfortable truths, and through sentience we seek to derive meaning beyond, create illusions where the truth doesn't fit what we'd like it to. The book itself is clunky, laden with metaphors, similes and figures of speech that distract from the clarity and flow of the story. In fact, as story-telling goes, Blindsight leaves a lot to be desired. Vivid, if at times difficult to follow, descriptions do add to the horror, though, and his writing leaves the reader with an impression of his brilliance when interlaced with his unabashed scientific literacy and ability to give double-meanings to every event, action and twist in the story. It may not be the best writing, but that's a byproduct of his intelligence. Blindsight, in sum, is a novel that examines sociopath mindsets, the consequences of automation, philosophical justifications for science, art and pursuit of knowledge, and humanity itself. Watts is undoubtedly brilliant, although that doesn't make him necessarily right. He is a biologist with a PHD who seems somewhat bitter at what he perceives to be humanity's arrogant, self important view of the universe. In Blindsight, he throws an extraterrestrial, planet sized vessel of destruction against our blinders, hoping,at the very least, to get us to see reality from another perspective.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2016 by Mark Henderson
A humbling book
Format: Kindle
Blindsight is one of the smartest and most confusing books I have read in a long time. I genuinely liked this book, but I also spent a good chunk of it asking myself what the hell was going on. Peter Watts does not hold your hand. The story bounces around more than an NFL free agent, throwing hard science, neuroscience, philosophy, alien intelligence, and vampires at you like you are supposed to already understand all of it. That said, once the bigger ideas started clicking, this book really got under my skin. What makes Blindsight unsettling is not monsters or jump scares. It is the idea that consciousness might not actually be an advantage. That human self awareness, the thing we think makes us special, could actually be inefficient baggage. That idea stuck with me long after I finished. The alien intelligence in this book feels truly alien, not just humans with weird skin or different motivations. That is what makes it creepy. There is this constant sense that humanity may not be as advanced or important as we think we are. Did I understand every page? Absolutely not. Did I respect the hell out of what Watts was trying to do? Absolutely. This is not an easy read, but if you like dark science fiction that makes you question intelligence, consciousness, and humanity’s place in the universe, it is worth the mental whiplash.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2026 by Ky
Love It, Hate It, with a Great Conceptual Twist
Format: Kindle
I really want to give this books 3.5 stars ... it's got a lot of short-comings, but maybe not all of those are entirely objective. And in the end, the plot twist and the science based mind, uh, screw, make it a very interesting novel, so I begrudingly upped the rating on this book. First, the bad: this is one of the densest, hardest to like books I've read in quite some time. The author seems to delight in needlessly upping the reading level on this book ... for example, there was a word I can't remember, and I've never seen before, that basically means "to give birth". Given how obscure and/or specialized this word must be (my Kindle tagged it as "ZOOLOGY"), I can only imagine the author must have had a Thesaurus at hand during the writing of this book. And some of the scenes get especially muddled with uncommon or rarely used jargon-ish words, so much so that at times it took me a minute or two to read through one paragraph due to having to look up a word in each sentence. There are times when, yes, a very technical or obscure term was warranted; there is, afterall, a lot of bleeding edge science talk in this book. At other times, when merely commenting on general events, the use of these words borders on pretentious. Second, editing is the next worst thing about this book. At times, the scene descriptions are aggravatingly obtuse. I found myself having to re-read ... and in some cases, re-re-read, events to understand what actually happened. Sometimes it's just a case of not enough detail. Other times it's that the author uses so many metaphors, and at times, metaphors on top of story-specific metaphors, that it was like peeling apart an onion and ... oh God, I just made a meta-review or something. Anyway, the author's style in this sense is on and off ... at times it's atrocious, and at others, it's just clever and creative. Final negative aspect: this is a space sci-fi book, but the author somehow found it necessary to re-invent the concept of the vampire. Yes, THOSE vampires. On the one hand, I have to give it to the guy: he presents possibly the most scientific, believable accounting of how vampires could actually exist I've ever read, bar none. He even explains why Crucifixes (or specifically, sets of intersecting lines) would be problematic for them. But on the other hand ... why? Why was this necessary? We know of lots of real-world animals with genes or biological tricks that allow them to survive near-lethal environments, or go into an "undead" state to conserve resources (the original reason for vampires as something to do with making people survive long treks through space, rather than doing the cliched cyrogenic thing). In fact, the author even expounds upon this at the back of the book, relenting that he kind of did the vampire thing just to be original. Well, it was original ... but also very non sequitor. But the thing that brought the whole story back around for me was the mystery and horror of the alien artifact in this story. Let me put it this way: if you've read Michael Crichton's "Sphere", it's a lot like that, but amped up and thrown into space. The plot twist surrounding the nature of the artifact is brilliant, and really I can't say much more without potentional spoilers, but the resulting intellectual exploration of humanity versus non-humanity ... brilliant. Let me just say it blew my mind. I can forgive the rest of the book's shortcomings just based upon the last third of this book. It's hard to get into ... like, really hard. The author doesn't make it a very approachable book, and part of that is needlessly throwing around high-concepts of a sci-fi future without providing a whole lot of needed context (if you have to provide a half-dozen explanations at the back of your book, chances are you were a little too dense with your concept presentation). However, I would urge you to push past the first few chapters ... or 10 ... of the book. If you can keep track of a lot of jargon, ignore some vague descriptions, and stick with it, this book is pretty good.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2015 by AustinTiffany
A modern scifi masterpiece.
I don't usually care for scifi, quite frankly. The writing is usually subpar, the ideas are often dated or simply banal/"no duh" in the face of modern technology, and the optimism can be downright saccharine. But man, when scifi is good, it can really shine. My favorite scifi authors are Stanislaw Lem and Philip K Dick. After reading Blindsight, I hold Watts in equally high esteem. Rather than portray first contact in an Arthur C. Clarke or Carl Sagan sense of aliens being a kind of benevolent older brother or father, Lem, Dick, and now Watts portray what to me is a much more compelling and perhaps more accurate picture: aliens may be just that--ALIEN! Incomprehensible. Unlike us. Different biology. Different motivations, or perhaps NO motivations. There have been some excellent films lately that have touched on these ideas lately like Annihilation and Arrival. Blindsight explores these ideas of consciousness, language, and meaning (or lack thereof) masterfully, deeply, and with a technical background that while occasionally difficult lends the novel an air of authority. The technical difficulty is there. Reading this is similar to reading Thomas Pynchon--you have to read it slow and you may not "get" 100% of it the first time. I work in the medical field so the biology was easy for me, but the physics terms were a bit tricky. Still, the verisimilitude provided by the jargon makes it completely justified and well-worth it in my opinion. Oh, and there's scifi vampires. I love it. It paints the idea of vampires in an utterly original right and asks, "What if the organism of folklore known as a vampire was actually REAL?" This is just such an excellent book. It oozes creativity and asks compelling questions which that make it a quintessential scifi contribution. I would also say it satisfies a kind of existential and cosmic horror in the tradition of Lovecraft or more recently Thomas Ligotti. I want to emphasize how great that is one more time: We now have a living author that has updated the ideas of Lem and Lovecraft for modern day times! Even at 12 years old, the idea of people transferring their consciousness in a virtual "heaven", the modification of the brain, and ConSensus acting as a kind of Google Glass on steroids--these ideas are fresh and eerily prescient. It's reputation on the internet is well-earned. A modern classic. Do yourself a favor and check this one out!
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Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2018 by Andrew E. Mendelson
A Masterpiece of Hard Scifi
This book changed my life. It broadened my intellectual horizons. It made me think about minds in a fundamentally different way. It is so dense with ideas that I can still draw inspiration or interesting thoughts from it. It is a difficult read. But it is a rewarding read. And it is a read which you can return to, and notice new things. It will not hold your hand. It will do its best to *put you there*. And that means you will be listening to scientific terminology, spoken by posthumans, filtered through a post-human interpreter. One of the most interesting ideas in the book is: none of the dialogue is actually spoken as written. The first person narrator and unforgettable protagonist, Siri Keeton - his duty aboard the ship is the *translate* what the post-humans are babbling to each other, in multiple languages, logic diagrams, and many other means of communication besides. What you're reading is a transcription to be sent back to the baselines on earth - unmodified humans. Us. Every facet of this novel exists for a reason. It's all calculated. It's brilliant. I am in awe. I read this years ago, and I am still in awe.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2025 by John Davidson
Hard sci-fi, now with vampires!
Format: Kindle
I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the storm of massive ideas casually swirling in every conversation. I could not always follow exactly what was happening, but sometimes it's easier to just push through and let your personal blindsight absorb it for you. I appreciated the big ideas mashed together with a vampire character. And if the idea of a vampire is holding you back from reading this, fear not, it works, and adds layers of excitement and suspense sometimes missing in densely detailed sci-fi. I will prob not read anymore in this series, but this is a fantastic and unique stand-alone story.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2025 by Jon Wolf