beaneater

“How do you say 'We come in peace' when the very words are an act of war?”

Blindsight is such a unique book, not just for its plot but for the complexity of the philosophical questions the author raises. A spaceship of five, including a vampire as the leader, sets out on a mission to explore deep space beyond the Kuiper belt after the Firefall phenomenon happens on Earth. A synthesist and our main protagonist, Siri Keeton, guides us through the events of the mission. The story can become hazy and overwhelming at times, because Siri Keeton lost half his brain to an intensive medical procedure as a child, leaving him cut off from his own emotions. He can read and predict other people perfectly, but he experiences even his own feelings as something to observe from the outside rather than live from within. That distance, combined with his job as a synthesist (someone trained to translate and report on things he isn't required to actually understand) makes him a narrator you can never fully trust, not because he lies, but because he might not grasp the meaning of what he's accurately describing.

Peter Watts touches on some genuinely heavy philosophical questions for a sci-fi book: what is consciousness, and is it even necessary for intelligence? On top of that, Watts introduces vampires, not the Dracula or Twilight kind, but a scientifically reverse-engineered kind, where even the old folklore gets a cold biological explanation instead of being thrown out. They're unsettling in the same way the unknown source of the Firefall is unsettling, and in the same way everything in this book that makes you ask "why?" is unsettling.

"Bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored," is a great summary of how I felt about this book. I was baited by its plot where astronauts travel for two years to Titan, but the authors decided to completely skip the travel there and back and all we got were just mere 10 pages or so. Not to mention the plot holes and the science that did not quite scienced.

When the plot finally started going somewhere, it ended suddenly and I realized that it was always the plan for the book to end on a major cliffhanger. I think it would work perfectly as a TV show as it was originally supposed to be, but even as that I would probably trash talk about it, because it is simply not good and not worth waiting for the sequel. It could entertain people who like soft sci-fi or people who typically don't read sci-fi at all.

Detour had a very promising start to be a new awesome sci-fi series, but unfortunately the first book got boring really quick as it is bland and pretty stereotypical with every cliché you could think of.

I was a little afraid Project Hail Mary would be too similar to The Martian. It has the same DNA, but PHM is actually so different, even on its own as a sci-fi book.

What makes it unique is the friendship between two different species from very different worlds that happens to bump into each other because of their shared mission. Weir lets Rocky stay genuinely alien throughout, yet the friendship is completely real anyway. Connection doesn't require sameness.

I saw the movie first and I think it actually worked in my favor (and I might be a little bit biased by it). The movie depicted Rocky perfectly too, definitely best film of the year so far for me.