''Blindsight'' is a
hard science fiction novel by Canadian writer
Peter Watts, published by
Tor Books in 2006. It won the
Seiun Award for best translated novel and was nominated for the
Hugo Award for Best Novel,
the
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel,
and the
Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
The story follows a crew of astronauts sent out as the third wave, following two series of probes, to investigate a
trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt comet dubbed "Burns-Caulfield" that has been found to be transmitting an unidentified radio signal to an as-yet unknown destination elsewhere in the Solar System, followed by their subsequent
first contact
First contact may refer to:
*First contact (astronomy), the moment in astronomical transit when the apparent positions of the two bodies first touch
*First contact (anthropology), the first meeting of two cultures previously unaware of one another
...
. The novel explores themes of
identity,
consciousness,
free will,
artificial intelligence,
neurology, and
game theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...
as well as
evolution and
biology.
''Blindsight'' is available online under a
Creative Commons license. Its sequel (or "
sidequel"), ''
Echopraxia'', came out in 2014.
Plot
In the year 2082, thousands of large, coordinated objects of an unknown origin, dubbed "Fireflies", burn up in the Earth's atmosphere in a precise grid, while momentarily broadcasting across an immense portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, catching humanity off guard and alerting it to an undeniable extraterrestrial presence. It is suspected that the entire planet has been surveyed in one effective sweep. Despite the magnitude of this "Firefall", human politics soon return to normal.
Years afterwards, a comet-surveying satellite stumbles across a radio transmission originating from a comet, subsequently named 'Burns-Caulfield'. This tight-beam broadcast is directed to an unknown location and in fact does not intersect the Earth at any point. As this is the first opportunity to learn more about the extraterrestrials, three waves of ships are sent out: the first being light probes shot out for an as-soon-as-possible
flyby of the comet, then a wave of heavier but better-equipped probes, and finally a crewed ship, the ''Theseus''.
''Theseus'' is propelled by an antimatter reactor and captained by an
artificial intelligence. It carries a crew of five cutting-edge
transhuman hyper-specialists, of whom one is a genetically reincarnated vampire who acts as the nominal mission commander. While the crew is in hibernation en route, the just-arrived second wave of probes commence a compounded radar scan of the subsurface of Burns-Caulfield, but this immediately causes the object to self-destruct. ''Theseus'' is re-routed mid-flight to the new-found destination of the signal: a previously undetected
sub-brown dwarf
A sub-brown dwarf or planetary-mass brown dwarf is an astronomical object that formed in the same manner as stars and brown dwarfs (i.e. through the collapse of a gas cloud) but that has a planetary mass, therefore by definition below the limi ...
deep in the
Oort cloud, dubbed 'Big Ben'.
The crew wakes from hibernation while the ''Theseus'' closes on Big Ben. They discover a giant, concealed object in the vicinity, and assume it to be a vessel of some kind. As soon as the crew uncloaks the vessel, it immediately hails them over radio and, in a range of languages varying from
English to
Chinese, identifies itself as 'Rorschach'. They determine that Rorschach must have learned human languages by eavesdropping on comm-chatter since its arrival, sometime after the Broadcast Age began. Over the course of a few days many questions and answers are exchanged by both parties. Eventually Susan James, the linguist, determines that 'Rorschach'
doesn't really understand what either party is actually saying.
''Theseus'' probes Rorschach and finds it to have hollow sections, some with atmosphere, all filled with levels of radiation that render remote operation of machinery virtually impossible and would kill a human in a matter of hours. Despite this and over Rorschach's objections the whole crew except the mission commander enters and explores in a series of short forays, using the ship's advanced medical facilities to recover from the damage the radiation inflicts on their bodies. They discover the presence of highly evasive, fast-moving nine-legged organisms dubbed 'Scramblers', of which they kill one and capture two for study. The 'Scramblers' appear to have orders of magnitude more brainpower than human beings but use most of it simply to operate their fantastically complex musculature and sensory organs; they are more akin to something like white blood cells in a human body. They are dependent on the radiation and EM fields of Rorschach for basic biological functions and seem to completely lack
consciousness.
The crew explore questions of identity, the nature, utility and interdependence of intelligence and consciousness. They theorize that humanity could be an unusual offshoot of evolution, wasting bodily and economic resources on the self-aware ego which has little value in terms of Darwinian fitness. Open warfare breaks out between the humans and the Scramblers and ''Theseus'' eventually decides to sacrifice itself and its crew using its
antimatter payload to eliminate Rorschach. One crew member, the protagonist and narrator Siri Keeton, is shot off inside an escape vessel in a decades-long fall back to Earth to relay the crucial information amassed back to humanity. As he travels back towards the inner Solar System, he hears radio broadcasts which suggest that the vampires have revolted and may be exterminating baseline humanity.
Characters
Crew of the ''Theseus''
*Siri Keeton is the narrator and protagonist. Debilitating brain surgery for medical purposes has cut him off from his own emotional life and made him a talented "synthesist", adept at reading others' intentions impartially with the aid of cybernetics. He is assigned to ''Theseus'' to interpret the actions of the specialized crew and report these activities to Mission Control on Earth. He comes to realize that the other crew members resent him for his role, seeing him as nosy
surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...
.
*Major Amanda Bates is a combat specialist, controlling an army of robotic "grunts".
*Isaac Szpindel is the ship's primary biologist and physician. He is in love with Michelle, one of the Gang's personalities.
*Jukka Sarasti is a
vampire and the crew's nominal (and frightening) leader. As a predator from the
Pleistocene, he is alleged to be far smarter than baseline humans.
*The Gang are four distinct personalities in the mind of one woman, the ship's linguist. They are tasked with communicating with the aliens, if possible. A single personality "surfaces" to take control of their body at any given time. The active personality reveals itself through a change in tone and posture. These personalities express offence when referred to as "
alters". The personalities are:
**Susan James, whom the others refer to as "Mom". She is the "original" personality.
**Michelle is a shy, quiet,
synaesthetic
Synesthesia (American English) or synaesthesia (British English) is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who rep ...
woman who is romantically involved with Szpindel.
**Sascha is harsher and more overtly hostile towards Siri.
**Cruncher, a male, rarely surfaces and serves as an advanced data-processing facility for James.
*Robert Cunningham, Szpindel's backup, is a secondary biologist/physician.
*The Captain is the ship's artificial intelligence. Throughout the story, the Captain remains inscrutable and mysterious, generally communicating directly only with Sarasti.
People on Earth
*Robert Paglino, Siri's childhood best friend and a practical example of Siri's muted emotions: Siri cannot actually feel "friendship" following his brain surgery, but intellectually knows how he is expected to behave as a friend and continues to play the part.
*Chelsea, Siri's ex-girlfriend. A professional tweaker of human personalities.
*Helen Keeton, Siri's mother, whose consciousness has been connected,
brain in a vat style, to a virtual utopia called "Heaven". As a parent, she traumatized Siri with emotional demands and intrusiveness into his private life.
*Jim Moore is Siri's father, a colonel involved with planetary defense.
Aliens
*''Rorschach'', an alien vessel or organism in low orbit around the
sub-brown dwarf
A sub-brown dwarf or planetary-mass brown dwarf is an astronomical object that formed in the same manner as stars and brown dwarfs (i.e. through the collapse of a gas cloud) but that has a planetary mass, therefore by definition below the limi ...
Big Ben. While it has a superhuman intelligence, it gradually becomes apparent that ''Rorschach'' completely lacks true
consciousness or
self-awareness
In philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifesty ...
.
*Scramblers, 9-legged
anaerobic aliens that inhabit ''Rorschach'' and appear to be part of it in some sense. Like ''Rorschach'', they are more intelligent than humans but not conscious or self-aware.
Major themes
Consciousness
The exploration of consciousness is the central thematic element of ''Blindsight''.
The title of the novel refers to the condition
blindsight, in which vision is non-functional in the conscious brain but remains useful to non-conscious action.
Other conditions, such as
Cotard delusion and
Anton–Babinski syndrome
Anton syndrome, also known as Anton's blindness and visual anosognosia, is a rare symptom of brain damage occurring in the occipital lobe. Those who have it are cortically blind, but affirm, often quite adamantly and in the face of clear evidenc ...
, are used to illustrate differences from the usual assumptions about conscious experience.
The novel raises questions about the essential character of consciousness. Is the interior experience of consciousness necessary, or is externally observed behavior the sole determining characteristic of conscious experience?
Is an interior emotional experience necessary for empathy, or is empathic behavior sufficient to possess empathy?
Relevant to these questions is a plot element near the climax of the story, in which the vampire captain is revealed to have been controlled by the ship's
artificial intelligence for the entirety of the novel.
Philosopher
John Searle
John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...
's
Chinese room
The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot have a " mind," "understanding" or "consciousness," regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. The argument was pres ...
thought experiment is used as a metaphor to illustrate the tension between the notions of consciousness as an interior experience of understanding, as contrasted with consciousness as the emergent result of merely functional non-introspective components.
''Blindsight'' contributes to this debate by implying that some aspects of consciousness are empirically detectable.
Specifically, the novel supposes that consciousness is necessary for both aesthetic appreciation
and for effective communication.
However, the possibility is raised that consciousness is, for humanity, an evolutionary dead end.
That is, consciousness may have been
naturally selected
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. C ...
as a solution for the challenges of a specific place in space and time, but will become a limitation as conditions change or competing intelligences are encountered.
The alien creatures encountered by the crew of the Theseus themselves lack consciousness.
The necessity of consciousness for effective communication is illustrated by a passage from the novel in which the linguist realizes that the alien creatures can't be, in fact, conscious because of their lack of semantic understanding:
"Tell me more about your cousins," ''Rorschach'' sent.
"Our cousins lie about the family tree," Sascha replied, "with nieces and nephews and Neanderthals. We do not like annoying cousins."
"We'd like to know about this tree."
Sascha muted the channel and gave us a look that said ''Could it'' be ''any more obvious?'' "It ''couldn't'' have parsed that. There were three linguistic ambiguities in there. It just ignored them."
"Well, it asked for clarification," Bates pointed out.
"It asked a follow-up question. Different thing entirely."
The notion that these aliens could lack consciousness and possess intelligence is linked to the idea that some humans could also have diminished consciousness and remain outwardly functional.
This idea is similar to the concept of
philosophical zombie, as it is understood in
philosophy of mind. ''Blindsight'' supposes that
sociopaths might be a manifestation of this same phenomenon,
and the demands of corporate environments might be environmental factors causing some part of humanity to evolve toward becoming philosophical zombies.
Transhumanism
''Blindsight'' also explores the implications of a
transhuman future.
Within the novel, humans no longer engage in sex with other humans for pleasure, instead choosing to use
virtual reality to find idealized and submissive partners,
and many choose to withdraw from reality entirely by living in constructed virtual worlds, referred to as "Heaven".
Vampires are predators from humanity's distant past, resurrected through recovered
DNA, and live among the humans of the late 21st century.
These vampires operate with diminished sentience presented as comparable to high-functional
autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
with comparable dysfunction in affect and speech, but have the advantage of multiple simultaneous thoughts occurring in parallel within their minds.
Enhanced pattern-matching skills comparable to some forms of autism combine with this "hyperthreading" to make them invaluable in developing unusual and often very effective approaches to solving complex problems.
Reception
Carl Hayes, in his review for ''
Booklist'', wrote: "Watts packs in enough tantalizing ideas for a score of novels while spinning new twists on every cutting-edge motif from virtual reality to extraterrestrial biology."
''
Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' said about the book: "Watts carries several complications too many, but presents nonetheless a searching, disconcerting, challenging, sometimes piercing inquisition."
Jackie Cassida in her review for ''
Library Journal
''Library Journal'' is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional prac ...
'' wrote: "Watts continues to challenge readers with his imaginative plots and superb storytelling."
''
Publishers Weekly'' wrote: "Watts puts a terrifying and original spin on the familiar alien contact story."
Elizabeth Bear, an award-winning author in the science fiction field, declared:
It's my opinion that Peter Watts's ''Blindsight'' is the best hard science fiction novel of the first decade of this millennium – and I say that as someone who remains unconvinced of all the ramifications of its central argument. Watts is one of the crown princes of science fiction's most difficult subgenre: his work is rigorous, unsentimental, and full of the sort of brilliant little moments of synthesis that make a nerd's brain light up like a pinball machine. But he's also a poet – a damned fine writer on a sentence level...
Adaptations
In October 2020 a non-commercial ''Blindsight'' short film was released. Watts describes it as, "snatches of ''Blindsight'' recalled by Siri Keeton during one of his waking interludes in the aftermath of that novel. Spectacular highlights arranged in reverse order, Memento-like".
References
External links
The full text of ''Blindsight'' at Watts' official websiteBlindsight short film official website
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