Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

384 pages

English language

Published March 19, 2006

ISBN:: 9780765312181
Goodreads:: 48484

(1 review)

It's been two months since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since - until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who to send to meet the alien, when the alien doesn't want to meet? Send a linguist with multiple-personality disorder, and a biologist so spliced to machinery he can't feel his own flesh. Send a pacifist warrior, and a vampire recalled from the grave by the voodoo of paleogenetics. Send a man with half his mind gone since childhood. Send them to the edge of the solar system, praying you can trust such freaks and monsters with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find - but you'd give anything for that to be …

It's been two months since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since - until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who to send to meet the alien, when the alien doesn't want to meet? Send a linguist with multiple-personality disorder, and a biologist so spliced to machinery he can't feel his own flesh. Send a pacifist warrior, and a vampire recalled from the grave by the voodoo of paleogenetics. Send a man with half his mind gone since childhood. Send them to the edge of the solar system, praying you can trust such freaks and monsters with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find - but you'd give anything for that to be true, if you knew what was waiting for them.

2 editions

Wolfgang Wopperer reviewed Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

An exploration of consciousness

5 stars

From sociopaths to truly alien aliens, from simulating empathy to seeing without perception, from unfeeling predators to semi-sentient AI, from multiple personalities living in one brain to brains replaced and enhanced by machinery, Blindsight explores how and why experience is conscious – or not.

And it turns our most important assumption about consciousness on its head – that it's the epitome of evolutionary progress. This is ultimately the question the book poses: What if it's not? To explore it, it resurrects vampires, narrates unreliably, poses alternately as a space opera and as hard sci-fi, and is at the end completely of its own kind.

If you're into mind-expanding science fiction, this is a must read – even if it is ultimately mind-deflating. (Which I won't explain further to not spoiler anything, so please, find out yourself!)