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!)