Blindsight - Peter Watts
Is civilization a disease? Certainly, civilization brings ease of food, water, and shelter. But it blurs the Ease of direct experience. In Blindsight, Peter Watts explores what it means to be civilized - and, more precisely, what it means to be conscious - through encounter with the alien. Not just alien as in extraterrestrial, but, further, the most astoundingly convincing alien existence I have encountered in sci-fi.
The story follows Siri Keeton, who is shot into space with a menagerie of fellow superhumans - but, in the day and age of the story, most humans are "super" relative to us today. Watts uses this bunch of not-quite-humans tucked into a spacecraft together as a breeding ground for not-quite-human interaction projected onto the plane of human language and thought. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this novel is that, in every chapter and every interaction, one is reminded that you're not getting the full story, not because it isn't presented thoroughly, but because we as mere humans are incapable of processing the amount and quality of information experienced by the characters. It is humbling and thrilling.
This feeling of humility - and delicious confusion - doubles, maybe even triples, when the spaceship reaches its ostensible destination, its encounter with a creation alien to not just our senses but our imagination. Like Ted Chiang's aliens in "The Story of Your Life," Watts thrusts the reader's head into unknown waters. I would argue that Watts' creations are even more foreign to our sensibilities than Chiang's, and thereby more delicious to chew on. Given that The Story of Your Life is one of the best short stories I've read in the past couple of years, this is no easy statement to make. And, to describe Watts' creations further would be to ruin the joy of discovery.
Altogether, I recommend this book for its near-psychedelic quality. It stirs action in one's mind from the ferocity of thought required to parse some of its ideas. And, most satisfyingly, it has a bibliography chock full of research papers and philosophical explorations.
Read this book to question your mind.
The story follows Siri Keeton, who is shot into space with a menagerie of fellow superhumans - but, in the day and age of the story, most humans are "super" relative to us today. Watts uses this bunch of not-quite-humans tucked into a spacecraft together as a breeding ground for not-quite-human interaction projected onto the plane of human language and thought. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this novel is that, in every chapter and every interaction, one is reminded that you're not getting the full story, not because it isn't presented thoroughly, but because we as mere humans are incapable of processing the amount and quality of information experienced by the characters. It is humbling and thrilling.
This feeling of humility - and delicious confusion - doubles, maybe even triples, when the spaceship reaches its ostensible destination, its encounter with a creation alien to not just our senses but our imagination. Like Ted Chiang's aliens in "The Story of Your Life," Watts thrusts the reader's head into unknown waters. I would argue that Watts' creations are even more foreign to our sensibilities than Chiang's, and thereby more delicious to chew on. Given that The Story of Your Life is one of the best short stories I've read in the past couple of years, this is no easy statement to make. And, to describe Watts' creations further would be to ruin the joy of discovery.
Altogether, I recommend this book for its near-psychedelic quality. It stirs action in one's mind from the ferocity of thought required to parse some of its ideas. And, most satisfyingly, it has a bibliography chock full of research papers and philosophical explorations.
Read this book to question your mind.
Comments
Post a Comment