Blindsight

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"A Tom Doherty Associates book."
Two months after the Earth is taken over by an alien species, a space probe detects a faint signal from the edge of the solar system and attempts to make contact, despite the dangers the signal hints at, relying on a linguist with multiple personalities to make the first contact and attempt a peace agreement.

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Densely philosophical first-contact story. submitted by eknapp on December 18, 2015, 1:45pm Earth understandably panics when several thousand alien probes appear, scan the entire planet, and self-destruct. The signal is tracked to a location in the Oort Cloud and a manned vessel is sent to communicate if possible and exterminate if necessary.

Blindsight covers a LOT of ground. There’s humanity’s near-future fracturing into subspecies. The emissary ship is captained by a sort of vampire, a long-extinct-but-genetically-reconstituted predatory hominid, of a man-eating subspecies responsible for campfire monster legends. The linguist has surgically implanted multiple personalities, which dramatically increases her processing power. All of the crew have various forms of physiological and neurological cybernetic enhancements. This allows Watts to delve into what it is to be human.

More interesting is Watts’s consideration of the nature of sentience and, more specifically, its purpose. He argues that consciousness is an artifact of natural biofeedback loops (eg stable heartbeats) and is actually non-adaptive. An evolutionary dead end. Which kind of blew my mind.

Watts constructs an intriguing alien antagonist that is logical and plausible. I’m always thrilled when authors avoid the Star Trek trap: “It’s just like humans except it’s green. Or short. Or has a knobbly forehead. Or is more aggressive, etc.” LAZY. The “scramblers” are extremely detailed radially symmetric creatures with alien physiology and alien motivations and hold up remarkably well under scrutiny. Which is awesome.

I love books that make me think, and maybe even do a little research. Blindsight is just right, heavy enough to make me burn some gray matter but not so leaden that my brain tries to crawl out my ear to get away.