Book Review - Peter Watts' Blindsight

A friend of mine, Jake, who has read more than just about anyone I know, recommended this book.  It is a fascinating tale of first alien contact where a little way in, one gets a foreboding sense that the main characters have already lost the game before their journey to the meet-up even began.  Watts is definitely in the Stephen Hawking camp when it comes to alien contact.

The main characters are interesting folks - humans carved up, reshaped, and reworked as sort-of super humans plus one vampire.  Despite my being thoroughly tired of the much-abused vampire as a character, I thought Blindsight was a great book with a great vampire.  Peter Watts (not, as Wikipedia takes pains to point out, the Peter Watts of Mott the Hoople fame) writes hard science fiction that includes a great yarn and many good turns of phrase allowing someone like me the luxury of not worrying too much about failing to understand all the deep science-y stuff.  After all, I am just a humble librarian.  Even the appendix on the "origin" of vampires was so heavily cited with actual studies that it seems like a reasonable idea that we'd send one on a space voyage to meet aliens.

Blindsight came out in 2006, so I feel a little behind the curve.  Now I'm going to go back and try out Starfish, Watts' first novel from 2000.  Anyway, I would recommend Blindsight if you like a good hard science sci-fi tale.  Plus there's this to look forward too.