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Go buy this!
Dec. 23rd, 2006 09:33 pmSo John Scalzi made me buy Peter Watt's new novel Blindsight
. Yes, he made me - came over to my house with a stick and said "buy it or else." (Actually, he sent his wife over with an aluminum baseball bat.)
At any rate, I did buy it. The prologue is too long and only marginally relevant, and the novel has several sections of second-person POV (you did, you see) and oh yeah, things don't end so good. That's the bad news.
However, Blindsight is Wicked Good! Peter Watts, an escaped marine biologist, created an exceptionally fine Book Of Ideas, one that will have you thinking from page one.
The plot, in summary, is simple. Some alien artifacts (64,000 or so, to be accurate) show up and take a picture of the entire Earth. They do so in such a way that everybody knows about it. Obviously, this must be investigated. A ship is sent, commanded by a Vampire (neat digression about how they've been resurrected from extinction by genetic engineering) and crewed with four other heavily augmented humans.
They encounter aliens, who are entirely unlike the aliens you've seen in other books. Keep your eye on the Vampire, too - he's a genetically engineered genius (predators have to be smarter then the prey) and it's not clear who's side he's on. Although there's plenty of plot to go around, Watt's characters are cool too - if not the type you'd like to have a drink in a bar with.
Overall, this is science fiction of Ideas, and well worth your time and money. For more cool stuff about Peter Watts, visit his web site at http://www.rifters.com.
. Yes, he made me - came over to my house with a stick and said "buy it or else." (Actually, he sent his wife over with an aluminum baseball bat.)At any rate, I did buy it. The prologue is too long and only marginally relevant, and the novel has several sections of second-person POV (you did, you see) and oh yeah, things don't end so good. That's the bad news.
However, Blindsight
is Wicked Good! Peter Watts, an escaped marine biologist, created an exceptionally fine Book Of Ideas, one that will have you thinking from page one.The plot, in summary, is simple. Some alien artifacts (64,000 or so, to be accurate) show up and take a picture of the entire Earth. They do so in such a way that everybody knows about it. Obviously, this must be investigated. A ship is sent, commanded by a Vampire (neat digression about how they've been resurrected from extinction by genetic engineering) and crewed with four other heavily augmented humans.
They encounter aliens, who are entirely unlike the aliens you've seen in other books. Keep your eye on the Vampire, too - he's a genetically engineered genius (predators have to be smarter then the prey) and it's not clear who's side he's on. Although there's plenty of plot to go around, Watt's characters are cool too - if not the type you'd like to have a drink in a bar with.
Overall, this is science fiction of Ideas, and well worth your time and money. For more cool stuff about Peter Watts, visit his web site at http://www.rifters.com.
