The Digital Renaissance: Review: Blindsight

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Review: Blindsight

Blindsight by Peter Watts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was really intrigued with this story. There was a lot of concepts that I enjoyed exploring, such as the idea of human consciousness being up loadable into a computer system (obviously separating our psychic nature from our biological machinery). This sets the stage for the author to present his ideas about the relationship between intelligence and consciousness (which I generally associate with defining individuality or ego) in a first contact story very similar to how Space Odyssey 2001 reads. On top of this, there are several hard science concepts and theories that had me scrambling to my references to see if he had invented it or if it was real (a lot was real and I actually learned a lot about the current state of science exploration). The author supplies a ton of citations and references to many of the concepts that he uses within the story.

I don't agree with some of the author's premises, but it was an interesting discussion none-the-less and added to my enjoyment of the book.

This book is currently available online (for free) here.

A very good review (with spoilers) is available here.

View all my reviews

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My Ratings Explained ...

[ ***** ] Amazing Read - Perfect story, exciting, engrossing, well developed complex characters, solid plot with few to no holes, descriptive environments and place settings, great mystery elements, realistic dialogue, believable reactions and behaviors; a favorite that I can re-read many times.
[ **** ] Great Read - Highly entertaining and enjoyable, exciting storyline, well developed characters and settings, a few discrepancies but nothing that can’t be overlooked. Some aspect of the story was new/refreshing to me and/or intriguing. Recommended for everyone.
[ *** ] Good Read - Solid story with a 'good' ending, or has some other redeeming feature. Limited character development and/or over reliance on tropes. Noticeable discrepancies in world building and/or dialog/behavior that were distracting. I connected enough with the characters/world to read the entire series. Most of the books I read for fun are here. Recommended for fans of the genre.
[ ** ] Okay Read - Suitable for a brief, afternoon escape … flat or shallow characters with little to no development. Over the top character dialog and/or behavior. Poor world building with significant issues and/or mistakes indicating poor research. Excessive use of trivial detail, info dumps and/or pontification. Any issues with the story/characters are offset by some other aspect that I enjoyed. Not very memorable. May only appeal to a niche group of readers. Recommended for some (YMMV).
[ * ] Bad Read - Awkward and/or confusing writing style. Poor world building and/or unbelievable (or unlikeable) characters. Victimization, gaslighting, blatant abuse, unnecessary violence, child endangerment, or any other highly objectionable behaviors by Main characters. I didn't connect with the story at all; significant aspects of this story irritated me enough that I struggled to finished it. Series was abandoned. Not recommended.