Riley's Commie Book Club - Blindsight
It's Commie Book Club's new home! This month, Riley changes gears a little bit from the theoretical to discuss one of his favourite works of Science Fiction, Blindsight by Peter Watts. It's a hard-sci fi first contact novel that is so hard it has citations. Only very minor spoilers contained herein - you are encouraged to read it!
Find it on Watts' website, where he posted it free on his website after a dispute with his publisher.
Different format options available at the top https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
Comments (6)
Just finished it today and afterwards listened to this post. Thank you Riley, without you mentioning this book multiple times I probably wouldn’t have read it. Even if it’s a little tough to get into and had me asking ‘wtf is going on’ a lot in the beginning (or kind of the whole way through if I’m being honest) I absolutely loved it. In seriously considering starting over again right away, something I’ve never done with any book
Coming from the future 2025, I read this book because of this podcast and have been recommending it to all my friends so someone will read it. I loved it. It was so good.
"You can start all sorts of cascades just by playing certain sounds in the right order, or by showing images with the right balance of geometry and emotion." Holy Christ on the cross! Speaking of SF positing a change and gaming out the consequences, I forgot how early Watts set this one up!
I'm so glad someone else enjoys this book like I do. I have the right set of overlapping hyperfixations (and have spent enough time on the about standing Atomic Rockets site) that I didn't need the jargon explained, and when one chapter opened with "imagine you are a machine," considering the context of what had been happening i thought "but I am a machine," which the text literally followed up with "no, I know, but imagine you are a different kind of machine," I knew this was going to be the book for me.
Just followed Trashfuture after Alice's crossover thing with DoNotEat, anyway this book has always er disturbed me and i'm super curious what other stuff you've covered, i just stumbled on Peter Watts and his writing's stuck with me
Oh, Mr Quinn!!! I enjoyed this one even more than the Mark Fisher one. I've downloaded the book so will report back to you (like a good student) when I've finished it. Thank you 💜x