# Review of Blindsight by Peter Watts (2006) **See Also:** [[Book Reviews]]. If you like hard SF that's well-written and intellectually challenging, then Blindsight is for you. In a nutshell, Blindsight a first-contact story with a species that is *utterly* alien to humanity, set in the year 2082. We dispatch a ship because we're worried the aliens aren't very nice. The minimal crew of the ship is constituted of a very odd collection of neuro-atypical trans-humans, all selected for their *augmentations*, which make them ideal for various specific functions needed for their mission. And an AI. The story is told from the point of view of trans-human crew member Siri Keeton, who was subjected as a child to a hemispherectomy to cure severe seizures, leaving him emotionally hollow, even with various neural augmentations. But because of his lack of emotional life, he is able to parse other people's intentions impartially, which tends to piss them off because no one really wants that accurate of a mirror held up to them. Indeed, this becomes his career - documenting what people are actually thinking and doing by reading their "surfaces" - their words, tones, and body language, far more clearly than neurotypical people can do. The other crew members include a soldier whose underlings are robots that she can control mentally; a person whose mind was artificially partitioned to contain five separate personalities, each with their own specialities; a biologist who can control lab equipment with their mind; a literal vampire, and a few others, each with their own *augmentations* that make them... well, *creepy* to normal folk (like the reader). The AI is the ship's "Captain", taking orders from the vampire, who is the mission leader. In hindsight, I realized the characters were all carefully constructed to demonstrate various aspects of the human experience of consciousness. As such, one might think it a bit contrived, but Watts does it so skillfully, and brings all the characters to life so well, that it all just makes sense. As the mission proceeds, the team learns more about the aliens, and the reader learns more about the crew. Viewed through Siri Keeton's eyes, we get a dispassionate analysis of humanity, simplified by the division of its features into the characteristics of the crew members, even though Keeton himself is an absolute mess. Keeton is keenly conscious of everyone else, yet seemingly utterly unconscious of his own self. But... Blindsight is a difficult read. Not because the writing is opaque or the structure is bizarre. Indeed, the writing is simple yet evocative. One of my metrics for a good book is that the words pass effortlessly into me, creating images and ideas that aren't mine yet live vigorously and beautifully in my mind. Blindsight definitely checks that box. It's a difficult read for two reasons: The first reason is that it's *very* hard SF. The characters have all had advanced, extensive training in multiple sciences and technologies. As such, the dialogue is filled with scientific and technical terms. I had to look several of them up. It's not "technobabble"; these are legitimate scientific concepts and terms occurring in all kinds of papers you can find with Google Scholar. That might turn some people off, but I'm weird, and I love it when an author gets me so interested in the story that I *want* to look those words up to better understand the story. And I have *never* read a book that came with an afterword explaining all the science on which the story is based, complete with a bibliography of *133* references! (For comparison, my PhD thesis has 225 references.) The second reason that Blindsight is a tough read is that the book is a rather scathing indictment of *consciousness*. Yeah, you read that right; the book makes a compelling argument that being conscious is not a survival trait. I don't mean conscious as in "awake"; I mean conscious as in how we're sentient in ways that other animals don't seem to be. You just *know* that's gonna be a tough sell. I won't explain it any more than that, because (a) spoilers are bad, and (b) I can't possibly capture it as well as Watts does. Which is a shame, because there is *so* much to unpack in this story. It's not laid out as a lecture or a textbook; it's all very organic. The encounter with the aliens makes the story a rip-roaring adventure, but the *point* of all the action is to highlight how humans think. This novel would be a valuable discussion tool in courses on literature, psychology, sociology, politics, anthropology, or sustainability. Watts's arguments emerge gradually as a result of the interactions of the various characters, both human and alien. I loved the journey on which the novel took me even though the punchline made me rather uncomfortable because it made me question the nature of my existence and just how much of it might be utter bollocks. To achieve that without boring me, or intellectually bludgeoning me, or insulting me, is quite an achievement. Arguing against the usefulness of consciousness will certainly chaff many people, and perhaps this accounts in part for why the novel has had such a rough time on the market. I found the argument compelling (though part of me wish I didn't), but that's probably because I have been wondering about "human exceptionalism" for some time now. Of course, Watts's thesis hinges on a number of assumptions about the nature of the future society of which the human characters are members, and that people augmented as those characters have been would become as Watts depicts them. Watts himself admits this in the afterword. But as a thought experiment, Blindsight is both chilling and revelatory. I'd hate to think that the same reason that I am me is also the reason that the world is such a messy, messed up place. And yet, Watts's approach to the matter really leaves me with no alternative - if his assumptions are correct. Finally, the book can be read for free under a Creative Commons license, which [some see](https://aescifi.ca/blindsight-review/) as a contribution to the business of writing as significant as the novel itself is a contribution to the arts. But you should buy it. Watts deserves it for this amazing work.