Reading Order
Blindsight Reading Order
Peter Watts's Blindsight (2006) is the most intellectually challenging first contact novel in science fiction — the crew of the Theseus traveling to the edge of the solar system to investigate a mysterious object, only to find aliens who are intelligent but possibly not conscious, forcing a confrontation with what consciousness actually is and whether it has survival value. Blindsight is philosophical hard SF at its darkest — Watts uses the first contact scenario as a vehicle for neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and the most disturbing possible answers to questions about the nature of human identity. It was shortlisted for the Hugo Award and is freely available on Watts's website.
Where to start
Blindsight
Complete Blindsight Book List
- 1Buy
Blindsight
Peter Watts·2006·The first novel — the Theseus and its crew, the Rorschach, the Scramblers, the philosophical horror of an intelligence without consciousness. Dense and richly footnoted with real neuroscience. - 2Buy
Echopraxia
Peter Watts·2014·The companion novel (not a sequel) — Daniel Bruks, a baseline human, traveling to the sun aboard a ship full of posthumans, the Bicameral Order of monks and their zombie-process theology, the Blindsight universe from a different angle.
Blindsight — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main philosophical argument of Blindsight?
Blindsight's central argument — supported by extensive footnotes citing actual neuroscience — is that consciousness may be an evolutionary epiphenomenon: useful in small doses for certain kinds of creative problem-solving, but ultimately a metabolic cost that slows neural processing. The aliens in Blindsight (the Scramblers) are highly intelligent without being conscious in any sense we would recognize; they are faster and more efficient than conscious beings in every way that matters for survival. The novel asks whether consciousness — and by extension, everything that makes humans human — is a temporary accident that evolution may be moving away from.
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