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  • Blindsight (Firefall, 1)

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Peter Watts
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Blindsight (Firefall, 1)

by Peter Watts (Author), Elizabeth Bear (Introduction) Format: Paperback
4.2 out of 5 stars (8,522)

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Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight

Two months since the stars fell...

Two months of silence, while a world held its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist―an informational topologist with half his mind gone―as an interface between here and there.

Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.

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  1. Book 1 of 2
    Firefall
  2. Print length
    384 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Tor Books
  5. Publication date
    April 21, 2020
  6. Dimensions
    5.37 x 0.96 x 8.31 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1250237483
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1250237484
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A magnificent, darkly gleaming jewel of a book that hurdles the contradictions inherent in biochemistry, consciousness, and human hearts without breaking stride.” ―Elizabeth Bear, author of Karen Memory

“Peter Watts has taken the core myths of the First Contact story and shaken them to pieces. The result is a shocking and mesmerizing performance, a tour-de-force of provocative and often alarming ideas. It is a rare novel that has the potential to set science fiction on an entirely new course.” ―Karl Schroeder, author of Stealing Worlds

“A tour de force, redefining the First Contact story for good. Peter Watts' aliens are . . . something new and infinitely more disturbing, forcing us to confront unpalatable possibilities about the nature of consciousness.” ―Charles Stross, author of The Delirium Brief

“Blindsight is excellent. It's state-of-the-art science fiction: smart, dark and it grabs you by the throat from page one. Like a C J Cherryh book it makes you feel the danger of the hostile environment (or lack of one) out there. And unlike many books it plays with some fascinating possibilities in human development (I like the idea of some disabilities becoming advantages here) and some disconcerting ideas about human consciousness (understanding what action preceding though actually means).” ―Neal Asher

“If Samuel R. Delany, Greg Egan and Vernor Vinge had collaborated to update Algis Budrys's classic Rogue Moon for the new millennium, they might have produced a novel as powerful and as uniquely beautiful as Blindsight.” ―Spider Robinson, co-author of Variable Star by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson

About the Author

Peter Watts is a former marine biologist, flesh-eating-disease survivor and convicted felon whose novels―despite an unhealthy focus on space vampires―have become required texts for university courses ranging from Philosophy to Neuropsychology.

His work is available in 21 languages, has appeared in over 350 best-of-year anthologies, and been nominated for over 50 awards in a dozen countries. His (somewhat shorter) list of 20 actual wins includes the Hugo, the Shirley Jackson, and the Seiun.

Peter is the author of the Rifters novels (Starfish, Maelstrom) and the Firefall series (Blindsight, Echopraxia).



ELIZABETH BEAR was the recipient of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2005. She has won two Hugo Awards and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for her short fiction. Bear lives in South Hadley, MA.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 21, 2020
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250237483
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250237484
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.37 x 0.96 x 8.31 inches
  • Book 1 of 2 ‏ : ‎ Firefall
  • Best Sellers Rank: #10,924 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars (8,522)

About the author

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Peter Watts

Peter Watts

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This is awkward and a little creepy. They tell me I have to do it for promotional purposes, but I've already got a blog. I've already got a website. Being told that setting up an author page on fcuking *Amazon* is essential to success? A company that treats us all like such goddamn children it doesn't even allow us to correctly spell an epithet with a venerable history going back 900 years or more? That just sucks the one-eyed purple trouser eel.

Also the bio information above is fucked. For example, my work has only appeared in 36 BoY collections, not 350; the noms and awards info is out of date too, but apparently it was all written by some publishing house and I can't change it from this interface.

Still, here I am. But if you're really all that interested, go check out my actual blog/website. Google is not your friend (any more than Amazon is), but at least it'll point you in the right direction.

I'm the one on the left, by the way.