Blindsight

Blindsight is at once a science fiction foray, a psychological exploration, and a pants-wetting horror story all rolled up into one. It has both strong characters and vampires. I know! We culturally forgot books could have both of those things in the last few years.

Let's start with the science. It would be very arrogant of me to say that I understood much of what was going on beyond the most basic elements. I had to constantly reread because I'd miss important things with the psychology, biology, or technical talk went on for too long. I was always better for those re-readings though because the book deals with some really interesting theories. It ranges from the plausibility of vampires (I enjoy the Crucifix glitch, although using the V word still through me off) to what it means to be sentient. I went back and forth on my own opinions of the scramblers and the rightness/wrongness of the crew's mission. Watts brings in a lot of phenomena that I have passing familiarity with, mostly during the hallucinations, and treats it all in a very unique way. He manages to pull off a scientifically plausible ghost story, and that deserves applause.

He wouldn't have managed if he didn't also have a firm grip on character. Siri, our intrepid sociopathic narrator is pretty amazing to watch. His disconnect, his analysis, his rationalizing the world around him makes him a 1st person narrator that I don't find cloying. Most of the time, I really dislike 1st person p.o.v. because we get so bogged down in that one person's emotional overload and I end up hating them because I get sick of their whining. That doesn't happen with Siri. We get to watch him process humanity, and eventually, painfully, discover it for himself. While I didn't like Chelsea or the concept of “tweaking” at all, her death scene where Siri is just searching helplessly for the appropriate words was heartbreaking.

The other characters resonate the more strongly for being filtered through Siri's Chinese room. I love Amanda Bates, especially after getting her backstory. I also love that she is never referenced as a “female general,” just a general because we don't need to make a big deal out of that. The Gang of Four is a pretty incredible concept and another idea that sets Blindsight apart from other science fiction. Szpindel provided some much needed humor while Sarasti kept everything on edge, even during the peaceful sequences.

Then there were the not-so peaceful sequences. Holy crap I was scared when they were on board the Rorschach. Actually, I was scared from the moment the ship called Susan by name. I knew what Watts was doing. I knew he was pointing out the inconsistencies in human thinking and our own ability to convince ourselves what is true, what is our will. I was still terrified during the “haunting.” It's one of those books I pray is never adapted to a film because this sequence would never be as scary and the whole point would evaporate.

Blindsight may err a little bit on the heavy side, being as it took me a whole week to get through a mere 300 pages, but all of those pages made me think, made me question my own ability to make decisions. I've heard the book criticized for not being “hard” science fiction, but I think that everything he describes has plausibility at the very least. He spends the last forty pages citing his sources, and even Sarasti gets a reasonable if not likely explanation. I'd recommend this book if you like a solid horror story and exploring the limits of the human mind, as long as you don't mind a vampire wandering onstage now and again.