Echopraxia

Book 2 of the Firefall duo. It continued the wild ride of Blindshight with another weird bunch of characters, but a different spaceship on a different journey.

This time the ship is heading to a facility close to the sun. Among the different cast of characters we slowly find out how they are linked to the crew of the first book, and how the aliens of Bk 1 have somehow migrated to story 2. And it's not all good. In the first book Watts was exploring concepts of intelligence vs self awareness. In the second book he explores issues of free will vs whatever the alternatives are. His background is as a marine research biologist and this book closes with several essays on the scientific analysis of his weird characters and story elements, citing several hundred academic journals and articles in the process. So just as my mind was reeling from the close of the story itself I found myself in an academic treatise whirlwind where he seems to say, "See, I told you it was possible."

And on a completely different note. He minimally mentions the time when he flushed his mouth with a cocktail of marine animal and plant DNA just before a swab being taken by some American govt. agency. Now that's a story I want to know more about. :)