Existential Hard Sci-Fi...With Vampires? | Blindsight Review
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- You can read Blindsight online for free here: rifters.com/re...
(Alternatively, you could probably find it for free on many ebook apps, which is what I did.)
Also, check out Quinn's Ideas' videos on Blindsight if you don't mind spoilers! • The Horrible Truth Abo...
Music:
George Street Shuffle and Tango de Manzana Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons...
Art in thumbnail by Dmitri Skolzki
I love Peter Watts. The zombie soldiers are the creepiest concept in fiction: do your tour in a dream like state and only wake up when you retire, or when you die
It sucks that your review videos don’t do as well as your sketches, they’re definitely top tier in terms of being clear and concise. I’m also gonna give Blindsight a read, it sounds super interesting!
I'm fairly certain based on his personality, sense of humor, and even apperance, that someone I know 5ish years in the future gets his hands on a time machine and comes back in time to become Generic Entertainment.
Yep, it's me. I'll see you at the beginning, friend.
See, this is the kind of wholesome imaginative humorous interaction that restores my faith in humanity using social media for positive impact. Well done, you goons! Bravo!
I didn't realize you did actual reviews - just thought you made funny videos poking fun at different types of book nerds and writers. I loved a couple of his other books so I'm excited to hear your take on this one.
Yeah, lol, that's the problem when you have a channel that's sort of a book review channel and sort of a skit channel, then you don't upload a book review for like six months, get a bunch of new subscribers, and now have to convince all these new people to watch book reviews as well as skits. I don't expect these videos to do as well in the algorithm, but ah well, I like to make unironic videos about books anyway. Thanks for taking the time to check this one out!
Blindsight is the only book that actually gave me nightmares, that and I guess the scene from The Phoenix Exultant where a civilization falls to a grey goo scenario. Watts' description of Rorschach and it's motivations or lack thereof is chilling. The kind of stuff that really sticks with you.
I would also recommend Blood Music by Greg Bear if you haven't read it already. It too is excellent scifi horror that also asks questions about the nature of consciousnesses though it focuses heavily on body horror. The bathtub scene still makes my stomach churn, if you know you know.
Thanks for the rec, just downloaded it.
These two books are in my top 5 for sure!
Just put Blood Music as my next read. Thank you for the recommendation
holy crap Blindsight is one of my favourite books, good shit
This sounds like a fascinating read, thanks for sharing this.
Wow, I never realized this was under Creative Commons. That’s so cool. I remember loving this book’s payoff the two times I read it but thanks to my poor memory I can only vaguely remember the details… so this is a nice reminder to go enjoy it again. 😅
I wish I heard your blessing. I have a poor memory of things I physically do but a good memory of things I think about, so I can't really rewatch or reread anything I enjoyed. It would have been been fun to rediscover the books that shaped me in my childhood.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I love reading but my short term memory is so poor that I often take notes or have to read a book twice to understand it. I wish I could remember everything I think about. That is a true gift!
Heh, cool to see you shouting out Quinn's Ideas. That's another good channel, indeed.
Quinn is 0/3 for me so far. I love him, but I’m beginning to realize we don’t share the same taste
Holy shit, the way you described the MC made me realize hes a living Chinese Room thought experiment. Watts is a fucking genius.
Thats a big theme in the book!
I'm impressed you spotted it just from a vague description. But you are completely right, the MC himself uses a Chinese Room thought experiment to describe what he does to other people, and the entire concept of Chinese Room and other types of conciseness-less intelligence is a big theme in the book
Isn’t this obvious?
I mean… yeah 😂
For me, the most mind blowing SciFis I've read recently are: Blindsight, Three Body Problem, and Children of Time. Oh boy CoT slaps so much! I haven't read the 3rd book but the first two are amazing
Oh you're in for a treat with Children of Memory, it might be my favorite in the series.
@@pholidia8175I agree, Children of memory is an absolute mindfuck the further into it I got. Also I love the crows sm
I haven’t read CoT, so thanks for the recommendation-but I agree with the others! Have you read Anathem? His layering of ideas in philosophy and geometry and physics is pretty cool.
The third is so far my least favorite by quite a bit. Hopefully gets better as it goes.
I was savagely disappointed by every single one of these. Is there something wrong with me?
Yay! One of my favorite books! Also, the first book by Peter Watts I read. I even followed most of the sources referenced in the end.
If you liked it too, then you should read the sequel, "Echopraxia"
First of all, love your channel! I think this is one the best books I ever read in the way it forces you to think about the world and conscience in a different way but at the same time it has fantastic mood and worldbuilding. The only book I read after it that felt like this level of hard sci fi was Diaspora by Greg Egan. Same level of mind blowing narrative but without really a story or protagonist you want to care about. I highly recommend both!
I really, really need to get to Greg Egan; thanks for the recommendation!
You should read Greg Egan. Permutation City is absolutely mind bending on the level of Blindsight. Orthogonal builds an entire world, physics to biology, from a single sign flip in an equation governing spacetime which makes it an impressive achievement and also gives it fantasy vibes because of how different the world is from ours.
Blindsight sounds like a hard science version of Dracula combined with Arrival
If you like "Blindsight" you are going to love "Echopraxia" *chef's kiss*
I consider Blindsight to be better than its sequel, but otherwise I agree.
I’m so glad i found your channel, it’s hard to find people with the same interests as me who don’t recommend the same recommendations everyone else does.
Blindsight is one of the best books I have read in years. It is odd, spooky, thoughtful, and has just enough weird semi plausible things to think about once you have put it down.
See for me it’s pretty terrible. The science is interesting, but I am a character driven reader and the characters are just ..so bad. And I focus on small technical things, like the author’s constant use of italics. It has neckbeard energy. And I feel bad for saying this and feeling this way.
Thank you so much for this review! i love his novels for many years, as i think blindsight is a perfect thing to start) its good that you popularising it, watts deserves to be known and read ;)
I love this book so much. It quite honestly has some of the best prose I’ve read in sci fi IMO, very poetic, and I absolutely agree that the way it ties together all its themes by the end is mind blowing!! Great to see it getting some attention. I’d definitely reccomend reading starfish and Maelstrom, also by Peter Watts.
This was already on my reading list, but after hearing you mention its conclusions being accidentally prophetic (potentially), it's now on my next-to-read list.
Loved this book. It also reminds me of three body problem as in "blow your mind with existential cosimic horror". If you stumble upon more novels with this vibe keep us posted.
Yeah if anything’s gonna get you hooked on spec evo it’s alien biospheres
The guy who makes sketches about books makes reviews too? Neato. Subbed.
Great review. putting blindsight on my list
one of the best scifi books ever. rip roaring and well written in a flinty, sharp style. also there is a black humor funny twilight zone style finale that will get you too.
I found your channel yesterday thanks to your previos video, after wathing it I searched through your entire channel to find the review of this book and it wasn't there, today it got recommended to me. I also really liked Blindsight, love your videos.
Since I have already written one comment, I can also recommend some books. The author from whom I have read the most books is Stanisław Lem, mainly because he is the most famous sci-fi writer from my country, his best known book is Solaris, its about an expedition to a planet covered with a conscious ocean and how it plays with explorers minds. He also wrote two great hard sci-fi books, "Invincible" and "Fiasco", both of which describe people's encounters with an alien civilization and their mutual influence on each other. There is one more great hard sci-fi book by another Polish author that I would like to recommend, it is "Cathedral" by Jacek Dukaj, it tells the storry of priest going to a planetoid to investigate the holiness of Izmir Predu for whom a 600m biomechanical cathedral was grown on said planetoid. The complexity of language used is similar to that of Blindsight, its only 100 pages but an incredible story nontheless. Love your videos, this review was great, I hope your channel will grow quick.
Cool! Now we need a review about the sequel: Echopraxia
Have you seen the fanmade CGI Short trailer for that book on youtube?
Looks amazing.
If its the one I think it is, I recommend seeing it.
Saw the video title and immediately added to the tbr
Blindsight is a masterpiece. One of my favorite books, period.
I . . . have not yet read Echopraxia.
Yessss blindsight! One of my all time favorite books! The method they use to start learning the alien language is something only an supremely evil genius could come up with.
You also love biblaridion? I just recommended it to another excellent small time youtuber: ua-cam.com/video/QJHR2NB7Wt4/v-deo.html
Combine this with the fact that you're also interested in super niche topics like shrimp welfare and I'm starting to think you're somehow mining my brain for content. If you are, please don't stop!
I fucking love this book. Great review
I was sold on this. Got the book yesterday. So far, it's weird but interesting.
I was really with you , especially after the 'contemp fiction as hard sci-fi ' narration,
which made me feel inadequate, but The Dark Forest ? really ?
I couldn't be bothered to read the third part of the trilogy!
Blindsight on the other hand, which i just downloaded, seems to pick up where
other sci-fi tropes leave off....enjoying the vigorous prose!
The depressing outcomes of a lot of the hard scifi I've read is really odd to me. I haven't read a single Greg Egan book that had a happy ending, and I almost want to start skipping the ends.
This kind of explorative writing is so interesting and so filled with new experiences. Why douse that all in existential dread?
Makes me want to go back and read the Bobiverse again. Those books end up sharing a lot more awesome concepts because they're not focused on characters freaking out for large portions of the novels...
For spoiler reasons I won't elaborate, but you should read Greg Egan's Orthogonal trilogy. Also Diaspora's ending isn't really super depressing, but I can definitely see how someone else would read it that way
i'm about 3/4 through this book - about 3/4 of it went right over my head. Watts is clearly super intelligent, i wish he would have held our hands a little bit more though, other than a few very cinematic scenes, i'm finding his writing to be way too sharp and acute in that Gibson/cyberpunk style, where there are so many intentional gaps. i've read *some* hard sci-fi in the past and a couple Stevenson novels, but man, this one is a real doozy.
Weird timing I also just finished this book like a week ago. Great review
I love your sit down videos!
I love blindsight! Have you read any vernor vinge? They aren't the hardest sci fi, but I love the alien societies in A Fire Upon the Deep & The Deepness in the Sky.
Since you mentioned the dark forest hypothesis, you might have a look at The Killing Star, I recommend it.
I literally read this last week!
I liked a lot all the things you highlighted when I was reading. The scene of the "false first contact" is so so good. But, one has to put it: he doesn't know at all to write human relationship (something needed in a book that takes place in a limited space and with a lot of idiosyncratic characters); and even the memories, the relationship of him with his ex (if I remember well) was a chore to read. It is, although, a book that deservers a reread just to explore the concepts.
I dislike the misanthropy of the book.
Blindsight Echopraxia & The Colonel by Watts are all part of Firefall series.
My problem with the novel is that is seems to be writen by Edgy McEdgyness.
Fantastic video! I'm not going to read Watts. But next time I meet a genius young person who thinks they're bored, I'll link them up.
Problem about his work being depressing is he is rather depressing himself. His lecture up on UA-cam tied to Blindsight is a good example of that.
Guy now thinks people need to be reengineered to remove certain things he doesn't like and thinks are harmful to humanity.
Whatever you want to get into about that subject, it's clear he's gotten into some dark mental territory.
For sure, he's an incredibly gifted writer and Blindsight is one of my favorite books, but the whole thing just radiates this deep bleak darkness, it's like you can feel his mental state when he wrote the book and holy SH*T am I glad I don't live like that. It's like this horrible soul-sucking pit lurking behind every word. Amazing book, 9.5/10
By all means, continue with the reviews!
I just finished the novel and wanted to see other perspectives on this novel, and you now have a new subscriber. I loved it but some parts about consciousness confused me.
It's definitely a dense read! I really enjoyed it, but I did have to re-read sections at times, because there's just so many ideas packed in there.
I had to stop halfway through that pretentious mess. I loved some elements to it but wow does Watts enjoy the smell of his own farts.
Thank you!!!! Put it perfectly.
The moment you mentioned that you prefer hard scifi, I thought of The Compleat McAndrew by Charles Sheffield. Have you read it?
Try reading Revolutionary Phenotype if you haven't already, it might also blow your mind a little.
I listened to a very interesting podcast with a neurologist recently. His explanation of consciousness was as disturbing as it was fascinating. To paraphrase extremely badly the basic idea is our brains are machines that are telling us a story about ourselves. The idea that we think our own consciousness is a mysterious and unique property is just that. A story. What it is not is an accurate description of reality. The implications here are profound. Our brains are in effect nothing but biological machines So there's really nothing particularly special about them other than the fact we have no idea how they really work much less how to make one. It's all just a hypothesis of course but honestly I don't think it should be disregarded out of hand. It's probably a lot more plausible than assuming a ghost in the machine.
One piece of speculative biology that introduced me to the entire concept is "South Scrimshaw," which I wholly recommend to anyone who finds this comment. It's free on Steam as a "visual novel" or as a video on UA-cam, and its about whales :)
If you love spec biology check out Scavengers Reign, it's awesome!
I love your content
Hey man, thanks for the interesting videos on your channel !
One thing I've noticed several times while watching your vids and that instantly kick me out of focus are the cuts between some parts of the recording, where a new audio sentence starts a bit before the new video take starts as well. I know the goal is to prevent having too many blanks in the audio tracks, and the effect of having a new audio start slightly before the video cuts as well is interesting and can be a cool tool to use, but here it just falls right into the uncanny valley for me and leaves a weird feeling each time.
I think you could put just a bit more time between the 2 audio tracks when you do that, making it seem like a small breathing, a more natural pace. And you could also reduce the window of "new audio + old video" by a few tenths of a second.
Maybe there are some cool guides out there on how to craft this effect perfectly !
Anyway this is only my personal take on the subject, so wait and see if others might feel the same or, on the contrary, appreciate it.
Cheers !
Edit for timestamps examples :
3:23 this one hit hard on the not cool side
3:33 feels smooth and on point
I’m I’m my even Z dev g be rgfff bc g be every
I read this a couple years ago because I was led to believe it was a horror book and damn did I feel deceived. It is at best unsettling but horror? Not in the least. It was certainly an interesting book and there were parts I found quite fascinating but if I had known it was hard sci-fi, I wouldn’t have read it, and I don’t think I would have really missed out anything.
It's not bad... The writing can be a bit repetitive expecially with the metaphors and adjectivation and it can feel like the author really wants to repeatedly hammer you on the head with his favourite thematic over and over (expecially with some a bit on the nose metaphors and adjectivations that as said above are repeated time and again).
But I really liked the first book... Although for the aforementioned I couldn't really go for seconds with Echopraxia and bailed out after a bit...
CONSCIENCE IS BAD *BONK BONK BONL BONK*
I just recently read this book! I really liked the aliens in this, but the name of the vampire character, Jukka, is so boomer Finnish name that I laughed 😅
So many books, so little time.
Rifters was also good.
Once you go Peter Watts you won't know happiness again
After watching several sketches, this is the video that earned my sub. 👍🏻
Who is the redheaded character reminiscent of the DID-ish character in this one?
Thanks for subbing! The character is Shallan Davar from the Stormlight Archive.
I found your video with the link to read it for free 2 weeks after buying it from Amazon... FML 😢 I hope some of the money went to Peter Watts at least instead of all to Jeff Bezos.
I'm 1/3 of the way through and very much enjoying it so far, I've been struggling to find another good hard sci fi book/series since finishing The Expanse.
Sorry, new guy here! Have you red "killing star" now that you mentioned sci-fises about the drak forest theory?
I took 5 years to write a hard sci-fi novel and worked with scientists from many different backgrounds to make it. I have a feeling you’d like it 🧐
Is there any way to read this novel?
@@mattrobson3603 the novel is also called “Icarus Dawns” if you want to look it up
@@mattrobson3603it’s called “Icarus Dawns” it can be found a bunch of places :)
😍
Thanks, sounds cool, but I will pass on this one. I am looking for a non-nihilistic sci-fi story, but they seem to be non-existent. Any recommendations?
If you are looking for optimistic sci-fi, check out Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s some of the best modern science fiction around.
Unless you are arachnophobic.
That was a great book 🖤🖤
Wash your hair.
Good video.
There's a manga called Alita battle angel. It's about cyborgs and martial arts in the junk towns after the apocalypse. In the second series (The Last Order) a vampire is introduced. It's out of place in a cyborg comic, but turns out to be a great story.
Im trying to read this in english, my second language, and i dont understand shit🤣
I’m an English major, and neither do I 😂
@@jbear3478 I finished. I hated it🤣
Excuse me, existential what?
Hey man, great review... too great. You've just lost watchtime; I can't finish watching the review as I'm too busy looking where to buy the book. Sorry, but in the first four minutes you've already given me too many reasons -- maybe try stretching your point out next time.
"Hard Sci-Fi... With Vampires" - When people are so embarrassed to read anything other than hard sci-fi that they have to find a way to call any book they like hard sci-fi.
I barely remember that book, but - unless I'm mixing something up - the one thing I do remember is that it starts with a long and detailed starfish biology lesson. Bending physics for... some reason.
This isn't the question of the _readers_ being ashamed; it's the author.
They are basically just humans without the ability to create a specific protein, thereby requiring a level of cannibalism. Sort of like how cats can't be vegetarian because they can't make certain proteins and need to consume them.
Doesn't sound impossible. It's a marine biologist trying to invent plausible vampires, it's going to obey biological laws as well as other hard scifi obeys physics.
Dragon's Egg is considered hard sci-fi and it's a lot less plausible than a canablistic human subspecies
Ayayayaysyehdjdofj autistic space vampires who get triggered by lines whats not to love
Loved that book. Peter Watts is great!
For me Blindside was a mashup of two books. The aliens were scary and made me think deep sentient thoughts. The space vampires ... I tried. If the tone had been less realist, it would have worked. I kept thinking of What We Do In the Shadows in space.
I would like Peter Watts more if everything he wrote was not steeped in terminal misanthropy.
Great video, but your editing is a tad aggressive .
First
Thirst
This is easily my favorite novel
I wonder what it’s like to live as you
"Hard sci fi" doesn't just mean "I read some interesting stuff on r/til and crammed it all haphazardly into a their-tier spaceship story." If you like the story, that's cool. But the science is about as hard as jello. Also, MFer should probably go outside a couple of times before making "there are no right angles in nature" a plot point. The vampires, as written, would have seizures and die the first time it rained while the horizon was visible.
I wanted, and tried to read this book really hard, but my brain just can't understand what's going on. The way it is written makes it very difficult for non-native english readers to understand or follow what's happening, even though i read so much english fiction, this one just doesn't work :(( maybe some years later i will try again.
pleb filtered
I hated this book, I found it absolutely up it's own ass and thoroughly predictable once I put myself in the mindset of an edgy 19 year old redditor. I have no idea how people enjoy this book, I have no idea how people can read it without getting eye strain from the constantly rolling them.
I feel sorry for all the people who do like it. 😂 the constant italics and inability to give us any interesting or charismatic characters, along with the disjointed mess of descriptions and explanations, I just…. I don’t get it and I don’t want to 😂
I wanted to like this, but I think it’s poorly written. Either that or my spatial intelligence is too low to understand anything going on. I should probably stop listening to recommendations from the same UA-cam channel
I think your channel would do better if you hit the gym
hes in twink mode
What the fuck 😂 he’s handsome just the way he is
I want to send you money for gym membership
To me Blindsight was a good read, well written, but not spectacular. More like a bunch of ideas mashed together: standard cyberpunk + space vampires + philosophizing about consciousness.
THIS. THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR. THANK YOU.
Just finished it earlier today, thank you so much for sending me on that journey. And the notes and recommended texts at the end were just as interesting as the story itself. I've been working on a collaborative writing project for a few years now with a somewhat similar premise but we're all the kind to get excited over worldbuilding and theory and get a little slow on writing the (non-linear) stories within it, and the plot already spans several thousand years and counting, so this is a book I'll be sending to everyone involved. My emotionally masochistic philosophy obsessed friend in particular will both hate me and love me for that. She knows I always send her things that upset her deeply but she's always asking for more, and the whole "vampires came from autistic sociopaths" angle will definitely amuse her, since I'm the vampire-obsessed autistic sociopath (ASPD diagnosis, not just being edgy) of the group, lmao. And she's autistic with an over-abundance of empathy. Some of the points in the book could have been our conversations.
Now I should probably finish the video, lol sorry. But in my defence, you kinda sidetracked me with a book. Which I'd say was a win for us both. Thanks again!
this sounds cool as hell