Blindsight is an incredibly imaginative science fiction novel that takes on the foibles of human consciousness and examines, in a serious way, what an alien-form of consciousness might look like.

Siri is a unique protagonist. Because of severe seizures when he was young, doctors performed dramatic brain surgery in order to save his life, essentially cutting his brain in half.

“The brain’s a very flexible piece of meat; it took some doing, but it adapted. I adapted.” pg 9, ebook.

This early surgery changed the way Siri’s brain worked and how it processed reality, making him the perfect translator for other humans whose brains and bodies have been so changed that baseline humans can no longer communicate with them.

And Siri’s special talents are desperately needed after aliens unleash surveillance technology in the atmosphere. Humanity called the strange lights in the sky, “fireflies.”

“How else would you explain 65,536 probes evenly dispersed along a lat-long grid that barely left any square meter of planetary surface unexposed? Obviously the Flies had taken our picture.” pg 24, ebook.

Siri becomes part of an elite mission sent by Earth to discover where the “fireflies” originated from and who or what created them.

Blindsight isn’t a simple read. It proposes complex ideas that demand some attention to unravel and it makes the reader consider how real is her own perception of this thing we call “reality.”

It asks how technology may change not only how humankind takes in information, but how that information is interpreted and how that would separate people from each other. The characters Peter Watts has created for the alien-seeking mission are some of the most unique I’ve read because he takes those ideas to extreme conclusions.

“When the fate of the world hangs in the balance, you want to keep an eye on anyone whose career-defining moment involves consorting with the enemy.” pg 135, ebook.

But it feels very real. That is Watts’ strength – making the fantastical seem perfectly logical like vampires, real vampires.

Highly recommended for readers who enjoy “hard” science fiction.

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