Blindsight (2006)
(title of post links to free download)
In the middle of reading this book I was compelled to take a month-long break to take care of some life potpourri. It certainly hurt my enjoyment of the novel, since I stopped reading right when the action picked up, and for that month my lasting impression of the book was of a series of digressions into identity and sentience ("sentience" definitely being a word that distinguishes SF readers from those who frequent other genres), wrapped in a dark, dense, and convolutedly told first contact story.
It hits a really good mix of theory and action when they encounter the aliens at about the halfway point though, and picks up steam through to the end. I page-turned the last 100 or so pages (of a 300-page book).
This was up for a Hugo Award for 2007, and probably should have won on the strength of its commitment to rooting fantastic phenomena in at least somewhat plausible scientific theory (aside from the vampires, but c'mon, it's vampires!), and its willingness to pose an unpleasant question and follow it to its logical, bleak, conclusion. What the Hugo Winner, Rainbows End, had that Blindsight didn't was a preternaturally gifted preteen girl to act as a foil and soften the hero-hardass's heart. A good thing, IMHO.
In the middle of reading this book I was compelled to take a month-long break to take care of some life potpourri. It certainly hurt my enjoyment of the novel, since I stopped reading right when the action picked up, and for that month my lasting impression of the book was of a series of digressions into identity and sentience ("sentience" definitely being a word that distinguishes SF readers from those who frequent other genres), wrapped in a dark, dense, and convolutedly told first contact story.
It hits a really good mix of theory and action when they encounter the aliens at about the halfway point though, and picks up steam through to the end. I page-turned the last 100 or so pages (of a 300-page book).
This was up for a Hugo Award for 2007, and probably should have won on the strength of its commitment to rooting fantastic phenomena in at least somewhat plausible scientific theory (aside from the vampires, but c'mon, it's vampires!), and its willingness to pose an unpleasant question and follow it to its logical, bleak, conclusion. What the Hugo Winner, Rainbows End, had that Blindsight didn't was a preternaturally gifted preteen girl to act as a foil and soften the hero-hardass's heart. A good thing, IMHO.
Labels: books
posted by Jon @ 2:56 PM
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