From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Blindsight is a hard science fiction novel by Canadian writer Peter Watts, published by Tor Books in 2006. It won the Seiun Award for best novel in Japanese translation and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Locus Award. The story follows a crew of astronauts sent to investigate a trans-Neptunian comet transmitting an unidentified radio signal, leading to first contact. The novel explores themes of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, and game theory. Blindsight is available online under a Creative Commons license. Its sequel, Echopraxia, came out in 2014.
In the year 2082, thousands of coordinated comet-like objects, dubbed "Fireflies", burn up in Earth's atmosphere in a precise grid, alerting humanity to an extraterrestrial presence. Soon after, a comet-surveying satellite detects a radio transmission from a comet named 'Burns-Caulfield'. Three waves of ships are sent: lightweight probes, heavier probes, and a crewed ship, the Theseus. Theseus is propelled by an antimatter reactor, captained by an AI, and carries five transhuman hyper-specialists, including a genetically reincarnated vampire as commander.
While the crew hibernates, the second wave of probes scans Burns-Caulfield, causing it to self-destruct. Theseus is re-routed to a sub-brown dwarf in the Oort cloud, dubbed 'Big Ben'. The crew wakes to find a giant concealed vessel, which hails them as 'Rorschach'. Linguist Susan James determines Rorschach does not understand actual communication. Probes reveal hollow sections with lethal radiation levels. Despite Rorschach's objections, the crew continues investigation.
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