[Inane Babble]

With Peter Watts new book coming out next week I just wanted to let everyone know that Peter Watts new book is coming out next week.

It's called Echopraxia and is a sequel to Blindsight. For anyone who has not yet read Blindsight, you can do it for FREE, online, at

http://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

He has a large amount of his work available freely online at his website http://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

This guy is an absolute genius and writes some of best, hardest, yet somehow most approachable science fiction I have ever seen. He writes brilliantly compelling sotries while exploring complex themes throughout his novels and shorts. I cannot recommend him enough to you.

An excerpt of the book was published on tor as a short story to pique your interest.

http://www.tor.com/s...nel-peter-watts

Go! Read his stuff! Enjoy!

Then come back and let's talk about it

Then do it all over again when Echopraxia comes out.

[Morgoth]

So I finished Echopraxia and, to no ones great surprise, enjoyed it immensely. AS With Blinsight I read it while on a work related trip, however this time around the whole thing was a lot more exhausting and I feel I probably didn't give the book the focus and attention it deserved. As a result I fear several layers of the story went right above my head, like puffy little clouds trailing the breeze.

I think I will have to read it again soon, paying a lot more attention to the theme(s) of the story as well as the title. As with Blindsight, the title Echopraxia carries several meanings and I suspect I only saw the most obvious ones.

So, am I the only one having read this yet? What did you guys think?

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 23 September 2014 - 07:39 AM

[Inane Babble]

I probably only got the top layers of the story as well, one of the things about Watts stories is that he was a Marine Biologist, and still regularly reads cutting edge scientific papers, so a lot of what he talks about is simply beyond me. But thats good! It gives me the same feeling that actual science gives me as well.

Spoiler

Really loved Portia as an idea, and the way it was "made" on the ship through the telematter beam. Humans used virus (speech) vs Rorsach. It wasn't very effective... Rorshach used virus (Portia) vs Humans. It's super effective!

Wish the Vampire vs bicameral ending was further explored in the book, I don't understand how the end of the book results in what we saw at the end of blindsight (for anyone who need's reminders, it was no more broadcasts from regular humans, the occasional burst of chatter from someone fleeing earth being chased by people who communicated with clicks that "frightened Siri's brainstem" Indicating the Vampires had took over). I probably missed the point of both books admittedly and really just need to have them spelled out for me.

Really confused that The Colonel short story wasn't actually in the book, as I feel it would have added a lot to the power dynamic on board the ship, seems odd to have such a big piece of character development simply absent. For those interested you can find it, and almost everything else Watts has written on his website here; http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

[Morgoth]

Spoiler

Well, the book does change Blindsight too. The idea that the narrator of Blindsight is in fact not Sirin, but rather a construct of Rorsach changes quite a lot. One has to wonder how reliable the narrator is.

There's a lot of symbolism I haven't fully grasped the meaning of, but the connection between the books focus on religion and Portia's avatar walking out of the dessert is surely more than a piece of literary theater. If there is to be a war on earth greater than the chaos errupting from the fall of Icarus, it must surely be between the post-humans like the Bicamerals, the Vampires and Portia, and there's a number of religious undertones there. But then there is the emergent superintelligence grown from the minds of all the roaches to consider as well. A god for men, one could say, rather than a piece of corrupted code.

I don't know, those issues aren't as important I think in comparison to the events of the main plot-arch. It was interesting to see Valeri grow more "human" as Brüks was growing less so. Relating to an equal without imediatly killing that equal seemed all she really wanted. An escape from a kind of loneliness we can hardly imagine. I found her death surprisingly touching. Her "humanity" made me think that, in the end, it might seem the Vampires have more in common with baselines than they do Portia after all.

Into the more technical aspect though. Why do you think Watts chose that title?

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 23 September 2014 - 10:09 AM

[Inane Babble]

Morgoth, on 23 September 2014 - 10:08 AM, said:

Into the more technical aspect though. Why do you think Watts chose that title?

Echopraxia is involuntary movement that mimics the actions of others.

He said that the main theme he wanted to explore in this book is Autonomy, while Blindsight was about Conciousness. So I think he chose the title as a statement about the lack of control we have on our own actions and used the book to display that facet of our lives taken to an extreme level. He really loves pointing out how little agency the little "I" conciousness actually has.

Whats really scary is that "sleep related automatism" is actually a real thing; people drive cars, cook meals, have sex or even kill people without being aware. Imagine what people could/would do if you could INDUCE that state and then give people orders. Every military mind on the planet would kill half the world for that opportunity. So Watts takes that to it's logical extreme, by having the military put people under for entire tours, where they perform better than they ever could awake, never question orders then wake up not remembering a single thing. But then the really disturbing question is this; What is the difference between someone awake and choosing to kill a person, and someone sleeping doing it? The answer is just that the person asleep does it better. I love Peters view on humanity, so full of hope /s.

I don't know that I agree that the Siri at the end of Blindsight is a Rorshach created one, Jukka resets him back to factor default before jettisoning him away from Big Ben. I think Siri is just learning how to be conscious again in those last few pages.

Spoiler

At the end of the book it looks to be shaping up to be a contest between the New-Roaches vs Bicameral vs Vampires, and given how Bruks was able to kill Valerie I think the New-Roaches have a good chance versus them, it just depends how quickly the New-Roach spreads amonst the population.

The bit I don't understand at all is the Bicameral's role in the whole mission or what their end goal was. Were they trying to trigger the New-Roach brain in Bruks or/then the wider population? Are they playing a longer game than that? Are they planning to stay around or take over or fade away?