Blindsight Voted Fourth Best SFF of the Decade
Tor took a reader poll to vote for the best SF and Fantasy novels of the decade. Blindsight, by Peter Watts, came in fourth place. Elizabeth Bear wrote an appreciation of Blindsight, calling it "the best hard science fiction novel of the first decade of this millennium."
"...his ideas are horrible and fascinating and glitter like a swarm of darkly jeweled beetle carapaces, that he’s got a hard-biology explanation for vampirism and that his thematic freight—that all we see when we look out at the universe is our own selves reflected, because that is what we are programmed to see, and that our conscious minds may very well be bad for us—is gorgeously developed.
Blindsight is one of those rare books that alters the reader’s perception of the world and of himself, if the reader is brave enough to tackle it head-on."
Sometimes I watch a movie or read a book or hear music and say to myself "that wasn't for me, but it was carried off like a virtuoso." Others have said that of Blindsight. It isn't for everyone, but it is for me.
You can read Blindsight for free on Peter Watts' site. The notes and references are fascinating in their own right. You can also watch and listen to Peter Watts' slideshow presentation about a fictional scientific explanation for vampires as an extinct hominid predator species.
Comments
parslaanna on Mar. 4, 2011 1:16 AM
I felt that way about the movie Black Swan. I didn't like it one bit, but I thought it very well done.
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