Blindsight

Should have mentioned this at some point.

The Crysis 2 novelization Crysis: Legion is quality fiction in its own right. It essentially justifies the existence of the game itself -- which makes considerably less sense without Watts' clarifications and extrapolations. I mean, really? Why would aliens that can build technology that works millions of years later and fly between stars be engaged in a nigh-equal ground war with us? Watts explains it all.

The only quibble I could find was the way he has Christmas and Christianity almost extinct by the year 2023. I suspect that's a datum that got laterally transferred from Echopraxia by accident.

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Speaking of which, the book formerly known as State of Grace (and before that Dumbspeech aka Mutespeech) is now Echopraxia. That's right, the sequel to Blindsight. It's finished and has been passed off to the editors. Yay!

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Last but not least, our patron author got married. Congrats are of course in order.

number six, hard six, six

Near Chicago? Local club to read, discuss Starfish

chicago-sf.org's reading group will meet to discuss Peter Watts' Starfish. We'll meet August 15th at the Oak Park Public Library at 2PM up in their second floor book discussion room. Are you a Peter Watts fan who hasn't gotten enough chance to talk Watts in meatspace? Please join us! I'd really like to be able to turn up some new folks for this, which is our 3rd anniversary. For more information, see our event thread.
Espeon

A Question About Starfish.

If anyone still reads this place, I have a question.

Does anyone have any interesting articles or reviews about Watts' book Starfish? I'm rereading it, and I was wondering if there were any interesting tidbits out there that weren't linked on Watts' website already.

Thanks!
Blindsight

State of Grace jacket copy - as written by the author.

A Different Kind of Singularity


The eve of the 22nd century. A world where the dearly-departed send postcards back from Heaven, and Jainist evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically-engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline Humans, and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off their own self-awareness during combat. A world under blatant surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.

Daniel Brooks is a living fossil: an old man in a world of immortals, a field biologist in a world where all biology has long since turned computational, an unwitting catspaw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he turns his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he isn't hiding from anything; he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that's about to turn all of history inside-out. - http://rifters.com/real/2009/01/co…


If you haven't already guessed, State of Grace is the sidequel to Blindsight, colloquially referred to as Dumbspeech. I prefer Mutespeech myself but there you go.
Wu Ao Shi

"Family Values".

Screw this. I'm sick of being outnumbered by morons. I'm calling in reinforcements.

Dix has got to have other parents, a father at least, he didn't get that Y chromo from me. I swallow my own disquiet and check the manifest; bring up the gene sequences; cross-reference.

Huh. Only one: Kai. I wonder if that's just coincidence, or if the Chimp drew too many conclusions from our torrid little fuckfest back in the Cyg Rift. Doesn't matter. He's as much yours as mine, Kai, time to step up to the plate, time to—

Oh shit. Oh no.

Please no. -- http://rifters.com/real/2008/06/fa…