Deconstructing the alien: Blindsight by Peter Watts

In 1999 Canadian author Peter Watts made a big splash with Starfish, his ‘New York Times Notable Book of the Year-listed’ debut thriller about a group of misfit bio-engineered humans sent deep underwater by a multinational corporation to harness the geothermal energy of Channer vent on the Juan de Fuca Ridge. This time Watts turns his attention upwards, tackling the starscapes of outer space rather than undersea, bringing with him the biologist’s eye view that made the Starfish trilogy so compelling, disturbing and utterly fascinating.

The year is 2082. Alien ‘fireflies’ have surveyed the Earth, taken a snapshot of life upon it, and, in doing so, alerted humankind to their presence. Radio signals from the Kuiper belt reveal their possible location – and leave humankind in a state of panic.

The team sent to investigate and initiate first contact is not your regular group of likely literary heroes: Siri Keaton, synthesist, a man incapable of experiencing empathy since half his brain was cut out in a childhood hemispherectomy to combat the seizures of viral epilepsy; Isaac Szpindel, a biologist hardwired with extreme body modification; Susan James, a linguist whose personality has been surgically partitioned into four separate entities referred to as the Gang of Four; Major Amanda Bates, a soldier with treason scarring her record; — and Jukka Sarasti commanding them all in conjunction with the ship itself, Theseus, a quantum computer AI. Jukka Sarasti is a vampire. Yes, that’s right, as in the fanged, blood-drinking variety. A genuine monster reconstituted through genetic manipulation, heading up earth’s attempt at first contact with an alien ship that has named itself Rorschack and may or may not be sentient. And dangerous.

As in Starfish, Watts has once again envisioned a group of freaks as protagonists — a strange choice of crew to represent humanity, perhaps? Not when you consider how things are going back home on Earth. Two-party nonvirtual sex pairing has become almost irrelevant. Close to a generation of people, including Siri Keaton’s own mother, have opted to place their bodies in storage and ascend to ‘Heaven’ to live out their lives immersed in their own personalities. Humanity is a couple of years away from the Singularity — reliable Human-consciousness emulation in a software environment — when suddenly aliens appear, Earth panics and global priorities change overnight.

Siri Keaton and his crewmates are awoken from hibernation to find themselves deep in the Oort, confronted by an Oasa emitter: Big Ben, a quantum particle, heavy as ten Jupiters. Behind it, hidden from plain view, lurks a city-sized alien spacecraft that physically “embodies the very notion of torture”. Communication between the two species begins. But the linguist Susan James soon suspects that Rorschack, despite its ability to converse with them in Earth languages, might not be intelligent at all. It might be pattern matching rather than comprehending. Rorschack is growing before their eyes, sucking up matter from Big Ben’s accretion belt, inflicting hallucinations and dysfunctions on the Theseus crew. But is it hostile, friendly or indifferent? Even when it threatens Susan, the crew remains unsure of Rorschack’s abilities and intentions.

In an effort to find answers, the crew, sans vampire, board Rorschack and brave its deadly internal environment in search of clues. They soon encounter creatures with the ability to be seen or not seen by human eyes – and accidentally kill one of them. Investigation of the carcass shows the creature to be sophisticated, but not intelligent. They go back for a couple of live “scrambler” specimens to study: creatures so alien they possess neither brains nor genes. It is soon determined that the only way to force these creatures to communicate is to hurt them.
This novel explores and questions the advantages we presume exist in being human. What is intelligence actually good for, biologically speaking?

The first contact scenario has been played out hundreds of times in speculative fiction cinema, literature and television. When the aliens get here, will they be our friends? Benevolent masters intent on saving humankind from its own self-destructive ways? Or rampaging armies of cyborg/insect warrior soldiers wiping us out because genocide is what they do? Will we be their allies or their lunch? It is often presumed the aliens will be smarter than us from sheer necessity: if they aren’t hyper intelligent, how will they ever find us amidst all that interstellar dust? One fact almost always presumed is a common point of reference: a way to make contact. From the software compatible aliens of Independence Day to the Relics of Rama, some sense can usually be fathomed of it all at some point between the humans and the aliens and their intentions. But what if it can’t be? What are the advantages to being human? What if there aren’t any?

“You’re not so much successful as isolated from any real competition,” says the vampire to Siri Keaton. What if he’s right about that?

On earth, the strangest creatures of all live in the sea. No one could be better placed than a marine biologist to ask the hard questions about life itself and envision a seed from the murky depths of space. Being used to those most alien of creatures, Watts has worked out his scenario in exquisite detail: from the vampire’s crucifix glitch (and resulting aversion to Euclidian geometry) to the telematter drive that propels Theseus into the Oort to confront the alien.

This is a smart book, worth reading for the ideas it contains alone: hard SF at its hardest. Watts surfs the cutting edge of technological exploration, weaving his future humans from the dark edges of today’s research and development. His protagonists are hard to like, but easy to believe in as they navigate through the minefield of communicating with the other: knowing their mistakes could have devastating consequences for earth.