Blindsight by Peter Watts

This book was so good, I read it twice. And I don't mean, I read it years ago and wanted to read it again. No, I read it (or rather, listened to it) about a week ago, finished it feeling I hadn't retained much, and then immediately re-read it. 

On the first go, I was constantly confused about what was going on and who the various characters were. I couldn't even really say what the basic plot was. This probably isn't making my case that this is a good book, and I wasn't feeling that way either. But despite this, I realized I was never bored while listening, and I liked a lot of the ideas I heard, it was just so dense with information that anytime I tried to multitask, I'd miss something (one of the pitfalls of listening to my books instead of reading them).

So I checked some blogs online, brushed up on the basic plot and characters, and tried again. This time, I focused on really paying attention, cut out the multitasking, and it paid off.

Blindsight is a hard science fiction book, written in 2006 by Peter Watts. It's full of interesting concepts like, well, blindsight, first of all, which is the ability to perform a task without consciousness. An example given in the book occurs when a person is temporarily blinded, yet is able to react to visual stimulus. This article, from the BBC, explains the concept much better: 

"Just how many of our decisions occur out of our awareness, even when we have the illusion of control? And if the conscious mind is not needed to direct our actions, then what is its purpose? Why did we evolve this vivid internal life, if we are almost 'zombies' acting without awareness?"

This quote could have been pulled directly from Watts' book. In fact, he also brings up the concept of zombies in a similar context. Watts explores consciousness as an abnormal, evolutionary quirk. Perhaps, humans are flukes of nature, slowed by our sense of self. Could there be intelligent life that isn't self-aware? What benefit to survival does consciousness actually provide?

Watts also includes concepts of AI, the observer effect, von Neumann machines, Turing machines, game theory, and even vapirism.

All is presented in the context of a society that is a few years away from achieving a single consciousness. The need for bodies is fast in decline - people can upload themselves to "heaven" while their bodies lay in storage, sex in the first person is considered old-fashioned, body modifications include brain treatments and tweaks, and alterations abound that basically turn people into biomachines.

Our narrator, Siri Keeton, underwent a hemispherectomy as a child to treat epileptic seizures. The debilitating surgery took most of his ability to have emotions, but enabled him to become a synthesist - someone who takes vasts amounts of complex information and relays it to others in a coherent way. 

In 2082, the fireflies came. The world was awash in light due to alien probes that surrounded Earth and took a picture of its entire surface. Earth responded by sending Siri and four others (not including their backups, who would remain in stasis unless needed), to follow a signal believed to be coming from a comet. Blindsight begins with the crew waking up five years into their  journey, having gone off course, and severely overslept.

Their ship is Theseus, which is described anthropomorphically and run by an AI captain. It has some kind of user interface that all the crew can interact with called ConSensus that allows them to upload and share information and communicate remotely. Theseus's AI communicates exclusively with Jukka Sarasti, a vampire who has been resurrected from the Pleistocene era, to command the crew. There is also Isaac Szpindel, the biologist and physician, who can hear X-rays and see in shades of ultrasound. Then there is Amanda Bates, whose military background provides expertise relevant to the ship's and crew's physical security. Finally, we have the "gang of four." This is a person who had multiple personalities induced - the primary personality being Susan James, a linguist. Also inhabiting the same body is Michelle (another synthesist), Sascha (I'm not sure of her specific role), and Cruncher, a male who mostly stays in the background, well, crunching data.

The crew can all be considered altered in various ways, so much so, a normal person wouldn't be able to comprehend interactions between them, which might occur in various languages and even without known language, which would seem nonsensical to a layperson. "No real scientist would allow their thoughts to be hamstrung by  conceptual limitations of a single language...It's just that once you get past a certain point, formal speech is too damn slow!" So it is Siri's job to observe and understand everyone's intentions and relay this information back to mission command. 

Theseus travels to Big Ben, a quantum particle as heavy as 10 jupiters. There they encounter Rorshach, a sort of civilization? Factory? Well, they're not so sure, so they attempt to make contact. Unfortunately for them, Rorshach is rife with radiation that means any forays into its environs result in radiation sickness, which can include physical symptoms such as blindness, tumors, and eventually, death, but also psychological symptoms reminiscent of hauntings, loss of self, and possession. Each trip to Rorshach requires the crew to spend time in the ship's medical bay, healing from the effects of their trip. And then they do it all over again.

If you're still with me in this review, it means you're finding these concepts as fascinating as I did. I'd recommend this book to you with one caveat - it's dense and requires your full attention. Save yourself the second read-through and pay attention the first time around. You'll be better for it.

And for some extra fun, check out Watts' website. He has extra content relevant to the book as well as some of his novels available in their entirety. I checked out Blindsight and found there were notes and references that provided fun information like a primer on vampires and the physiology of the aliens encountered. I'm kinda annoyed that wasn't a part of my audiobook. I also found some great art made for various versions of the book, and learned there is a sequel to Blindsight, called Echopraxia, so it was definitely worth a look.

The September House by Carissa Orlando

 

Have you seen the show Ghosts? It's a campy sitcom about a woman who sees ghosts in her house and has learned to live with them. This is kinda like that, but a lot more macabre, and a lot more funny!

If it isn't bad enough to live in a haunted house, try living in this haunted house in September! The ghosts act up more than usual, the walls bleed profusely, and forget about sleeping, with all the moaning and screaming. But Margaret is resigned to this. She's learned to adapt, ignore, and tolerate all the goings on. She's tried the usual remedies: priests, microfiche research, ouija boards, digging up bones, and more. But eventually things go back to the way they were, and of course, there's always September.

Take Elias, for example. The boy who doesn't speak but howls, and bites if you get too close. Margaret has learned to just treat him like a plant, narrating her life around him, while expecting no response in return. And it works! Unless she gets too close of course, but shame on her for crossing his boundaries. Margaret understands that if she follows the rules, bites will be kept to a minimum. 

In this way she has managed to figure out what triggers each ghost. If you don't want the upstairs bedroom ghosts to crawl out of the fireplace, don't start a fire! Easy! And sometimes avoidance is best, which is the case for Master Vale, who lives in the basement. The Bible pages attached to the back of the door seem to be doing the trick, as long as the door stays boarded up. 

By playing by the rules, Margaret has learned to coexist in this crowded house. But her husband, Hal, isn't quite as understanding and leaves. And this is news that she can only hide from her daughter, Katherine, for so long. Eventually, Katherine insists on a visit to figure out where Hal went. Unfortunately for Margaret, this is in the middle of September, when even the best behaved ghosts find themselves relieving their anxiety by rearranging the furniture a la poltergeist style:

Unfortunately, this also means the door to the basement has to get unboarded, in order to avoid more questions about what's...down there. 

What's great about this book is how a lot of what goes on can have an alternate meaning to an outside observer: Frederika, the helpful (dead) housekeeper, likes to make tea for Margaret. But all Katherine knows is that the stove is on and left unattended constantly. Or Katherine will catch Margaret talking, seemingly to herself. And signs that Margaret sees as other worldy messages are seen as meaningless noise by Katherine, who grows increasingly worried for her mother as she observes more and more bizarre behavior.

Just like the plot of a typical sitcom - misunderstanding abounds and hilarity ensues, with a touch of horror mixed in. This is a great read that will keep you entertained the entire time.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

This book made me kinda mad. But it's partially my fault. Apparently it's a sequel and I'm not sure how I didn't know that going in. For those who live under a rock, like me, Jennifer Egan wrote A Visit From the Goon Squad. Did you know there's a sequel to that? Yeah yeah.

I'm not convinced you need to read one to get the other though. Based on Egan's style of writing, which is to say, eclectic. There are a multitude of characters with loose connections to each other. So much so that I made a lot of notes about who was who and how they knew each other. Turns out that didn't really matter because I'm not sure there's really a plot. Or if there was, I completely missed it.

Let me try to explain it like this...let's say you want to know the story of the Three Little Pigs. I'll start with a chapter on the son of the man who harvested the straw one of the pigs used for his house. You might get excited reading about this man, whose life sounds beguiling. But the next chapter will then be about the aunt of the wolf and how she went on a trip that resulted in her meeting her mate and having a pup who occasionally hung out with his cousin when they were little. Then I might write a chapter about one of the pig's adventures that involved a wolf trying to blow his house down, but it won't be obvious that is what is actually happening. Maybe there will be an entire chapter written in emails (which is kinda fun) about one of the pig's kids trying to meet them via a seven degrees of Kevin Bacon scheme. But you won't realize it's the pig's kid because there are too many characters mentioned to keep track of, even though you took COPIUS notes about who was who. All the time you're thinking, "What about the other two pigs and how it all ends? Wait, what was this story about again?"

That's kinda how I felt during and after reading this book. I just couldn't get into it and I'm not sure I even know what the story was about. And here's what I thought the story was about - a future where people could download all their memories with the option to upload them to a collective consciousness. So you could search specific dates, people, or events, and benefit from the memories of anyone who experienced that thing. Sounds INTRIGUING, right? If you want to know more about that, I wouldn't recommend this book.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

"Your words are kindling, twigs covered in wax, soaked in lamp oil, sticky with tar. Your breath is a match, scratching along sandpaper... Whisper break the silence, one word, then two...with every word spoken a loud victory. The words burst into flames, the silence, broken."

This imagery from the novel's foreward was so powerful and poetic, and the story hadn't even started yet! But what a great story it is, and beautifully told - even though one doesn't think of freshman year of high school as an ideal setting. And for Melinda Sordino, it certainly isn't. The summer before high school, Melinda's life changed when she was raped at a party. She called the police for help, but couldn't find the words to describe what happened. Her silence did nothing to dispel rumors that she ratted on the party. Melinda grew deeper into depression and isolation as the year progressed, barely able to speak more than the minimum to interact with others. 

Melinda's world around her slowly falls apart, a symptom of the inner turmoil she faces. Her friends, new and old, abandon her. Her relationship with her parents is strained. And her grades suffer, except in art class, where she is tasked with a project based on a randomly chosen object, a tree.

Besides all of this, Melinda still experiences the usual high school dramas: finding a place to belong, making friends, keeping friends, and what activities to participate in. And the story is told from Melinda's perspective in short, aptly-titled segments that focus on different aspects of her life and the life many of us have faced in those formative years. 

Besides being an accessible, easy to read story, there were also a lot of symbolic nuggets that were fun to discover, including an ironic high school classroom discussion about symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. One student defiantly declared that authors don't use symbolism, at least in the way the high school teacher believed (I remember having a similar conversation about The Great Gatsby!), and the class was quickly assigned an essay on the use of Hawthorne's symbolism. "That's what you get for speaking up" laments Melinda, a further reinforcement of the benefits of silence. 

Although afraid to speak and interact with others, Melinda still has a clear voice in the novel. She's a great narrator and you'll root for her the entire way, while maybe realizing she is someone you know - an acquaintance, a friend, or even yourself. Her story is the story of so many people that must be told, and in the end, Melinda finds a way to tell it.

Sundial by Catriona Ward

We all have roots - and good, bad, or something in the middle, there's always something to learn from them. Whether it's understanding why you are the way you are, or recognizing that history is repeating itself and trying to stop that, or even trying to glean new information that might help you moving forward, it all comes back to where you began. And for Rob, that's Sundial.

Rob grew up with her sister on Sundial, a ranch where their father and his wife hosted college students that ran experiments designed to influence dogs' behavior via an implanted chip in their brains. There's really no good way to transition from that last sentence, so I'll just say that living isolated on the ranch, home-schooled, and only peripherally interacting with the students, Rob's experiences inform her views as an adult. And when she starts noticing disturbing behavior from her daughter, Callie, Rob feels it's necessary to take Callie to Sundial, to teach her about Rob's upbringing. Oh, and to dig up (literally and figuratively) family secrets that she thought she had left behind.

The cover shown here says Stephen King found the book terrifying. It's not quite as literally terrifying as it is figuratively. Let's just say I'm not sure I would reach for this book first, if terror is what I'm looking for. It's more mystery, some thriller, and a little bizarre. But honestly, I feel like there are other mysteries that are more mysterious, other thrillers more thrilling, and other premises more deliciously bizarre than what is offered here. 

This was a slow-burn for me. It took me awhile to get into, and I have to admit, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed Ward's other book, The Last House on Needless Street. I didn't feel as invested in the characters in this one. Maybe Ward was too successful in making them unlikeable, so I didn't care as much about them, which, unfortunately, affected how I felt about the book as well.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

This period thriller is from 1898 and is about a governess who is hired by a man to care for his niece and nephew. The governess begins the job with excitement, but soon experiences disturbing events and believes ghosts of deceased employees are coming for the kids. 

This novella was adapted from serial installments in the magazine Collier's Weekly. It was interesting to read a ghost story from over 100 years ago and see how similar it is to modern-day ghost stories, but in a Victorian setting. Having said that, it took quite a bit of concentration for me to stay focused on the plot. As can be expected, the language was antiquated and at times difficult to follow, especially during the more narrative parts, as opposed to parts with dialogue.

There is enough ambiguity to the story to guide the reader to multiple conclusions. Ultimately, we read about a bad situation made worse, but what makes it worse can be argued. Is it ghosts? A trick of the mind? Abnormal biology? Whatever it is, events unfold much as they would when something, already over-tightened, experiences one more turn of the screw. 

At the end of the day, there are plenty of ghost and horror stories out there that will leave you a lot more scared and interested than this one. But if you have a thing for Victorian culture and old-fashioned writing, maybe pick this one up.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

If you knew the day you would die, how would that change the way you live? Chloe Benjamin explores this idea in her second novel about four siblings who, in New York in 1969, learn just that. Simon, Klara, Daniel, and Varya sneak off to see a fortune teller whose gift is knowing your death date. After they each learn how long they'll live, we hear about their separate stories.

At 17, Simon leaves New York for San Francisco with his sister Klara, who is 19. Klara has dreams of becoming a magician, following in the footsteps of her grandmother. Simon doesn't realize his dreams until he moves to San Francisco, where he can live more openly as a gay man. He begins dancing at a club, and then takes ballet in order to improve his dancing. There he meets Robert, and they live as a couple in the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's.

Klara, also in San Francisco, pursues her dream of performing magic shows. She starts from the ground up, with simple card tricks and illusions and works her way up to performing at the Mirage in Las Vegas. 

Daniel becomes a doctor, and meets an FBI agent who is asking questions about the woman Daniel and his siblings met so many years ago. 

Varya works in research, trying to find out the key to a long life. But her research is interrupted when she meets someone asking questions about her past. 

Although their lives diverge and seem to separate pretty quickly after their childhood, they still deal with the same issues - like their mother - Who will stay home to care for her? Who deserves her love the most? Will they break free of the superstitions and rituals they see her carry out? They also each have a dream that is sidelined in some way - whether it's mental illness, disease, revenge, or their own self. And together they deal with the knowledge of their fate and the question of whether knowing this directed their life choices, or if their life choices brought them closer to their fate. 

I listened to the audio book, so I'm not sure I can separate how much was the writing versus the narrator, but this book had a lyrical quality to it that was transcendent. I loved reading about each sibling and was disappointed when one person's section ended, but then found myself equally enraptured with the next. Each person's story was interesting in and of itself, but the bigger questions raised about things like fate and legacy took it to another level.