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Firefall #2
Echopraxia
Prepare for a different kind of singularity in this follow-up to the Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight
It's the eve of the twenty-second century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and 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 self-awareness during combat. And it’s all under surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.
Daniel Bruks is a living fossil: a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational, a cat's-paw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he’s turned his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out.
Now he’s trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son. To his right is a pilot who hasn’t yet found the man she's sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call “The Angels of the Asteroids.”
Their pilgrimage brings Dan Bruks, the fossil man, face-to-face with the biggest evolutionary breakpoint since the origin of thought itself.
It's the eve of the twenty-second century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and 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 self-awareness during combat. And it’s all under surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.
Daniel Bruks is a living fossil: a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational, a cat's-paw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he’s turned his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out.
Now he’s trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son. To his right is a pilot who hasn’t yet found the man she's sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call “The Angels of the Asteroids.”
Their pilgrimage brings Dan Bruks, the fossil man, face-to-face with the biggest evolutionary breakpoint since the origin of thought itself.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published August 26, 2014
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April 25, 2021
If it wasn't for my co-readers of Blindsight encouraging ourselves onward, this would have been a solid DNF. While Blindsight explored what individuality and personality, Echopraxia mostly just explored Watts' navel.
I started it with enthusiasm, looking for a continuation of the story of Siri and his father, Colonel Moore. When it opened with a scene following the parasitologist Daniel Brük around his live-animal traps in the desert, I could not have been more pleased. The state of the Earth and of civilization in ten years or so post-launch of the Theseus gradually becomes clear. Unfortunately, there aren't many details that carry over from Blindsight. Group minds have developed further, although that's somewhat unclear, and a semi-religious order, nick-named the 'Hive,' has a nearby monastery where they have a controlled tornado. We also learn about the slow decay of the shared computer-reality Heaven, and the fast-moving environmental decay of the planet. There have also been plagues, with resultant zombie-like people remaining. It's a bleak, but not implausible vision.
Narrative is largely limited to Brük, although we occasionally jump to another. What is truly unfortunate for the reader, and I'm echoing a number of other reviewers here, is that Brük is largely clueless about what is happening, and literally ends up going along for the ride. A sudden attack drives Brük toward the safety of the Hive monastery and that's when the 'plot'-I use the term very loosely--begins. The attack coincides with the Hives' desire to know more about the Theseus' fate, and the Colonel's desire to know more about his son's.
“Moore had told him as much as he could understand, Brük supposed. There would be more. Solutions to problems no baseline could even see, let alone solve. A careful clandestine exit stage left, while unwitting pursuers followed a bright burning decoy toward the land of the comets. All spread out across the curve of his own personal diving belt, numbers and diagrams."
Once in space, things get less coherent. Brük finds himself engaging in philosophical debates with one of the highly augmented contractors, Sengupta. Many who read this talk about Watt's exploration of the philosophy of minds, and some of that comes into play here. I'll be honest with you though; unlike Stephenson who likes to stick with an idea and explore with endless detail, Watts seems to be more of a disciple of the two-beer school of thought: drink two beers and write down all the ideas that you and your friends talk about while hanging at the bar. They're cool ideas, but do they mesh? Form a cohesive whole, the way they did in Blindsight? I'd give a resounding 'no,' on that one.
"Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart."
I realized I was in trouble when I realized how much I disliked the books' main character, Brük. While I thought at first he might be on a journey of Personal Transformation, it became clear he's Everyman, a viewpoint to express and argue ideas. Not only does he lack plot agency, he's also not likable. He dislikes almost everyone he encounters in the story, and those he supposedly 'likes,' he often actively antagonizes. He refuses offers of helping hands, yet is wounded when hands are extended to him. He is blatantly, excessively contrarian, hypocritical and oh-so-very human, and is easily the least enjoyable character in the book.
Side characters were actually far more interesting. The intensity of Valerie the vampire had her stealing her scenes. Lianna, ambassador between Hive and 'baselines,' actually acts as more of an emotional center and explainer, translating for the reader. There's very little humor, but some of the few moments come from Sengupta:
"And then, more cheerfully: 'but if the mission does go pear-shaped, wouldn’t you rather die in your sleep than be wide awake and screaming when you get sucked into space?'"
As always, Watts occasionally hits poetic beauty with his writing, and while it was often self-indulgent, I couldn't help but admire it.
And the ending. I stuck with it, hoping for a pay-off at least in plot, and perhaps details on the Theseus and the lifeforms from Blindsight. What was most frustrating is that while it was interesting, so much feels unresolved. Because Brük is left out of the discussion and missions, the reader is left with third-hand cluelessness as to plot details. We have to infer events after Brük encounters the fallout.
So, it barely works on plotting. Does it work on a philosophical front? I'd say no. Again, this is the 2 beer school of philosophy, where you sit down and draw upon a decade or two of wide-ranging knowledge in conversation, tugging on various strings and seeing where your ping-pong of ideas takes you. Unlike Blindsight, nothing here feels particularly cohesive, except perhaps some of the discussions about group mind/processing. Mostly it's scattershot and annoying. While I hold up BBlindsight and Starfish as stellar excellent examples of sci-fi done right, I'll never recommend Echopraxia.
One and a half dead snakes, rounding up to differentiate it from my one-star reviews.
Watt's helpful Reddit thread about Echopraxia that I wish I had found a month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/SF_Book_Club...
Many, many thanks to Phil, for the bon mots and wise thoughts, Nataliya, for the sympathetic frustration, and for Stephen and David on the sidelines, sympathizing.
I started it with enthusiasm, looking for a continuation of the story of Siri and his father, Colonel Moore. When it opened with a scene following the parasitologist Daniel Brük around his live-animal traps in the desert, I could not have been more pleased. The state of the Earth and of civilization in ten years or so post-launch of the Theseus gradually becomes clear. Unfortunately, there aren't many details that carry over from Blindsight. Group minds have developed further, although that's somewhat unclear, and a semi-religious order, nick-named the 'Hive,' has a nearby monastery where they have a controlled tornado. We also learn about the slow decay of the shared computer-reality Heaven, and the fast-moving environmental decay of the planet. There have also been plagues, with resultant zombie-like people remaining. It's a bleak, but not implausible vision.
Narrative is largely limited to Brük, although we occasionally jump to another. What is truly unfortunate for the reader, and I'm echoing a number of other reviewers here, is that Brük is largely clueless about what is happening, and literally ends up going along for the ride. A sudden attack drives Brük toward the safety of the Hive monastery and that's when the 'plot'-I use the term very loosely--begins. The attack coincides with the Hives' desire to know more about the Theseus' fate, and the Colonel's desire to know more about his son's.
“Moore had told him as much as he could understand, Brük supposed. There would be more. Solutions to problems no baseline could even see, let alone solve. A careful clandestine exit stage left, while unwitting pursuers followed a bright burning decoy toward the land of the comets. All spread out across the curve of his own personal diving belt, numbers and diagrams."
Once in space, things get less coherent. Brük finds himself engaging in philosophical debates with one of the highly augmented contractors, Sengupta. Many who read this talk about Watt's exploration of the philosophy of minds, and some of that comes into play here. I'll be honest with you though; unlike Stephenson who likes to stick with an idea and explore with endless detail, Watts seems to be more of a disciple of the two-beer school of thought: drink two beers and write down all the ideas that you and your friends talk about while hanging at the bar. They're cool ideas, but do they mesh? Form a cohesive whole, the way they did in Blindsight? I'd give a resounding 'no,' on that one.
"Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart."
I realized I was in trouble when I realized how much I disliked the books' main character, Brük. While I thought at first he might be on a journey of Personal Transformation, it became clear he's Everyman, a viewpoint to express and argue ideas. Not only does he lack plot agency, he's also not likable. He dislikes almost everyone he encounters in the story, and those he supposedly 'likes,' he often actively antagonizes. He refuses offers of helping hands, yet is wounded when hands are extended to him. He is blatantly, excessively contrarian, hypocritical and oh-so-very human, and is easily the least enjoyable character in the book.
Side characters were actually far more interesting. The intensity of Valerie the vampire had her stealing her scenes. Lianna, ambassador between Hive and 'baselines,' actually acts as more of an emotional center and explainer, translating for the reader. There's very little humor, but some of the few moments come from Sengupta:
"And then, more cheerfully: 'but if the mission does go pear-shaped, wouldn’t you rather die in your sleep than be wide awake and screaming when you get sucked into space?'"
As always, Watts occasionally hits poetic beauty with his writing, and while it was often self-indulgent, I couldn't help but admire it.
And the ending. I stuck with it, hoping for a pay-off at least in plot, and perhaps details on the Theseus and the lifeforms from Blindsight. What was most frustrating is that while it was interesting, so much feels unresolved. Because Brük is left out of the discussion and missions, the reader is left with third-hand cluelessness as to plot details. We have to infer events after Brük encounters the fallout.
So, it barely works on plotting. Does it work on a philosophical front? I'd say no. Again, this is the 2 beer school of philosophy, where you sit down and draw upon a decade or two of wide-ranging knowledge in conversation, tugging on various strings and seeing where your ping-pong of ideas takes you. Unlike Blindsight, nothing here feels particularly cohesive, except perhaps some of the discussions about group mind/processing. Mostly it's scattershot and annoying. While I hold up BBlindsight and Starfish as stellar excellent examples of sci-fi done right, I'll never recommend Echopraxia.
One and a half dead snakes, rounding up to differentiate it from my one-star reviews.
Watt's helpful Reddit thread about Echopraxia that I wish I had found a month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/SF_Book_Club...
Many, many thanks to Phil, for the bon mots and wise thoughts, Nataliya, for the sympathetic frustration, and for Stephen and David on the sidelines, sympathizing.
April 25, 2021
“Life was a struggle to exist at the expense of other life.”A few weeks ago I read Blindsight and emerged from that reading session breathtakingly (even if slightly confusingly) fascinated and dazzled by the far-reaching hard SF and existential questions. (I also mostly managed to filter out the vampire character from my clearly suboptimal consciousness). And I felt strangely disturbing empathy for Siri Keeton- a weird and supposedly unlikable enhanced-human protagonist whose struggles hit a strange chord with me.
Echopraxia, however, required almost *physical* effort for me to get through. And no, it is not a bad book — but it certainly was not for me, failing to engage me the entire time. Maybe it’s because my puny “baseline”, “roach” consciousness impedes my intelligence — but my pesky consciousness was irritatingly annoyed by detached boredom.
Broken down to the bare bones, both Echopraxia and its sorta-predecessor Blindsight share a similar structure: an outsider boards a spaceship headed to a far-flung corner of the Solar System in search of something menacingly and bafflingly alien while in the company of baffling post-humans whose abilities are beyond understanding. And there’s a vampire on board each time — an apparently scientifically plausible vampire. And then there are mind-boggling existential questions that stretch my mental horizons quite a bit.
As Watts himself states in the “Notes” section at the end of the book - the part that I actually liked:————
“[…] the neurological condition of echopraxia is to autonomy as blindsight is to consciousness.”
But while Blindsight felt like challenging awesomeness, Echopraxia did not resonate with me at all.
First of all, our POV character, biologist Dan Brüks - a “baseline” (non-augmented) biologist that ends up first a bystander, then pretty much a “pet” human, then something more menacing - to me was quite uninteresting. His ordinariness may have been intended to make him more relatable, I suppose, but in the end it’s working against the intentions. Brüks for the vast majority of the book is confused and overwhelmed, watching events unfold that are beyond his comprehension and therefore opaque and ten steps ahead of his best reasoning. A big deal is made of emphasizing how this is similar level of incomprehensibility that a capuchin monkey would feel in the presence of scientists — hive-mind post-human Bicamerals (sentient religious tumors, basically) and all-powerful and very territorial vampires - but his clueless efforts and failings to keep up and resulting condescension from everyone else were uninteresting to me. Siri Keeton of Blindsight, himself possessing a bit of post-humanity and struggling with humanity expectations was infinitely more interesting and relatable. I want to see interesting things happen in a comprehensible way, not just be a very confused fly on the wall or an equally confused roach on the floor, to keep up with the book’s chosen vocabulary. Almost any side character would have been more interesting — but it’s the Everyman Brüks we get.
“Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart.”
When the protagonist fails to engage me, I look to the ideas — because it’s perfectly fine for ideas or a setting to take center place over a so-so character (I mean, read any of Kim Stanley Robinson’s books to see that protagonists can be little else but a driving force for the ideas and setting). And it was yet another stumbling block. While Blindsight made my mind reel with the questions of consciousness versus intelligence, with a side dish of hard SF, biology, physics, astronomy, psychology, Echopraxia brought science versus faith into sharper focus — and I realized that I am much less interested in the implications of religiosity in space, as well as the idea of hive minds. But, to give credit where credit is due, I did briefly enjoy the “God as a virus” idea — because miracles are basically malfunctions in the governing laws of the universe, with the implications unexpectedly funny — and this passage:
“What—what is this mission, exactly?” Brüks asked softly.
“Mmmm.” Sengupta rocked gently back and forth. “They know God exists already that’s old. I think now they’re trying to figure what to do with It.”
“What to do with God.”
“Maybe worship. Maybe disinfect.”
The word hung there, reeking of blasphemy.
“How do you disinfect God?” Brüks said after a very long time.”
I think I just don’t care much for faith-based existentialism. These ideas will not keep me up at night, my mind reeling. But of course that’s just me — the ideas may get others’ metaphorical juices flowing just fine.
And the other ideas thrown in felt scattered, lacking that focus and cohesiveness that Blindsight had. Or else hive minds and such is just again failing to engage my very “baseline” brain. I can’t claim smarts like what Peter Watts has, so I gotta manage with what I have, and that may not be enough to appreciate the ideas tapestry - or quilt blanket, if you share my mind frame - here. The reliance on the inability of a “baseline” human understand the workings of post-human vastly superior intelligence makes a lot of events seem like convenient hand-waving of “we are just too dumb to get it, it’s pretty much godlike” nonsense that for me was frustrating as hell.
“Dan, you gotta let go of this whole self thing. Identity changes by the second, you turn into someone else every time a new thought rewires your brain.”
————
“A fifth of the world’s energy supply, in the hands of an intelligent slime mold from outer space.”
The inevitable alien encounter that was three quarters of the book in the making sparked my curiosity only when the analogy to the Portia spider made me excitedly remember Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time.
“It actually did remind him of a spider, in fact. One particular genus that had become legendary among invertebrate zoologists and computational physicists alike: a problem-solver that improvised and drew up plans far beyond anything that should have been able to fit into such a pinheaded pair of ganglia. Portia. The eight-legged cat, some had called it. The spider that thought like a mammal.”But while Rorschach in the previous book was endlessly fascinating to me, the quiet menace of Portia - even after that ending - was just underwhelming enough to continue persistent confused monotony.
————
And then those damn vampires that idiotic humans brought back from extinction via genetic tinkering — and immediately proceeded to enslave them through the exploitation of the “Crucifix Glitch” (vampire brain visual cortex is wired differently, leading to right angles inducing horrible seizures). The problem for me was that I found vampires the weakest part in Blindsight and did my best to ignore them, which in that book was not too difficult. Here, however, vampire takes center stage, exhibiting such powers that I will never believe they would have ever gone extinct in the first place.
I don’t care about that vampire, and ignoring them was not possible here . Thank
————
One thing I advise for anyone venturing to read this book is to read The Colonel before this one. That novelette should have been a prologue to this book, featuring Jim Moore, Siri Keeton’s father, and a decent introduction to hive minds of this universe — including the Bicamerals that are among the central forces in Echopraxia. If there’s ever another edition, it should be included as Chapter Zero.
————
Overall, it’s a 2-star read for me. And although I hate giving the book a low rating when it is not actually a bad book, I rate on the impact it had on me and not on any greater merit, and I had to force myself to pick it back up.
Buddy read with Phil and carol.
My enthusiastic review of Blindsight: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
July 3, 2022
2022 Update:
I enjoyed this book much more the second time around compared to my first reading. It’s smarter, more coherent, and more interesting than I remember. I think I understood it better, both because I’m more familiar with some of the ideas Watts was working with, and also because I’m less allergic to the notion that “religious-esque” phenomena may arise from tinkering with human consciousness. Still hoping Watts will get around to continuing this series at some point…
Original Review from 2015:
In Echopraxia’s “Notes and References,” Peter Watts admits that this book might be a literary “faceplant.” I’m inclined to agree. This second installment in the Firefall series is impossible to assess without comparing it to its stunning and disturbing predecessor. Blindsight was innovative, expeditious, and chillingly fulfilling; Echopraxia is desultory, slow, and largely unrewarding. It signifies an unwelcome turn for an otherwise promising series.
Many of Echopraxia‘s failings are apparent from its first pages and persist throughout the novel. As a writer of hard science fiction, Watts has an understandable tendency to dwell on abstruse technological topics. This is not a problem as long as he includes a followable story and engaging characters to balance out his recondite descriptions of antimatter generators, morose musings about the inadequacies of human consciousness, and detailed structural portraits of ships designed for deep space travel. Blindsight achieved this balance with exceptional poise, but Echopraxia swings egregiously toward a heavy reliance on technical tropes while leaving plot and character far behind.
Biologist Daniel Brüks, Echopraxia’s protagonist, defies Watts’ every attempt to render him an interesting and believable character. Brüks is an intellectual “baseline” (i.e. an unaugmented human amongst transhuman companions)––a loner and natural skeptic whose defining feature is bemusement as he is swept into an extraterrestrial conflict he neither understands nor cares much about. Brüks is accompanied by a host of characters who are about as dull as he is (with the possible exception of military strategist Jim Moore, who we eventually discover is related to Siri Keeton, Blindsight’s protagonist). The origins of their motivations, goals and conflicts are unclear at the outset and arguably even less clear at the novel’s conclusion.
Watts retards Echopraxia by shifting his conceptual focus from speculations based on hard science toward imaginings of a mystical hive-mind intelligence for which he openly admits there is not a single shred of existing scientific evidence. These “Bicamerals” augment their brains to dissolve the illusion of individual consciousness in favor of an opaque and thoroughly religious groupthink that is vague to the point of meaninglessness. And yet, they are capable of generating (or at least overseeing) physical events and predicting real phenomena in ways that are sure to infuriate even the casual skeptic. It’s hocus-pocus legitimized by scientific jargon and the worn out assertion that science provides only provisional and not ultimate truths.
Perhaps the most distressing fact about Echopraxia is that almost all of its worthwhile moments and insights are recycled from Blindsight. The characters encounter the same (or at least a similar) alien lifeform as in the previous novel, but with far less exciting and meaningful consequences. Brüks participates in plenty of clever discussions about the evolution and limitations of human sentience, most of which would be more at home in Blindsight than they are in Echopraxia. Watts is indubitably a master at sabotaging his readers’ expectations, but does so this time around in ways that fail to logically align with a central storyline, character development, or thematic message. Nothing makes this point more emphatically than the remarkable contrast in the functions of two novels’ titular concepts; the idea of “blindsight” was a crucial element of how that story played out, whereas the word “echopraxia” doesn’t even show up until this book’s final act, and exerts little to no impact on unfolding events.
If there is a genuinely good book hidden somewhere in the pages of Echopraxia, exhuming it would take a lot more time and effort than I’m willing to shell out. However, having recently heard that Watts plans to continue the Firefall series, I have to admit that there is enough here to provide an adequate (if tenuous) bridge between two excellent novels. This is especially true in light of Watts’ frustratingly oblique but nevertheless tantalizing hints that Siri Keeton may again take center stage. Echopraxia’s conclusion also contains some underdeveloped but potentially illuminating ideas about madness, faith and betrayal that could be put to good use down the road. Watts is a talented and erudite thinker, so if he decides to come out for round three, I’ll give it a fair shake.
This is a harsh review, probably harsher than Watts deserves. Blindsight set such a high bar that perhaps it is unfair to expect him to produce a worthy successor. But with an eight-year gap to work with, it’s hard to believe Watts couldn’t come up with something much more entertaining and intellectually firm. As it is, Echopraxia is an ugly hodgepodge of scientific thought experiments and mystical ruminations that fails to recapture or embellish the raw force of Blindsight’s narrative unity.
This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.
I enjoyed this book much more the second time around compared to my first reading. It’s smarter, more coherent, and more interesting than I remember. I think I understood it better, both because I’m more familiar with some of the ideas Watts was working with, and also because I’m less allergic to the notion that “religious-esque” phenomena may arise from tinkering with human consciousness. Still hoping Watts will get around to continuing this series at some point…
Original Review from 2015:
In Echopraxia’s “Notes and References,” Peter Watts admits that this book might be a literary “faceplant.” I’m inclined to agree. This second installment in the Firefall series is impossible to assess without comparing it to its stunning and disturbing predecessor. Blindsight was innovative, expeditious, and chillingly fulfilling; Echopraxia is desultory, slow, and largely unrewarding. It signifies an unwelcome turn for an otherwise promising series.
Many of Echopraxia‘s failings are apparent from its first pages and persist throughout the novel. As a writer of hard science fiction, Watts has an understandable tendency to dwell on abstruse technological topics. This is not a problem as long as he includes a followable story and engaging characters to balance out his recondite descriptions of antimatter generators, morose musings about the inadequacies of human consciousness, and detailed structural portraits of ships designed for deep space travel. Blindsight achieved this balance with exceptional poise, but Echopraxia swings egregiously toward a heavy reliance on technical tropes while leaving plot and character far behind.
Biologist Daniel Brüks, Echopraxia’s protagonist, defies Watts’ every attempt to render him an interesting and believable character. Brüks is an intellectual “baseline” (i.e. an unaugmented human amongst transhuman companions)––a loner and natural skeptic whose defining feature is bemusement as he is swept into an extraterrestrial conflict he neither understands nor cares much about. Brüks is accompanied by a host of characters who are about as dull as he is (with the possible exception of military strategist Jim Moore, who we eventually discover is related to Siri Keeton, Blindsight’s protagonist). The origins of their motivations, goals and conflicts are unclear at the outset and arguably even less clear at the novel’s conclusion.
Watts retards Echopraxia by shifting his conceptual focus from speculations based on hard science toward imaginings of a mystical hive-mind intelligence for which he openly admits there is not a single shred of existing scientific evidence. These “Bicamerals” augment their brains to dissolve the illusion of individual consciousness in favor of an opaque and thoroughly religious groupthink that is vague to the point of meaninglessness. And yet, they are capable of generating (or at least overseeing) physical events and predicting real phenomena in ways that are sure to infuriate even the casual skeptic. It’s hocus-pocus legitimized by scientific jargon and the worn out assertion that science provides only provisional and not ultimate truths.
Perhaps the most distressing fact about Echopraxia is that almost all of its worthwhile moments and insights are recycled from Blindsight. The characters encounter the same (or at least a similar) alien lifeform as in the previous novel, but with far less exciting and meaningful consequences. Brüks participates in plenty of clever discussions about the evolution and limitations of human sentience, most of which would be more at home in Blindsight than they are in Echopraxia. Watts is indubitably a master at sabotaging his readers’ expectations, but does so this time around in ways that fail to logically align with a central storyline, character development, or thematic message. Nothing makes this point more emphatically than the remarkable contrast in the functions of two novels’ titular concepts; the idea of “blindsight” was a crucial element of how that story played out, whereas the word “echopraxia” doesn’t even show up until this book’s final act, and exerts little to no impact on unfolding events.
If there is a genuinely good book hidden somewhere in the pages of Echopraxia, exhuming it would take a lot more time and effort than I’m willing to shell out. However, having recently heard that Watts plans to continue the Firefall series, I have to admit that there is enough here to provide an adequate (if tenuous) bridge between two excellent novels. This is especially true in light of Watts’ frustratingly oblique but nevertheless tantalizing hints that Siri Keeton may again take center stage. Echopraxia’s conclusion also contains some underdeveloped but potentially illuminating ideas about madness, faith and betrayal that could be put to good use down the road. Watts is a talented and erudite thinker, so if he decides to come out for round three, I’ll give it a fair shake.
This is a harsh review, probably harsher than Watts deserves. Blindsight set such a high bar that perhaps it is unfair to expect him to produce a worthy successor. But with an eight-year gap to work with, it’s hard to believe Watts couldn’t come up with something much more entertaining and intellectually firm. As it is, Echopraxia is an ugly hodgepodge of scientific thought experiments and mystical ruminations that fails to recapture or embellish the raw force of Blindsight’s narrative unity.
This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.
June 26, 2015
The novel is surprisingly easy to place in the taxonomy of great science fiction. Of course, to do so, one must first place Blindsight in it's proper place. It was a philosophical discussion on consciousness. Echopraxia, follows it's predecessor's conclusions, necessary story extrapolations, but it takes a sharp right turn when it brings up its primary philosophical mode. We put down consciousness for a moment, and pick up the discussion on free will. It might help to know the definition of the title: The involuntary repetition or imitation of another person's actions.
I loved the old topic. I rather prayed that it would continue, and it did in a lesser capacity. But instead of blowing my conscious mind again, we came along on a Hard-Sci-Fi ride that bumped me about on a God trip.
Wait! Wait, you might say. Is this a lovecraftian mashup with hard sf? Nope. Then is it an unintelligent social-dynamic exploration thing? Nope, not at all. Then what is it?
It's an exploration of how biology wires us to look for god, and how that expression manifests in all the new subspecies of human, and it happens in some of the most surprising of ways. Why do his absolutely friggin' fantastic portrayals of vampires believe in God? They're so smart that we've enslaved them to play the stock market or work out the hoariest of mathematical calculations. They glitch when they see right angles, unless they're put on a drug cycle, but more than anything, they're the most frightening thing from humanity's past, and the reasons are constantly renewed.
Seriously. I'm in awe. Vampires are so damn unpredictable, and it's worse because they can fly ahead with so many strange mental predictors to play everyone out in real life as if we're just pawns in chess. You think you've heard this tale? Try again. These aren't any kind of vampire I've ever seen. Try describing an autistic savant as an ultimate predator and you might have a slight inkling, but believe me, these vamps are better. They're hardly one or two dimensional, and they definitely don't match up with anything remotely social.
If they can see ahead so far as to play with all our destinies, then we've got just a small part of this novel revealed. Unfortunately for us, every species likes to play god, and let's not forget the alien species that still makes me shiver in delight and awe.
For a novel that devotes so much attention to free will, I rarely had a feeling that I had any during the reading of it.
I think I play a game with novels that most of us play to a more or less greater degree. I enjoy trying to parse out the plot well before the official reveals. For this novel, I really tried. Unfortunately, I was consistently left floundering because my brain had short-circuited in much the same ways that the characters did, as well. We are wired this way. We see the tiger in the bush, whether or not the tiger is really there. We draw eyes on the wall and immediately extrapolate a deity that watches over us. I get it. And I love how these quasi-post-singularity humans mess with their own programming along the spectrum, to greater or lesser successes in warding off the tiger.
Even aliens have to deal with the tiger. You know what I mean, you Kipling readers. It's all about eat or be eaten, even when you're discussing God.
The one thing I love the most about the novel is the main character. It was a severe departure from Blindsight, because he isn't one of the many strangenesses that came out of humanity's evolution. He is an honest baseline human surrounded by others who are smarter, faster, and more adaptable than him. I won't get into his story because it's quite fun in the novel, but suffice to say, it's worth it.
Is this a worthy successor to Blindsight?
That's an excellent question. I truly loved Blindsight, and most of that was due in particular to the main topic at hand. Echopraxia, by contrast, is up against a very, very long tradition of writers who have all tried to tackle the same question. I did particularly enjoy how Peter Watts gave credit to Dune, which was an excellent example of the same.
On the balance, Echopraxia is a fantastic standalone novel. As a direct sequel, there are a few solid connection points, but it doesn't need or beg for true resolution from Blindsight.
If I try to balance the two novels together, Blindsight's weight will knock Echopraxia off the scale. It only suffers in direct comparison, but by itself it rocks.
Do I recommend the novel? Hell yes. Great action, great characters, excellent suspense, and (again) fanfuckingtastic aliens.
I loved the old topic. I rather prayed that it would continue, and it did in a lesser capacity. But instead of blowing my conscious mind again, we came along on a Hard-Sci-Fi ride that bumped me about on a God trip.
Wait! Wait, you might say. Is this a lovecraftian mashup with hard sf? Nope. Then is it an unintelligent social-dynamic exploration thing? Nope, not at all. Then what is it?
It's an exploration of how biology wires us to look for god, and how that expression manifests in all the new subspecies of human, and it happens in some of the most surprising of ways. Why do his absolutely friggin' fantastic portrayals of vampires believe in God? They're so smart that we've enslaved them to play the stock market or work out the hoariest of mathematical calculations. They glitch when they see right angles, unless they're put on a drug cycle, but more than anything, they're the most frightening thing from humanity's past, and the reasons are constantly renewed.
Seriously. I'm in awe. Vampires are so damn unpredictable, and it's worse because they can fly ahead with so many strange mental predictors to play everyone out in real life as if we're just pawns in chess. You think you've heard this tale? Try again. These aren't any kind of vampire I've ever seen. Try describing an autistic savant as an ultimate predator and you might have a slight inkling, but believe me, these vamps are better. They're hardly one or two dimensional, and they definitely don't match up with anything remotely social.
If they can see ahead so far as to play with all our destinies, then we've got just a small part of this novel revealed. Unfortunately for us, every species likes to play god, and let's not forget the alien species that still makes me shiver in delight and awe.
For a novel that devotes so much attention to free will, I rarely had a feeling that I had any during the reading of it.
I think I play a game with novels that most of us play to a more or less greater degree. I enjoy trying to parse out the plot well before the official reveals. For this novel, I really tried. Unfortunately, I was consistently left floundering because my brain had short-circuited in much the same ways that the characters did, as well. We are wired this way. We see the tiger in the bush, whether or not the tiger is really there. We draw eyes on the wall and immediately extrapolate a deity that watches over us. I get it. And I love how these quasi-post-singularity humans mess with their own programming along the spectrum, to greater or lesser successes in warding off the tiger.
Even aliens have to deal with the tiger. You know what I mean, you Kipling readers. It's all about eat or be eaten, even when you're discussing God.
The one thing I love the most about the novel is the main character. It was a severe departure from Blindsight, because he isn't one of the many strangenesses that came out of humanity's evolution. He is an honest baseline human surrounded by others who are smarter, faster, and more adaptable than him. I won't get into his story because it's quite fun in the novel, but suffice to say, it's worth it.
Is this a worthy successor to Blindsight?
That's an excellent question. I truly loved Blindsight, and most of that was due in particular to the main topic at hand. Echopraxia, by contrast, is up against a very, very long tradition of writers who have all tried to tackle the same question. I did particularly enjoy how Peter Watts gave credit to Dune, which was an excellent example of the same.
On the balance, Echopraxia is a fantastic standalone novel. As a direct sequel, there are a few solid connection points, but it doesn't need or beg for true resolution from Blindsight.
If I try to balance the two novels together, Blindsight's weight will knock Echopraxia off the scale. It only suffers in direct comparison, but by itself it rocks.
Do I recommend the novel? Hell yes. Great action, great characters, excellent suspense, and (again) fanfuckingtastic aliens.
November 18, 2014
3 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2014/11/17/r...
I thought I would be going into Echopraxia with two strikes against me. First, the fact that I haven’t read Blindsight which is the first book in the Firefall series, and second, there was the worry that the book would be too “hard sci-fi” for my tastes. Fortunately, neither really ended up being an obstacle. Sure, I had my issues with this novel, but those have little to do with my original concerns.
It’s hard to explain a book like Echopraxia; this is one of those cases where it’s probably better to just let the publisher description do the talking: “The eve of the twenty-second century”, “a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues”, “genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans”, “soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off self-awareness during combat”.
It’s a whole other world, with a very different status quo. People like biologist Daniel Bruks who is adamant against upgrading himself with any implants or enhancements are seen as “old school”, living fossils that are still clinging on to an extinct way of life. While working in the field in the middle of the Oregon desert, he finds himself entangled in a conflict between a vampire and her entourage of zombie bodyguards versus a faction of technologically advanced Bicameral monks. Now he’s trapped on a ship headed to the center of the solar system to learn what happened to Blindsight, the expedition which took off years ago to investigate what appeared to be an alien signal.
The ideas here are wild, spectacular and ambitious. The plot, on the other hand, is quite thin – another reason why it would be difficult to describe this novel. Echopraxia is a book that feels less concerned with providing a cohesive narrative, instead focusing more heavily on philosophical discussion and debate on the human condition. Great if like these kinds of books, not so great if you don’t. Personally, I really enjoyed the first hundred pages or so because it contained most of the story. Watts established the setting, the main characters and the conflict. But everything started unraveling after that point, and became unfocused and disorganized.
The challenge for me was in trying to tease apart the jumble of ideas without allowing myself to be driven to distraction. Watts’ writing is laden with scientific jargon and not very easy on the eyes, making this one a slower read. Given the heavier themes and tinge of gloom, not to mention the fact there’s barely any plot, there’s just not too much energy to push it along. Not that I’m saying Echopraxia is a bad book. Far from it, in fact. I feel it has all the right ingredients, but the actual execution of all those great ideas leaves something to be desired.
Over the years, I think I’ve come to gain a deeper appreciation for hard sci-fi. It’s still a struggle sometimes, I admit, but it’s no longer the insurmountable hurdle it once was. However, plot and characters rank high on my priority list. Compelling and cogent storytelling is still somewhat of a requirement in the question of whether or not I’ll enjoy a book. Unfortunately, parts of Echopraxia are just too inconsistent for me to embrace it with open arms, but Watts should be recognized for his incredible talent of making everything he writes about sound fascinating and convincing. This is not a book you’ll want to pick up for a light afternoon of reading, but it’s worth it if you’re up for a thoughtful discourse on the complexities of the human mind and consciousness.
I thought I would be going into Echopraxia with two strikes against me. First, the fact that I haven’t read Blindsight which is the first book in the Firefall series, and second, there was the worry that the book would be too “hard sci-fi” for my tastes. Fortunately, neither really ended up being an obstacle. Sure, I had my issues with this novel, but those have little to do with my original concerns.
It’s hard to explain a book like Echopraxia; this is one of those cases where it’s probably better to just let the publisher description do the talking: “The eve of the twenty-second century”, “a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues”, “genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans”, “soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off self-awareness during combat”.
It’s a whole other world, with a very different status quo. People like biologist Daniel Bruks who is adamant against upgrading himself with any implants or enhancements are seen as “old school”, living fossils that are still clinging on to an extinct way of life. While working in the field in the middle of the Oregon desert, he finds himself entangled in a conflict between a vampire and her entourage of zombie bodyguards versus a faction of technologically advanced Bicameral monks. Now he’s trapped on a ship headed to the center of the solar system to learn what happened to Blindsight, the expedition which took off years ago to investigate what appeared to be an alien signal.
The ideas here are wild, spectacular and ambitious. The plot, on the other hand, is quite thin – another reason why it would be difficult to describe this novel. Echopraxia is a book that feels less concerned with providing a cohesive narrative, instead focusing more heavily on philosophical discussion and debate on the human condition. Great if like these kinds of books, not so great if you don’t. Personally, I really enjoyed the first hundred pages or so because it contained most of the story. Watts established the setting, the main characters and the conflict. But everything started unraveling after that point, and became unfocused and disorganized.
The challenge for me was in trying to tease apart the jumble of ideas without allowing myself to be driven to distraction. Watts’ writing is laden with scientific jargon and not very easy on the eyes, making this one a slower read. Given the heavier themes and tinge of gloom, not to mention the fact there’s barely any plot, there’s just not too much energy to push it along. Not that I’m saying Echopraxia is a bad book. Far from it, in fact. I feel it has all the right ingredients, but the actual execution of all those great ideas leaves something to be desired.
Over the years, I think I’ve come to gain a deeper appreciation for hard sci-fi. It’s still a struggle sometimes, I admit, but it’s no longer the insurmountable hurdle it once was. However, plot and characters rank high on my priority list. Compelling and cogent storytelling is still somewhat of a requirement in the question of whether or not I’ll enjoy a book. Unfortunately, parts of Echopraxia are just too inconsistent for me to embrace it with open arms, but Watts should be recognized for his incredible talent of making everything he writes about sound fascinating and convincing. This is not a book you’ll want to pick up for a light afternoon of reading, but it’s worth it if you’re up for a thoughtful discourse on the complexities of the human mind and consciousness.
May 5, 2016
Echopraxia: Nowhere near as good as Blindsight
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
I was extremely impressed by Peter Watts’ Blindsight (2006), a diamond-hard sci-fi novel about first contact, AIs, evolutionary biology, genetically-engineered vampires, sentience vs intelligence, and virtual reality. It is an intense experience, relentless in its demands on the reader, but makes you think very hard about whether humanity’s sentience (as we understand it) is really as great as we generally think it is.
The short answer, according to Watts, is no. It’s an evolutionary fluke, was never necessary for survival, and will actually be a hindrance when we encounter more advanced alien species, most of which may have developed high levels of intelligence without wasting any precious brain capacity on sentience, self-awareness, or “navel-gazing.” It’s a very depressing idea, but he drives home his argument with such force that you at least have to acknowledge his points, even if you disagree with them.
So I was pretty excited to pick up Echopraxia (2014), thinking it would continue the story of Theseus crew member Siri Keaton. Despite the climatic events at the end of Blindsight, the story lacked resolution. It even hinted at events back on Earth that whetted my appetite for more.
Imagine my disappointment as I discovered that Echopraxia takes up a different but parallel storyline, so you will not learn anything about the aftermath of the previous story. I can understand that Watts wants to explore in more detail the future he’s created, but it seems willfully contrary to not reveal anything further. If he’s eventually planning a third volume that ties the two previous books together, I can understand it, but I found this very frustrating.
Halfway through the book, I feel as if nothing of interest had happened after the initial action set-piece when an army of zombie soldiers led by a vampire attack a desert religious enclave of ‘Bicamerals.’ Then without much warning, old-school ‘baseline’ biologist Daniel Bruks is whisked into space on the Crown of Thorns. The crew is a mix of modified humans who are vastly more advanced than him. Essentially, the plot grinds to a halt in space, and neither the characters nor the writing captured my interest the way Blindsight did.
I got through half the book, gave up and tried a second time to no avail. There are none of the mind-bending discussions of alien biology or consciousness that made Blindsight so good. It’s still very dense, scientific jargon-laden writing, but without the central First Contact plot driving events forward, it’s hard to digest. While I found Synthesist Siri Keaton so bizarre and disturbing in Blindsight, he had a human past that was slowly revealed in flashbacks. In contrast, I didn’t find anything of interest about Daniel Burks.
After deciding to give up on this one, I felt a flood of relief and excitement at the idea of starting a new book. I don’t like DNFs (Did Not Finish), but couldn’t see any benefit in slogging on further. If anything, I would much rather go back and listen to Blindsight again, which was an amazing book all the way through.
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
I was extremely impressed by Peter Watts’ Blindsight (2006), a diamond-hard sci-fi novel about first contact, AIs, evolutionary biology, genetically-engineered vampires, sentience vs intelligence, and virtual reality. It is an intense experience, relentless in its demands on the reader, but makes you think very hard about whether humanity’s sentience (as we understand it) is really as great as we generally think it is.
The short answer, according to Watts, is no. It’s an evolutionary fluke, was never necessary for survival, and will actually be a hindrance when we encounter more advanced alien species, most of which may have developed high levels of intelligence without wasting any precious brain capacity on sentience, self-awareness, or “navel-gazing.” It’s a very depressing idea, but he drives home his argument with such force that you at least have to acknowledge his points, even if you disagree with them.
So I was pretty excited to pick up Echopraxia (2014), thinking it would continue the story of Theseus crew member Siri Keaton. Despite the climatic events at the end of Blindsight, the story lacked resolution. It even hinted at events back on Earth that whetted my appetite for more.
Imagine my disappointment as I discovered that Echopraxia takes up a different but parallel storyline, so you will not learn anything about the aftermath of the previous story. I can understand that Watts wants to explore in more detail the future he’s created, but it seems willfully contrary to not reveal anything further. If he’s eventually planning a third volume that ties the two previous books together, I can understand it, but I found this very frustrating.
Halfway through the book, I feel as if nothing of interest had happened after the initial action set-piece when an army of zombie soldiers led by a vampire attack a desert religious enclave of ‘Bicamerals.’ Then without much warning, old-school ‘baseline’ biologist Daniel Bruks is whisked into space on the Crown of Thorns. The crew is a mix of modified humans who are vastly more advanced than him. Essentially, the plot grinds to a halt in space, and neither the characters nor the writing captured my interest the way Blindsight did.
I got through half the book, gave up and tried a second time to no avail. There are none of the mind-bending discussions of alien biology or consciousness that made Blindsight so good. It’s still very dense, scientific jargon-laden writing, but without the central First Contact plot driving events forward, it’s hard to digest. While I found Synthesist Siri Keaton so bizarre and disturbing in Blindsight, he had a human past that was slowly revealed in flashbacks. In contrast, I didn’t find anything of interest about Daniel Burks.
After deciding to give up on this one, I felt a flood of relief and excitement at the idea of starting a new book. I don’t like DNFs (Did Not Finish), but couldn’t see any benefit in slogging on further. If anything, I would much rather go back and listen to Blindsight again, which was an amazing book all the way through.
October 7, 2014
5 Stars
Echopraxia by Peter Watts is a rare case where the sequel outdoes the beginnings. I loved Blidnsight, I would have never imagined a case where I thought that a sequel would make for a better and longer lasting read….Wow…here it is. Echopraxia takes the philosophical approach of blindsight one major step further. Watts coins this book himself as “a faith-based hard science fiction novel”, what an oxymoron…
“Finally: free will. Although free will (rather, its lack) is one of Echopraxia’s central themes (the neurological condition of echopraxia is to autonomy as blindsight is to consciousness).”
This book started off with what I was worried would end up being a major flaw in that we did not have anything invested in our protagonist Daniel, nor did we have any reason to care. It actually was not until the midway point that Bruks finally asserted himself and his personality as the star of our story. That being said, the hard science, the amazing near future world, the dark undertones, and the merits of its predecessor made it a no brainer that I would read it cover to cover no matter what….Thank god (no pun intended) that I did.
This is a book that is really a study in or more like a look around the corner at what is faith? what is God? What is free will? and even a bit more about the nature of consciousness. The novel is steeped in dialogue and situations that explore faith and God and the meaning of life.
Watts shows in this book just how far he has come as a gifted writer. In Blindsight he showed us glimpses of his writing style, command of the English language, and his ability to put his thoughts on paper. But now nearly a decade later he has honed his craft to an elite level. I put him right up their with the best writers out their. I was truly blown away by his writing.
Although this book is mostly about the dialogue, the situations, and settings, there still is a good deal of action that is very well done.
A snippet that shows his action writing style….
“In the lamprey now: No time to stop, no chance to bar the way, you even think about dogging that hatch and she’ll be on you before you even turn around. Don’t look back. Just keep running. Don’t think about where, don’t think about when: thirty seconds is a lifetime, two minutes is the far future, it’s the moment that matters, it’s now that’s trying to kill you. A voice ahead, as panicky as the one inside, echoing down the throat and getting louder: all shit shit shit and docking clamps and numbers going backward—but Don’t worry about that either, that’s for later, that’s for ten seconds from now if you’re still alive and—“
The ending of this book is simply spectacular. All of the end scenes culminate and bring this adventure to a conclusion by bringing to the forefront all of the themes which were explored throughout. There is no major plot twist per se, instead, the entire last portions of this story are more like an evolution, things that change with time, rather than a sudden major twist. It makes this book a real gem. I do not want to give away spoilers. It is simply masterful storytelling.
I will surely reread this amazing faith based hard science novel by one of my favorite authors.
One of my favorite reads of the year.
Echopraxia by Peter Watts is a rare case where the sequel outdoes the beginnings. I loved Blidnsight, I would have never imagined a case where I thought that a sequel would make for a better and longer lasting read….Wow…here it is. Echopraxia takes the philosophical approach of blindsight one major step further. Watts coins this book himself as “a faith-based hard science fiction novel”, what an oxymoron…
“Finally: free will. Although free will (rather, its lack) is one of Echopraxia’s central themes (the neurological condition of echopraxia is to autonomy as blindsight is to consciousness).”
This book started off with what I was worried would end up being a major flaw in that we did not have anything invested in our protagonist Daniel, nor did we have any reason to care. It actually was not until the midway point that Bruks finally asserted himself and his personality as the star of our story. That being said, the hard science, the amazing near future world, the dark undertones, and the merits of its predecessor made it a no brainer that I would read it cover to cover no matter what….Thank god (no pun intended) that I did.
This is a book that is really a study in or more like a look around the corner at what is faith? what is God? What is free will? and even a bit more about the nature of consciousness. The novel is steeped in dialogue and situations that explore faith and God and the meaning of life.
Watts shows in this book just how far he has come as a gifted writer. In Blindsight he showed us glimpses of his writing style, command of the English language, and his ability to put his thoughts on paper. But now nearly a decade later he has honed his craft to an elite level. I put him right up their with the best writers out their. I was truly blown away by his writing.
Although this book is mostly about the dialogue, the situations, and settings, there still is a good deal of action that is very well done.
A snippet that shows his action writing style….
“In the lamprey now: No time to stop, no chance to bar the way, you even think about dogging that hatch and she’ll be on you before you even turn around. Don’t look back. Just keep running. Don’t think about where, don’t think about when: thirty seconds is a lifetime, two minutes is the far future, it’s the moment that matters, it’s now that’s trying to kill you. A voice ahead, as panicky as the one inside, echoing down the throat and getting louder: all shit shit shit and docking clamps and numbers going backward—but Don’t worry about that either, that’s for later, that’s for ten seconds from now if you’re still alive and—“
The ending of this book is simply spectacular. All of the end scenes culminate and bring this adventure to a conclusion by bringing to the forefront all of the themes which were explored throughout. There is no major plot twist per se, instead, the entire last portions of this story are more like an evolution, things that change with time, rather than a sudden major twist. It makes this book a real gem. I do not want to give away spoilers. It is simply masterful storytelling.
I will surely reread this amazing faith based hard science novel by one of my favorite authors.
One of my favorite reads of the year.
September 5, 2015
Ok, so it’s pretty clear that Peter Watts doesn’t think very highly of the human race. When I look around at the state of the world we’ve made I have to admit that I’m not sure I can blame him. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like he thinks much of the possible post-human solutions to the ‘problem’ either. Man, what’s a species to do?! Given the general tenor of Watts’ books I think the answer might be: just roll over and die…after sufficiently (and pointlessly) railing against the inevitable of course. Shit, I wonder what Watts is like at parties?
I was looking forward to reading this book given how much I enjoyed its prequel _Blindsight_, but I have to admit that I didn't grok this one nearly as much. I think the long lapse since reading _Blindsight_ didn't help. I'm pretty certain if I'd re-read it before tackling _Echopraxia_ I probably would have had an easier time of it. I was also a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of hard science that I must admit I didn't quite follow most of the time. Given this is a hard SF book I can't really hold that against it...it's my problem, but one that did deter from my enjoyment of the story to a certain extent.
We pick up several years after the events of _Blindsight_ with the human race assuming, as usual, that no news is good news as far as the mission to discover the origins of the mysterious aliens behind the 'Firefall event' goes and so we're back to our life as usual with internecine wars and the race to outdo each other in resource consumption taking up most of our time and effort. Daniel Bruks is a biologist living a solitary life in the desert cataloging mutated species and running from a traumatic event in his past. He is also a baseline human struggling to live in a post-human world. His life is about to change drastically through the intervention of a nearby 'monastic' community of Bicameral humans (basically a super-intelligent hive mind) and an escaped vampire (yes a vampire in a hard SF book...Watts has a very interesting version of these beasts who are actually a prehistoric human offshoot brought back by the wonders of science and stupidity of mankind).
In short order Bruks finds himself running from unknown enemies and participating in a voyage across the solar system to discover what mysteries and dangers lie in the ruins of the Theseus project as outlined in the first book. It's a Peter Watts book so I don't think I'm committing a heinous act of spoiler if I note that nothing goes well at all for anyone. Watts populates his mission to space with an array of modified post-humans and his view on how our race might evolve, and the technologies to which they are wedded, is always interesting. Of course we require a lens like Bruks through which to view these super beings who are beyond the ken of wormlike mortals such as ourselves.
All in all I generally enjoyed the story though Watts' baseline of utter pessimism and my aforementioned inability to always follow the technical nuances of the science being thrown around did hamper my enjoyment some. I also *think* I know what happened at the end of the story, but am a little uncertain about some aspects of it, though I guess having food for thought about the hows and whens is ok. I'll call this one a draw I guess...interesting stuff for sure, but not a book for which I am the ideal reader.
I was looking forward to reading this book given how much I enjoyed its prequel _Blindsight_, but I have to admit that I didn't grok this one nearly as much. I think the long lapse since reading _Blindsight_ didn't help. I'm pretty certain if I'd re-read it before tackling _Echopraxia_ I probably would have had an easier time of it. I was also a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of hard science that I must admit I didn't quite follow most of the time. Given this is a hard SF book I can't really hold that against it...it's my problem, but one that did deter from my enjoyment of the story to a certain extent.
We pick up several years after the events of _Blindsight_ with the human race assuming, as usual, that no news is good news as far as the mission to discover the origins of the mysterious aliens behind the 'Firefall event' goes and so we're back to our life as usual with internecine wars and the race to outdo each other in resource consumption taking up most of our time and effort. Daniel Bruks is a biologist living a solitary life in the desert cataloging mutated species and running from a traumatic event in his past. He is also a baseline human struggling to live in a post-human world. His life is about to change drastically through the intervention of a nearby 'monastic' community of Bicameral humans (basically a super-intelligent hive mind) and an escaped vampire (yes a vampire in a hard SF book...Watts has a very interesting version of these beasts who are actually a prehistoric human offshoot brought back by the wonders of science and stupidity of mankind).
In short order Bruks finds himself running from unknown enemies and participating in a voyage across the solar system to discover what mysteries and dangers lie in the ruins of the Theseus project as outlined in the first book. It's a Peter Watts book so I don't think I'm committing a heinous act of spoiler if I note that nothing goes well at all for anyone. Watts populates his mission to space with an array of modified post-humans and his view on how our race might evolve, and the technologies to which they are wedded, is always interesting. Of course we require a lens like Bruks through which to view these super beings who are beyond the ken of wormlike mortals such as ourselves.
All in all I generally enjoyed the story though Watts' baseline of utter pessimism and my aforementioned inability to always follow the technical nuances of the science being thrown around did hamper my enjoyment some. I also *think* I know what happened at the end of the story, but am a little uncertain about some aspects of it, though I guess having food for thought about the hows and whens is ok. I'll call this one a draw I guess...interesting stuff for sure, but not a book for which I am the ideal reader.
Want to read
April 28, 2020This copy 40
This set of two books is limited to 300 signed and numbered copies. Each book has a ribbon marker and signature page signed by Peter Watts and artist Thomas Walker.
Published February 2020.
This set of two books is limited to 300 signed and numbered copies. Each book has a ribbon marker and signature page signed by Peter Watts and artist Thomas Walker.
Published February 2020.
March 28, 2021
I’ve got fairly mixed feelings about this one. Loved its predecessor, Blindsight. And I enjoyed seeing more of that world here, along with Siri Keaton’s father. (He is not the main character though.) For the most part I quite liked Echopraxia while I was reading it. Up until the ending. The ending was really pretty unsatisfactory.
On the other hand, after reading this possibly borderline spoilery review: http://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fe... and looking at the book from the perspective suggested there, as a kind of counterpoint to the rah-rah, singularity as nerd-rapture view of a “post-human” future that seem to be more common in SF, I have to say my appreciation for what Watts did here actually increased a bit.
But in the interest of being done with this pseudo-review, I’ll toss out some points I haven’t really integrated.
The Bad:
- Fairly unsatisfactory ending, though your mileage may vary.
- The plot is hidden from the main character to a degree that it actually makes the book feel kind of plotless and adrift. I spent a lot of the book unsure why the main character was even in the book, much less the main character.
- Occasional unclear writing. This is something which was a bit of a problem in Blindsight as well. I’ll be reading along and suddenly I have no idea what the main character is going on about. Watts changes topic without sufficiently a clear signal to the reader. This frequently takes a form something like this: An event or conversation takes place. The main character has an insight based on that event or conversation and proceeds to ruminate on it for a few paragraphs. Meanwhile the reader is not given the slightest clue what that insight actually was. It’s annoying as fuck.
The Good:
- Watts has envisioned a very interesting future world/society.
- Like Blindsight, the book is full of interesting ideas about intelligence and consciousness, some of which are speculative, but most all of which are based on legitimate science. It’s biology/neurology flavored hard SF, and it’s awesome.
- Watts' endnotes are almost as interesting as the novel itself.
If that last bit sounds interesting and you can cope with a less than optimistic ending, I’d recommend it. It mostly reads fairly well and easily maintained my interest even while occasionally frustrating me.
On the other hand, after reading this possibly borderline spoilery review: http://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fe... and looking at the book from the perspective suggested there, as a kind of counterpoint to the rah-rah, singularity as nerd-rapture view of a “post-human” future that seem to be more common in SF, I have to say my appreciation for what Watts did here actually increased a bit.
But in the interest of being done with this pseudo-review, I’ll toss out some points I haven’t really integrated.
The Bad:
- Fairly unsatisfactory ending, though your mileage may vary.
- The plot is hidden from the main character to a degree that it actually makes the book feel kind of plotless and adrift. I spent a lot of the book unsure why the main character was even in the book, much less the main character.
- Occasional unclear writing. This is something which was a bit of a problem in Blindsight as well. I’ll be reading along and suddenly I have no idea what the main character is going on about. Watts changes topic without sufficiently a clear signal to the reader. This frequently takes a form something like this: An event or conversation takes place. The main character has an insight based on that event or conversation and proceeds to ruminate on it for a few paragraphs. Meanwhile the reader is not given the slightest clue what that insight actually was. It’s annoying as fuck.
The Good:
- Watts has envisioned a very interesting future world/society.
- Like Blindsight, the book is full of interesting ideas about intelligence and consciousness, some of which are speculative, but most all of which are based on legitimate science. It’s biology/neurology flavored hard SF, and it’s awesome.
- Watts' endnotes are almost as interesting as the novel itself.
If that last bit sounds interesting and you can cope with a less than optimistic ending, I’d recommend it. It mostly reads fairly well and easily maintained my interest even while occasionally frustrating me.
November 12, 2020
Moved to gwern.net.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 30, 2021
Echopraxia is a worthy sequel to Blindsight, but a very different experience to be sure nonetheless. Echopraxia takes place a little over a decade after Blindsight and still nothing has been heard of the space expedition sent off to explore the aliens who took a detailed 'picture' of Earth one day using over 60,000 'cameras'. Unlike the preamble in Blindsight and the mission, where Watts redefined the 'first contact' novel (for better or worse), from the onset the reader is unclear exactly what is going on here, and that lack persists throughout the book; I will get back to this later.
The story focuses on Dan, a largely 'baseline' human, who starts off doing some biological research deep in the deserts of Oregon. We never really get a good 'read' on Dan; like all the characters in Echopraxia, they are not very developed at all. Yet, Dan constitutes something of a link or proxy for the reader as he is the only one not fundamentally transformed via brain implants and other 'augments'. Dan research is basically trapping and analyzing the various fauna to be found to see how much they have been modified by rogue viruses and other externalities of the dystopian world developed in some detail in Blindsight. It seems that almost any group can 'cook up' some type of viral infection to nasty effect, and the spillovers of such 'terrorist' activities have basically impacted almost all life forms on the planet. Watts does not mess around with dystopia!
One evening the sensors and cameras around Dan's bivouac indicate a huge array of human-shaped life forms rapidly approaching and Dan decides to split the scene. This illustrates a motif found throughout the book-- events happening without Dan (or the reader) knowing why they are happening. In any case, Dan manages to find his way to a monastery run by the bicameral order, a group introduced in the novelette The Colonel (found freely on Tor's website). The bicamerals are basically a hive mind where the individual members are all brain linked to each other. Watts notes that they own 'half of the patent office' but what exactly are they researching? For me, the most interesting aspect of the bicamerals resides in their faith and the constant discussions contrasting faith and science. A bit more on this later.
Once Dan enters the monastery, things get even messier. He is escorted around by Lianna, who serves the order as something of an interpreter between the order and 'baselines'. She had something mysterious done to her brain to facilitate this, but we never know exactly what. Lianna also takes Dan to see Jim Moore, an 'old soldier' who also happens to be Siri's father from Blindsight, following the events outside. It seems a vampire, Valerie, and her army of 'zombies' has attacked the monastery and Dan was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. After a nasty viral attack, Dan wakes up on a space ship heading toward the sun. This is something of a parallel between Blindsight, e.g., a space voyage, but with a very different cast of characters. Besides Dan, we have Valerie with a bodyguard of several zombies, Lianna, Jim, Sengupta (a pilot who works for the order) and an array of bicamerals. They are heading to the Icarus space station, which we know channels energy from the sun to power spaceships; it also contributes about a fifth of the power to Earth.
I am going to stop with the detailed plotting here; let me just say that Watts moves with really frenetic pacing throughout the novel. Watts also treats us to a wealth of ideas to chew on as we go, but does not go as deep into philosophy as Blindsight. Rather, most of the speculations concern the direction of humanity and the emergence of a post-human singularity, hive minds or otherwise. I found many similarities here Accelerando and if you like Stross, you should check out Watts!
Ah, so what does it mean to be human? Watts really paints a depressing picture of humanity for sure. There is very little compassion to be found here, or empathy. Human civilization is rapidly going down the tubes and millions have just escaped to 'heaven', living a virtual existence and tuning out the world. Strife and famine ravage what is left and climate change is barely being controlled despite 'brute force' methods enabled via the power from Icarus. So many viruses are out of control around the world, mutating and such that there is very little left untouched. As I said above, Watts really does dystopia quite well.
For me, this actually turned out to be more of a mystery novel than 'pure' science fiction; we do not know why the order, in league with a vampire, is heading to Icarus or what they hope to find there. Even after they arrive, the mission is still mysterious. Why is Dan along? At first it seems that he is simply a sympathetic character that the readers can identify with, but the longer we read into the story, more bits and pieces start to emerge that challenge that narrative. I am not going to give away the ending, but I can say that if you expect a happy ending, you will be disappointed.
I really liked the 'big ideas' Watts presents us with here, although it does feel like he fell into the trap of many hard science fiction writers of not developing characters in any detail. Maybe trap is not the right word here, for in Blindsight, the characters were a pretty odious crew. The ideas are enough to pull the reader along nicely and the mystery starts to unfold. This was published about the same time as Children of Time and I feel there must have been some conversations between the authors, but I will not say what about.
3.5 stars, rounding up to 4.
The story focuses on Dan, a largely 'baseline' human, who starts off doing some biological research deep in the deserts of Oregon. We never really get a good 'read' on Dan; like all the characters in Echopraxia, they are not very developed at all. Yet, Dan constitutes something of a link or proxy for the reader as he is the only one not fundamentally transformed via brain implants and other 'augments'. Dan research is basically trapping and analyzing the various fauna to be found to see how much they have been modified by rogue viruses and other externalities of the dystopian world developed in some detail in Blindsight. It seems that almost any group can 'cook up' some type of viral infection to nasty effect, and the spillovers of such 'terrorist' activities have basically impacted almost all life forms on the planet. Watts does not mess around with dystopia!
One evening the sensors and cameras around Dan's bivouac indicate a huge array of human-shaped life forms rapidly approaching and Dan decides to split the scene. This illustrates a motif found throughout the book-- events happening without Dan (or the reader) knowing why they are happening. In any case, Dan manages to find his way to a monastery run by the bicameral order, a group introduced in the novelette The Colonel (found freely on Tor's website). The bicamerals are basically a hive mind where the individual members are all brain linked to each other. Watts notes that they own 'half of the patent office' but what exactly are they researching? For me, the most interesting aspect of the bicamerals resides in their faith and the constant discussions contrasting faith and science. A bit more on this later.
Once Dan enters the monastery, things get even messier. He is escorted around by Lianna, who serves the order as something of an interpreter between the order and 'baselines'. She had something mysterious done to her brain to facilitate this, but we never know exactly what. Lianna also takes Dan to see Jim Moore, an 'old soldier' who also happens to be Siri's father from Blindsight, following the events outside. It seems a vampire, Valerie, and her army of 'zombies' has attacked the monastery and Dan was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. After a nasty viral attack, Dan wakes up on a space ship heading toward the sun. This is something of a parallel between Blindsight, e.g., a space voyage, but with a very different cast of characters. Besides Dan, we have Valerie with a bodyguard of several zombies, Lianna, Jim, Sengupta (a pilot who works for the order) and an array of bicamerals. They are heading to the Icarus space station, which we know channels energy from the sun to power spaceships; it also contributes about a fifth of the power to Earth.
I am going to stop with the detailed plotting here; let me just say that Watts moves with really frenetic pacing throughout the novel. Watts also treats us to a wealth of ideas to chew on as we go, but does not go as deep into philosophy as Blindsight. Rather, most of the speculations concern the direction of humanity and the emergence of a post-human singularity, hive minds or otherwise. I found many similarities here Accelerando and if you like Stross, you should check out Watts!
Ah, so what does it mean to be human? Watts really paints a depressing picture of humanity for sure. There is very little compassion to be found here, or empathy. Human civilization is rapidly going down the tubes and millions have just escaped to 'heaven', living a virtual existence and tuning out the world. Strife and famine ravage what is left and climate change is barely being controlled despite 'brute force' methods enabled via the power from Icarus. So many viruses are out of control around the world, mutating and such that there is very little left untouched. As I said above, Watts really does dystopia quite well.
For me, this actually turned out to be more of a mystery novel than 'pure' science fiction; we do not know why the order, in league with a vampire, is heading to Icarus or what they hope to find there. Even after they arrive, the mission is still mysterious. Why is Dan along? At first it seems that he is simply a sympathetic character that the readers can identify with, but the longer we read into the story, more bits and pieces start to emerge that challenge that narrative. I am not going to give away the ending, but I can say that if you expect a happy ending, you will be disappointed.
I really liked the 'big ideas' Watts presents us with here, although it does feel like he fell into the trap of many hard science fiction writers of not developing characters in any detail. Maybe trap is not the right word here, for in Blindsight, the characters were a pretty odious crew. The ideas are enough to pull the reader along nicely and the mystery starts to unfold. This was published about the same time as Children of Time and I feel there must have been some conversations between the authors, but I will not say what about.
3.5 stars, rounding up to 4.
May 25, 2020
Peter Watts returns readers to the dystopian world of Firefall with Echopraxia, the second novel in the series.
Meet Daniel Bruks, an outcast biologist with a secret. He's struggling to continue with his scientific studies in a world that has ceased to make sense after the alien contact in Firefall.
"The Theseus mission would be well past Pluto by now. If it had found anything, Bruks hadn't heard about it. For his part, he was sick of waiting. He was sick of life on hold, waiting for monsters or saviors to make an appearance. ... He wished the world would just hurry up and end." pg 15
His life quickly changes when he finds himself herded into an esoteric and technologically advanced cult's desert compound while they're under attack from weaponized zombies. (It makes more sense when you read it, I promise.) What follows is an exploration into the realms of religion, technology and faith.
"One day you're minding your own business on your camping trip..." "Field research." "... the next you're in the crossfire of a Tran war, the day after that you wake up on a spaceship with a bull's-eye painted on its hull." "I do wonder what I'm doing here. Every thirty seconds or so." pg 81
The same microscopic lens Watts used to take apart consciousness in the last book, he applies to a totally different topic, religion, in this one and it doesn't quite work.
He doesn't take any time to introduce readers to some of the more far-out concepts from the last book. If I had dived into Echopraxia without reading Firefall, I would have been totally lost. And as it was, I certainly was confused by the end.
Where the last book was a space and science adventure, this one is a journey, both metaphorical and physical. The threats along the way are somewhat as scary, but the characters aren't as well-fleshed out.
Maybe I was spoiled in the last book because I really enjoyed Siri, the narrator's, character. Daniel Bruks is more difficult to love.
But it's not just the characters. The science of the last book was more connected to the story line. In this book, it almost felt like a tacked-on after thought.
And as hard as I tried to put the pieces together, the ending never quite made sense. I put some serious thought into it too. It's one thing to leave an ending somewhat ambiguous so the readers can hash it out, it's another to give almost no clues at all.
That's not to say Watts isn't brilliant, because he is. However, if you have the choice between reading Firefall or Echopraxia, I would suggest the former rather than the latter.
Meet Daniel Bruks, an outcast biologist with a secret. He's struggling to continue with his scientific studies in a world that has ceased to make sense after the alien contact in Firefall.
"The Theseus mission would be well past Pluto by now. If it had found anything, Bruks hadn't heard about it. For his part, he was sick of waiting. He was sick of life on hold, waiting for monsters or saviors to make an appearance. ... He wished the world would just hurry up and end." pg 15
His life quickly changes when he finds himself herded into an esoteric and technologically advanced cult's desert compound while they're under attack from weaponized zombies. (It makes more sense when you read it, I promise.) What follows is an exploration into the realms of religion, technology and faith.
"One day you're minding your own business on your camping trip..." "Field research." "... the next you're in the crossfire of a Tran war, the day after that you wake up on a spaceship with a bull's-eye painted on its hull." "I do wonder what I'm doing here. Every thirty seconds or so." pg 81
The same microscopic lens Watts used to take apart consciousness in the last book, he applies to a totally different topic, religion, in this one and it doesn't quite work.
He doesn't take any time to introduce readers to some of the more far-out concepts from the last book. If I had dived into Echopraxia without reading Firefall, I would have been totally lost. And as it was, I certainly was confused by the end.
Where the last book was a space and science adventure, this one is a journey, both metaphorical and physical. The threats along the way are somewhat as scary, but the characters aren't as well-fleshed out.
Maybe I was spoiled in the last book because I really enjoyed Siri, the narrator's, character. Daniel Bruks is more difficult to love.
But it's not just the characters. The science of the last book was more connected to the story line. In this book, it almost felt like a tacked-on after thought.
And as hard as I tried to put the pieces together, the ending never quite made sense. I put some serious thought into it too. It's one thing to leave an ending somewhat ambiguous so the readers can hash it out, it's another to give almost no clues at all.
That's not to say Watts isn't brilliant, because he is. However, if you have the choice between reading Firefall or Echopraxia, I would suggest the former rather than the latter.
February 13, 2021
"You wouldn't believe what's happening," he said.
"Tell me."
"I've got caught up in some kind of war, I'm trapped behind enemy lines with a bunch of--really. You wouldn't believe me."
"Monks and zombies," she said. And the vampire."
Of course she knew.
I'm now officially a Peter Watts fan boy. I have GOT to reread Blindsight.
"Tell me."
"I've got caught up in some kind of war, I'm trapped behind enemy lines with a bunch of--really. You wouldn't believe me."
"Monks and zombies," she said. And the vampire."
Of course she knew.
I'm now officially a Peter Watts fan boy. I have GOT to reread Blindsight.
November 23, 2020
Despite (…or because?) some strong thematic disagreements, I'm happy to give Echopraxia four stars. While it's not without flaw, it's bold, experimental, courageous, honest, intelligent, and, above all, thought-provoking. After Blindsight and now Echopraxia, I can say Peter Watts is shaping up to be one of my favorite hard sci-fi authors; he is to neuroscience and psychology what my favorite sci-fi author, Greg Egan, is to physics and mathematics.
Echopraxia follows the journey of baseline non-posthuman “roach” Daniel Bruks, who gets entangled with a deadly vampire and a quasi-religious science order of posthumans as they journey to the sun in search of a message that may have come from the aliens in Blindsight.
But Echopraxia isn’t really a sequel of Blindsight, so much as a mirror journey: one, a forge of heat that transmutes human to inhuman; the other, a forge of cold that transmutes inhuman to human. One, a king on puppet strings; another, a prisoner holding the puppet strings. One, an exploration of consciousness; the other, of free will.
Even their narrators, despite being dissimilar characters, mirror each other in interesting ways. It’d be imprecise to call them both unreliable narrators. My experience is that ‘unreliable narrators’ might be better described as ‘deceptive narrators,’ in that the author/narrator is purposefully, often annoyingly, withholding information or manipulating the reader to achieve a “gotcha” effect (see: Fight Club). Not the case with Blindsight’s Siri & Echopraxia’s Daniel. It’s less that they’re unreliable and more that Watts does a very good job of limiting the PoV. The characters only see and hear they they see and hear. They only know what they know, especially true in the case of Daniel Bruks: he is not posthuman but many of the characters around him are. So he simply can’t understand the minds of vastly more intelligent beings. Nor, in fact, can we.
This among other factors can make Echopraxia a challenging read. Some of that is fair game. It’s a book of highly complex ideas which, by definition, make for more challenging reading material. But some felt more an issue with muddy writing or overzealous editing. I know of at least one instance (because Watts admitted to it) where he accidentally edited out a key clue. And I personally found some of his descriptions, especially with regard to the spaceship on which most of the novel is set, a little difficult to parse.
But even that criticism isn’t really meant as much of a criticism. Your own tastes may vary, but if I engage with a piece of media and come away feeling like I fully and clearly understood it, then I’m bored. I mean, what’s the fun in fully understanding something? Where’s the growth, where’s the mystery?
Above all, though, it's important to understand Echopraxia is as much a philosophical text as it is a story. Much more so than Blindsight, which was itself quite philosophical. That may not be your thing. But if it is, chances are high you'll enjoy Echopraxia.
That much for the book review. What follows are two mini essays: one an actual criticism about religion in Echopraxia (and a rebuttal of several of its characters’ arguments), followed by a defense of Free Will.
~~~
One of the major themes of Echopraxia is faith/religion and its relation to science. I earlier mentioned the quasi-religious science order of post-humans, the Bicameral Order. Basically they’ve rewired their brains into a hive-mind / distributed intelligence network. Because the part they’ve rewired is closely tied with the “religious” part of the brain, they often engage in “religious” behavior, like speaking in tongues. Because these characters are essentially incomprehensible to Daniel Bruks, we don’t get much direct interaction with them. Instead, Daniel debates with their human translator, who often talks about “having faith,” about the pros and cons of science and religion.
Unfortunately, I found the notion of the Bicameral Order’s religiosity unconvincing. It felt more tacked on than anything else, a fact the author himself admits in his notes: “In hindsight, it is apparent that describing the Bicamerals as a religious order is a little misleading…”
The problem for me is I make a very large distinction between ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion.’ As Sam Harris - as die-hard an atheist as you can find - has said: an atheist can have as spiritual or transcendent an experience as a theist. So I’d disagree that there exist “religious” centers of the brain because to me (and most theists I’ve talked with) the word religion implies organized religion. Y’know, spirituality guided by a church and a doctrine. But the Bicameral Order doesn’t have a doctrine, so when their translator kept uttering, “have faith,” I kept thinking, “have faith in what?”
What’s more, while I always enjoy a good religion vs. science discussion, it’s hard to actually find a good one. I don’t think Echopraxia’s debates qualify either. Let’s unpack some aspects of its science vs. religion debate:
In Bruk's and translator’s discussions, we encounter the oft-repeated notion that science is actually a form of religion. The translator mentions how science may be empirical - but aren’t scientists just taking it on faith their senses are accurately reporting the truth?
Another related claim she makes is that physics requires a tenet of “faith” that physics rules are constant across both time and space.
The simple rebuttal is that comparing science to religion is a categorical error. It’s like suggesting drinking a glass of orange juice is the same as squeezing an orange to make juice. Science and religion are opposite processes. Science is NOT a body of knowledge - it is a method (skeptical inquiry, often enforced with a logical positivist philosophy) that LEADS to a body of knowledge. Religion, however, is a body of knowledge (a dogma) that LEADS to a method (prayer, meditation, codes of ethics, etc). This is why science leads to new discoveries, but religion does not. That is not religion’s purpose.
To give the more advanced rebuttal, I’m going to talk about Descartes and Hume.
One of the most famous phrases in philosophy is Descartes’ cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. Descartes considered this phrase the foundation of Truth. Everything else - the world around us as reported by our potentially faulty senses - could be deceptions, but cogito ergo sum is unquestionable Truth.
Cogito ergo sum is stupid. As is the claim that science requires “faith” that our senses report back the Truth. Science doesn’t give two shits about Truth. Science is interested in using the evidence of our senses to predict what our senses will next encounter. So it doesn’t matter if our senses are being deceived; it doesn’t matter if we’re in a simulation or a giant’s dream. The world of senses is our reality, and science deals with reality, not some shadowy Platonic Truth.
As for the notion that science takes it on faith that physics is constant in both time and space…
A: It only holds that stance because so far, it hasn’t been falsified. It’s an empirical stance, not a faith-based stance.
B: Even if physics is not constant in time and space, so what?
To dig a little deeper, let’s talk Scottish philosopher David Hume and his widely misunderstood problem of induction. I’m especially guilty. I learned the problem of induction long before I actually studied Hume, so I spent years and years thinking I understood something that I most certainly did not.
The problem of induction is this: the only way to prove the validity of induction (drawing specific conclusions from a general rule) is to invoke induction itself. Specifically, you must invoke the general rule that general rules are unchanging. See the problem? It’s like defining happiness as “the state of being happy.”
Now when I first learned this, I interpreted it as an attack on science. Science rests on the foundation that induction is a valid methodology for making predictions. We collect a bunch of data, use inductive reasoning to form a general rule, then we use deductive reasoning with that newly formed rule to make predictions of the future! But the problem of induction seems to suggest that this ISN’T a valid approach. Ergo, attack on science.
But then I actually studied Hume, and I found I had misunderstood his intentions entirely. Hume was a critic of religion. A strong one. His point with the problem of induction wasn’t an attack on empiricism but rather an attack on the notion of a pure, unchanging Truth. His point was that even if we somehow found such a Truth, we couldn’t even be certain that Truth would stay True. That’s really what the problem of induction states: the very idea of an absolute or ultimate Truth is logically incoherent.
So, yes, many science methodologies include the assumption that physics is unchanging. But this isn’t part of the core methodology of science. If we discover that some aspects of cosmology can be explained by non-constant physics, guess what? Science will adopt that. That’s not faith, it’s empiricism.
~~~
I’m a huge proponent of free will for reasons both pragmatic and aesthetic. I love love love the topic of free will. K-pop fangirls got nothin’ on me when it comes to free will, and I’ve just been waiting for an excuse to write about it some more. And tada, Peter Watts delivers!
In both Blindsight and Echopraxia, free will is a major theme, and its non-existence is a core assumption underlying both books. In his notes for Echopraxia he writes:
“Neurons do not fire spontaneously, only in response to external stimuli; therefore brains cannot act spontaneously, only in response to external stimuli (Footnote: Yes there may be random elements - quantum flickers that introduce unpredictability in one’s behavior - but slaving your decisions to a dice roll doesn’t make you free) … The switch cannot flip itself. QED [Free will obviously does not exist].”
He even calls it a “farce.” Oh boy. I disagree on so many levels. Where to begin?
[A] Neurons only fire in response to external stimuli? External to what? The neuron itself? Maybe but definitely not external to the body. I mean, what causes neurons to fire when we’re dreaming? Why do people in sensory deprivation tanks hallucinate? If I sit in a room and meditate, why are my thoughts constantly changing, despite external stimuli remaining largely constant? Why do amputees feel phantom pain?
No, it’s absolutely clear that neurons can cause other neurons to fire. In fact, with few exceptions, ONLY body neurons can cause brain neurons to fire. The brain itself does not contain any transducers to convert physical signal to electrical signal; the eyes, ears, skin, etc do all of that. So neurons only fire in response to external stimuli? In the absence of some strange situation, brain neurons are almost entirely switched by the BODY ITSELF.
[B] Re: quantum flickers & dice rolls. Physics and free will is a tricky thing. If free will exists in physics, it will always appear as indeterminism, as a “dice roll.” By definition. If it were deterministic, it would be enslaved by some causal chain, and it wouldn’t really be free would it?
[C] Still, I think Watts is correct when he writes, “slaving yourself to a dice roll doesn’t [give you free will],” but I’d retort he has improperly defined the “you” in that statement. Why wouldn’t the “you” INCLUDE those quantum flickers, those dice rolls? Shouldn’t it? How could there be a coherent and complete definition of “you” that doesn’t include your subconscious, your body, and those quantum effects essential for their functioning? If we don’t include those, then what’s the difference between a corpse and a person? But I would go even further, radically further, in my definition of "you."
There’s a famous Zen Buddhist koan (riddle) that asks, “What is the sound of a one-handed clap?”
Do you know the answer? Don’t think physically. Consider Buddhist doctrine.
The answer is, of course, that a one-handed clap makes no sound. It’s impossible. But what does that mean?
Other equivalent answers might be “peace” or “nirvana” or “enlightenment” or “unity.” But Zen koans aren’t about the answers. They’re thinking tools. In this case, the riddle is meant as a reflection on the Buddhist idea that there is no separation between the Self and the Universe. The literal definition of nirvana is “blown out”; enlightenment occurs when you extinguish the illusion of Self.
A two-handed clap - which is loud and violent - arises when two different parts of the same body strike each other. When, say, two people - part of the community, the same humanity, the same ecosystem, the same universe - do violence against each other. But if they were to understand themselves as individual neurons within the same Over-Mind, why would they do violence against each other? They would understand that violence against anyone else is violence against oneself. [By the way, this doesn’t necessarily dictate a doctrine of non-violence, but rather that violence should be committed only in accordance with utilitarian aims].
That’s the problem I find with most people’s - including Peter Watts’ - conceptions of free will: their definition of the “you” in the statement “you don’t have free will.” They’re mentally setting up a metaphor in which the universe/physics is a prison and we are all separate entities - prisoners - trapped within.
But this separation is nonsense. Human beings are not unnatural but part of nature. We are not within the universe, we are a part of the universe. We are not independent beings separate from a boundless God, we must by definition be internal components of a boundless God. The quantum particles in our brains are not puppets dancing to the strings of quantum fields, they themselves are authors of those fields.
In other words, you are not a “slave” to a dice roll, you include those very dice rolls. The question isn’t, Do you possess free will? Rather it is, does the universe possess free will? If it does, then so do you. If it doesn’t, then neither do you.
As for the answer to that question, I’m genuinely unsure.
But as I wrote earlier, I suspect that indeterminism and other fundamental limits on knowledge are manifestations of a free will baked within the very fabric of reality. I mean, we KNOW we possess will. We can have a hunger for a hamburger and act on that hunger. That’s will. It’s just whether our acting on that hunger is according to a script written internally or externally - whether it’s “free” or not. And since our (or at least my) best understanding of quantum mechanics suggests that we don’t live in a clockwork universe… if that doesn’t add up to free will, then what would?
Echopraxia follows the journey of baseline non-posthuman “roach” Daniel Bruks, who gets entangled with a deadly vampire and a quasi-religious science order of posthumans as they journey to the sun in search of a message that may have come from the aliens in Blindsight.
But Echopraxia isn’t really a sequel of Blindsight, so much as a mirror journey: one, a forge of heat that transmutes human to inhuman; the other, a forge of cold that transmutes inhuman to human. One, a king on puppet strings; another, a prisoner holding the puppet strings. One, an exploration of consciousness; the other, of free will.
Even their narrators, despite being dissimilar characters, mirror each other in interesting ways. It’d be imprecise to call them both unreliable narrators. My experience is that ‘unreliable narrators’ might be better described as ‘deceptive narrators,’ in that the author/narrator is purposefully, often annoyingly, withholding information or manipulating the reader to achieve a “gotcha” effect (see: Fight Club). Not the case with Blindsight’s Siri & Echopraxia’s Daniel. It’s less that they’re unreliable and more that Watts does a very good job of limiting the PoV. The characters only see and hear they they see and hear. They only know what they know, especially true in the case of Daniel Bruks: he is not posthuman but many of the characters around him are. So he simply can’t understand the minds of vastly more intelligent beings. Nor, in fact, can we.
This among other factors can make Echopraxia a challenging read. Some of that is fair game. It’s a book of highly complex ideas which, by definition, make for more challenging reading material. But some felt more an issue with muddy writing or overzealous editing. I know of at least one instance (because Watts admitted to it) where he accidentally edited out a key clue. And I personally found some of his descriptions, especially with regard to the spaceship on which most of the novel is set, a little difficult to parse.
But even that criticism isn’t really meant as much of a criticism. Your own tastes may vary, but if I engage with a piece of media and come away feeling like I fully and clearly understood it, then I’m bored. I mean, what’s the fun in fully understanding something? Where’s the growth, where’s the mystery?
Above all, though, it's important to understand Echopraxia is as much a philosophical text as it is a story. Much more so than Blindsight, which was itself quite philosophical. That may not be your thing. But if it is, chances are high you'll enjoy Echopraxia.
That much for the book review. What follows are two mini essays: one an actual criticism about religion in Echopraxia (and a rebuttal of several of its characters’ arguments), followed by a defense of Free Will.
~~~
One of the major themes of Echopraxia is faith/religion and its relation to science. I earlier mentioned the quasi-religious science order of post-humans, the Bicameral Order. Basically they’ve rewired their brains into a hive-mind / distributed intelligence network. Because the part they’ve rewired is closely tied with the “religious” part of the brain, they often engage in “religious” behavior, like speaking in tongues. Because these characters are essentially incomprehensible to Daniel Bruks, we don’t get much direct interaction with them. Instead, Daniel debates with their human translator, who often talks about “having faith,” about the pros and cons of science and religion.
Unfortunately, I found the notion of the Bicameral Order’s religiosity unconvincing. It felt more tacked on than anything else, a fact the author himself admits in his notes: “In hindsight, it is apparent that describing the Bicamerals as a religious order is a little misleading…”
The problem for me is I make a very large distinction between ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion.’ As Sam Harris - as die-hard an atheist as you can find - has said: an atheist can have as spiritual or transcendent an experience as a theist. So I’d disagree that there exist “religious” centers of the brain because to me (and most theists I’ve talked with) the word religion implies organized religion. Y’know, spirituality guided by a church and a doctrine. But the Bicameral Order doesn’t have a doctrine, so when their translator kept uttering, “have faith,” I kept thinking, “have faith in what?”
What’s more, while I always enjoy a good religion vs. science discussion, it’s hard to actually find a good one. I don’t think Echopraxia’s debates qualify either. Let’s unpack some aspects of its science vs. religion debate:
In Bruk's and translator’s discussions, we encounter the oft-repeated notion that science is actually a form of religion. The translator mentions how science may be empirical - but aren’t scientists just taking it on faith their senses are accurately reporting the truth?
Another related claim she makes is that physics requires a tenet of “faith” that physics rules are constant across both time and space.
The simple rebuttal is that comparing science to religion is a categorical error. It’s like suggesting drinking a glass of orange juice is the same as squeezing an orange to make juice. Science and religion are opposite processes. Science is NOT a body of knowledge - it is a method (skeptical inquiry, often enforced with a logical positivist philosophy) that LEADS to a body of knowledge. Religion, however, is a body of knowledge (a dogma) that LEADS to a method (prayer, meditation, codes of ethics, etc). This is why science leads to new discoveries, but religion does not. That is not religion’s purpose.
To give the more advanced rebuttal, I’m going to talk about Descartes and Hume.
One of the most famous phrases in philosophy is Descartes’ cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. Descartes considered this phrase the foundation of Truth. Everything else - the world around us as reported by our potentially faulty senses - could be deceptions, but cogito ergo sum is unquestionable Truth.
Cogito ergo sum is stupid. As is the claim that science requires “faith” that our senses report back the Truth. Science doesn’t give two shits about Truth. Science is interested in using the evidence of our senses to predict what our senses will next encounter. So it doesn’t matter if our senses are being deceived; it doesn’t matter if we’re in a simulation or a giant’s dream. The world of senses is our reality, and science deals with reality, not some shadowy Platonic Truth.
As for the notion that science takes it on faith that physics is constant in both time and space…
A: It only holds that stance because so far, it hasn’t been falsified. It’s an empirical stance, not a faith-based stance.
B: Even if physics is not constant in time and space, so what?
To dig a little deeper, let’s talk Scottish philosopher David Hume and his widely misunderstood problem of induction. I’m especially guilty. I learned the problem of induction long before I actually studied Hume, so I spent years and years thinking I understood something that I most certainly did not.
The problem of induction is this: the only way to prove the validity of induction (drawing specific conclusions from a general rule) is to invoke induction itself. Specifically, you must invoke the general rule that general rules are unchanging. See the problem? It’s like defining happiness as “the state of being happy.”
Now when I first learned this, I interpreted it as an attack on science. Science rests on the foundation that induction is a valid methodology for making predictions. We collect a bunch of data, use inductive reasoning to form a general rule, then we use deductive reasoning with that newly formed rule to make predictions of the future! But the problem of induction seems to suggest that this ISN’T a valid approach. Ergo, attack on science.
But then I actually studied Hume, and I found I had misunderstood his intentions entirely. Hume was a critic of religion. A strong one. His point with the problem of induction wasn’t an attack on empiricism but rather an attack on the notion of a pure, unchanging Truth. His point was that even if we somehow found such a Truth, we couldn’t even be certain that Truth would stay True. That’s really what the problem of induction states: the very idea of an absolute or ultimate Truth is logically incoherent.
So, yes, many science methodologies include the assumption that physics is unchanging. But this isn’t part of the core methodology of science. If we discover that some aspects of cosmology can be explained by non-constant physics, guess what? Science will adopt that. That’s not faith, it’s empiricism.
~~~
I’m a huge proponent of free will for reasons both pragmatic and aesthetic. I love love love the topic of free will. K-pop fangirls got nothin’ on me when it comes to free will, and I’ve just been waiting for an excuse to write about it some more. And tada, Peter Watts delivers!
In both Blindsight and Echopraxia, free will is a major theme, and its non-existence is a core assumption underlying both books. In his notes for Echopraxia he writes:
“Neurons do not fire spontaneously, only in response to external stimuli; therefore brains cannot act spontaneously, only in response to external stimuli (Footnote: Yes there may be random elements - quantum flickers that introduce unpredictability in one’s behavior - but slaving your decisions to a dice roll doesn’t make you free) … The switch cannot flip itself. QED [Free will obviously does not exist].”
He even calls it a “farce.” Oh boy. I disagree on so many levels. Where to begin?
[A] Neurons only fire in response to external stimuli? External to what? The neuron itself? Maybe but definitely not external to the body. I mean, what causes neurons to fire when we’re dreaming? Why do people in sensory deprivation tanks hallucinate? If I sit in a room and meditate, why are my thoughts constantly changing, despite external stimuli remaining largely constant? Why do amputees feel phantom pain?
No, it’s absolutely clear that neurons can cause other neurons to fire. In fact, with few exceptions, ONLY body neurons can cause brain neurons to fire. The brain itself does not contain any transducers to convert physical signal to electrical signal; the eyes, ears, skin, etc do all of that. So neurons only fire in response to external stimuli? In the absence of some strange situation, brain neurons are almost entirely switched by the BODY ITSELF.
[B] Re: quantum flickers & dice rolls. Physics and free will is a tricky thing. If free will exists in physics, it will always appear as indeterminism, as a “dice roll.” By definition. If it were deterministic, it would be enslaved by some causal chain, and it wouldn’t really be free would it?
[C] Still, I think Watts is correct when he writes, “slaving yourself to a dice roll doesn’t [give you free will],” but I’d retort he has improperly defined the “you” in that statement. Why wouldn’t the “you” INCLUDE those quantum flickers, those dice rolls? Shouldn’t it? How could there be a coherent and complete definition of “you” that doesn’t include your subconscious, your body, and those quantum effects essential for their functioning? If we don’t include those, then what’s the difference between a corpse and a person? But I would go even further, radically further, in my definition of "you."
There’s a famous Zen Buddhist koan (riddle) that asks, “What is the sound of a one-handed clap?”
Do you know the answer? Don’t think physically. Consider Buddhist doctrine.
The answer is, of course, that a one-handed clap makes no sound. It’s impossible. But what does that mean?
Other equivalent answers might be “peace” or “nirvana” or “enlightenment” or “unity.” But Zen koans aren’t about the answers. They’re thinking tools. In this case, the riddle is meant as a reflection on the Buddhist idea that there is no separation between the Self and the Universe. The literal definition of nirvana is “blown out”; enlightenment occurs when you extinguish the illusion of Self.
A two-handed clap - which is loud and violent - arises when two different parts of the same body strike each other. When, say, two people - part of the community, the same humanity, the same ecosystem, the same universe - do violence against each other. But if they were to understand themselves as individual neurons within the same Over-Mind, why would they do violence against each other? They would understand that violence against anyone else is violence against oneself. [By the way, this doesn’t necessarily dictate a doctrine of non-violence, but rather that violence should be committed only in accordance with utilitarian aims].
That’s the problem I find with most people’s - including Peter Watts’ - conceptions of free will: their definition of the “you” in the statement “you don’t have free will.” They’re mentally setting up a metaphor in which the universe/physics is a prison and we are all separate entities - prisoners - trapped within.
But this separation is nonsense. Human beings are not unnatural but part of nature. We are not within the universe, we are a part of the universe. We are not independent beings separate from a boundless God, we must by definition be internal components of a boundless God. The quantum particles in our brains are not puppets dancing to the strings of quantum fields, they themselves are authors of those fields.
In other words, you are not a “slave” to a dice roll, you include those very dice rolls. The question isn’t, Do you possess free will? Rather it is, does the universe possess free will? If it does, then so do you. If it doesn’t, then neither do you.
As for the answer to that question, I’m genuinely unsure.
But as I wrote earlier, I suspect that indeterminism and other fundamental limits on knowledge are manifestations of a free will baked within the very fabric of reality. I mean, we KNOW we possess will. We can have a hunger for a hamburger and act on that hunger. That’s will. It’s just whether our acting on that hunger is according to a script written internally or externally - whether it’s “free” or not. And since our (or at least my) best understanding of quantum mechanics suggests that we don’t live in a clockwork universe… if that doesn’t add up to free will, then what would?
January 24, 2024
So disappointing. I really loved Blindsight, which was challenging and huge in scope, but totally satisfying. With Echopraxia I was completely lost until the second half, and even then the plot was a mess.
This book is damn near impossible to recap. The MC is a "normal" guy named Dan Bruks. Dan has no clue what's going on. He's surrounded by biologically and cybernetically enhanced beings like a vampire and zombified soldiers. Vampires are an ancient species that hunted stone-age humans and have been brought back to life Jurassic Park-style. Their fear of crosses comes from a genetic condition where right angles give them seizures. This is why they died out when civilization took off (gotta give credit here - I thought that was pretty creative!) Let's see... there's also hive-mind religious fanatics called Bicamerals who believe a life form discovered on a space station just might be God.
Wondering how all these disparate things tie together? They don't, and this summary only scratches the surface! Not recommended.
This book is damn near impossible to recap. The MC is a "normal" guy named Dan Bruks. Dan has no clue what's going on. He's surrounded by biologically and cybernetically enhanced beings like a vampire and zombified soldiers. Vampires are an ancient species that hunted stone-age humans and have been brought back to life Jurassic Park-style. Their fear of crosses comes from a genetic condition where right angles give them seizures. This is why they died out when civilization took off (gotta give credit here - I thought that was pretty creative!) Let's see... there's also hive-mind religious fanatics called Bicamerals who believe a life form discovered on a space station just might be God.
Wondering how all these disparate things tie together? They don't, and this summary only scratches the surface! Not recommended.
March 30, 2021
Worthy sequel I would recommend to those who liked Blindsight.
December 19, 2014
Cool, profound, geeky SF just like its predecessor Blindsight, and behaving just as badly. Will explain that last thought in a bit. In terms of gosh-wow elements, Echopraxia delivers. Smart vampires, augmented humans, targeted plagues, an insolar journey to Icarus, alien fungi, and action and conflict to pull all these together. Watts sticks to "painting pictures" and demonstrating through action rather than "explaining", and with minimalist portraits, making for a challenging read, at best. That is not entirely bad though, why do SF if you're going to skip the science? So, I was willing to invest the effort, re-reading chapters that seemed too obscure, or searching for that one word that would make sense of a chapter.
It has its thrill-my-bones moments, too, like when . But for the most part, Watts maintains an even-toned droning through the narrative, like a researcher building up arguments for a thesis. And, in this second book, the author's paper is about the metaphysics of God and religious belief, daunting perhaps but as audacious as his treatment of consciousness in Blindsight.
On behaving badly, the reading (listening) experience was akin to dealing with a precocious child who is inclined to tantrums and long moments of silence. In instances, it shows you something cool like anaerobic alien moss or runaway plagues that create zombies or get people to twitch or dance to death (the echopraxia of the title), and then it just forgets about it, doesn't mention it and doesn't give any more details. Or it devolves into techno-geek, using paper-qualified nomenclature that decent spellcheckers reject about some arcane biochemical process. Sometimes, it goes into rants, about religious extremism, or scientific insincerity, or institutional abuse, and then it can get distracting.
Maybe it's allowed to have its rants, it's a dystopia after all, about the coming end of humankind, and the emergence of transhumans in their various forms, about how normal humans, roaches, do not have capacity to comprehend the nature of a supreme being.
After Blindsight, what else did anyone expect? I found this to be an angry book, but for sufficiently premised reasons; and there is much to ponder in its very detailed depictions of a future far beyond our imagining, far worse and unrecognizable. So, I think I'm primed for book 3. Just don't let it take too long.
It has its thrill-my-bones moments, too, like when . But for the most part, Watts maintains an even-toned droning through the narrative, like a researcher building up arguments for a thesis. And, in this second book, the author's paper is about the metaphysics of God and religious belief, daunting perhaps but as audacious as his treatment of consciousness in Blindsight.
On behaving badly, the reading (listening) experience was akin to dealing with a precocious child who is inclined to tantrums and long moments of silence. In instances, it shows you something cool like anaerobic alien moss or runaway plagues that create zombies or get people to twitch or dance to death (the echopraxia of the title), and then it just forgets about it, doesn't mention it and doesn't give any more details. Or it devolves into techno-geek, using paper-qualified nomenclature that decent spellcheckers reject about some arcane biochemical process. Sometimes, it goes into rants, about religious extremism, or scientific insincerity, or institutional abuse, and then it can get distracting.
Maybe it's allowed to have its rants, it's a dystopia after all, about the coming end of humankind, and the emergence of transhumans in their various forms, about how normal humans, roaches, do not have capacity to comprehend the nature of a supreme being.
After Blindsight, what else did anyone expect? I found this to be an angry book, but for sufficiently premised reasons; and there is much to ponder in its very detailed depictions of a future far beyond our imagining, far worse and unrecognizable. So, I think I'm primed for book 3. Just don't let it take too long.
September 12, 2014
Follows Blindsight, which was that hard scifi first encounter space horror novel arguing – rather revolutionarily at the time, less so now – that consciousness (the singular I self) is an evolutionary mistake, and a costly one.
Blindsight was interesting as hell; this book less so. As Watts himself says in the end matter, "Echopraxia is to autonomy as blindsight is to consciousness" (and if you can follow that, you are officially his target audience). He's referring to the conditions, but of course it also applies to the books. Watts himself admits that the examination of autonomy in an age of neuro programming isn't terribly interesting. It's not, particularly compared to Blindsight's genuinely mind-expanding concepts.
And what this book is doing, I don't think it does terribly well. It's what Watts calls "faith-based hard SF" – a future which posits that certain types of advancements in physics require a return to religious frameworks and a melding with science. Watts has some interesting tidbits in his notes (the notes being my favorite part of any Watts book) about what religious belief does to the brain. Makes it better at pattern-matching, for one. Which is interesting and all, but I never thought this faith/science meld went beyond some suggestive imagery (hive-minded monks speaking science revelations in tongues) and a lot of wordplay about God. It just didn't . . . well, honestly. It just didn't ever make more than "that's a nice party trick" sense.
Still. Being able to identify God as a virus running in a universe ruled by a digital physics model is fun. And I give points for the effort here, and the endeavor. It just ain't Blindsight.
Blindsight was interesting as hell; this book less so. As Watts himself says in the end matter, "Echopraxia is to autonomy as blindsight is to consciousness" (and if you can follow that, you are officially his target audience). He's referring to the conditions, but of course it also applies to the books. Watts himself admits that the examination of autonomy in an age of neuro programming isn't terribly interesting. It's not, particularly compared to Blindsight's genuinely mind-expanding concepts.
And what this book is doing, I don't think it does terribly well. It's what Watts calls "faith-based hard SF" – a future which posits that certain types of advancements in physics require a return to religious frameworks and a melding with science. Watts has some interesting tidbits in his notes (the notes being my favorite part of any Watts book) about what religious belief does to the brain. Makes it better at pattern-matching, for one. Which is interesting and all, but I never thought this faith/science meld went beyond some suggestive imagery (hive-minded monks speaking science revelations in tongues) and a lot of wordplay about God. It just didn't . . . well, honestly. It just didn't ever make more than "that's a nice party trick" sense.
Still. Being able to identify God as a virus running in a universe ruled by a digital physics model is fun. And I give points for the effort here, and the endeavor. It just ain't Blindsight.
September 25, 2021
3.0 Stars
After absolutely loving Blindsight, I had high hopes for this companion sequel despite the mixed reviews I read online. I should have believed the other reviewers. This novel explores some fascinating scientific concepts and theories surrounding post humanism and free will. Yet, as a novel… it was a narrative mess. The story involves vampires, zombies and religion, while making little sense. My favourite section was the author's notes at the end.
After absolutely loving Blindsight, I had high hopes for this companion sequel despite the mixed reviews I read online. I should have believed the other reviewers. This novel explores some fascinating scientific concepts and theories surrounding post humanism and free will. Yet, as a novel… it was a narrative mess. The story involves vampires, zombies and religion, while making little sense. My favourite section was the author's notes at the end.
November 21, 2020
Notes:
- Thought provoking mix of philosophy & science.
- Lacks concrete descriptions, active scenes, minimum attempt at settings and focused more on the message/s the author wanted readers to think or believe than in the plot.
- Core ideas for the story are cool but lack of focus on the story (plot, character development, etc) made Echopraxia a lecture camouflaged in fiction.
- Thought provoking mix of philosophy & science.
- Lacks concrete descriptions, active scenes, minimum attempt at settings and focused more on the message/s the author wanted readers to think or believe than in the plot.
- Core ideas for the story are cool but lack of focus on the story (plot, character development, etc) made Echopraxia a lecture camouflaged in fiction.
November 26, 2020
Easier to follow than Blindsight, same heavy dose of cognitive science betwixt the fictions. I liked it.
February 2, 2017
This is more like technobabble verbal masturbation than a proper story with proper characters. There simply needs to be a more engaging plot with characters you actually care about. This had neither, rather going into INCREDIBLY detailed technical descriptions about philosophical musings or gadgets and doodads. There is no emotional connection here. The precursor Blindsight had emotion. It was really weird with a lot of technobabble too, but you cared about it in that one because of the emotional connection to the characters and the story you could actually follow. This book is lost in the dark. Meh.
December 22, 2018
If Blindsight was the movie Primer, this one is more like the movie Armageddon, bigger with more going on. I liked the two Firefall books and I enjoy reading challenging science fiction sometimes but in terms of pure entertainment I had more fun reading his Rifters novels. I had to do some research after completing to help me understand more of what happened because my baseline human brain could not keep up in some parts, and I tip my hat to the author for consistently providing dark depressing science fiction that I like to read.
April 7, 2015
Spiritual hard sci-fi with zombies, vampires, and a little demon possession? That pretty much sums it up. Yeah.
This was less a sequel to Blindsight and more a story of similar events happening in the same world. The setting is mostly the same. The continuity kinda takes a back seat. Still, I enjoyed it. The author's voice is crazy unique, if nothing else. It is extremely highlightable.
I recommend to fans of the first book.
This was less a sequel to Blindsight and more a story of similar events happening in the same world. The setting is mostly the same. The continuity kinda takes a back seat. Still, I enjoyed it. The author's voice is crazy unique, if nothing else. It is extremely highlightable.
I recommend to fans of the first book.
June 28, 2014
NObody does hard scfi like Peter Watts. If you want your mind blown out of the back of your head with crazy science and over the top ideas, this is for you.
Guess what?!?!? He can write too, not only do you get a wild story, you get a well written one and you care about what happens to the characters.
check this one out.
Guess what?!?!? He can write too, not only do you get a wild story, you get a well written one and you care about what happens to the characters.
check this one out.
September 14, 2020
"Then we're stupid and we'll die."
—Pris, in Blade Runner (1982)
When you open a book and the very first page you see drops the word "bleak" (a word I used to describe Peter Watts' Maelstrom too, by the way, back in 2009), one could be excused for feeling a little reluctant to continue:
Watts's literary science fiction is engaging and stunningly bleak, but he asks all the right questions about our evolution.More about both parts of that observation later...
—The Washington Post, on Echopraxia
*
This novel is a sequel of sorts—the hard-SF vampires of Blindsight are back, and deadlier than ever. But Peter Watts doesn't seem to do traditional series. Echopraxia is still an independent work—which is a good thing.
Watts' meticulously-researched work reminds me of Greg Egan's—another hard-SF author who's unafraid of extrapolating from what we know to its logical conclusion, no matter where that takes him. Echopraxia also draws on the same research as Tor Nørretranders' brilliant, methodical deconstruction of consciousness, the nonfiction The User Illusion. At one point, Echopraxia actually brings in process theology, an area of philosophy that my wife studied extensively as part of her Ph.D. research.
You may also be interested in the book's Reddit Q&A, but I would strongly advise that you not peruse that thread until after you've read the book itself.
*
So Echopraxia is often bleak, no doubt about it. Observations like these are scattered throughout the book:
These deaths were the closest that Darwin's universe would ever come to altruism.
—p.27
"Art," Moore said. "I remember."
—p.174
Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart.
—p.177
"Oh, they get bored sometimes. Kids, you know. But all it takes is a little judicious injustice, some new atrocity visited on the little people. Get them all fired up again, and off they go."And I thought I was cynical... this last quote resonated with me strongly, though, living as I do just a mile or two from downtown Portland, Oregon, where kids—and others—have been all fired up for months now as I write.
—p.231
This is tough stuff to read. The choice Watts presents for us, over and over, is not to evolve or die. It's to evolve and die, or just die.
And, despite his care, Watts doesn't get everything right.
That's what it sounded like, anyway: the soft muffled whoomph of far-off ordinance.Sigh... explosives are ordnance, dammit... although I will concede that ordinances often do more damage.
—p.28
Giving up on Echopraxia because of all that would be a mistake, though. Maybe a better word for Watts' fiction would be "uncompromising." After all, it's not unrelievedly pessimistic, not at all. One of the repeated messages in Watts' novel: baseline humans aren't superior—but we have been really lucky. Watts describes baseline humans as "cockroaches," which in context is a compliment; roaches really are adaptable and ubiquitous, despite all efforts to eradicate them. It's a trait we mere humans have done well to emulate.
On the other hand...
"Let's just agree that neither side has a monopoly on assholes."
—Lianna, p.183
And I really liked the sarcasm of this observation:
"I'll give you that much—you've actually turned incompetence into a survival strategy."Heh... speaking as a boring old baseline human myself, I have to agree.
—p.265
*
The novel proper begins with one man in a tent, in the Oregon desert. (And yes, Oregon has deserts, even today—in the rain shadow east of the Cascade Range, a full two-thirds of the state is dry.) Daniel Brüks is a scientist, gathering data on the DNA of what wildlife remains and trying to find some that hasn't been contaminated by one or another recombinant, retroviral product.
Brüks knows about evolution... later in Echopraxia, we get this parable:
Look, Brüks wanted to say: fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain, and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger, and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy, he thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and a tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations—and after awhile everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there weren't any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learned to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favors the paranoid. Even here in the twenty-first century you can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now, we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.
—pp.180-181
Daniel Brüks' self-imposed isolation is soon interrupted, by unseen things that really are watching him... and then Echopraxia's momentum really accelerates. We soon find out that there's a new threat to Earth—a threat to all of the expanded humanities inhabiting Earth now, that is, whether they're vampires, zombies, Bicamerals or just plain old baseline human...
*
I haven't been able to shake a strong feeling of déjà vu—the sense that I've read Echopraxia before, somehow, and it just got... redacted from my memory. Echopraxia came out in 2014, though, and I would certainly have reviewed it on Goodreads... wouldn't I?
You'd let me know. Wouldn't you?
February 23, 2023
El conjunto de toda la historia que compone “Firefall”, tanto ambas novelas como las dos historias cortas, es un experiencia que es muy difícil de recomendar. Requiere atención mas allá de lo habitual, requiere releer párrafos enteros y aun así me ha hecho dudar mas veces de las que me gustaría reconocer, si no es que me estaba perdiendo mas de la cuenta por el idioma. Hay que estar “de humor” por decirlo de otra manera.
Si no lo estás, puede que sea un ladrillazo que no te atrape lo suficiente, pero si entras en el juego y las ideas que Blindsight te tira a la cara te parecen suficiente base como para adentrarte un poco mas, la experiencia es bastante única y satisfactoria. No voy a decir que lo he entendido absolutamente todo, porque estaría mintiendo como un bellaco y tampoco creo que Peter Watts quiere que lo entiendas todo, pero si puedo afirmar que he disfrutado mucho del conjunto y mas aun de está segunda parte de la historia que de Blindsight.
Si no lo estás, puede que sea un ladrillazo que no te atrape lo suficiente, pero si entras en el juego y las ideas que Blindsight te tira a la cara te parecen suficiente base como para adentrarte un poco mas, la experiencia es bastante única y satisfactoria. No voy a decir que lo he entendido absolutamente todo, porque estaría mintiendo como un bellaco y tampoco creo que Peter Watts quiere que lo entiendas todo, pero si puedo afirmar que he disfrutado mucho del conjunto y mas aun de está segunda parte de la historia que de Blindsight.
April 22, 2021
So who's this book FOR? That's a key question. Part of me thinks Watts wrote it for himself, as an exercise in tying together a lot of ideas about religion, consciousness, the mind, awareness, etc. within a framework of SF. To make it palatable and interesting? Maybe. If so, did it work? I'm not sure.
Especially after reading the afterword and references, I felt a bit of "hey, let's see if I can get it ALL into this book”. When I was in grade school, I was a superb speller, and when we were asked to use each word in a sentence, I always tried to use them all in one sentence; this felt a bit like that.
Brüks is one of those characters that exists so things can happen to him. Normally I don't like those, but he may have been necessary here. And yes, as soon as I saw the name I thought "Watts has a friend named Brooks" and yes, spoiler alert, he does credit a Dan Brooks for help. What next, characters subtly named Brock Obammer or Lionel Mezzi?
I liked Sangupta yes I did she was great and especially her speech patterns and no eye contact.
Valerie was delightfully nasty, like a Neal Asher character, but underwent a curiously sharp personality change at the end, maybe I missed something.
Don't worry too much about the plot; I suspect it would not stand up to close scrutiny, nor does it need to. It's just there to put a bit of sequence on events. But full credit to Watts for revealing very slowly indeed just who's who and who's trying to achieve what and who the enemy is.
And the extrapolation of the real-life Portia spider was good stuff.
Summary: a good read but in the end disappointing as we realize it was really no more than a framework for a philosophical discussion. Maybe if you go in knowing that it will help. I try not to read reviews before I tackle a book; in this case it might have helped. I think a few too many ideas made it in, but if you like a mix of hard science and philosophy more than I do you will like this book more than I did.
Especially after reading the afterword and references, I felt a bit of "hey, let's see if I can get it ALL into this book”. When I was in grade school, I was a superb speller, and when we were asked to use each word in a sentence, I always tried to use them all in one sentence; this felt a bit like that.
Brüks is one of those characters that exists so things can happen to him. Normally I don't like those, but he may have been necessary here. And yes, as soon as I saw the name I thought "Watts has a friend named Brooks" and yes, spoiler alert, he does credit a Dan Brooks for help. What next, characters subtly named Brock Obammer or Lionel Mezzi?
I liked Sangupta yes I did she was great and especially her speech patterns and no eye contact.
Valerie was delightfully nasty, like a Neal Asher character, but underwent a curiously sharp personality change at the end, maybe I missed something.
Don't worry too much about the plot; I suspect it would not stand up to close scrutiny, nor does it need to. It's just there to put a bit of sequence on events. But full credit to Watts for revealing very slowly indeed just who's who and who's trying to achieve what and who the enemy is.
And the extrapolation of the real-life Portia spider was good stuff.
Summary: a good read but in the end disappointing as we realize it was really no more than a framework for a philosophical discussion. Maybe if you go in knowing that it will help. I try not to read reviews before I tackle a book; in this case it might have helped. I think a few too many ideas made it in, but if you like a mix of hard science and philosophy more than I do you will like this book more than I did.
November 27, 2023
This is not quite as good as Blindsight, but still has the Watts touch, in terms of weaving in science, immediate at the time of writing, to a plot and concept that spirals out into wider implications, onboarding the reader to the various ramifications of the germination of the core notions. It’s really fun reading just for that. Though, the world is absolutely shot to shit in basically every way possible and it has serious horror undertones. Plus, it clips along nicely. Hard scifi basically never does that.
There are a few darlings though. Vampires. Actual vampires, since this is post humanism, exist. And there is a species gap that is significant. As are the other post human elements, where parts of humanity essentially are no longer human, as they do not experience the world as someone non augmented or altered. And that’s the crux of this novel. The implications of the ways in which technology is already altering us, only rapidly extrapolated into cogent “what ifs”.
But also zombie type people and factions at war, manipulated in a very cyberpunk manner, by machinations they cannot ever perceive, nor will they ever. It’s an idea book, which I think succeeds very well (unlike some Stephenson books I have hated the reading experience of), and I am certainly on the Watts train now. I believe I also have Starfish somewhere.
There are a few darlings though. Vampires. Actual vampires, since this is post humanism, exist. And there is a species gap that is significant. As are the other post human elements, where parts of humanity essentially are no longer human, as they do not experience the world as someone non augmented or altered. And that’s the crux of this novel. The implications of the ways in which technology is already altering us, only rapidly extrapolated into cogent “what ifs”.
But also zombie type people and factions at war, manipulated in a very cyberpunk manner, by machinations they cannot ever perceive, nor will they ever. It’s an idea book, which I think succeeds very well (unlike some Stephenson books I have hated the reading experience of), and I am certainly on the Watts train now. I believe I also have Starfish somewhere.
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