Blindsight

I also love books that combine thrilling adventure stories with the thoughtful exploration of ideas.

The protagonists of this haunting sci-fi/existential horror novel make contact with an alien species that, while highly intelligent, appears to lack any sense of self-awareness. This leads to the scary question: Are the aliens the weird ones in this scenario, or is human consciousness a unique mutation in a universe filled with zombies?

Blindsight is a suspenseful read for a number of reasons.

It’s hard science fiction, so there is a heavy amount of science poured into the pages, but that science goes deep into the realms of philosophy. It delves into the mysteries of the human mind, its limits, and the idea of what is consciousness.

The tension here was very existential for me because I often find myself in these same debates with myself and this novel took me deeper into that debate—deeper into the depths of the human mind than I ever wanted to be.

What is consciousness? I wish more science fiction novels explored this question, so when I found one that combines an alien encounter with big ideas about life and the human condition, I got excited. Very excited. This novel explodes with creativity, from the way it depicts aliens who’ve arrived at the edge of the solar system to observe Earth, to a resurrected vampire (yes, you read that right) who’s been included on the space crew sent to investigate the alien outpost. The novel wrestles with the idea of what it means to be conscious, and whether humans, with their sense… show more.

To stay in that existential crisis vibe, let’s turn to Blindsight, a book I avoided for way too long because vampires in space sounded goofy as hell. This horror-tinged hard SF novel manages to make First Contact feel fresh again, with truly alien aliens, inventive tech, and spectacular visual setpieces – plus a hit of psychology and linguistics. The underlying idea that consciousness as we know it is a parasitic fluke, and any advanced life we encounter will be brilliant biological automatons, had me rattled for days.

It is very, very rare to read a book that not only challenges your assumptions about how the universe works, but challenges assumptions you didn’t even know you had. Blindsight is a science fiction novel which asks a really simple question. Is it necessary to be conscious? Is it good to be conscious? Are human minds the only way an intelligent mind could operate, or are we a peculiar sort of mistake?

As we turn over more and more of our own decision-making to machine systems that don’t even pretend to be conscious, I think we need to figure out… show more.