Not Fade Away

We’re coming up on the end of the month, so time to produce my essay for the book club reading.  This month, it was Peter Watts’ Blindsight, a hard SF tale of first contact asking us to question our assumptions on sentience, self-awareness, and consciousness.  I’m afraid my essay goes a little long this time.

Blindsight asks: “What if consciousness was not nearly as important as we think it is — was just a blip, a temporary artefact in our evolution?”  While it is a useful exercise, I contend that it remains a thought exercise.

1. The shifts toward consciousness and self-awareness happens relatively far back in our ancestry, at least as far as mammals’ branching out from the family tree of life on Earth.  We’re quite familiar with the fact that mammals (and even birds, reptiles and fish in a more limited way) exhibit individual personality and rudimentary partitioning of me/not me.

2. Self-awareness could conceivably be a by-product in evolution, but it would only evolve out if it was a detrimental trait in propagating genetic material.  The fact that it has survived and developed suggests that it was at least neutral but closely correlated with a beneficial feature, and more likely a beneficial feature in itself.

3. To evolve out of a species like ours, self-awareness would also have to overcome culture, since at this point culture has modified our response to environmental pressure.

4. In a species without self-awareness, it’s not clear what would be the drive to technology and space travel.  Or would the concept require “self” as a necessary but temporary phase?

5. There is little evidence so far of a long-term move away from self or from self-awareness in human evolution or culture.  In fact, the pressure toward conformity to group norms and identity seems in many ways to decrease in modern societies, with a greater range of individual behaviours and expressions gaining acceptance.

Readings

Dawkins, Richard. 2009.  The Greatest Show on Earth.

Downey, Greg.  2013.  Becoming Human: How Evolution Made Us.

Harris, Sam. 2012. Free Will.

— . 2010. The Moral Landscape.

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Illustration: Concept art by Sparth (Nicolas Bouvier) for the French edition of Blindsight (published by Univers Poche).)

Pop Culture Blindsight

Continuing with notes and resources for this month’s book club reading, Peter Watts’ Blindsight, here are some fun links to explore.

First, readers should explore Peter Watts’ own Website and the supplemental material he posted.  Not only are the endnotes from the book expanded there (“for extra credit”), but he provides microfiction in the form of “primary” documents on the Firefall event, Theseus, Burns-Caulfield, Rorschach, vampires, etc.  He also provides alternate jacket covers that use the original art proposed for the book, not the one that was unfortunately altered for the first edition; and art from the various editions of all his books, including foreign editions of Blindsight.

Next, there are a number of exciting tools online for exploring the Solar System.

• A prodigious time sponge for nerds like me: Solar System Visualizer on the University of Maryland’s Astronomy Workshop site.  You can select scale, speed, bodies to include, etc.  They also have other educational apps and simulations.
• Play with a Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud model on GravitySimulator.com.  The site has several other fun simulations and articles on a slew of other bodies in the Solar System.
• NASA site sections on the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud and on comet exploration.
• A useful NASA overview on understanding cosmic distance scales.
• An interactive visualization of the scale of the Universe, from micro to macro.
• A user-friendly infographic from Space.com: the Solar System explained from the inside out.

On the future of space exploration and “realistic” spaceships:

• Lovely space art illustrations on Space.com’s Pinterest board.  Space.com also has several other Pinterest boards worth exploring, check their various themes.
• The results of the ESA’s 2003 and 2005 contest: Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications.
• Realistic 3D Space Ships created using Google Sketchup.
• A Tumblr of Realistic Spaceship Illustrations.

On the novel Blindsight itself (these links contain spoilers, of course!):

• The ever-reliable(!) TV Tropes site has collected a list of tropes used in the book.
• A review on Bookslut.com.
• Another of Tor.com: “The Consciousness Glitch”.
• “The Hard SF of Peter Watts,” by Cillian McGillycuddy.

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Illustration: Concept art by Sparth (Nicolas Bouvier) for the French edition of Blindsight (published by Univers Poche).)

Lingo: Peter Watt’s “Blindsight”

This month, we’re reading Peter Watts’ Blindsight in my SF/F book club.  As pointed out by reviewer mattastrophic, “Watts seems to adhere at least somewhat to a writing dictum of John W. Campbell (intentionally or not): treat the advanced technology just like the people in your story would, like it’s just an everyday thing.”

It helps reduce the amount of text dedicated to exposition, and it provides immersion, but it can also leave the reader exhausted, even annoyed, at having to figure out so much without help.  So here is my attempt at providing a glossary of sorts!  Most of this is current-day technospeak, but it’s handy to have all in one place.

If you have additional entries to request or improvements to suggest, please leave a comment below and I’ll see what I can do!  

Readings: Peter Watts’ “Blindsight”

The book of the month for August in my Goodreads book club is Peter Watts’ Blindsight.  Since I was the one to suggest it, I get to lead the discussion.

First, the obligatory bio: Dr. Peter Watts is a Canadian science fiction author and by profession a marine mammal biologist.  Watts obtained a bachelor’s of science degree in 1980 and a master’s of science degree in 1983, both from the University of Guelph, Ontario, and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC from the Department of Zoology and Resource Ecology in 1991.  His doctorate thesis, should you want to read it, was entitled “Hauling out behaviour of harbour seals, Phoca vitulina richardsi, with particular attention to thermal constraints” (PDF).

In his personal life, he made a splash in recent years for a couple of unusual incidents. In December 2009, what should have been a routine border crossing turned into a big deal at the U.S border. Watts was returning to Canada via the Michigan border after helping a friend move house in Nebraska. After border guards asked to search his car, Watts got out of the vehicle and questioned what they were doing – and immediately was pepper sprayed, handcuffed, and placed under arrest. Witnesses in the car with him said he did nothing more than question the guards; he did not attempt to attack them. Nevertheless, he was charged with felony assault against a federal officer (and eventually released on foot, in his shirtsleeves, in a snow storm!)

The officer later admits in court that he has punched Watts. A jury found Watts guilty of obstructing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer  He faced a maximum sentence of two years in prison.  Watts blogged about his sentence saying that because of how the law was written, his asking: “What is the problem?” was enough to convict him of non-compliance.  In April 2010 he was given a suspended sentence, and a fine. However, due to immigration laws, Watts’ felony conviction prevents him from re-entering the United States.

Then in February 2011 he contracted necrotizing fasciitis (“flesh-eating bacteria syndrome”) during a routine skin biopsy on his right calf.  He has blogged in some detail about the ordeal, including photos of the medical procedures which saved his leg and the associated skin grafts.  Not for the faint of heart.

Later that year he got married to Canadian fantasy author Caitlin Sweet.  I can only hope that this marks the end of a string of awful luck.

Second, my impression: To say that Watts does not suffer fools gladly is an understatement.  He’s about as acerbic and even cantankerous as Harlan Ellison — and in my opinion, he’s often right.  He also has a dry, sardonic sense of humour that reminds me of of the better days of Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven’s (like RoboCop).

The writing: Blindsight uses the conventions of a first-contact tale to explore the nature and significance of sentience.  Watts makes his novels and short stories available free online under Creative Commons license.  Various formats are available, check the individual pages for each work.

Watts’ books are probably the “hardest” science fiction we’ve looked at in this reading group.  In the fantasy spectrum, he sits at the end where the speculative reality is anchored as convincingly as possible in the developing edge of today’s science.  His previous novels, the Rifters series, are closer to his original love since they deal with underwater life forms; Blindsight was his first foray into space travel fiction.

Awards: The novel was no. 3 for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2007, as well as being a finalist for the Locus Science Fiction Award, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the Geffen Award for Best Translated Science Fiction Book.  In Poland, the book has been very successful, winning the Sphinx award for 2008 Foreign Novel of the Year and the 2008 Katedra award for Best Foreign Fantastic Book (both awarded by popular vote).  In March 2011, TOR Books readers voted Blindsight to #4 on the list of best SF/F novels of the decade opening this millennium.

The Internet footprint: Although Blindsight originally received critical approval, Watts’ name remained relatively poorly known and sales were originally modest.  Interestingly, he credits his decision to release the book free online under CC license for rapidly tripling his print sales.  This decision, and his visible presence online, has resulted in gradually becoming known and acquiring dedicated fans.