What happened in Blindsight?

September 22, 2011 8:17 PM

What the hell happens at the end of Peter Watts' entertainingly grittygrim space vampire novel Blindsight? (spoilers expected and obligatory, naturally)

It's not completely obscure, but I'm interested in thoughts and speculations on the main character's 'sudden revelation' and what happens to humanity as he drifts back to Earth.

posted by Sebmojo to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

Best answer: It's been awhile since I read it, but from what I can remember, the vampires devised a way around the biological restraints on their power (the inability to view right angles without a special drug) and launched a worldwide revolution. The human population had already been shrunken by mass migration into the computerized "heaven" simulation -- all of whom died when the servers were forced offline. The remnants were presumably rounded up by the vamps and turned into glorified cattle, with those in space hunted down and destroyed by vampire forces. Essentially, the weak and emotional human race, an accident of evolution that wasted precious resources on "art" and "compassion" and "culture," had at long last been subsumed by the ruthless, superintelligent, non-sentient and utterly sociopathic vampire species... just like every other planet in the galaxy with intelligent life.

If you want to know more, just wait for Watts's next book State of Grace, which will tell the story of how the vampire revolt came to pass.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:24 PM on September 22, 2011 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I think I agree with Rhaomi. It's about a year since I read it, but my memory of it is that:

(a) Vampires themselves are chinese-room style intelligences, much closer to the scramblers than to humans.
(b) The vampires, amoral predators at heart, have been positioning themselves to take over for a very long time and the push has finally started. Humans have been weakened by pushing more and more of their population into virtual environments, by being compassionate enough to allow vampires into increasingly pivotal roles throughout society and by the distractions of art, culture and consciousness generally.
(c) This non-conscious, amoral form of life is almost certainly the norm throughout the universe; human-style self-awareness is a costly aberration that will inevitably be wiped out when it meets the inherently more focused and efficient vampire-like intelligences.

So our trusted new friends are much less like us and much more of a threat we thought, the universe is more alien and inhospitable than we had speculated, we as a species are doomed, and any species that's remotely like us is doomed too.

...You know, I sometimes get the feeling that Watts needs a hug or something.

If you want to know more, just wait for Watts's next book State of Grace, which will tell the story of how the vampire revolt came to pass.
I hadn't heard that, thanks!
posted by metaBugs at 3:11 AM on September 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Right, that sort of matches what I thought.

There's a blurb on one of his books, something like "when I feel my will to live is a little too strong I always like to read Peter Watts".
posted by Sebmojo at 5:09 AM on September 23, 2011

What's powerful about the writing, of the end, is that he doesn't spell it out for you; he just gives you the pieces, and lets the awareness dawn on you.

And yes, Blindsight is definitely a walk on the dark side.
posted by ahaynes at 8:38 AM on September 23, 2011

This doesn't directly answer your questions, but might also want to check out his faux powerpoint presentation on how corporations resurrected the vampires if you haven't seen it (it's Flash, so be forewarned).
posted by digitalprimate at 11:19 AM on September 23, 2011 [1 favorite]