Probably my favorite hard sci-fi book. I haven't found the rest of the author's books (Peter Watts) as good, but I'm hoping his upcoming books change that. The sequel to Blindsight especially is a frustratingly opaque book, with a stilted pace in contrast with Blindsight (although several fascinating concepts are in there, if you take the time to read all the errata on the web in order to properly understand it).<p>Also his blog is worth a read: <a href="https://www.rifters.com/crawl/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rifters.com/crawl/</a>
A great book, one of the best sci-fi books of the 21st century perhaps. And its worth noting that its all online at that page because he released it as Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5<p><i>I've set my latest novel free under the usual Creative Commons license ...<p>I do this only partly to add data to the ongoing get-rich-by-giving-your-stuff-away experiment. The other reason is that a lot of people seem to be having trouble actually finding the book in brick-and-mortar stores. All the buzz in the world is worth jack-shit if the product isn't readily available.<p>So check it out and go wild. And when your eyes start to fall out from phosphor burn, consider buying an old-fashioned paper version. There should be enough to go around before long: I'm told Blindsight's going into second printing.</i><p><a href="https://boingboing.net/2006/12/11/peter-watts-blindsig.html" rel="nofollow">https://boingboing.net/2006/12/11/peter-watts-blindsig.html</a>
Watts' back catalogue:<p><a href="https://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm</a><p>I also enjoyed his earlier trilogy: starfish, maelstrom and behemoth<p>a lot of the short stories are also good.<p>a recurring theme in some of Watt's writing is damage control for failing or broken civilisation -- for example there was an X prize competition last year for short stories starting from the assumption that a plane flight magically jumps 20 years into the future, Watts produced this: <a href="https://seat14c.com/future_ideas/37D" rel="nofollow">https://seat14c.com/future_ideas/37D</a>
One of the greatest sci fi books ever. I read it again on the long flights back home from vacation this summer. It's been a few years since the last re-read and I think I understood something new. I also suggest its almost sequel, Echopraxia.