Blindsight by Peter Watts
Since the stars fell two months ago…
Throughout those two months, the entire globe held its breath.
A feeble signal that is sweeping the galaxy like a lighthouse beam can now be heard from the boundary of the solar system by some half-defunct space probe as it sparks fitfully beyond Neptune’s orbit. Nothing out there is speaking to us. Maybe it’s communicating with a faraway star. Or possibly to somewhere nearby or on the way.
Who then do you send to compel introductions amongst people who don’t want to be met and have unknown and unfathomable alien intellect? You send a linguist who has had her brain surgically divided into various sentient processing centres, each of which has a different personality. You send a biologist who is so closely connected to technology that he can taste ultrasound and see x-rays.
Blindsight by Peter Watts
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In the vain hope that she won’t be required, you send a fighter who believes in peace. You send a monster to lead them all—a vampire, a predatory extinct hominid raised from the dead by the voodoo of recombinant genetics and sociopaths’ blood. And as a bridge between here and there, you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind missing. Be sure they can be trusted with the world’s future. They might even be more alien than what they were supposed to look for.
From Siri Keeton’s perspective, who had a hemispherectomy as an infant to prevent his epileptic convulsions, the narrative is presented. While effective, it also helped him become emotionally detached, making him the ideal candidate for the position of synthesist, a type of observer tasked with “integrating features, attitudes, and impulses to produce a whole personality.” His task is to watch the crew, a group of transhumanist misfits, as they strive to understand the aliens and then put their discoveries into language that common people back home can understand.
Siri, though, isn’t exactly a trustworthy storyteller. Despite the fact that the spacecraft was physically more than half a light-year from home, the crew didn’t trust him since they believed he was a spy for mission control. Siri’s emotionally repugnant behaviour against his ex-girlfriend is shown in flashbacks from before the mission, further demonstrating his inability to relate to people. He attributes his failings to the surgery, but because it is his job to read people, he is unable to comprehend who he is and what it means to be human.
