Science fiction is often divided into two main genres: soft and hard. Soft science fiction tends to be more humanistic, with a greater emphasis on traditional story and character development. Ursula Le Guin, Theodore Sturgeon, and Cordwainer Smith are good examples.
Hard science fiction tends to focus on concepts, with more weight given to scientific rigor and speculation. Its lineage stretches from Asimov and Clarke to modern authors like Greg Bear and Alastair Reynolds. It’s not to say these guys can’t write stories, but this is primarily a literature of ideas.
That’s where Watts comes in. His books are defined by pessimism towards the future and a density of scientific detail. He wants to make a point as well as tell a story.
In Blindsight, he introduced us to a race of aliens that were…well, alien. They had nothing in common with us. Though they were intelligent, they never developed actual sentience. In fact, they did just fine without it. Watts implied that consciousness itself might be an evolutionary glitch, and a counterproductive one that decreases the chances of long-term survival.
Though he originally wrote the idea as a literary “punchline,” it has since been taken seriously in the academic community. And that makes it all the more horrifying.
Blindsight tackled issues of consciousness and evolution. Nature doesn’t make optimal adaptations; it simply chooses the least deficient outcome. Human perception is a buggy and limited simulation of the real world. Above that is the Lovecraftian notion that we’re hardly the universe’s special little snowflakes.
Echopraxia is less of an actual sequel than it is a companion story. On the surface, events sound similar to the last book. A group of characters ventures into a first-contact-gone-wrong scenario, and much philosiphizing takes place. There’s even a disturbingly plausible vampire.
80 years from now, the human race has changed. Biological and cybernetic enhancements are the norm. Having foregone any of that, protagonist Daniel Brüks is something of an anachronism. He finds himself in the company of a religious order bound for a rendezvous with something they call the Angels of the Asteroids.
Despite rejecting the methods of science, the monks certainly produce their share of it. Having altered their brain chemistry, they act as a gestalt and make deductive leaps that aren’t possible through experimentation. The world accepts their conclusions as revealed knowledge, and the monks consider their work to be divine.
The problem is, they gibber incoherence that requires specialized translators. Such is the future in which the human mind has been jumpstarted. Brüks is the guy in the middle, who can only guess at their behavior.
He can also only guess how much of his circumstances are under his control. Memetic viruses spread with the effectiveness of their physical counterparts, and it’s hard to tell if one is being manipulated. Questions about free will and whether it really exists are posed, and no easy answers are given.
Oh, and the vampires. When they were brought into the modern world through genetic engineering, there was a failsafe. They appear to have found an ingenious way around it, and they’re off the leash. Their intellect gives them the ability to influence events in ways normal people can’t perceive.
Yeah, it’s paranoid. No, there’s not a happy ending.
So, how does it compare to Blindsight? Simply put, it’s not quite as good. The pacing is slow until the middle of the book, and the density of the writing renders events confusing at times.
Or it could just be that it’s not the frigid splash of cold water to the face the last book was. It’s still well worth reading, but check out Blindsight first if you haven’t.