Comment by pointlessone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pointlessone | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of glowing comments here. I tried it but couldn’t finish. It’s very confusing. It constantly mentions things, places and events that have not been properly introduced.

Minor spoilers ahead.

One of the major characters is a vampire. The character is introduced as if everyone knows what a vampire is. And it’s kinda true. Readers probably have some idea what it is. So do characters in the world. But about it turns out vampires in the world are quite different to what a common reader might know. And this gets first explained about third way in the book.

Things get explained eventually but I just got tired being confused all the time. Do I need to remember this thing I’m told? Do I rely on my prior knowledge or do I get a different explanation later? Do I reread past parts when I get those explanations in case I took things wrong?

I see why people are excited about all the ideas in the book but it’s an extremely hard read. I wonder whether people are attached to it mostly because they had to work hard to get through it.

It's a different style of introducing a fantastical setting compared to the classic exposition dump, or the clumsy audience- substitute narrator who keeps asking for explanations, but it's far more engaging if you just let yourself enjoy the ride for a bit.

For example, I believe that early on the narrator speaks about his mother 'going to Heaven' - you're supposed to be curious about what exactly that means, since it's clearly not the same way we use the phrase. You're supposed to look forward to the eventual explanation, and to trust that there will be one.

Of course if that explanation never comes, and the detail is critical to the plot, that's a failure of the author. But no different from any other plot hole - that's what reviews are for.

>For example, I believe that early on the narrator speaks about his mother 'going to Heaven'

>Of course if that explanation never comes, and the detail is critical to the plot

it's the matrix. Siri's mum ends up in a data centre somewhere with her conscious mind having every whim sated while her unconscious is running vampire Facebook or whatever

I believe the Heaven is explained. At least it's shown what it is and is kinda understandable.

The whole book is written from the point of view of the main character in a form similar to a diary. Diegetically it makes sense to not explain everything because the character knows it all already. I kinda like the idea of it but in practice it left me confused most of the time.

I fully admit that it might be just me. I like new ideas and non-linear story telling (e.g. I absolutely love Use of Weapons by Banks). I like when my books make me go "Fuck yeah!" (excited) or "Oh fuck!" (surprised). This one made me go "WTF?" (confused) more than I like.

I loved the writing style for the same reason I loved the writing style in Use of Weapons. I absolutely hate exposition dumps. I can think so treat me like it. Maybe try listening to an audiobook of Blindsight I did that, I havent actually read it yet but the audiobook was very good.

It's less about working hard and more about going with the flow. Where you found references to hitherto unexplained aspects of the book's universe confusing and frustrating, another reader (e.g. me) might find them intriguing and tantalizing. When I read Blindsight I was happy to accept that its universe was a strange one different from my own, and that I would learn more about it as I kept reading.

This requires some degree of trust (or at least indulgence) in the author, but it's a fairly common expositional style in fiction.

Blindsight was the first book I read by Peter Watts. The vampires threw me for a loop when I was reading it too. They seemed like a weird element to include in a moderately hard sci-fi book, and it was a bit jarring. The explanation for how they were a subspecies that got resurrected was kinda weak, and for the first chunk of the book I thought they were only there because the author really likes vampires or something.

Later on it turns out that he had a good reason for including them! They’re included so he could compare and contrast human minds with other types of minds: the really alien (the Scramblers), and the human-ish (the vampires). The whole thing is a neat sci-fi story wrapped around a prolonged meditation on consciousness, which I think is neat (but I can also understand if it isn’t your bag).

The author explains the vampires in another document [0].

The vampires were my favorite part of the book.

[0] https://rifters.com/real/shorts/VampireDomestication.pdf

It's a fairly difficult book to get through if it's not a style you're used to. I loved it on the first read, but on the second read I realized there was much of the book I had understood so poorly that my brain just forgot about it. At times, Watts gets really confusing - this is true in all of his books. However, I invariably find that it's worth it to just move on from those sections and continue reading.

The slow introductions to weird ideas is definitely intentional; you're not intended to hold all the clues in your head and piece it together like a mystery.

Book indeed a slog, audiobook enjoyable. Side-quel, Echopraxia even more sloggy, took multiple attempts to audiobook. Still enjoyable and worth the effort, one of my more favoured scifi works. But also one of those titles where you're also fine reading a synposis and entries on tvtropes. Would make a fun movie.

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