Evolution's Starfish

Blindsight by Peter Watts. Yet another excellent read from one of my favorite authors. The plot and concepts would be scary on their own even if Watts hadn't done his homework and based nearly all of it on real data. The book is a bit dense in the technical jargon and I admittedly had to read it with my browser on Wikipedia just so I could figure out what the hell the characters were talking about. The thought that went into some of the ideas that were very prevalent in the book is surprisingly detailed and the exposition of one aspect in particular is so fascinating in and of itself that it might merit a movie.
There were aspects to it that reminded me of Ian McDonald's Evolution's Shore, (which I regret not having written a review of) particularly the notions about alien thoughts and some aspects of the physiology, not to mention the whole unstoppable alien thing. But whereas McDonald's story is cautiously optimistic, Blindsight has a burningly calm pessimism which can only be described as 'Wattsian'. Just as a final comparison, I enjoy how Watts described the aliens, even though he laments how he "crapped out on the whole unlike-anything-you've-ever-seen front" as opposed to McDonald's once-too-often claim that the aliens were utterly indescribable.
There were a couple of interesting parallels to the Rifters trilogy which make me wonder about what Peter Watts is like in person. I suspect he secretly wanted to be a psych major in college given the degree to which the plots and character development in both the trilogy and this book hinge on cutting edge theories about the mind. He especially seems to like sociopaths. If Watts is as pessimistic as his writings suggest I would probably not be able to stand an intellectual discussion with him, which is rather saddening. Lastly, according to his website's timeline, Blindsight does not take place in the same continuity as the Rifters trilogy. But the settings are sufficiently far apart chronologically where it could be possible. Not to mention there's a single, wonderfully sly quote that hints that they might be part of the same microcosm.