Blindsight

Peter Watts
2006 a.
384 lk.

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence, while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed, and the fainter one she'll do any good if she is. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist an informational topologist with half his mind gone as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.

But you'd give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them...

Arvamus:

Oh aeg... kuu aega enda piinamist ja saigi loetud. Ma ei mäleta, et oleksin ammu mõnda teist nii otsesemalt teadusega seostatud ulmeraamatut lugenud... Niipalju kui ma tean, siis autor on kõrgharidusega bioloog, ja mitmeid muude alade teadlasi on ta kirjutamisel konsultantidena ka kasutanud. Ning tulemus on selline, et käisin aga pidevalt raamatu lõpus järjekordse mõiste seletust vaatamas ja siis googles üritamas endale asjast mingitki arusaamist tekitada.

Süžee on ju päris asjalik ja tulnukad tõeliselt tulnukalikud ning midagi meist hoopis erinevat ja arusaamatut (sisust on eelmine arvustaja juba kirjutanud), aga minu jaoks mattus paljugi sügavale sinna teaduslikkuse alla, kust seda väga vaevaline välja kaevata oli, nii et mingit naudingut ma sellest raamatust küll ei saanud. Kuid niipalju erilisust kirjutatus oli, et tõsist poolelijätmise mõtet ka ei tekkinud, kuigi lugemist lõpetades oli esimeseks emotsiooniks kergendustunne - lõpuks ometi sai raamat läbi. No jah, loo lõpp oli minu arvates mage, ma ootasin kõige eelnenu põhjal midagi palju erilisemat, mitte vaikset visinal kustumist...

Hinnata on raamatut keeruline. Vaevanägemise eest - selline keeruline poolteaduslik jutt - tuleks autorile küll priske viis panna. Samas loetavuse eest ei paneks ma enamat ühest. Raamatu idee polnud paha, aga põnevus kadus keerulisuse sisse... Tundub, et ma oskaks selle raamatu puhul igat hinnet millegagi põhjendada, järelikult ei jää muud üle, kui keskmine panna – kolm.