• NeoDB
  • Explore
  • Feed
  • Home
    • Scan barcode
    • Sign up or login
    • Preferences
1yr Zhou Yisu
cover

Book

Echopraxia
Douban Goodreads Skybridge
Peter Watts publishing house: Tor Books 2014 - 8
Prepare for a different kind of singularity in this follow-up to the Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight It's the eve of the twenty-second century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off self-awareness during combat. And it’s all under surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself. Daniel Bruks is a living fossil: a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational, a cat's-paw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he’s turned his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out. Now he’s trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son. To his right is a pilot who hasn’t yet found the man she's sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call “The Angels of the Asteroids.” Their pilgrimage brings Dan Bruks, the fossil man, face-to-face with the biggest evolutionary breakpoint since the origin of thought itself.

finished reading Echopraxia 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
后1/4质量明显更高,否则顶多3.5,前半读着太累了,Watts叙事风格故意模糊的缺点就体现出来了。和盲视不同的地方在于故事的发展悬念不足。虽然从Burks角度看故事比从那些怪胎的要更符合人,但也同时意味着他根本搞不明白在干嘛。整体的科学框架继承自盲视,所以这方面没什么改变。奇点人类(暂且这么说)、吸血鬼、以及外星生物三方的博弈。最后的「新人类」动机什么什么?吸血鬼为了拯救自己的族类?外星人为了在星际间扩散?还是Bicams终于找到了自己的神灵?好像都是,但又不是。读者不应该忘记的是在前作里的终极棋手:船长-朱卡合体,在这里没有出现(AI被提到了,但着墨不多)。对自我意识的讨论也没了(前作里运用Jaynes/Metzinger还是很酷的)。最后的融合结尾就更像是铺垫,意犹未尽。

Zhou Yisu
@yisu@neodb.social
1 following  ·  1 followers
Educator & Sociologist from Macao. Current book project focus on Science and Technology development in contemporary China and higher education.

关注我们建议反馈站点公约 About API Apps
You are visiting an alternative domain for NeoDB, please always use original version if possible.