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''Blindsight'' is a hard science fiction novel by Canadian writer Peter Watts, published by Tor Books in 2006. It garnered nominations for a Hugo Award for Best Novel, a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel,〔(【引用サイトリンク】 Campbell Award Winners & Nominees )〕 and a Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 Locus SF Award Winners & Nominees )〕 The novel follows a crew of astronauts sent out as the third wave following two series of probes to investigate a trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt comet dubbed 'Burns-Caulfield' that has been found to be transmitting an unidentified radio signal to an as-yet unknown destination elsewhere in the solar system, followed by their subsequent first contact. The novel explores questions of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology, game theory as well as evolution and biology. ''Blindsight'' is available online under a Creative Commons license.〔http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#CC〕 Its sequel ''Echopraxia'' came out in 2014. ==Plot== In the year 2082 thousands of large, coordinated objects of an unknown origin, dubbed "Fireflies", burn up in the Earth's atmosphere in a precise grid while momentarily broadcasting across an immense portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, catching humanity off-guard and alerting it to an undeniable extraterrestrial presence. It is suspected that the entire planet had been surveyed in one effective sweep. Despite the magnitude of Firefall many years pass with absolutely no new developments and despite an initial international panic things quickly return to normal. Eventually, quite by accident, a comet-surveying satellite accidentally comes across a radio transmission originating from a comet (subsequently named 'Burns-Caulfield'). This tight-beam broadcast is directed to an unknown location and in fact does not intersect the Earth at any point. Being the first opportunity to finally learn more about the events surrounding Firefall, three waves of ships are sent out; the first being light probes shot out for an as-soon-as-possible flyby of the comet, then a wave of heavier (but much better equipped) probes, and the third being the ship ''Theseus'', captained by an artificial intelligence, a vampire (an extinct apex predator offshoot of humanity that went extinct sometime during the Pleistocene but brought back through gene therapy on high-functioning sociopaths and autistic patients.) as mission commander, as well as five cutting-edge transhuman crew members, each filling their own hyper-specialized niche for whatever might arise if first contact occurs by the time they arrive, many years after the first two waves. While the crew is in hibernation and en-route, the just-arrived second wave of probes commence a compounded radar scan of the subsurface of Burns-Caulfield, but this immediately causes the object to self-destruct. ''Theseus'' is eventually re-routed mid-flight to the new-found destination of the signal; a previously undetected gas-giant deep in the Oort, dubbed 'Big Ben'. After the crew wakes from hibernation while ''Theseus'' closes on Big Ben, they detect a giant stealthed object assumed to be a vessel of some kind. As soon as the stealth capabilities are discovered and worked around it immediately establishes radio communication and, in a range of languages varying from English to Chinese, identifies itself as 'Rorschach'. The crew determines that Rorschach must have learned Human languages by eavesdropping on comm-chatter since its arrival. It is deduced that it has been in-system for quite some time, arriving sometime after the Broadcast Age due to the nature of its speech and vocabulary. Though over the course of a few days many questions and answers are given by both parties, the ones offered by Rorschach seem strange and non-revealing. Eventually Susan James, the linguist, determines that 'Rorschach' doesn't really understand what either party is actually saying. Rorschach is found to have hollow sections, some with atmosphere, but all extremely lethal. Some "killing you instantly" and others "only killing you in a matter of hours". Since probes and robots are found to be completely ineffective due to the extreme amounts of radiation and EM interference, and after finding ways to survive short trips inside the impossibly harsh environments, the crew is sent down to explore Rorschach with a series of increasingly invasive procedures. They soon discover the presence of highly evasive fast moving 9-legged organisms dubbed 'Scramblers', of which they kill one and successfully abduct two for study. It is determined that the 'Scramblers' are more akin to something like white blood cells in a human body than actual individuals and that although they both seem orders of magnitude more intelligent than human beings, they seem to completely lack consciousness. The narrator, Siri, and the crew explore questions of identity, consider the nature of intelligence and consciousness, their utility, the possibility of one without the other, the implications of these properties on each other, and humanity's prospect at potentially being an unusual offshoot of evolution when taking these new insights into account, that perhaps most life in the universe is replicating non-sentient intelligence, when wasting resources on ego, "navel-gazing" and consciousness is hugely wasteful. Things escalate and ''Theseus'' eventually decides to sacrifice itself and its crew using its antimatter payload to eliminate Rorschach, with Siri being shot off inside an escape vessel in a decades-long fall back to Earth to relay the crucial information amassed back to humanity. As he falls back towards the inner Solar System, he hears radio broadcasts which suggest that the vampires have revolted and may be exterminating baseline humanity. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Blindsight (Watts novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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