Echopraxia
by Peter Watts · first published 2014
67% recommend28% neutral4% critical
Why HN recommends it
Hard sci-fi sequel to Blindsight that probes consciousness, rationality and cognition through transhuman characters. Valued for brilliant ideas and demanding plots; suits readers who like dark, challenging fiction.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A follow-up to the Hugo Award-nominated Blindsight, Echopraxia is set in a 22nd-century world transformed by scientific evangelicals, supernatural beings and ghosts, where defunct biologist Daniel Bruks becomes trapped on a spaceship destined to make an evolutionary-changing discovery.
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…motivated to break out of its cage and/or do harm. 3) That sheer intelligence is sufficient to escape any trap. Having said that, if you enjoy those assumptions I would recommend you read 'Blindsight' and 'Echopraxia' by Peter Watts if you haven't already, I think you would enjoy them :)
on “How can we be sure AI will behave? Perhaps by watching it argue with itself” ↗I highly recommend the book Echopraxia, sci-fi written by a marine biologist which explores voices in heads as reptile programs not unlike shell daemons communicating through audio. http://www.amazon.com/Echopraxia-Peter-Watts/dp/076532802X
on “How Culture Affects Hallucinations” ↗The book "Echopraxia" by Peter Watts has exactly this in it. It's a great read!
on “Close Encounter with a Gigantic Jet” ↗…overview of dreaming. "Material World" by Ed Conway A detailed look into basic minerals like sand, salt, oil, their supply chains, and the process of converting ores to materials. "Blindsight" and "Echopraxia" by Peter Watts Sci-fi novels that deal with themes of consciousness and first contact with alien intelligence. "The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again" by M. John Harrison Noted for beautiful writing…
on “Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?” ↗If we're going in this direction, you might find enjoyable the book Echopraxia (and its predecessor, Blindsight). Without spoiling too much, it features a group of people that pushed their cognitive wetware and hardware to the point they can't even communicate with normal humans…
on “A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)” ↗…http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm ...because it's fascinating first contact novel; crazy, well researched, aliens that are genuinely alien, and not quite as bleak as his other books. (Still quite bleak.) There's a sequel, Echopraxia, that is also awesome, and will introduce you to Portia Labiata, the most intelligent spider in the world. Also, space vampires.
on “Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?” ↗I didn't mean to imply that. Indeed, Portia! So if you love Portia, I recommend Peter Watts' Echopraxia and (for a full-length focus) Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time.
on “The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why?” ↗…the intent of advancing positive (non-dystopian) sci fi in the near future, and thus spurring on the next generation of scientists and engineers to go ahead and create it. Peter Watt's Blindsight and Echopraxia are also good (currently still reading the latter). It has scientifically plausible zombies and vampires, so that's something. Ramez Naam's Nexus has very interesting ideas on what happens to the world…
on “How Magic Leap Is Creating an Alternate Reality” ↗…who also has a backlist of work available online: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm Watts' "Rifters" trilogy is there in its entirety. Also "Blindsight", which is fascinating. His latest book is "Echopraxia", a sequel to Blindsight, which isn't there, but you could always consider buying it if you like his other stuff! Amusingly, as vampires are/were in fashion, both Stross and Watts have written books…
on “Toast” ↗…https://www.dropbox.com/s/om9xdox53rcl1g9/Screenshot%202015-... Some of the notably awesome books on that screen: The Son, Spin (and really, almost anything by Robert Charles Wilson, but especially Spin), The Dog Stars, Blindsight and Echopraxia, Station Eleven, Seveneves and REAMDE, Nightwoods. Bonus: gut-wrenchingly awful books I started reading and aborted (or worse, read to the end on the misguided hope that somehow they would redeem themselves):…
on ““Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves” ↗Thanks! I just bought The Star Fraction purely on your recommendation... I find gambling like that pays off big, sometimes. To return the favor, I recommend you try Blindsight and its sequel Echopraxia, by Peter Watts. Those were two of my favorite books of 2015 (the books are older, but I only found them this year). Unusual, but awesome, SF.
on “The Best Books I Read in 2015” ↗- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin - Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - The Tao Te Ching - The Gateless Gate (Koun Yamada translation/editing) - The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) by Neal Stephenson - The Invisibles…
on “Ask HN: What books fundamentally changed the way you think about the world?” ↗I love his ideas, but sometimes they swamp the action. There's less of that in Echopraxia than in Blindsight, as a response to feedback. But Blindsight gives you back story for Echopraxia. After you've read them, do check out https://www.reddit.com/r/SF_Book_Club/comments/2hzpmt/echopr...…
on “Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic” ↗…were just passing through my head,” one subject reported. Is consciousness even real, man? Great books if you wanna chew on basically (for now) unanswerable questions: Peter Watts' "Blindsight" and "Echopraxia." Neal Stephenson's "Anathem."
on “MIT Researchers Have Developed a ‘System for Dream Control’” ↗If you want an amusing (and yet depressing) perspective, I recommend Peter Watts' Echopraxia. One of the background themes is how much energy they need to pump sulfates into the stratosphere, in order to prevent catastrophic GCC-driven wildfires. Given the current heatwave around the northern…
on “Scorching Summer in Europe Signals Long-Term Climate Changes” ↗