This is the crux of our differing in interpretations. There's no character transcendence in half the books we've previously mentioned, and I'll slap a short story compilation on the list for good fun: Mirrorshades. Undoubtedly, it exists in Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive. But Snow Crash?Blindsight, like most cyberpunk novels, is about humanity. It's about transcending humanity, and what happens when we do. It's about finding humanity in the midst of technological overload, and how or why we should do this.
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And vampires are the most inhuman of all. What was it you said, "high tech, low life?" A vampire doesn't have higher thoughts. But it uses higher technology. It sits at the top of the food chain, with a beyond-genius IQ, yet is barely conscious of itself.
Blindsight isn't a novel about encountering an alien out there. It's a novel about encountering the alien inside us. Every character in the expedition is inhuman to some degree. They've been engineered to the gills, all to remain relevant in a world where human skillsets have been outpaced by AI and vampires.
To be fair, Watts doesn't spend all that much time discussing the ways that the characters have been modified. But we do get little bits here and there. I think the purpose in his framing is to allow the reader to form opinions of the characters which are incorrect. We believe that Siri Keeton is emotionless and vulcan-like because he tells us he is. We believe the captain is a dangerous predator because we are told so. But all of the information we receive is filtered through Siri, an unreliable narrator.
If you think Schismatrix Plus is cyberpunk, then how can you say Blindsight is not? Both are consumed with the question of humanity and both are set in a far-flung future, where genetic engineering and technology are used to design and modify "better" people. Aliens exist in Schismatrix as well. The "Hive" story in Schismatrix Plus is particularly relevant to Blindsight. The thesis is almost exactly the same. Hell, the structure isn't dissimilar.
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- Whether is an internal or external discovery is irrelevant. First contact is a critical facet of the book.
- I'm not sure with a "cyberpunk protagaonist" is.... Case, Hiro, Turner, and Count have nothing in common with Keeton. They have very little in common with each other.
- I didn't say or coin "high tech, low life". The source of that wonderfully succinct phrase is Bruce Sterling.
- I have no opinion on Schismatrix Plus as I haven't read it, which is why I never mentioned it or made a comparison.
- You'd probably enjoy this presentation about vampires by Watts if you haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEOUaJW05bU
Perpetuate the bastardization and stretch the definition as thin as tissue, and it's hardly a surprise that we're left with the asinine depictions and categorizations we have now. Hardly unusual for a novel to span multiple genres. I guess now just about everything by Clarke, Heinlein, and Niven are "cyberpunk", regardless of whether you find them entertaining or "boring as fuck".Cyberpunk is a nebulous genre in the first place, and ranged from the almost entirely incorporeal Matrix to grounded-and-gritty Terminator.
Phenomenal book. Couldn't agree more.But whatever you call it, I still recommend reading Blindsight.
One other note =)
So many cyberpunk, science fiction-y kind of stories end up derivative of Snow Crash. They'll have this video game, street samurai, neo-noir, techo-retro aesthetic. At its worst, it feels like little more than reading a Shadowrun campaign. So I prefer tales of the bizarre and out-there.
With the super power of hindsight, it's easy how people can be dismissive or oblivious to Snow Crash's influence (or foreshadowing) on the real world. Three off the top of my head: gargoyles (smart phones and all IoT devices perform the same function), "Earth" (Google Earth), and the obvious Metaverse. In my experience with peers or co-workers it's far more popular with devs and infosec because of it's undeniable influence on actual, real tech. I’m continually flabbergasted at the heaps of literary and electronic shit and clones spawned from both Snow Crash and Neuromancer.