On the surface, Peter Watts’ novel Blindsight is a space adventure about first contact, but it’s mostly a series of lectures on the nature of consciousness. Watts works to convince the reader that space-faring intelligent aliens can exist without conscious self-awareness. The aliens in Blindsight are far scarier than the xenomorph creatures in the Alien movie franchise. Blindsight is science fiction horror.

It’s much easier to accept Watts’ main premise in 2026 than in 2006 when Blindsight was first published. Billions of people now converse with intelligent chatbots that have no conscious self-awareness. At least we hope they don’t. Reading Blindsight in the 2020s should make us more paranoid about AI.

Peter Watts is known for writing hard science fiction. He received a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, from the Department of Zoology and Resource Ecology. Writers of hard science fiction have an opportunity to present a hypothesis and test it in a novel. How seriously we should take these hypotheses depends on many factors. It’s not real science, but in some cases, both the writer and readers want to accept the fictional hypothesis as being provable scientifically in the future.

Watts makes a case that self-aware consciousness is a fluke of evolution. That intelligence could evolve more efficiently without it. Watts presents a convincing case in Blindsight, but should we believe him? With all hard science fiction, we must ask ourselves: Is this plausible or just good storytelling? Most science fiction writers don’t try as hard as Peter Watts in Blindsight, so it’s easy to just say, “Wow, that’s cool,” and let their work go unexamined. Watts presents so much interesting evidence (infodumps) that I feel demands evaluation.

I’ve tried several times over the years to read Blindsight. I never could stick with it. Blindsight just didn’t grab me, and learning that it featured a vampire completely turned me off. Recently, a reader left a comment on my post “Why Do We Read Science Fiction?” recommending Blindsight because it featured “creatures with very advanced intelligence but no self-awareness.” I’ve been doing a lot of reading on consciousness, so this did grab me.

Again, I struggled to get into the story. Several times, I considered quitting. The novel often presented ideas that got me thinking, but Watt’s style just wasn’t working. It’s probably a case of that old breakup line, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Since we’re going to talk about the nature of consciousness, I should admit that I’m 74, and I often struggle with 21st-century science fiction. The SF books my mind was trained on came from the 1950s. They were often fewer than 200 pages, told in a linear plot, and had likable characters whom I could identify with. Blindsight is 384 pages, told in a convoluted plot, and there isn’t a single likeable character in the whole story. Fantasizing about being on the crew of the Theseus would be like wanting to be on the crew of the Nostromo? The entire time I was reading Blindsight, I thought about Alien. There are many similarities and parallels between the two stories, and their endings have much in common.

More than that, 1950s science fiction portrayed an overall positive philosophy regarding space exploration. Blindsight is a horror novel about the possible dangers we might find in outer space. Back in the 1940s, John W. Campbell, Jr., allowed Robert A. Heinlein and a few other writers to present stories with aliens so overwhelmingly terrifying that they put humanity on the level of a cargo cult. Heinlein even had Lazarus Long and companions run home to Earth after encountering one alien species. In the 1950s, Campbell and Heinlein switched gears and promoted humans as the badasses of the galaxy. Reading Blindsight makes me think humans need to stay on Earth and hide.

I accept that Blindsight is a masterpiece of 21st-century science fiction, and I even admire the story. I’m already thinking I should reread it because I’m sure I missed quite a bit of what Watts was trying to accomplish. However, there are many ideas raised in this novel that I want to discuss and even argue over. So this isn’t a review. If you haven’t read it, you might want to go read it before continuing. Blindsight has inspired many positive reviews on YouTube.

I should also mention that I almost didn’t finish Blindsight this time either. I was about a third of the way into the story and found the characters and plot confusing. So I read its Wikipedia entry. Even though it gave away the entire plot, it helped me enjoy the rest of the novel. I believe my problems were due to another difference between 20th-century SF and 21st-century SF. Science fiction has become more baroque in its complexity and storytelling techniques.

This YouTube video by the Feral Historian gives away the entire story. It’s not a review, but a synopsis of the story’s philosophical speculation. It’s strikingly eloquent, and I’m envious of his writing and speaking style. (By the way, the Feral Historian uses video clips from a short film based on Blindsight.)

I believe Peter Watts wants his readers to take his science-fiction speculations seriously because of his infodumps and Socratic dialogues. The infodumps cover a wide range of studies and theories about consciousness. I often wondered why Watts just didn’t skip the story and present his ideas as a collection of popular science essays.

There are two hierarchies for disseminating scientific ideas.

Genuine Science

• Science (peer reviewed)
• Mentors
• Popular Science Books
• School Science
• Science Documentaries
• Popular Science Articles
• Science Fiction?

Pretend to Plausible Science

• Science Fiction
• Pseudoscience
• Social Media
• Crackpots
• Comic Books

Watts bases his main hypothesis on the Chinese Room thought experiment first proposed by John Searle in 1980. The link is to a Wikipedia entry that I highly recommend reading to fully understand Blindsight. Searle proposed the Chinese Room thought experiment to refute the idea that if a computer could do everything a human could, it would also be self-aware and conscious.

When the crew of Theseus finally tracks down the alien spaceship, they are surprised by this message:

RORSCHACH TO VESSEL APPROACHING 116°AZ–23°DEC REL. HELLO THESEUS. RORSCHACH TO VESSEL APPROACHING 116°AZ–23°DEC REL. HELLO THESEUS. RORSCHACH TO VESSEL APPROACHI …

She’d decoded the damn thing. Already. She was even answering it:

Theseus to Rorschach. Hello Rorschach.

HELLO THESEUS. WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

After quite a bit of back-and-forth communication between the two ships, Szpindel suggests that the aliens don’t actually understand English, but are using the technique suggested in the Chinese room thought experiment. If Watts had written Blindsight in 2026, would he have suggested the aliens understood English because they were a large language model (LLM)? Anyone with much experience communicating with ChatGPT would make the assumption.

Many current AI researchers are hellbent on creating a conscious, self-aware AI. If humans are biological machines that evolved to have self-awareness, then AI researchers believe it’s possible to build self-aware machines. Searle proposed the Chinese room thought experiment as proof that it’s possible to create a machine that appears self-aware but isn’t. Philosophers and computer scientists eventually concluded that the Chinese room thought experiment wasn’t conclusive.

Anyone who meditates or studies the science of the mind knows that intelligence and awareness are two separate aspects of our being. Throughout his novel, Watts hammers home to his readers that humans are not what we think we are. Just consider the title of the novel, Blindsight. Read the Wikipedia entry. Throughout the novel, Watts chronicles conditions where our senses fool us. At times, I wonder if Watts had been reading too many Oliver Sacks essays.

Watts suggests that conscious self-awareness may be an illusion, and suggests that many humans are no more than zombies.

At some point in the story, I believe readers should be asking: Is Watts wrong? If we combine LLMs with robots and those mechanical beings learn to interact with reality, will conscious self-awareness spring up? Will robotic consciousness be just as soulful as human consciousness? The scientific study of minds doesn’t leave room for the soul, although many religious researchers would like to find it. Christians will have to decide if robots and aliens have souls. Watts suggests that nobody has souls, that immensely intelligent beings could exist without consciousness, and that even those who do claim to have conscious self-awareness might be delusional.

Blindsight is an incredibly bleak book. But then it’s a horror novel. Several factors in Blindsight make me distrust any idea Watts proposes. The main one is resurrecting vampires. In the fictional world of Blindsight, vampires did exist, but became extinct. They are resurrected to learn about their longevity and ability to hibernate. The crew of the Theseus is enhanced by these genetic discoveries, allowing them to survive the long voyage to the edge of the solar system. I’m sorry, but this is comic book-level science.

The crew is supposed to be transhuman, or posthumans. Science fiction often imagines posthumans with longevity, immortality, and psychic abilities. I find such speculation to be weak, boring, and trite. Those ideas seem to have been swiped from Greek mythology. I thought the film Gattaca did a good job of imagining posthumans being humans with genetic modifications. Many science fiction writers like to imagine posthumans with all kinds of body modifications. That also seems rather comic-booky to me.

Watts offers several possibilities, but none of them were developed with much conviction or detail. The main one is Jukka Sarasti, a vampire. Vampires are genetically resurrected from their extinction in the Pleistocene. Probably inspired by Jurassic Park, but much like how current-day Colossal Biosciences wants to bring back the Woolly Mammoth.

The whole time I was reading Blindsight, I thought of that old saw: if a gun is introduced in the first act, it must be used by the final act. In my mind, I kept thinking: if a vampire is introduced at the beginning of a story, it’s got to kill before the story is over. That anticipating messed up Blindsight for me. Watts, in the very end, does fire off his vampire. However, it undermines the seriousness of his original hypothesis. I must admit I have a great prejudice against vampires. I thought vampires were perfect in Dracula, Bram Stoker’s famous novel, and their continued use has been all downhill since then.

The Gang of Four is merely a body with multiple personalities. I saw no advantage to this. I’ve had enough of this idea after seeing The Three Faces of Eve and reading the book.

Siri Keeton is our protagonist. He had had half his brain removed in childhood, which created a unique perspective for studying consciousness. Watts portrays him as the ship’s “synthesist.” I never felt Siri had any significant insights. Watts seems to use Siri to think out ideas to help move the story along.

However, I’m not going to ding Watts for these criticisms. Many modern science fiction stories try to jam in as many ideas as possible. It makes for an epic science fiction impact. For an old fart like me, it’s just tiring, but I do understand that younger, more energetic minds feed on this kind of science fiction speed.

We still need to decide on the novel’s main hypothesis. Can advanced intelligence exist without self-aware consciousness? The internet is full of stories about the initiative that Openclaw agents are taking. Watts didn’t know about LLMs and agentic AI, but both are convincing evidence for his case.

We only know of one species in the universe that we consider conscious and self-aware. The concept of the soul has existed for thousands of years, complicating this discussion. We have to assume there might be an infinite number of kinds of consciousness. It’s almost impossible to imagine anything that’s not like us. But then Einstein imagined relativity, proving the human mind can conceive of something vastly different.

Humanity is now spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI. Far more than we spent on the space race of the 1960s. More than likely, we can create robots that can function independently in this reality and become far more intelligent than we are. But will we ever know if they have self-aware consciousness like ours? Throughout Blindsight, Watts asks if we’re as self-aware as we think we are.

I’m not sure if Peter Watts ever asks if vastly intelligent beings without conscious self-awareness feel they do have it? Maybe the creatures on Rorschach experience existence no different than us. Maybe both the concept of the soul and conscious self-awareness are illusions.

Personally, I think my sense of awareness is one thing, and my fast and slow thinking abilities are two other mechanisms in my brain. That my sense of umwelt comes from an integration of sensory inputs, a sensorium. And that my thoughts come from another biological mechanism that works much like an LLM. Why shouldn’t it? LLMs are based on neural networks.

Because of a TIA, I know my awareness can exist without my thoughts. I also know that my awareness can disappear, and my biological LLM can generate dreams with all kinds of weird logic and intelligence. Watts mentions in the novel that sleepwalkers can drive cars or pursue various other activities without waking up.

The reason Blindsight makes such an impact on readers is not because of scary aliens but because it makes us think about our own minds, and that can be very scary.

By the way, the part of my being that watched me write this can’t explain how the part of my being thought it up.

James Wallace Harris, 5/20/26