2 posts tagged “peter watts”
Following with my Books-To-Read-Queue, I just finished reading this book:
Most of the book deals with the life of 6 persons onboard a deep-sea power station, who had to be modded to be able to survive in this high pressure environment. The crew is composed by rapists, pedophiles, borderline psychotics,
and victims of same, so you might guess the interaction between them might be. Also they get infected by a virus-like entity called βehemoth which, if set loose upon the world, will destroy all of the human race (and the ecosystem), and i'm talking in a bad way. The thing is, everything goes south thanks to fact that the powerfull nations of the world (year 2050) couldn't trust themselves, so they trust the handling of βehemoth to Skynet "Smart gels" (which appear to be some kind of Neural Net). The problem is that the computer has a thing for simpler systems (βehemoth) over complex ones (us). The reason for that, being related to what the net had become in those days and the role of the Smart gels in controlling it.
I can hardly wait to read Maelstrom (by the way, this is the name that the Interweb is called on those days) and see where this leads to, this one ended in quite a bit of hell in a desperate attempt to destroy βehemoth and I heard it somehow gets to enter the Maelstrom and evolve there. :)
I finished reading some days ago this book:
As my friend Juan puts it, this is 'hardcore SciFi'. I won't go into details on the plot (else my little Green friend will kill me, seriously), but I really recommend this book to anyone who wishes to be amazed by the simple grace and style in which Peter Watts speaks not only of a 'First-Encounter' event with real aliens, but his comments about the nature of us carbon-based lifeforms humans.
Also, he includes a vampire in the crew. Most people seem to find Sarasti scary, but I didn't (and I read this book at night with all lights off while everyone at home was sleeping). Don't know why, but my first bet is my tv-damaged-brain that maybe has made me more insensitive to such things along the years. Need to admit, cool vampire.
One of the comments that brought most of my attention is the one that talks about the difference of technology level in alien encounter situations (read the book if you want the exact exciting speech), also --SPOILER ALERT-- doesn't apply to the aliens in the book --SPOILER ALERT--:
- Technologically advanced civilizations will not be hostile
- Technologically advanced civilizations will be hostile
- I don't care
Point #1, when you reach certain level of knowledge your civilization will need not to resort to violence as a way to solve problems, since you will be enlightened, or something like that. I don't really identify with this point, so I don't know many arguments on this. Maybe possible, but what level is that? how far are we from that? is it possible that we already passed it?
Point #2, technology is used to dominate less advanced groups. The most compelling reason to create new technology is to gain an edge against other factions which we don't really like we <<insert uber-important philosofical reason here>>, so we need to vanquish them. This is the point I tend to agree the most...
Imagine you are a carbon-based monkey-descended lifeform whose ancestors from only a few hundred years ago were clubbing another carbon-based monkey-descended lifeform battling for the survival of your kind in some prehistoric marsh. Your most important technological achievements come from research for new-and-improved ways to club another carbon-based monkey-descended lifeforms defend yourself in the name of freedom, your religion, money (also a religion), etc. You live in what is defined as Society, defined as: something that forces you not to harm co-exist with other lifeforms you really can't stand living with for the sake of ... not being alone? getting some basic services and living longer?. But you don't live in The Society, you live in A Society, which implies that there are many more. You can't stand the people in your society, but somehow you manage to do it in a day-by-day basis. What you are sure about is that the thing you can't really stand are the other societies. Somehow you have technology.
Now comes the question: If you were to get some great technology breakthrough that allowed you to get the people in your society, the other societies, your entire planet, other races too under your cold steel hand, would you do it? even if it may be possible to destroy all the cited groups? including yourself?
Thought so.
