_Echopraxia_ is a long-awaited "sidequel" to Peter Watts's exceptional novel _Blindsight_, the tale of what's happening "back home", mostly earthside, while the crew of the _Theseus_ is deep in space. Yet don't think of it as an "also ran"; think of it as the key that unlocks a puzzle, a key that's a puzzle in its own right. _Blindsight_ was chock full of questions and _Echopraxia_ pulls off a stunt that most writers wouldn't even try, answering a lot of questions by asking other questions.
Both novels take place in a future not quite a century from now, when technology has advanced to a degree that is practically post-Singularity even for the majority of humans directly involved in the work. Not surprisingly, for either a Watts novel nor to anyone following the fields, some of the greatest advances are in the fields of the biomedical, especially in the arts of making people into nothing nature intended.
Military personnel might be mostly mainstream, enhanced with prostheses or implants or even a little wetware, but they might also be Zombies, modified to effectively discard consciousness (and conscience) as a time-wasting parasite on the enhanced metabolic rates needed to prevail in battle. System operators of technology ranging from autonomous networks to deep-system spacecraft are modified, implanted, genetically reshaped, all the better to work with systems initially designed by human beings but now evolved into their own form of artificial life. Vampires have been "resurrected" from long extinction, with activation of "junk" DNA of autistics producing fearsome predator with off-the-charts pattern-matching skills and the social skills and intentions of sociopaths, kept in check only by the "Crucifix Glitch" that would quickly kill them if not for Anti-Euclidian drugs supplied by their creators/captors who use them for specialty problem-solving and making corporate management decisions. Half of the world's patents are held by the Monks of the Bicameral Order, people who have so modified their own brains and nervous systems that they need a special breed of modified humans to act as the interpreters between their Hive Mind and the rest of humanity.
In the face of all of this radical specialization, what's a "normal" Baseline Human to do?
Daniel Bruks is a practicing field biologist, doing sampling in the desert, and not incidentally more or less on the lam. He once did some coding in epidemiological surveillance but didn't do it well enough. His unintentional "backdoor" was exploited by terrorists to kill thousands and while nobody can call him criminal, his colleagues don't want much to do with someone who was so careless or incompetent with their project. To make matters worse, Bruks is very old-fashioned. In a world where most professionals do simulations and modeling controlled by their own implants, Bruks has an aversion to implants and can be regarded as something of a Luddite.
His peaceful days in the desert are interrupted when a cadre of zombies sweep through his research grounds and the terrified biologist runs as fast as he can to the only nearby shelter, a "monastery" of the Monks of the Bicameral Order. He makes it inside only to find that he has escaped from a zombie incursion into an emergency evacuation of the Order and he wakes up on a deep-system ship headed for close solar orbit. Between the surviving Hive Mind "monks, an obsessed Colonel seeking any signs of life from his _Theseus_-mission-specialist son, the vampire-on-the-lam who had been controlling the Zombies (also along for the ride), and the revenge-driven ship's pilot, Bruks finds himself outclassed and underskilled. He can't even talk to half of the crew/passengers. The thoughts of the Monks are outside of all humanity and their communications almost as much so, talking to the Zombies is a really bad idea, the ship's pilot only almost makes sense to Bruks, the translator for the Hive Mind is not only halfway there to joining the Hive, but she's also deeply "religious" in contrast to the agnostic/atheist Bruks whom she half-heartedly prosyletizes. Meanwhile, the hyperintelligent vampire is lurking around just out of Bruks's sight and he'd prefer to see even less of her than he already does... and Bruks isn't the only one who is totally convinced that she's _up to something_.
Their destination? _Icarus_ is a massive station in close orbit around the sun, converting vast energies and plasma streams into quantum specifications beamed out to the vanished _Theseus_. The quantum specs are used to write matter into being at the destination, or more to the point, to write antimatter for propulsion. But those quantum specs could be written to anything that can receive the signal and convert the specs... and as much signal is being sent out from _Icarus_, some tiny bit of signal is coming back. The Colonel thinks it's a message from _Theseus_ and that it could be from, or inform him of, his lost son. Nobody seems to know what the Hive Mind thinks, other than that they are so deeply interested in both the message and reception point that they put together the majority of this mission, with their vast wealth and incomprehensible technology. Trying to second-guess the vampire isn't proving too successful for anyone. But what are the intentions of the aliens who seem to have left something at _Icarus_? What _is_ that, anyway? And what will happen when they find out?
_Echopraxia_ is chock full of Watts's trademark diversions through the landscape of today's cutting edge biotech and neuromedical research. These aren't digressions, usually; they are pivotal to the plot and often are essential to the origin or status of the characters. Philosophical questions arise within the dialog and scenario, but moreso the gestalt of the tale. It doesn't so much _do_ philosophy or speak to (or of) philosophy though there is a bit of that; rather the depiction of that world and the people in it comprise so much philosophy (especially moral questions in medical and social applied sciences) that you might see the philosophy not as peeking out from under the carpet, but as being the carpet, so to speak, as well as the people standing on the rug talking about philosophy. But it's not about philosophy! It's about a very possible world we could live in a century from now! Isn't it? Is there a difference?
If you like thought-provoking visionary SF that has a fine notion of pace and timing, this book is for you. If you like the sort of action writing that's equivalent to standing around chatting on the coffee-break one minute, and moments later digging yourself out of the pile of rubble at the bottom of the cliff asking "what just happened" even though you had a very good view of everything going to hell all around you, this book is for you. If you want to see questions answered that you might have left over from reading _Blindsight_, this book doesn't so much give you the answers as it points you down the road to where answers will be found, once you pause and inventory your backpack when you get there.
This book needs to be on your bookshelf and you should put it there.
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Top reviews from other countries
Adam Carlton
Not 'there and back again'; instead a complex puzzle
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 19, 2014John Fletcher
Come back next year for a better review.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2015
