Rate this book

Echopraksja (2014)

by Peter Watts(Favorite Author)

3.94 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

MAG

series

Firefall

review 1: Interesting as expected but a bit of a slog to get through. Why? The story doesn't flow and isn't as interesting as Blindsight. There's a lot of dialogue, not much action. Also, I never became a fan of the lead character. He was a wimp and dim-witted at times which I know is a point of the story, but readers want someone smart and strong (like themselves) to root for. A hero. On the plus side, there are a number of ideas to make you think about what may be possible with biology.Caveat: I listened to this book through an Audible.com purchase and I wonder how much my opinion of the book was affected by the narrator Adam Rough. While Adam is not bad, I do not like his character voices, and I do not think he read parts of the book with the tone and inflection I would imagine P... moreeter Watts wrote them. Too bad. I'll have to think about this more and possibly read a paper/Kindle version later.
review 2: To put is simple, Watts is just going Anti-Yudkowsky. In Blindsight he carpet-bombed the value of a sapient mind, the will to live, compassion, happiness. But you were still left with the hope that in the sad morbid universe of survivalist jerks, there is at least some science and rationality. In Echopraxia, however, Watts says "LOL NOPE", and shatters the virtue of rationality and truth-seeking _even_ if your objective is to build a technical civilization. A challenger appears, my dear transhumanists. Reading the list of references literally left me with Hans Landa's "Bingo!" expression, and I don't know how anyone who knows what's going on can react otherwise.The language - not the technical jargon, but the poetic epithets and metaphors - were a bit too hard (definitely harder than in Bllidsight) for a non-native speaker, although that's my problem, not the author's. Besides, as my contribution to the coming of decadent post-human era, I'll probably switch to ebooks - easier to look up new words that way (and I'm already rewired to prefer looking up to memorizing stuff).Plot-wise, it doesn't really matter whether to read Blindsight or Echopraxia firth, but idea-wise it's better to already have the pessimistic mood of Blindsight when reading this one.Overall: 10 out of 10, would read more - as if my opinion changes anything, or a mare baseline human can have a meaningful opinion at all. less

Download links for: Echopraksja

Advertising