Despite the magnitude of this 'Firefall', human politics soon return to normal. It is suspected that the entire planet has been surveyed in one effective sweep. In the year 2082, thousands of large, coordinated objects of an unknown origin, dubbed 'Fireflies', burn up in the Earth's atmosphere in a precise grid, while momentarily broadcasting across an immense portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, catching humanity off guard and alerting it to an undeniable extraterrestrial presence. Its sequel (or ' sidequel'), Echopraxia, came out in 2014. The novel explores themes of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology, and game theory as well as evolution and biology.īlindsight is available online under a Creative Commons license. The story follows a crew of astronauts sent out as the third wave, following two series of probes, to investigate a trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt comet dubbed 'Burns-Caulfield' that has been found to be transmitting an unidentified radio signal to an as-yet unknown destination elsewhere in the Solar System, followed by their subsequent first contact. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

It won the Seiun Award for best translated novel and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the John W. Blindsight is a hard science fiction novel by Canadian writer Peter Watts, published by Tor Books in 2006.

Novel blindsight