Which, on that note, is a good moment to mention that Watts’ newest book, Echopraxia–set in the same universe as Blindsight–just came out a little over a month ago. Though I have tons of books here in Saigon I need to get through before we leave, it’s still on my TBRTYD (To Be Read This Year Dammit) list. I’m so glad I did: support for excellence is a good thing. Watts released this novel (like a number of others he’s written) under a Creative Commons license, and it’s available on his website in HTML form. (Or you can get it from a number of other public domain/CC sites like .) I actually read it on my Kindle, but I bought a hardback years ago, which is in a box somewhere in Seoul. It’s also one of the best books I’ve ever read, and really, it felt like finally someone had put into SFnal form all those ideas I was first exposed to in Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine back in grad school, plus so much of what we’ve learned since. You’ll notice Peter Watts’ Blindsight gets prominent mention here. It just so turned out to be the book I was reading when the invitation to participate showed up in my email, and, well, was perfectly relevant. With that in mind, here’s what we asked our panel of experts: Q: What successfully makes an alien character, well, really alien?Ī bunch of authors responded.
Humans with funny foreheads are easy truly alien aliens are hard. Just poking my head up above the surface to note that I participated in the most recent Mind Meld, addressing this question:
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