Blindsight's a fun book, but just about all the science is bonkers. It has as much to do with cognitive science as the Martian Chronicles with astronomy. Still a fun read though.

Is there a new book coming out? Blindsight was pretty cool and the other one was also pretty good. The Rifters series was also not bad although even more oppressive than the Blindsight ones.

God I fucking hated Blindsight. Because it was well written, even interesting, but full of things that were like "Yes, yes, very clever, but do you understand that it makes it impossible to give a shit about any of this?"

I mean seriously, this must have happened at some point before the events of the novel:

"We're bringing vampires back!"

"Wait, vampires existed?"

"Yeah, turns out they co-evolved with humans as a specialized, even obligate predator of humans, but died out because right angles give them seizures, so architecture basically killed them off."

"But there are nomadic groups of that existed even into the 20th century where crosses and right angles are uncommon, wouldn't they have continued to exist, well into the modern era? And if they co-evolved with humans wouldn't all humans have the same mythos about them? Hell, wouldn't cross iconography be common everywhere?"

"There's a good and satisfying explanation to those questions."

"Which is?

"... There's a good and satisfying explanation to those questions."

"Okay, where did you get the DNA?"

"Oh, fragments of human DNA, from sociopaths and the like."

"Wait, you mean they were cross fertile with humans? They were an obligate predator of humans and cross fertile? How the hell does that even work? That's like finding a sheep-wolf hybrid!"

"I'm just going to make fart noises with my mouth until you change the subject"

"Seriously?"

*BBBBBBPPPPPPFTHTH*

"Okay, whatever, so you've somehow created these things which you claim are vampires. What are you going to do with them?"

"We're thinking of turning over all of our decision making to them!"

"Okay, so they're benevolent they'll improve life? That's really interesting."

"Hooo boy no. As far as we can tell the closest thing they feel to joy is the sensation of inflicting pain on a sentient being that's unable to fight back. I mean just the other day they tricked one of the lab assistants into getting to close, and well, I'll spare you the details, but it's going to be a closed casket funeral."

"This is terrible and stupid, a fifth grader could tell you how this goes wrong, and I find it impossible to care about your easily foreseen death."