History Literature / Blindsight

* TrojanHorse: [[spoiler: It's suggested that ''Rorschach'' intentionally triggered the drone malfunction that fried the first encountered Scrambler, prompting the crew to set a trap for live specimens. Then, the Scramblers allowed themselves to be captured despite the trap not being a match for their SuperReflexes, allowing them to survey the ''Theseus'' and the neurology of the crew from their holding cells and return the data to the other Scramblers later.]

** [[spoiler: The Scramblers have chromatophores all over their bodies, allowing them to change color like an octopus. By combining this with their ability to perceive the firing of optic nerves, they can manage functional invisibility by only moving when a human observer is blind mid-saccade. Similar to the ''Rorschach'', this technique isn't able to fool multiple observers.]]

** [[The Scramblers perceive electromagnetic radiation with enough resolution to analyze the workings of the human brain. Cunningham speculates it may be able to see through walls.]]

* ManchurianAgent: [[spoiler:Susan's fifth personality. Bates guesses the personality is just panicking rather than undermining the crew intentionally, but regardless it play's exactly into the aliens' plans.]]

* TheChessmaster: The book deals with entities that are orders of magnitude more intelligent than the average human, so this is almost a given.
** Sarasti, like all vampires, evolved to hunt humans. No matter how hard you try to out-maneuver him, he'll always be one step ahead of you. Waiting. He was sent on the mission for this exact purpose - "vampire logic" might give ''Theseus'''s crew the edge they need against ''Rorschach''.

* ManchurianAgent: [[spoiler:Susan's fifth personality.]]

* TakingYouWithMe: [[spoiler:Jukka Sarasti/Theseus' final strategy against ''Rorschach''.]]
* TechnicallyLivingVampire: Vampires were a HumanSubspecies that evolved to prey upon other humans, the "undead" myth was inspired by their ability to hibernate for years.

** The Scramblers [[spoiler:being invisible by only moving when the humans aren't able to register seeing them]] also qualifies, since they would still [[spoiler:be visible when they were not moving - contrary to the claims in the book]].

** The best example of their intelligence and perception is that [[BizarreAlienSenses the Scramblers can see with eyespots all over their bodies, and can sense electromagnetic fields.]] These are so sensitive and their response time is so quick that they can [[spoiler: perceive individual nerve signals in the human body and move only during the saccades of the eye, which don't get translated to the brain and thus render the Scramblers effectively invisible.]]

** Siri Keeton's hemispherectomy lead to resemble being highly autistic, albeit quite high-functioning.

** Amanda Bates is the one approaching normal, though she's a military officer who made an unsanctioned act of diplomacy which included a minor act of treason as a "good faith measure", though it got better results in months than raw military actions. [[ReassignedToAntarctica She was stationed on the ship]] as security, but [[spoiler: privately considers staging a mutiny against Sarasti]]. And yet, [[spoiler: [[RedHerring that last part was all in Siri's head]].]]

* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Vampires turn out to have been an ancient HumanSubspecies adapted to prey on us. They existed millennia ago, before recorded history. Since they were predators, they had to have superior pattern-matching skills (all the tricks of autistic savants plus more) and general intelligence, better night-vision and the ability to put themselves into suspended animation (since, being apex predators, they had to give our populations time to rebound else they would hunt us to extinction). Unfortunately, the super-intelligence comes at a cost: their super-charged pattern recognition tends to get overstimulated when [[WeaksauceWeakness intersecting right-angles take up too much of their visual field]]. Basically, their brain ''glitches out'' and they have [[BrownNote epileptic seizures]] whenever they see anything with corners - thus explaining the origin of [[HolyBurnsEvil the myth about them being weak against the cross]]. When humans invented architecture, the vampires all died out. The modern-day resurrected vampires have to take "[[AppliedPhlebotinum Anti-Euclidean]]" drugs to enable them to survive because geneticists weren't stupid enough to remove the weakness.

** A hemispherectomy wouldn't rob someone of their emotions or empathy. In fact, actual patients who've had half of their brains removed due to epilepsy (exactly what happened to Siri) exhibit little to no changes afterward. [[spoiler: This is addressed in the sidequel, ''{{Literature/Echopraxia}}'', where its explained that Siri was the victim of a viral zombie attack while still unborn.]]

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Watts respects the speed of light, but some of his other plot devices take liberties with physics. Possibly explained by his being trained as a zoologist and biologist, rather than as a physicist.

** The human characters are severely hurt by the magnetic fields inside Rorschach, while the Scramblers are unaffected. But the Scramblers are also described as loaded with magnetite, which would produce enough heating as they moved through the field to kill them - Watts explicitly did not make them able to handle the heat.
** The Scramblers [[spoiler:being invisible by only moving when the humans aren't able to register seeing them]] also qualifies, since they would still [[spoiler:be visible when they were not moving]].

** The Scramblers [[spoiler:being invisible by only moving when the humans aren't able to register seeing them]] also qualifies, since they would still be [[spoiler:be visible when they were not moving]].

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Watts respects the speed of light, but some of his other plot devices take liberties with physics.
** Rorschach is hidden near a free-floating sub-brown-dwarf half a lightyear from the Sun called Big Ben, that late-21st-century humans had not previously recognized. In reality, early-21st-century surveys would have been able to see anything like that ([[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09985.pdf astronomers have looked]]).

* HighTimesFuture: Characters use a lot of drugs, ranging from currently-commonplace (nicotine) to extremely unusual. In a flashback; Siri and Chelsea's first date is at a lounge specializing in unique narcotics. The business is apparently unremarkable apart for the quality of the products.

** Rorschach is hidden near a free-floating gas giant half a lightyear from the Sun called Big Ben, that late-21st-century humans had not previously recognized. In reality, early-21st-century surveys would have been able to see anything like that ([[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09985.pdf astronomers have looked]]).
** Theseus is powered by an antimatter drive. It somehow produces that antimatter itself from captured regular hydrogen, by unspecified [[QuantumMechanicsCanDoAnything quantum handwavium]] beamed from a space station near the Sun.

''Blindsight'' is a hard ScienceFiction novel by Canadian author Creator/PeterWatts. It's a dark and cerebral FirstContact story that deals heavily with issues of sapience and what it means to be an "intelligent" species. Troubles with the publisher made the novel hard to find in stores, despite having been nominated for a UsefulNotes/HugoAward, so Watts put it out [[http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm on his website]] [[DoingItForTheArt for free]].

* AluminumChristmasTrees: At one point, Sarasti is shown analyzing some data presented as a bunch of screaming faces. Believe it or not, it's based on an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernoff_face actual method of data representation]].

* FiveManBand: In a twisted, unusual way, but it's there.
** TheHero: Siri, as the narrator, despite his policy of noninterference.
** TheLancer: Isaac Szpindel, biologist with extensive cybernetics, and the friendliest towards Siri.
** TheSmartGuy: Jukka Sarasti, who is frighteningly intelligent, like all [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampires]], that the average human is incapable of understanding how he reaches his conclusions.
** TheBigGuy: Amanda Bates, the military officer.
** TheChick: Susan James (in her core personality), though she also has elements of TheSmartGuy. Furthermore, the rest of the Gang play different roles.
%%** SixthRanger: [[spoiler:Cunningham]]