Echopraxia

Peter Watts

Aug 2014 · Firefall Book 2 · Sold by Macmillan

About this ebook

Prepare for a different kind of singularity in Peter Watts' Echopraxia, the follow-up to the Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight

It's the eve of the twenty-second century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off self-awareness during combat. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.

Daniel Bruks is a living fossil: a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational, a cat's-paw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he's turned his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out.

Now he's trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son. To his right is a pilot who hasn't yet found the man she's sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call "The Angels of the Asteroids."

Their pilgrimage brings Dan Bruks, the fossil man, face-to-face with the biggest evolutionary breakpoint since the origin of thought itself.



At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

After recently reading Blindsight for the first time and being absolutely spellbound throughout the entire book I have to say I don't think Watts's heart was really in this one. Not near as bad as "Ancillary Justice" but disappointing nonetheless. I can't stress enough how horrible Ann Lecklie is.

This book had me turning pages well into the night, even though I didn’t really understand much of what was happening. I had the same issue with Blindsight. Forever lost but loving it, like a tour of the Garden District in New Orleans. The how of getting plants to grow like they do in that district is lost on me, but the visuals are pretty enough to keep me enthralled. Visuals indeed. Echopraxia, like Blindsight, is so full of amazing metaphors and similes used as descriptive prose that it is just like riding a street car through the Garden District. Sights that are just beauteous to behold. It is really depressing though, but with a silver lining of hope. I get the silver lining imagery because of the illusion of baseline humans as roaches. Roaches live when all others die. Build yourself up to be a super human by way of tech implants, take away water for three days, and you’re dead. Try to starve or dehydrate a roach and you’re in for a lesson on futility. That’s all I’ll say directly about the story. Should you read Echopraxia? Oh yeah. You should. Read Blindsight first though, as lots of Echopraxia won’t make sense without it. Be prepared for a soul-crushing gorgeous adventure though.

Very challenging read. This is not a sprint. Good to have a search bar connected to learn about the references. Great book. Please write more.

About the author

PETER WATTS is the Hugo nominated author of Blindsight and has been called "a hard science fiction writer through and through and one of the very best alive" by The Globe and Mail and whose work the New York Times called "seriously paranoid."