#firefall peter watts

[mattiebluebird]

siri keeton: hello, my job is to take the jargon spat out by hyperintelligent posthumans and translate it into something that the average person can understand. in order to do this, i must observe, and due to this (and other various traumas in my past) i've developed a set of algorithms to study and mimic human behavior.

everyone, for some reason: you unfeeling monster. you unsentient creature. get out of my fucking sight.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[stainlesssteellocust]

The funny thing about the Sarasti reveal is that we were told this from the start. We already knew the ship was the Captain, that Jukka took orders from it and communed with it brain to brain. It’s a very effective meta example of the story’s logic: both the characters and the readers pay attention to the figurehead, even though we’re told about the quiet intelligence that’s really running things behind the scenes.

Unlike some readers I strongly believe Jukka was always there, possible nonsentience notwithstanding; his brain and vampire intelligence are obviously functional because he’s still susceptible to the Crucifix Glitch, he’s noticeably tempted by a human corpse, etc. It makes no sense to hollow out a vampire of all things into a meat puppet while still wasting space on the likes of Siri and Amanda, either. He had his purposes: to be a calculator app for Theseus, and to be the First Mate who made sure the crew did what Theseus wanted them to do.

He seems like a parallel to Siri in some ways, bringing the commandments of the Superintelligences down from the mountain and explaining them in ways that people can understand.

[maskedbeliever]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Firefall Series - Peter Watts Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Male Vampire Anthropologist, Original Character Ensemble Additional Tags: Vampires, Academia, Family Drama, Divorce, vampire domestication, Evolutionary Biology, AU, Death, Unrequited Crush, discussion of sex Summary:

A vampire builds a career in anthropology with a radical proposal about ancient human-vampire cooperation. As he works to spread the idea that some vampires lived among humans, he creates a place for himself in a small human family.

Vampires and humans are very different, but they have much more in common than most humans like to think.

AU in which the Fireflies do not come.

[this-has-returned]

I'd love to write more fanfiction, but I feel like I'm not smart enough to write for most of my fandoms lol.

And by that I mean I wanna write Firefall fanfic, but the worldbuilding of Peter Watts is absolutely fucking bonkers.

Ah well. I still have that Deep Rock Galactic x Dwarf Fortress fanfic series. I'm still rather happy with how it turned out.

[fluffy-leech]

@immortaljailor jump scared me with this "9 People to Get to Know Better (Tag Game)" thing. How dare you perceive me. Will it stop me from doing it though? Of course not. So here, take my nonsensical rambles.

3 ships you like: I've never been big on shipping or romance in general, but I have, over the years, grown fond of a few relationships. I could absolutely go with popular ones that everybody knows, however to spice things up I'll go and add some very niche ones.

First up is Jenniver Aristeides and Snnanagfashtalli from Star Trek novel The Entropy Effect, by Vonda N. McIntyre. I'm positive neither were meant to sound as in love with the other when it was being written, but I was struck by the realisation that there's no fully platonic explanation for these two. Like, we are first introduced to them when they are beamed back in the middle of a bar fight that Fash started because a group of men were laughing at Jen's appearance (seven feet tall, all muscle, every part of her silver in colour, is equal in strength to Vulcans, but too shy to stand up for herself). She was fully prepared to kill them. And then there is a whole conversation where Jen is completely devastated she wasn't able to save someone due to being incapacitated and Fash comes in like the overgrown cat she is and rubs her cheek against and then cuddles Jen And then theres this quote.

"Snnanagfashtalli, she felt about as she had naver felt about another being in her life. Perhaps it was gratitude for friendship and consideration; perhaps it was love. But she never experienced love, as a giver or receiver, so she did not know."

They're always together when we see them, and when Jen wants to be transferred to botanical sciences instead of moving rank in combat and defense, Fash is only ever supportive. They play chess late nights in the rec room while smiling at eachother and laughing. They are the most relaxed in eachother's company. Like, please tell me how I could possibly be normal about them?

Tied in second is Siri Keeton and Sarasti, and Daniel Brüks and Valerie, both being human/vampire relationships from Peter Watt's Firefall series. "Oh, not another human vampi-" shush. Vampires are different in this one. It's set in the late 2090's where humanity has reached the point where it's borderline posthuman but also not and theres been first contact and it adheres to actual science instead of inventing things like warp drive and wormholes and hundred of species of humanoid aliens (sorry star trek). I cannot describe the worldbuilding any further than that because it's just so in depth but the point is humanity has brought back an extinct branch of humanity that's referred to as vampires because evolution left them only being able to eat human flesh. For science of course. They are described so terrifyingly viscerally It rewired by brain. What I really vibe with about these two ships is while the humans, Siri and Daniel, are fighting against the prey instinct to flee and hide so they can work with their vampire companions to slow the decent into ruin humanity is steadily marching towards, the vampires, Sarasti and Valerie, are trying to fight their instinct to rip them apart and eat them, knowing if they do they'll go extinct, and also try and navigate the fact that they have grown attached to their human crew (set in space for the most part) even though they don't experience affection while the humans are still terrified of them. I explained that poorly but please go read the books. The first one, Blindsight, has been published online for free here. Echopraxia, second book, unfortunately has not gotten the same treatment but your local library might have it, and if not you can always request it be ordered. They've been translated into other languages as well.

Third and last in line is Connor and Tina Chen from Detroit: Become Human. Tina has exactly no lines in the entire game and if we are lucky 5 minutes of screentime. There are, as of my last check, twelve fics on Ao3 of them, half of them being a single chapter in oneshot collections, and no art. A shame, but expected given it's obscurity. Anyways I just vibe with them, though really only the AU version I crafted in my fic planning daydreams.

First ship ever: I was about to say I couldn't tell you if the universe's existence was on the line, but looking back I'm pretty sure it was either SCP-049 and SCP-035 or Malicoda and Ererbus from the Gameknight999 series by Mark Cheverton that made me actual think, "huh, they seem... closer than just friends." Of course that ended up with me thinking "Oh! they're best friends!" because romance simply does not render in my poor little autistic aroace brain unless explicitly stated. Art I saw when looking up those characters of course helped.

Last song you heard: As I write this I'm hearing the lovely tune of more soup by Gerald Fried on loop. It's been four hours and counting.

Favorite childhood book: How dare you make me choose. uhhh.. uhhhhh,,,,,,,, hhhh,,,

Lets just go with The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien and The Days Are Just Packed: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson. I read so much during my childhood that I cannot possibly choose, but those two stand out as being some that I still come back too.

Currently reading: A lot of things but most recently Life in Ancient Egypt by Adolf Erman, published in 1886 and translated in 1894 by H. M. Tirad, with the copy I have having been republished in 1971 with minor notes to correct things that have since been proven false. Unless of course you want to count all the fanfiction. There's been a lot of that too.

Currently watching: Trying to get though all of Hermitcraft, starting from season 1 and working up to the current season while also attempting to not forget to document the time and dates each and every video was published.

Currently consuming: Lots of water :)

Currently craving: Ginger tea (I ran out of the kind I like)

Tagging: No thank you, but if you see this and feel like doing it then by all means go ahead. :)

[Apologies for misspellings, grammatical errors, and this rambley wall of text]

[conglamerata]

We need more Jukka Sarasti 

[rachell-redacted]

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: Blindsight by Peter Watts

Review: Blindsight by Peter Watts

Series: Firefall #1Author: Peter WattsPublisher: Tor BooksReleased: October 3, 2006Received: NetGalleyWarnings: Ableism, abuse, domestic violence, medical experimentation, mental health issues Are you reading to dive into a speculative science fiction novel full of aliens, vampires, and monsters? Then it’s time to talk about Blindsight by Peter Watts. Humanity has always known that they are not…

[mattiebluebird]

Man Jukka Sarasti huh. Let me just brutally maul this guy and rip through his coping mechanisms and force him to feel empathy for the first time in his life so that he can have an epiphany about these aliens we're studying. Then I'll die

[dearthesea]

What a ride...

Peter Watts - Blindsight (Omnibus Edition)

[stainlesssteellocust]

there was a bloke used to hang around on Spacebattles back in the day who claimed to be a Russian biosciences expert

As this is the internet he could have actually been a teenage furry from Ohio for all I know, but whatever

Our guy made kinda unsettling posts and chatted about biowarfare and brains a lot, invented an evil black sludge for that one Alien Lamprey RP and showed quite an interest in horror before supposedly inheriting an old house and vanishing. I think. Theories ranged from “the house was haunted” to “the Russian mob got him for bitcoin crimes” to, most realistically, “he got tired of having a weirdo fanbase on a not particularly intellectual sci-fi forum and proceeded to jump ship”.

so far so normal

until one day I picked up Peter Watt’s novel Echopraxia. See, Echopraxia has a whole section at the end devoted to the author’s research and the people who helped him with it. And he mentions, in his acknowledgments, a “mysterious dude” who just so happens to share our guy’s username.

guess the bitcoin bandits didn’t get him after all.

[maskedbeliever]

Chapters: 3/3 Fandom: Firefall Series - Peter Watts Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Male Vampire/Female Human Characters: Original Character Ensemble Additional Tags: Vampires, Older Man/Younger Woman, First Time, Friends to Fuckbuddies, AU without Fireflies, Fingering, Vibrator, Penis in Vagina Sex Series: Part 2 of Vampire-Human Cooperation Summary:

The vampire Cyrus realizes that the deeper he has invested himself in a human family—now consisting of only Danielle, the daughter of his deceased best friend—the more difficult it is for him to think with the cold, rational focus his species is famous for.

Danielle acts on the crush she's had since she was a girl and tries first-person sex for the first time.

The Persistence Hunter Paradox: The tendency, as a human and vampire form a social bond, of the vampire to lose the ability to predict the behavior of that human. This occurs possibly as a result of the human gaining the ability to predict the behavior of the vampire, possibly as a result of the vampire becoming emotionally involved, or both or neither.

I WROTE THAT SMUT I WAS SAYING I’D WRITE

It’s a sequel to The Renfield Society Hypothesis. Hugest thanks to the tumblr anon who was really interested in it, I love you

[spacebrick3]

ItsGBM Day 15

Alright - I missed a few days because of AP testing, but here we are again!

Pick a book, what is a song that fits that book?

Alright - for the book, I’ll go with Firefall by Peter Watts. It’s an amazing first-contact story, even if a bit strange, just because of how accurate it all feels and how…alien the aliens seem.

The song I’m going with is Cypherpunk by Ben Prunty, since it has the right mix of dark, tech, and strange that I think fits the book well:

[this-has-returned]

Spoilers for Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts...

Okay, so I've been trying to process the Scrambler perspective in these books. (Maybe it should be called the "Rorschach perspective", if Scramblers are more like white blood cells...?)

During Firefall, enough data was gathered on Humans and Human technology to create a plan to stop us from emitting signals into space.

The problem, though, is Theseus used hidden technology and was launched with a breakneck schedule, which completely took Rorschach by surprise, because it shouldn't have been possible for Humans to build this so fast, much less find Rorschach at Big Ben.

This would have been Rorschach's first clue that things like Vampires, Transhumans, and Bicamerals live among the Humans.

This means that Rorschach is not working with enough data. So it injected two spies into Theseus to try and get a better idea of what pilots such a bleeding-edge spacecraft. Inside, it finds a team of Transhumans, someone with half a brain swapped out with a machine, a Vampire, and a high-level general intelligence in the computer systems.

The Vampire and general intelligence refuse to enter Rorschach for inspection, so it has to gather what it can from the invaders, at first. After abducting Susan James, and adjusting her to be a surprise agent later, they discover that we have the ability to coordinate several intelligences as a single system. This creates more questions than answers, so Rorschach must search harder.

The two spies probably discover the general intelligence running the ship. This probably fills in a few blanks, because there's no way the flesh-and-bone team members could have planned and executed any of this.

At the end of Blindsight and parts of Echopraxia, it's implied that the Scramblers somehow collected a large amount of data on Theseus. If Theseus self-destructed, it was probably all gathered by the two spies sniffing the camera and computer feeds, as they leisurely explored the operating system, and participated in the tests inflicted upon them. Honestly, I can't imagine that these tests would have slowed a Scrambler's ability to snoop around.

So the Scramblers store the data in their bodies, and leap back to Rorschach, so it can assimilate what was gathered.

In Echopraxia, the telematter stream is shown to be hijacked. This either means that the spies were covertly emitting from it while on Theseus (which I assume the general intelligence would have noticed), or Rorschach survived the antimatter detonation from Theseus, and replicated the telematter broadcast itself. I feel like there's an argument to be made that general intelligence might have genuinely not noticed, and the Bicamerals (who detected the hijack) are a magnitude smarter than the Theseus computer.

Either way, why does Rorschach send an agent (Portia) to the Icarus station?

Because there's still one more blank to fill.

The Humans could not have implemented the strategies seen from Theseus, but it's discovered that they're being orchestrated by a general intelligence in the computer.

But the general intelligence is not what created the ship and spotted Big Ben. There's still something even smarter lurking in the solar system, and it's not coming out to meet Rorschach. Rorschach needs bait.

Because Rorschach is hunting for Bicams.

So it uses the telematter stream in a way that only something like the Bicams would notice. It installs Portia at Icarus to fill in the missing blank when something so smart comes to look.

And when it DOES find the missing piece, it's clear that Humans are simply obsolete, and that Rorschach's species will not need to worry about open broadcasts in the future. That problem is solving itself, and requires no further intervention, and those that will usurp the Human species will still not be a threat to Rorschach's people. Indeed, it only took Rorschach's arrival, and nobody else needs to follow up in the solar system.

Also, if we are to take some passing details from Echopraxia into account, the Singularity has likely been born already, and has far-surpassed even the Bicams. This Singularity might be something that Rorschach's people identify as an ally, if not a simple non-issue cohabitant of the galaxy. Rorschach may have been attempting to diagnose and cure the Singularity of a rampant disease, because if the broadcasts are bothering Rorschach from WAY out in deep space, it must be absolutely insufferable to live ON THE PLANET that the broadcasts originate from!

[starscaul]