The crew wakes from hibernation while the Theseus closes on Big Ben. Theseus is re-routed mid-flight to the new-found destination of the signal: a previously undetected sub-brown dwarf deep in the Oort cloud, dubbed 'Big Ben'. While the crew is in hibernation en route, the just-arrived second wave of probes commence a compounded radar scan of the subsurface of Burns-Caulfield, but this immediately causes the object to self-destruct. It carries a crew of five cutting-edge transhuman hyper-specialists, of whom one is a genetically reincarnated vampire who acts as the nominal mission commander. Theseus is propelled by an antimatter reactor and captained by an artificial intelligence.

As this is the first opportunity to learn more about the extraterrestrials, three waves of ships are sent out: the first being light probes shot out for an as-soon-as-possible flyby of the comet, then a wave of heavier but better-equipped probes, and finally a crewed ship, the Theseus.

This tight-beam broadcast is directed to an unknown location and in fact does not intersect the Earth at any point.

Years afterwards, a comet-surveying satellite stumbles across a radio transmission originating from a comet, subsequently named 'Burns-Caulfield'. Despite the magnitude of this 'Firefall', human politics soon return to normal. It is suspected that the entire planet has been surveyed in one effective sweep. In the year 2082, thousands of large, coordinated objects of an unknown origin, dubbed 'Fireflies', burn up in the Earth's atmosphere in a precise grid, while momentarily broadcasting across an immense portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, catching humanity off guard and alerting it to an undeniable extraterrestrial presence. Its sequel (or ' sidequel'), Echopraxia, came out in 2014. The novel explores themes of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology, and game theory as well as evolution and biology.īlindsight is available online under a Creative Commons license. The story follows a crew of astronauts sent out as the third wave, following two series of probes, to investigate a trans-Neptunian Kuiper belt comet dubbed 'Burns-Caulfield' that has been found to be transmitting an unidentified radio signal to an as-yet unknown destination elsewhere in the Solar System, followed by their subsequent first contact. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. It won the Seiun Award for best translated novel and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the John W. Blindsight is a hard science fiction novel by Canadian writer Peter Watts, published by Tor Books in 2006.

Peter watts firefall series