Blindsight by Peter Watts
Published 2006 · 384 pages · 96,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Horror, Science Fiction
How hard is Blindsight to read?
Blindsight scores 55 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 65 out of 100
- Dense scientific terminology from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and physics. Watts writes for readers willing to work.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Complex sentences with technical precision and literary ambition. The narrator's detached voice adds difficulty.
- Abstraction: 75 out of 100
- The novel is fundamentally about the philosophy of consciousness. The hard-SF plot serves philosophical argument.
- Information density: 70 out of 100
- Extremely dense with neuroscience, physics, and philosophical concepts. Every page demands full attention.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Non-linear structure with a narrator who is explicitly unreliable and whose brain damage shapes his perception.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- The vampire, Rorschach, and Siri's hemispherectomy carry symbolic weight within the philosophical framework.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Siri's narration is deeply ironic — he describes human emotion from outside, understanding without feeling.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- The alien's nature is suggested but never fully confirmed. The implications for human consciousness remain open.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Non-linear narrative with an unreliable hemispherectomy narrator. Flashbacks intercut with the alien encounter.
How Blindsight is regarded
Blindsight holds a literary regard score of 53 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.