116. John Gaudiosi, “Gameworld: Virtual Economies in Video Games Used as Case Studies,” Reuters, October 1, 2009, http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/10/01/videogames-economies-idUSSP15565220091001.
117. Alexandre Alié and Michaël Manuel, “The Backbone of the Post-Synaptic Density Originated in a Unicellular Ancestor of Choanoflagellates and Metazoans,” BMC Evolutionary Biology 10, no. 1 (2010): 34, doi:10.1186/1471-2148-10-34.
118. P. Burkhardt et al., “Primordial Neurosecretory Apparatus Identified in the Choanoflagellate Monosiga Brevicollis,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 37 (August 29, 2011): 15264–15269, doi:10.1073/pnas.1106189108.
119. X. Cai, “Unicellular Ca2+ Signaling ‘Toolkit’ at the Origin of Metazoa,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 25, no. 7 (April 3, 2008): 1357–1361, doi:10.1093/molbev/msn077.
120. B. J. Liebeskind, D. M. Hillis, and H. H. Zakon, “Evolution of Sodium Channels Predates the Origin of Nervous Systems in Animals,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 22 (May 16, 2011): 9154–9159, doi:10.1073/pnas.1106363108.
121. Pierre-Yves Plaçais and Thomas Preat, “To Favor Survival Under Food Shortage, the Brain Disables Costly Memory,” Science 339, no. 6118 (January 25, 2013): 440–442, doi:10.1126/science.1226018.
122. Margaret Talbot, “Brain Gain,” The New Yorker, April 27, 2009, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot.
123. Vihang A. Narkar et al., “AMPK and PPARδ Agonists Are Exercise Mimetics,” Cell 134, no. 3 (August 8, 2008): 405–415, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.06.051.
124. “Christian Bök,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, September 14, 2013.
125. Jamie Condliffe, “Cryptic Poetry Written in a Microbe’s DNA,” CultureLab, New Scientist Online, 2011, http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/05/christian-boks-dynamic-dna-poetry.html.
126. “Deinococcus Radiodurans,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, July 29, 2013.
127. Yes, there may be random elements—quantum flickers that introduce unpredictability into one’s behavior—but slaving your decisions to a dice roll doesn’t make you free.
128. Benjamin Libet et al., “Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity (Readiness-Potential): The Unconscious Initiation of a Freely Voluntary Act,” Brain 106, no. 3 (September 1, 1983): 623–642, doi:10.1093/brain/106.3.623.
129. Chun Siong Soon et al., “Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain,” Nature Neuroscience 11, no. 5 (May 2008): 543–545, doi:10.1038/nn.2112.
130. Björn Brembs, “Towards a Scientific Concept of Free Will as a Biological Trait: Spontaneous Actions and Decision-Making in Invertebrates,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (December 15, 2010), doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.2325.
131. Alexander Maye et al., “Order in Spontaneous Behavior,” PLoS ONE 2, no. 5 (May 16, 2007): e443, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000443.
132. Anthony R Cashmore, “The Lucretian Swerve: The Biological Basis of Human Behavior and the Criminal Justice System,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, no. 10 (March 9, 2010): 4499–4504, doi:10.1073/pnas.0915161107.
133. David Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (New York: Vintage Books, 2012).
134. Daniel M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002).
135. Sam Harris on “Free Will,” 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
136. Davide Rigoni et al., “Inducing Disbelief in Free Will Alters Brain Correlates of Preconscious Motor Preparation: The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not,” Psychological Science 22, no. 5 (May 2011): 613–618, doi:10.1177/0956797611405680.
137. Roy F. Baumeister, E. J. Masicampo, and C. Nathan DeWall, “Prosocial Benefits of Feeling Free: Disbelief in Free Will Increases Aggression and Reduces Helpfulness,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35, no. 2 (February 1, 2009): 260–268, doi:10.1177/0146167208327217.
138. Kathleen D. Vohs and Jonathan W. Schooler, “The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating,” Psychological Science 19, no. 1 (January 1, 2008): 49–54, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02045.x.
139. Hagop Sarkissian et al., “Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal?,” Mind & Language 25, no. 3 (2010): 346–358, doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.2010.01393.x.
140. Wasn’t it Joss Whedon, in one of his X-Men comics, who stated that “Contradiction is the seed of consciousness”?
ABOUT THIS BOOK
February 13, 2082, First Contact. Sixty-two thousand objects of unknown origin plunge into Earth’s atmosphere – a perfect grid of falling stars screaming across the radio spectrum as they burn. Not even ashes reach the ground. Three hundred and sixty degrees of global surveillance: something just took a snapshot.
And then... nothing.
The world holds its breath and waits for the Second Coming – and while it waits, it fractures. Hive-minds coalesce, speaking in tongues; paleogeneticists resurrect nightmares from the dawn of humanity; soldiers are fitted with zombie switches to turn off consciousness in combat; half the population has retreated into the ersatz security of a virtual environment called Heaven.
Extinction beckons for Homo Sapiens.
But from deep space: whispers. Something out there talks – but not to us. Two ships, Theseus and the Crown of Thorns, are launched to discover the origin of Earth’s visitation, one bound for the outer dark of the Kuiper Belt, the other for the heart of the Solar System.
Their crews can barely be called human, what they will face certainly can’t.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER WATTS is a science fiction writer and a reformed marine-mammal biologist. He is the author of the Rifters trilogy, a winner of the Aurora, Hugo and Shirley Jackson awards and a Locus, Sturgeon and Campbell award nominee. Watts lives in Toronto.
Find out more at: www.rifters.com
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR
The Rifters Trilogy
Starfish
Maelstrom
Behemoth published as two novels:
Behemoth: ß-Max / Behemoth: Seppuku
Other
Crysis: Legion
Blindsight
Echopraxia
Collections
Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes
The Island and Other Stories
Beyond The Rift
REVIEWS
‘It puts the whole of the rest of the genre in the shade… If you read one SF novel this year, make it this one’
Richard Morgan
‘A tour de force, redefining the First Contact story for good.’
Charles Stross
‘State-of-the-art. Grabs you by the throat from page one.’
Neal Asher
A LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.
We will keep you up to date with our latest books, author blogs, special previews, tempting offers, chances to win signed editions and much more.
If you have any questions, feedback or just want to say hi, please drop us a line on
[email protected] @HoZ_Books
HeadofZeusBooks
The story starts here.
Blindsight first published in the USA in 2006 by Tor, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Echopraxia first published in the USA in 2014 by Tor, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
This combined edition Firefall, containing the works Blindsight and Echopraxia, first published in hardback in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Blindsight Copyright © Peter Watts, 2006
Echopraxia Copyright © Peter Watts, 2014
Firefall Copyright © Peter Watts, 2014
The moral right of Peter Watts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8 10
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 9781784080457
Hardback ISBN 9781784080464
Head of Zeus Ltd
Clerkenwell House
45-47 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.headofzeus.com
Peter Watts, Firefall
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends