f7d9395c_atings_and_reviews___Gwern_net__Review
[Title] Echopraxia (Firefall, #2) [Author] Peter Watts [Rating] ★★★★ [Year] 2014 [Read] 2014/08/15 [Review] 
We’ve been waiting for this since Blindsight came out in 2006 and blew away all its readers. It’s been a long wait and those who read Watt’s blog and are familiar with his many travails (from a fight with the US federal government to flesh-eating bacteria) will understand the long wait. Was it worthwhile? Not really. Echopraxia is a short fast read (~3-4h) which largely expands on the ideas that B introduced: the concept of new apex predators, vampires; the minimal value of consciousness and what non-conscious upgrades of the brain like the Bicamerals could do with the horsepower; hyper-advanced aliens; and subconscious manipulation. Watts adds in scientific ‘zombies’, but the idea never really goes anywhere - Watts’s side-story “The Colonel” is in some respects more interesting than the novel, and fleshes out the major character The Colonel in a way the novel never really does. (Although the novel at least does raise interesting questions about whether Siri Keeton really escaped alive in B, to recontextualize it - perhaps we’re simply reading alien propaganda!) The Bicamerals themselves are something of a disappointment compared to the invention of the Scramblers or vampires. The plot moves on rails from the biologist in the desert to the sun back to the desert, and likely B readers will see coming the major plot twists with the alien & vampire (it’s almost identical). Some potentially intriguing ideas go unexplored; for example, the spider/“eight-legged cat” suggestion is quite interesting, but the alien fungus winds up not doing anything beyond what a more normal version of intelligence would do and so it doesn’t illustrate the idea of a timesharing slow-but-powerful intelligence. The ending is opaque and knotty, but I think with some thought and review of terminology it becomes clear: the Bicamerals and emergent AIs have completed their plan in which the hijacked fungus is incubated in the protagonist to upgrade baseline humans to vampire-like entities (sans the vampire weaknesses and without consciousness), which will be able to go toe to toe with the God-like alien invader. So, not a waste of time and probably pretty impressive to people unacquainted with Watts, but below B, some of the Rifter books, and the better short stories. I suggest reading B, then “The Colonel”, then Echopraxia.
Ratings and reviews - Gwern.net
Review