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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
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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.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 9781784080457
Hardback ISBN 9781784080464
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