No mention of Peter Watts' Blindsight? That book changed all sorts of notions of first contact and consciousness for me. I'm still thinking about it to this day. Absolute must read for anyone concerned with such things
It was a Hugo nominee and actively reprinted under Tor Essentials label; probably doesn't qualify as a book "you may never have heard of"...but to be fair, anything by Andy Weir or Hugh Howey probably shouldn't have made the list either.
>probably doesn't qualify as a book "you may never have heard of"
That's most of the ones being mentioned in this thread. I think maybe they are scifi books you haven't heard of...if you also don't normally read scifi.
I loved that about this book. For the first like 75% of the book you're thinking, "Okay, these vampires must just be a metaphor or a name they've given to something else." Nope, just actual vampires.
Yeah it's implausible. I mean, I don't think his genetics is right. So it's probably physically possible in some sense, but I don't it makes sense that it's that stable of a trait.
I remember reading this, and looking out my office window where the branches of neighboring tree (denuded of leaves because it was winter) made three or four near-perfect right angles in projection (along with intersections at other angles).
I watched the video and that's what the fictional presenter says. I don't think it really makes sense though, but maybe you can get passed that because the species coming into existence at all is so contrived and unlikely?
The vampires appeared to have less of a gene pool and more of a gene cleanroom. Knife edge stuff there.
