Peter Watts /born in 1958/ is a world-famous writer of the first echelon of hard science fiction. Despite this definition of the genre, most of his works go beyond even fiction itself, and they can tentatively be called literature (about) people of the future. Using the achievements of modern science in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, physics, chemistry and biology, Peter Watts in his works constantly focuses attention on the important for today and critically important for the day to come issues of the further development of humanity and the possibility of its transformation into something else, outlines the issue of trans- and posthumanism, reflects on the possibilities of human self-awareness, and also considers the probable challenges that humanity risks facing in the very near future.
The range of questions that Peter Watts raises in his work is extremely diverse: starting from the classic ones - "what is a person?", "what is the mind?" and "do we really need self-awareness to compete effectively with other organisms?" - up to the very (impossibility) of contact with "others", as well as "what can our creator (god) be like and should we meet him at all?"
The works of Peter Watts can rightly be considered the literature of the future, and not only in the sense of fiction, but also in the broadest sense of literature as such. And his masterful writing skill and considerable knowledge in the most diverse fields of modern science provide a powerful basis for his texts, which are justly admired by the whole world and which, with their appearance, significantly changed the meaning and landscape of modern fantastic literature.
"Echopraxia" belongs to Peter Watts' most famous cycle "Firefall", which also includes the novel "Blindsight" and the short stories "The Colonel" and "The Insect Gods".
Enough time has passed since contact with "Theseus", who went to meet the mysterious aliens, has been lost, and the tangle of insoluble problems is getting tighter and tighter on Earth, in which the most diverse forces are intertwined - from ordinary people to various factions representatives of posthumanity. But unexpectedly, the traces of the missing "Theseus" are found in a near-solar orbit - at the giant power station "Icarus", which was the guide of "Theseus" in the darkness of space and which at the same time largely depends on the survival of the earthly civilization in its current form. It is there that the expedition will fly, with a rather whimsical crew, among whose members there is only one real person in the modern sense of the word.
Each of the expedition members has their own plans for God, whose traces they hope to find on "Icarus". The only problem is that God himself also has plans for everyone, and they are, of course, far from human understanding. It is there, in the midst of the burning heat of the sun, that the further fate of the Earth, humanity and what it will be like in the future, and whether it will be at all, will be decided.
Translated from English
Ostap Ukrainets
Kateryna Dudka
