I enjoy hanging out with Peter Watts. He's one of my husband's authors, and also I like his work.

He's exceedingly tall, so of course, he's someone I look up to. But also, he finds the world entertainingly bleak in ways that I often have not thought of. He's an ex-marine biologist, and about five years ago when I mentioned to him over lunch that our small son (also named Peter) wanted to grow up t be a marine-biologist, he responded, He'd better hurry, or there'll be nothing left to study but squid. That's Peter!

I confess that I have not read Blindsight yet, though it has made it as far as my night table. (But would you take a blurb from the editor's wife, anyway?) So I'll let Cory talk about it.

My friend Peter Watts has just put his breakout novel Blindsight under a Creative Commons license and put it online, partly because the book is selling so fast that readers are having a hard time laying their hands on copies. Peter writes the angriest, darkest sf I've ever read, heart-rending stuff that makes you glad you're alive if only because you're better off than his characters. He's also a wild talent when it comes to the intersection of biology and tech (he's got a Ph.D. in Marine Biology), the kind of person who spits out ideas that lesser writers end up hashing over for a decade afterwards (he once posited a perfectly plausible means by which a computer virus and human pandemic could co-evolve, for example). I've had at least ten people I respect come up to me and spontaneously advise me to read Blindsight ASAP -- my discretionary reading list is very clogged, but it's as high on it as I can put it, you damned betcha.

OK. So Peter's released it under CC license. First take a peak at the whole thing for free, and THEN order a copy for everyone on your Christmas list who needs this kind of dose of pure bracing gloom! What a deal! Act now without thinking!

To quote Carlos Fuentes, an offer like this isn't made every day!