Science Fiction Saturday: Peter Watts

Peter Watts is a Canadian science fiction writer, trained in marine biology, who writes some of the wildest--and best--science fiction currently out there. His most recent novel, Echopraxia, is quite a ride: 

It's the eve of the twenty-second century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off self-awareness during combat. And it's all under surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.

Daniel Bruks is a living fossil: a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational, a cat's-paw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he's turned his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out.

Now he's trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son. To his right is a pilot who hasn't yet found the man she's sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call "The Angels of the Asteroids."

Their pilgrimage brings Dan Bruks, the fossil man, face-to-face with the biggest evolutionary breakpoint since the origin of thought itself.

If this book doesn't blow your mind, you're just not paying attention! All his other books are excellent and almost equally mind-blowing. In addition, you can get free pdfs of a lot of his back catalog, completely approved by the author. And he has a very funky blog, with a very funky name, No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons, which I recommend. Time you made this gentleman's acquaintance!