A linguist with four distinct personalities surgically partitioned into her brain to process complex alien languages.
The book is notoriously "dense." If you find the jargon heavy at first, stick with it—the payoff in the final third is frequently described by readers on Reddit as life-changing. Blindsight by Peter Watts.epub
The crew encounters alien entities that are vastly more intelligent and faster than humans but appear to have no self-awareness or "inner life". It doesn’t just ask if we are alone;
It doesn’t just ask if we are alone; it asks if our very sense of "self" is a handicap in a competitive universe. Blindsight by Peter Watts.epub
Peter Watts has made the book available for free under a Creative Commons license on his official site, though you can also find it at retailers like Barnes & Noble .
To meet an alien intelligence, humanity sends a crew that is barely human themselves:
A "Synthesist" who had half his brain removed to stop seizures, leaving him a highly analytical observer who lacks traditional empathy.