Well this was a surprise read. While looking about the Peter Watts' books I came across this short story and when I found out it is available for free on publisher's (Tor) page I had to check it out.

And what a story. In general SF stories I split into dynamic epics (i.e. Dune, Starfishers, Culture, Polity etc), static epics (i.e Foundation, Culture (some of them are more on talk/philosophy than action)), crime/thriller/action (i.e. Robot series (including Caves of Steele), Neuromancer, Hardwired, Takeshi Kovacs) and existential ones (i.e. We, Brave New World, Hard to be God).

And then ..... then you end up with stories that make you spin around and wonder what did you just read. I had the same thoughts when I read Revelation Space and some of the works by Peter F Hamilton and Adrian Tchaikovsky.
So many elements mixed in, trans-humans, humans, dystopia elements (that mention of panopticon had my skin crawling, why do these elements resonate so close to home these days), weird, almost divine (and scary as hell) AI bio constructs, orbital stations and powerful weapons, biological poisons but also energy guns.

This short story of 29 pages could not be better teaser for this author's Firefall series. It reads like a quick pace movie trailer - we follow a man, Colonel from the title, who comes across the vital clue about his son while trying to deal sort of an understanding between global government and rogue AI bio constructs - for all means and purposes just recall the bunch of people linked together in dump underworld like in Ghost in the Shell movie. Informationt hey provide him, that could be both genuine but also means of manipulation force him to go dark and seek his son.

It is incredible how many things ended up in this .... short, man, shortiest of the short stories I ever read.

Did it interest me for the rest of the series? Absolutely! if single short story packs a punch like some full length SF novels I am in for a full scale adventure.

Highly recommended if you are still deliberating whether or not Firefall series sounds good I think this book will make decision for you. If you already went through the books in the series and liked it ... hey, I know :) I do not want to preach to the choir :) you already know the author's story-telling ability, this story might be interesting but I doubt anything of interest is on this pages for you.

Anyways, I just cannot wait to start the series :) ( )

It's fine, but probably would have been better left for the showrunner's bible for the inevitable eventual adaptation of the series.

It's telling that I fell asleep with two pages to go, and didn't read those until late the next night.

Tip: If you want to save yourself the two bucks this cost on kindle, it's available for free on the Tor website (linked in the Question section below on Goodreads). ( )

The Colonel by Peter Watts is a 30-page sequel to Blindsight. It got a Locus Award nomination for best novelette in 215, which leaves me wondering how short a work would have to be not to qualify as a novelette. That quibble aside, The Colonel gives Watts a chance to talk a bit more about the idea of a human hive mind, one of the few takes on alternate forms of sentience that Blindsight did not get around to. The main character is the father of Siri Keaton, still homeward bound on the Theseus. As a bonus, there is a cat who was technologically uplifted for military use and who now suffers post-traumatic stress. I wonder what David Brin would have to say about that. 4 stars. ( )

A bit of insight into a character that isn't even tertiary in the novel this story refers to, "Blindsight", and another take on the "hive mind" theme from that very novel. Conclusion: It's scary in every form or shape, but most of all is it incomprehensible for "baselines" like us. ( )

An interesting short story with a little twist to it. It is a teaser for the novels set in the same universe where the colonel is the father of one of the main characters ( )