Blindsight was the first book I read by Peter Watts. The vampires threw me for a loop when I was reading it too. They seemed like a weird element to include in

Blindsight was the first book I read by Peter Watts. The vampires threw me for a loop when I was reading it too. They seemed like a weird element to include in a moderately hard sci-fi book, and it was a bit jarring. The explanation for how they were a subspecies that got resurrected was kinda weak, and for the first chunk of the book I thought they were only there because the author really likes vampires or something. Later on it turns out that he had a good reason for including them! They’re included so he could compare and contrast human minds with other types of minds: the really alien (the Scramblers), and the human-ish (the vampires). The whole thing is a neat sci-fi story wrapped around a prolonged meditation on consciousness, which I think is neat (but I can also understand if it isn’t your bag).