Blindsight
Peter Watts
 Eighty years in the future, Earth becomes aware of an alien presence when thousands of micro-satellites survey the Earth; through good luck, the incoming alien vessel is detected, and the ship Theseus, with its artificial intelligence captain and crew of five, are sent out to engage in first contact with the huge alien vessel called Rorschach. As they explore the vessel and attempt to analyze it and its inhabitants, the narrator, Siri, considers his life and strives to understand himself and ponders the nature of intelligence and consciousness, their utility, and what an alien mind might be like. Eventually the crew realizes that they are greatly outmatched by the vessel and its unconscious but extremely capable inhabitants. When the level of this threat becomes clear, Theseus runs a kamikaze mission using its antimatter as a payload, while Siri returns to Earth, which he eventually realizes is being overrun by a non-sentient offshoot of humanity, beginning to exterminate what may be the only spark of consciousness in the universe.