Echopraxia (novel)

Echopraxia is a hard science fiction novel by Peter Watts. It is a "sidequel" to his 2006 novel Blindsight. It follows the story of a biologist who gets caught up in a voyage into the heart of the solar system among members of a transcendentalist monastic order and allies (including a vampire escaped from a research facility and her cadre of zombified soldiers) to investigate a mysterious signal seemingly coming from the mission sent to initiate first contact in Watts' previous novel.