Blindsight is a very compelling exploration of the idea that there may be different roles of consciousness in advanced intelligence. We know that a conscious decision on say the visual processing loop ends up costing 120ms or so. Why is this a good thing? What if you can have advanced intelligence without consciousness? Some work in AI (and some worries people have about AI) suggests this may be a real possibility as well.

The end result for me ends up being a much more intense feeling of the kinds of varieties of intelligence that may exist in the galaxy, or that we may end up creating ourselves.