r/printSF is unconscionably obsessed with this middling work. It's just a collection of "isn't that cool" pop-sci phenomena randomly dropped into an Aliens (1986) space horror plot. Watts in his interviews just comes across as a fanboy hack. Interstellar travel is so difficult that spacefaring aliens must have deliberately set out to do it and are thus conscious! Triffids aren't going to grow their way to Earth!