I read Blindsight and I thought it was good, I think, though I am no longer certain I exist as an I.

That works, too.

The author, Peter Watts, published this novel under a creative commons license. You can find the full text here, in multiple formats, at his website: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

Blindsight is a great story, but I don't really remember the characters. Why do you think the characters are noteworthy?

They where excellently shaped to display a philosophical problem.

The man with literally half his brain removed becoming, in essence, the surviving ego of the story, was a nice touch.

The first SF book I ever bought with my allowance money was Robert Heinlein's Starman Jones, one of his later "juveniles". I was ten years old.

I read it for the spaceships, and the computers, and the other whiz-bang technology stuff. I never even noticed the characters. I went on to read a bunch of E E "Doc" Smith and other space opera and was happy.

On a lark, I re-read Starman Jones a few days ago. I'm 56 now. I am astonished at how well Heinlein had drawn his characters, and I could now spot the pivotal moment where the protagonist makes his big change; all stuff I missed when I was a pre-teen, but that is obvious now. If Heinlein hadn't put all that "character stuff" there, I would not have enjoyed the book, but I wasn't conscious enough to appreciate it.

I realized quite a few years ago that most of the SF I read used the whiz-bang stuff as a hook, but that the books I enjoyed the most had the best character development.

I strongly disagree that character is inherently secondary in SF. Or rather, it is just as secondary in crappy SF as it is in the crappy books of just about any genre (mystery, bodice buster, adventure, western, spy novel, etc.). [Apologies for the word "crappy", but I'm feeling rather Ellisonesque this morning]

That does not makes much sense to me. You can be SF fan while demanding that arbitrary aspect of the book is high quality - whether character, action quality, gore, logical consistency or the text itself.

Just because you personally don't care about some aspect of the book does not mean all who do are dabblers.

I didn't mean to insult others' tastes, and I'm sorry if I came across that way - I'm all for enjoying whatever palette of genres you like. But if your primary interest is character, surely you would want books written with that in mind. And if a book is primarily about its characters, why would that book be written as SF?

For me personally, if the character is unrealistic, then it bothers me. It is not that it would be primary interest, I don't read because of it. But when it is badly written it make me stop to read - it prevents immersion to me and makes me feel like that world does not "work".