Blindsight is an excellent hard sci-fi novel which you might want to consider reading if you like that sort of thing, and I'll say no more about it.
If you liked Blindsight's ideas, you should definitely try to read Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity by Thomas Metzinger. Apparently Blindsight was heavily inspired by it. This is what the author has to say about it:
Let's get the biggies out of the way first. Metzinger's Being No One is the toughest book I've ever read (and there are still significant chunks of it I haven't), but it also contains some of the most mindblowing ideas I've encountered in fact or fiction. Most authors are shameless bait-and-switchers when it comes to the nature of consciousness. Pinker calls his book How the Mind Works, then admits on page one that "We don't understand how the mind works". Koch (the guy who coined the term "zombie agents") writes The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, in which he sheepishly sidesteps the whole issue of why neural activity should result in any kind of subjective awareness whatsoever.
Towering above such pussies, Metzinger takes the bull by the balls. {Spoilers for Blindsight, use rot13}: Uvf "Jbeyq-mreb" ulcbgurfvf abg bayl rkcynvaf gur fhowrpgvir frafr bs frys, ohg nyfb jul fhpu na vyyhfbel svefg-crefba aneengbe jbhyq or na rzretrag cebcregl bs pregnva pbtavgvir flfgrzf va gur svefg cynpr. I have no idea whether he's right— the man's way beyond me— but at least he addressed the real question that keeps us staring at the ceiling at three a.m., long after the last roach is spent. Many of the syndromes and maladies dropped into Blindsight I first encountered in Metzinger's book. Any uncited claims or statements in this subsection probably hail from that source.
Well Blindsight impressed me enough, that I've started The Ego Tunnel. In short, the idea of unconscious intelligence bothered me. My intuition says that consciousness could be what happens when something tries to model its intelligence and actions, but of course that hardly explains anything. While I feel like it's unlikely I'll find many good answers, it is interesting enough to be enjoyable to read.
Does LW have a consensus on which books are worthwhile to read regarding consciousness? I read a small intro (Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, Susan Blackmore, Oxford University Press), and the summary seems to be "Consciousness is pretty damn weird and no one seems to have much of a handle on it". As a non-technical layman, are there any useful books for me to read on the subject?
(I have started reading Daniel Dennet's Intuition Pumps, and I'm a bit torn. He seems highly respected by good scientists, but I feel that if the book didn't have his name on it, I would be well on my way to dismissing it. Are Dennet's earlier works on consciousness a good read?)