Call number
Genres
Publication
New York: Ace Books, 2006
Pages
415
Description
The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day. Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity. For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...… (more)
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novel — 2006)
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2006)
SF Site Reader's Choice (2005)
SF Site Editor's Choice (2005)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (Finalist — 2006)
Arthur C. Clarke Award (Shortlist — 2006)
British Science Fiction Association Award (Shortlist — Novel — 2005)
Seiun Award (Nominee — 2010)
Italia Award (Finalist — 2008)
Prometheus Award (Nominee — Novel — 2006)
Nagroda SFinks (2010)
Locus Recommended Reading (2005)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2005-07
Physical description
415 p.; 7.2 inches
ISBN
0441014151 / 9780441014156
Similar in this library
User reviews
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
I've read all of Charles Stross's Laundry novels, which are humorous neo-Lovecraftian espionage adventures. Those involve extensive homages to various earlier writers, with some consequent inflections of writing style. Accelerando is the first of Stross's straight-ahead science fiction books I've
In subject matter, this book seemed most comparable to the excellent work of Ian McDonald, with an ambitious 21st-century futurology involving radical technologies of simulation, artificial intelligence, and enhancement of human capability. But true to his title, Stross imposes a pace of change far in excess of what I've seen in McDonald's books. He has evidently taken Moore's Law of integrated circuit development and its extrapolation in Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns as the axioms of his story about what might become of our species and our planet. Not only does Stross have the intellectual fortitude to narratively stare down the "technological singularity" but he also confronts Fermi's Paradox. He enlists Ray Bradbury's notion of the matrioshka brain, Robert L. Forward's starwisp, and other inventions that seem inevitable in the face of unchecked technological development.
Given some of the topical focus, I was prepared for the futurological flavor of this book to have something in common with Olav Stapledon's Star Maker. Instead, I was surprised to sense a certain kinship to 1970s-era Robert Heinlein novels. Perhaps Heinlein's orientation to the aerospace research of his day has its analog in Stross's own background in software engineering. Moreover, the characters and their motivations are sketched in the manner that reminds me much more of Heinlein than, say, McDonald.
The novel has a triple-triadic structure, with the nine chapters having seen individual publication as short stories prior to their assembly here. As a consequence, there is something of an expositional "reset" at the start of each part, with a little redundancy and narrative hand-holding. But in light of the huge changes in context imposed by each transition from one part to the next, the effect is barely noticeable, and actually somewhat comforting. Another effect of this compositional process is that each chapter seems to have roughly the same dramatic weight as the others. The last of them could be read equally as climax or denouement, depending on the reader's inclination. Each of the three larger sections is focused on a successive generation of a single family moving deeper into the trans-human condition.
While not as overtly comedic as the Laundry books, Accelerando definitely has its share of laughs, many of them with a black sense of humor, such as the throwaway mention of cannibalistic cuisine on page 262. The characters are strong enough to keep the narrative rolling, despite its frequent interruption with bulletin-style text bringing the reader up to date on the state of (post-)human affairs for the decade in question. The entire book -- excepting the occasional retrospective glance -- is written in the present tense, and it is a mark of Stross's artistry in using this unconventional technique for novel-length fiction in English that I didn't even notice until I had read most of the way through the first large chapter. In the seven years since it has been collected into a novel, history has of course provided some contradictions to point up the status of Accelerando as a fiction, but the sort of events it proposes could still credibly be in our future.
Show More
digested, and I presume it represents a more direct delivery of his authorial voice. (There's a simulated Lovecraft cameo at page 337, though.) In subject matter, this book seemed most comparable to the excellent work of Ian McDonald, with an ambitious 21st-century futurology involving radical technologies of simulation, artificial intelligence, and enhancement of human capability. But true to his title, Stross imposes a pace of change far in excess of what I've seen in McDonald's books. He has evidently taken Moore's Law of integrated circuit development and its extrapolation in Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns as the axioms of his story about what might become of our species and our planet. Not only does Stross have the intellectual fortitude to narratively stare down the "technological singularity" but he also confronts Fermi's Paradox. He enlists Ray Bradbury's notion of the matrioshka brain, Robert L. Forward's starwisp, and other inventions that seem inevitable in the face of unchecked technological development.
Given some of the topical focus, I was prepared for the futurological flavor of this book to have something in common with Olav Stapledon's Star Maker. Instead, I was surprised to sense a certain kinship to 1970s-era Robert Heinlein novels. Perhaps Heinlein's orientation to the aerospace research of his day has its analog in Stross's own background in software engineering. Moreover, the characters and their motivations are sketched in the manner that reminds me much more of Heinlein than, say, McDonald.
The novel has a triple-triadic structure, with the nine chapters having seen individual publication as short stories prior to their assembly here. As a consequence, there is something of an expositional "reset" at the start of each part, with a little redundancy and narrative hand-holding. But in light of the huge changes in context imposed by each transition from one part to the next, the effect is barely noticeable, and actually somewhat comforting. Another effect of this compositional process is that each chapter seems to have roughly the same dramatic weight as the others. The last of them could be read equally as climax or denouement, depending on the reader's inclination. Each of the three larger sections is focused on a successive generation of a single family moving deeper into the trans-human condition.
While not as overtly comedic as the Laundry books, Accelerando definitely has its share of laughs, many of them with a black sense of humor, such as the throwaway mention of cannibalistic cuisine on page 262. The characters are strong enough to keep the narrative rolling, despite its frequent interruption with bulletin-style text bringing the reader up to date on the state of (post-)human affairs for the decade in question. The entire book -- excepting the occasional retrospective glance -- is written in the present tense, and it is a mark of Stross's artistry in using this unconventional technique for novel-length fiction in English that I didn't even notice until I had read most of the way through the first large chapter. In the seven years since it has been collected into a novel, history has of course provided some contradictions to point up the status of Accelerando as a fiction, but the sort of events it proposes could still credibly be in our future.
Show Less
LibraryThing member reading_fox
Weird. Written over a few years as short stories, this is the compiled novel version, all featuring the same characters at various points along their timespan.
The basic premise is that of an accellerated society with increasing computer imput, until most people are running solely as AI simulations
Very very fast paced, you really have to think about what's happened in the changing timeframes. Not exactly likely to occur to us, but it does provide some interesting insight into potential problems of the future. I was impressed with his solution to the Fermi Paradox, although I'm not sure the informational density figures were calculated rather than guessed. Being comprised of short stories the characterisation is pretty poor.
Overal it' sa bit too long really, as the point had been made by the third or fourth short story. Fun in a zany kind of way.
The basic premise is that of an accellerated society with increasing computer imput, until most people are running solely as AI simulations
Show More
of themselves. The story follows one family through about 6 decades of "real" time, in various locales through the solar sytem. Manfred is a bit of shyster - dreaming up schemes and ways around problems. But even he gets stuck keeping up with the new artifical conciousnesses of Economics 2.0Very very fast paced, you really have to think about what's happened in the changing timeframes. Not exactly likely to occur to us, but it does provide some interesting insight into potential problems of the future. I was impressed with his solution to the Fermi Paradox, although I'm not sure the informational density figures were calculated rather than guessed. Being comprised of short stories the characterisation is pretty poor.
Overal it' sa bit too long really, as the point had been made by the third or fourth short story. Fun in a zany kind of way.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jeffhandley
Tough read with a pussy ending. It was rare for it to make me want to read on to the next page, but I kept thinking it was going to get better. I read it 10-20 pages at a time over many months; it never gripped me. It's a shame, because the story and concept had great potential.
LibraryThing member Clevermonkey
A series of novellas rather than a single novel, more amazing pre- and post-Singularity ideas per page than anyone.
LibraryThing member paperloverevolution
Here’s what wrong with the book:
The characters are cardboardy and unbelievable. Stross is certainly clever, and his ideas are interesting. That’s not enough to propel an ‘inter-generational saga’ or whatever crap the jacket blurb described.
The aforementioned interesting ideas are mostly
And while Stross is capable of being very funny, the humor in Accelerando is heavy-handed. In the future, for instance, people are still making jokes about Nigerian email scams. It lacks the effortless wit that made Singularity Sky (Ace) such a delight. It was hard to force myself to finish reading it, and I have to admit that I skimmed the last thirty or so pages.
In summation: read something else.
The characters are cardboardy and unbelievable. Stross is certainly clever, and his ideas are interesting. That’s not enough to propel an ‘inter-generational saga’ or whatever crap the jacket blurb described.
The aforementioned interesting ideas are mostly
Show More
confined to massive infodumps at the end of each chapter, set apart from the story in bold, off-set font, rather than worked into the narrative in any sort of coherent fashion. I would rather Stross have written a very long article, or an essay, than to have waded through the skeletal ‘novel’ gracelessly tacked around his asides.And while Stross is capable of being very funny, the humor in Accelerando is heavy-handed. In the future, for instance, people are still making jokes about Nigerian email scams. It lacks the effortless wit that made Singularity Sky (Ace) such a delight. It was hard to force myself to finish reading it, and I have to admit that I skimmed the last thirty or so pages.
In summation: read something else.
Show Less
LibraryThing member emed0s
For the first hundred pages I thought the writer, instead of writing himself, had just developed a computer program that took random text snippets from Slashdot discussions and mixed them to generate some kind of literary nonsense. Cause the book is no more than a lot of technobabbling mixed with
The last 300 pages are more technology chatter but now said chatter comes straight, and raw, from the writer's imagination and it gets worse and worse, think miniaturization plus space travel, as he seems not to know where he wants to take the story.
If anything the books explores a little bit into the post-scarcity economics issue, but that doesn't make the book as a whole any better.
Show More
some explicit sex passages.The last 300 pages are more technology chatter but now said chatter comes straight, and raw, from the writer's imagination and it gets worse and worse, think miniaturization plus space travel, as he seems not to know where he wants to take the story.
If anything the books explores a little bit into the post-scarcity economics issue, but that doesn't make the book as a whole any better.
Show Less
LibraryThing member shawjonathan
Accelerando combines science of the brain, economic theory, any amount of hardware, and aliens. It's post-Internet and post-Neuromancer, and moves so fast and so far and so strangely that it's main pleasure for me, not an inconsiderable pleasure, was the constant sense that it was going to spin out
Show More
past the point where I could follow what was happening to its increasingly post-human world, and the thrill of feeling that I was almost keeping up. I just read that Charles Stross's previous book, Glasshouse, is one of the twenty science fiction novels that will change your life. It must be a humdinger if it's better than this, because this one certainly presents a future, or a range of futures, that are way beyond plausible or likely, and I would have thought until now way beyond imaginable. Like Neal Stephenson at his most exuberant, the book teems with ideas and inventions that seem to be generated and squandered for the sheer thrill of invention. (It does have a plot as well, and a satisfactory romantic thread or two.) Show Less
LibraryThing member scottcholstad
Didn't finish. Didn't even come close. Didn't like it. Wasn't impressed. Was pretty annoyed by this author and his characters.
Manfred Macx travels the globe and stays in swank hotels without any money whatsoever because he's given anything he wants by everyone in the world. Why? He's an idea man
Manfred Macx travels the globe and stays in swank hotels without any money whatsoever because he's given anything he wants by everyone in the world. Why? He's an idea man
Show More
and is constantly coming up with new ideas and instantly patenting them. But instead of holding onto them and making bank, he turns over the patents to a group like an open software group, which allows anyone who wants to access the info in the patents and become rich. So he has essentially made millions of people millionaires. As a result, the IRS says he owes them nearly 13 million and they are after him. His ex-fiance is a dominatrix who makes a reappearance early in the book. They've had plenty of S&M sex, but have never actually had intercourse and have never even climaxed, because exchanging bodily fluids is gross. I know. Stupid as hell. The thing that makes it even more stupid is that virtually as soon as they meet back up for the first time in who knows how long, they go to his hotel room where they resume their S&M routine, but this time, they actually do it and have orgasms because she wants to get pregnant. Even though he pretty much disgusts her. Makes no sense. And the Russian Microsoft Windows NT User Group is after him for help defecting. To where, he doesn't know. Or care. But the thing that's truly confusing is that they're actually lobsters (I'm not kidding) that are being uploaded onto the net by researchers in America, apparently as a precursor to uploading pretty much anything and everything at some point. And everything revolves around bandwidth. God, if I never go another day without hearing that term, I'll be grateful as hell. The author must use that term twice in every paragraph in the book and he uses it for EVERYTHING! It's annoying as hell. To makes matters worse, the book is full of techno-babble, as though he pulled out a tech dictionary and decided to put every word he could find in it -- and in Wired magazine -- into the book in arbitrary scenes to impress and confuse the reader. But it's useless, pointless trash. I doubt even he knows what he's talking about. Frankly, the blurbs on and in this book make it sound like Stross is as good as Gibson and some of the others, but that's not true. Not even close. He's got some interesting ideas, but he's boring, the book's boring and stupid, and I'm not wasting my time wading through this crap anymore. Not recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member TulsaTV
There are enough ideas in this novel for a shelf full of books. Perhaps the density and the constant scene changing simulates the future shock that should be induced by a multi-generational story over time, space, identity, and mind. I often found myself rereading sections, just to get oriented as
I was constantly reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Yet the author made a valiant attempt to explain or give a sense of the underpinnings of all the magic taking place.
As a novel, it doesn't have the motive force to make it a page-turner. The sheer volume of information and imagination works against it. I also felt that some of the ideas and occurrences were not coherently conceived and seemed arbitrarily thrown together. But I suppose the apparent incoherence is the way a complex and rapidly changing future might look to someone living through it.
There is a touch of what I would call "Heinleinian group solipsism": key characters find their own personal conflicts more interesting than the wonders being forcefully presented to them by their universe.
Though it wasn't an easy read, I'm glad I made it all the way through. Like Stapledon's "Last and First Men", the book deserves a round of applause for its audacity and scope.
This vision of the Singularity is far more detailed and plausible than Ray Kurzweil's nebulous and (I think) overoptimistic "Rapture of the Geeks". I thank Mr. Stross for that.
Show More
to who was speaking, or to visualize a setting.I was constantly reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Yet the author made a valiant attempt to explain or give a sense of the underpinnings of all the magic taking place.
As a novel, it doesn't have the motive force to make it a page-turner. The sheer volume of information and imagination works against it. I also felt that some of the ideas and occurrences were not coherently conceived and seemed arbitrarily thrown together. But I suppose the apparent incoherence is the way a complex and rapidly changing future might look to someone living through it.
There is a touch of what I would call "Heinleinian group solipsism": key characters find their own personal conflicts more interesting than the wonders being forcefully presented to them by their universe.
Though it wasn't an easy read, I'm glad I made it all the way through. Like Stapledon's "Last and First Men", the book deserves a round of applause for its audacity and scope.
This vision of the Singularity is far more detailed and plausible than Ray Kurzweil's nebulous and (I think) overoptimistic "Rapture of the Geeks". I thank Mr. Stross for that.
Show Less
LibraryThing member AsYouKnow_Bob
I read several of these chapters when they went by in Asimov's earlier this century; only now in 2009 did I finally read them as fixed-up together in novel form.
Madly inventive, but these portions are not much more coherent in a single serving than they were spread out across several years of
Einstein places hard limits on the stories an author can tell about the exploration of the galaxy; humans are too puny and too ephemeral to inhabit stories that span star systems.
Stross side-steps the problem by having his characters sail to the stars as computer downloads aboard a can-sized starship, capable of high g's and tiny payload mass.
But once the characters are computer simulations of themselves, it becomes increasingly hard to take their adventures seriously.
I then realized, however that, "rebootable software emulations of real characters" is actually a pretty good definition of the entire enterprise of "fiction".
Madly inventive, but these portions are not much more coherent in a single serving than they were spread out across several years of
Show More
Asimov's.Einstein places hard limits on the stories an author can tell about the exploration of the galaxy; humans are too puny and too ephemeral to inhabit stories that span star systems.
Stross side-steps the problem by having his characters sail to the stars as computer downloads aboard a can-sized starship, capable of high g's and tiny payload mass.
But once the characters are computer simulations of themselves, it becomes increasingly hard to take their adventures seriously.
I then realized, however that, "rebootable software emulations of real characters" is actually a pretty good definition of the entire enterprise of "fiction".
Show Less
LibraryThing member pamar
according to most people who care about this stuff, is the point in time where technology progresses at such a rate that it becomes impossible to understand what happens next for people who are living *before* the singularity.
I humbly propose an alternate explanation: it's the point in time after
From then onwards, I was reading on autopilot... the author is good at describing mega-homungous-hyper-concepts and has surely a good grasp of a large number of scientific fields, a vast arrays of memes and is happy to throw in-jokes at his Slashdot crowd... problem is, when things get really really very advanced, life and death stop to have meaning, reality can be bent at will and everything (and everyone) is a virtual machine running some sort of simulation sofware, possibly on a stack of other virtual machines simulating everything above and below every layer of reality....
Who cares?
Not me. I suppose that The Culture could be considered post-singularity, but -maybe by injecting a good dose of Good Old Space Opera tropes, Banks succeeds in keeping me interested in his characters and plots. Or at least it does most of the time.
I humbly propose an alternate explanation: it's the point in time after
Show More
which I stop caring about the characters in a science fiction novel. So, in this case, the Singularity happens around page 120.From then onwards, I was reading on autopilot... the author is good at describing mega-homungous-hyper-concepts and has surely a good grasp of a large number of scientific fields, a vast arrays of memes and is happy to throw in-jokes at his Slashdot crowd... problem is, when things get really really very advanced, life and death stop to have meaning, reality can be bent at will and everything (and everyone) is a virtual machine running some sort of simulation sofware, possibly on a stack of other virtual machines simulating everything above and below every layer of reality....
Who cares?
Not me. I suppose that The Culture could be considered post-singularity, but -maybe by injecting a good dose of Good Old Space Opera tropes, Banks succeeds in keeping me interested in his characters and plots. Or at least it does most of the time.
Show Less
LibraryThing member quantum.alex
tl;dr: I need a quantum-computer, nanomachine-Dyson-swarm-Matrioshka brain to write a review about this story about existential ideas and self-centered posthumans--both enhanced Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Singularity-spawned--as well as other self-centered, galactic, self-aware, self-actualizing
Show More
beings. If you understood that sentence or want to understand it, then this story is written for you. ^_^ Show Less
LibraryThing member aquinaught
My expectations were set too high with this book and it could be argued that my low rating is a bit exaggerated. I stand by it, however, because WOW did I not enjoy reading Accelerando. Stross was highly recommended to me by people whose opinions I hold in high regard and I loved the shit out of
Yeah. I wasn't thrilled very quickly and I plodded along in the hopes that things got better. I hated the characters to whom we were introduced. The rapid-fire high vocabulary became tiresome after a few instances. I did learn a few new words throughout the barrage, so it wasn't a futile endeavor. I understand that those passages were meant to show how on-the-ball and superior Manny was, but I can be reminded that I'm dumb only so often in my leisure reading before I surrender and venture forth in search of windows to lick.
I was thrilled when Stross took a page out of Asimov's Foundation series and leaped forward a generation because I hoped I would like this new protagonist. Nope. Add on heaps and heaps of politicking and a brief nod to the question of what makes a person and I just clicked the page bumper on my Kindle hoping it would get better eventually.
It didn't. At least for me. More characters I couldn't stand (and some who would simply disappear without a trace!), more situations I couldn't bother to ponder, and more apathy toward the conclusion. I couldn't even muster enthusiasm for the threat of the explosive annihilation of the Macx family at one point.
So maybe I'm not a hard sci-fi fan. Eh, it happens. I'm not going to hold it against Stross because he still comes highly recommended and did I mention I loved the shit out of A Colder War? On to The Atrocity Archives for redemption.
Show More
his A Colder War novella. I was strapped in for a hard sci-fi ride!Yeah. I wasn't thrilled very quickly and I plodded along in the hopes that things got better. I hated the characters to whom we were introduced. The rapid-fire high vocabulary became tiresome after a few instances. I did learn a few new words throughout the barrage, so it wasn't a futile endeavor. I understand that those passages were meant to show how on-the-ball and superior Manny was, but I can be reminded that I'm dumb only so often in my leisure reading before I surrender and venture forth in search of windows to lick.
I was thrilled when Stross took a page out of Asimov's Foundation series and leaped forward a generation because I hoped I would like this new protagonist. Nope. Add on heaps and heaps of politicking and a brief nod to the question of what makes a person and I just clicked the page bumper on my Kindle hoping it would get better eventually.
It didn't. At least for me. More characters I couldn't stand (and some who would simply disappear without a trace!), more situations I couldn't bother to ponder, and more apathy toward the conclusion. I couldn't even muster enthusiasm for the threat of the explosive annihilation of the Macx family at one point.
So maybe I'm not a hard sci-fi fan. Eh, it happens. I'm not going to hold it against Stross because he still comes highly recommended and did I mention I loved the shit out of A Colder War? On to The Atrocity Archives for redemption.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lewispike
This is really short stories tied together by characters. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it. Lots of things like where Web 2.0 will take us explored in an interesting way.
LibraryThing member jdrisko
An idea rich set of stories. Strongly techno sci-fi with a long term view. Some complain its too long or disjointed - I did not find the book this way. It requires imagination and flexibility but the core stories are quite clear and all have good character development and lots of humor. Dense but
The ending - in a work that goes to the far future, is ambiguous but I have yet to read any that works well. C'est la vie. Worth the price of admission if you are curious and enjoy running with great ideas.
Show More
rich, provocative. The ending - in a work that goes to the far future, is ambiguous but I have yet to read any that works well. C'est la vie. Worth the price of admission if you are curious and enjoy running with great ideas.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ivan.frade
Family businesses are always complicated and computational power can only make them worse. Take a good plot, mix it with a accelerating technological evolution and tell it using plenty of tech buzzwords. I found the result entertaining and kind of geek-fun.
LibraryThing member robertweaver
This was a free online version but still enjoyable.
LibraryThing member rameau
In 1957, Raymond Chandler wrote a cutting one-paragraph parody of sf. (Sample: "I check out with K 19 on Aldabaran III, and stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop.") Accerlerando is a lot like that, but novel length. It relies a lot on current and not-so-current tech
Show More
speak. (Serdar Argic is name-checked.) In 5 years, this will be dated. In 10 years, it will be incomprehensible. The character development is not much better with Manfred and Amber being straight-up geek wish fulfillment. By the way, what the hell are the inner solar system AIs doing with all their computer power? Based on the evidence in the novel, the answer seems to be nothing. (Their scheme for interfering with the Saturnians is ridiculously low-tech.) In short, this is more a compendium of silly high-nerd received ideas about the evolution of society than an actual novel or a serious extrapolation of what future tech and its social matrix might be like. Show Less
LibraryThing member Uffer
If you're looking for a book to unwind with, you may want to keep looking. Accelerando is dense with new and strange concepts, scattered across paragraphs in passing like confetti, and, for the most part, you aren't getting any kind of explanation of what they are or how or why. For the bits where
I enjoyed it, though. The plot is a little bit bumpy in a couple of spots - the book is apparently a number of shorter stories bolted together and tightened up until they squeak - but it's about as far-reaching as it gets, arcing from near-present to beyond singularity, each thing building on the previous in a logical enough way that soon enough adds up to a post-singularity Frankenstein, and it's going to take more than a mob with pitchforks and torches to sort this one out.
Well worth the time and effort.
Show More
you really need to understand what's going on to follow the plot, you get /just/ enough explanation to bluff your way through if you stretch a bit, but you may be at risk of a small bout of future-shock of your own, anyway. (This does appear to be more or less intentional though, so just sit back and enjoy the side-effects.)I enjoyed it, though. The plot is a little bit bumpy in a couple of spots - the book is apparently a number of shorter stories bolted together and tightened up until they squeak - but it's about as far-reaching as it gets, arcing from near-present to beyond singularity, each thing building on the previous in a logical enough way that soon enough adds up to a post-singularity Frankenstein, and it's going to take more than a mob with pitchforks and torches to sort this one out.
Well worth the time and effort.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jshrop
Wow, what a mind blowing book! I want to say pioneering, but I'm not sure if that's really the word, I think mind blowing is better. Stross has taken the idea of a post-singularity world and run with it to the nearest black hole! The number of awesome concepts and themes developed, thrown at us,
The story centers around the tipping point in human history where people's concsiences are uploaded and run on the increasingly large scale of computing power created out of all the dead matter in the universe. Entire planets are dismantled to create processors to run the collective of what was once mankind. Schisms develop between humans who don't want to be uploaded, the next generation of post-humans who have never known a physical body, explorers (and explorer copies), and weird outer planet colonists.
This novel has the hardest concepts to try and distill in a few hundred words, bottom line is: Read Accelerando. It is science fiction at it's best, it's most confusing, it's funniest, this novel has it all!
Show More
re-mixxed, and thrown at us again is mind bottling! (Blades of Glory anyone?) The story centers around the tipping point in human history where people's concsiences are uploaded and run on the increasingly large scale of computing power created out of all the dead matter in the universe. Entire planets are dismantled to create processors to run the collective of what was once mankind. Schisms develop between humans who don't want to be uploaded, the next generation of post-humans who have never known a physical body, explorers (and explorer copies), and weird outer planet colonists.
This novel has the hardest concepts to try and distill in a few hundred words, bottom line is: Read Accelerando. It is science fiction at it's best, it's most confusing, it's funniest, this novel has it all!
Show Less
LibraryThing member PortiaLong
Strong win! One of the best new books I have read in a while. I wasn't overly impressed with Singularity Sky but Stross has obviously found his stride.
Warning: I wouldn't recommend this book as someone's fist SF read, as with many genre works the standard tropes are assumed. But if you liked
Warning: I wouldn't recommend this book as someone's fist SF read, as with many genre works the standard tropes are assumed. But if you liked
Show More
William Gibson and Vernor Vinge then jump right in... Show Less
LibraryThing member JulesJones
[2006-12-17] Fixup novel about the Singularity and its aftermath. Three generations of the Macx family deal with the consequences of ever-accelerating technological change. Enormous fun, and stuffed with ideas, but *so* stuffed with ideas that you need your wits about you when reading it.
Note to
Fixup novel about the Singularity and its aftermath. Three generations of the Macx family deal with the consequences of ever-accelerating technological change. Enormous fun, and stuffed with ideas, but *so* stuffed with ideas that you need your wits about you when reading it.
Note to self -- stop doing first-time reads of Charlie's books on long haul flights, they interact strangely with jet lag. And the Laundryverse will probably *really* not mix well with jet lag...
Note to
Show More
self -- stop doing first-time reads of Charlie's books on long haul flights, they interact strangely with jet lag. And the Laundryverse will probably *really* not mix well with jet lag...Fixup novel about the Singularity and its aftermath. Three generations of the Macx family deal with the consequences of ever-accelerating technological change. Enormous fun, and stuffed with ideas, but *so* stuffed with ideas that you need your wits about you when reading it.
Note to self -- stop doing first-time reads of Charlie's books on long haul flights, they interact strangely with jet lag. And the Laundryverse will probably *really* not mix well with jet lag...
Show Less
LibraryThing member tcgardner
Wow! Computers are becoming more intelligent all the time and the rate of gaining intelligence is increasing. This is a great book.
Fast paced, modern writing without offending, and just a gripping story.
If you read any Charles Stross this has to be the book.
Highly recommended!
Fast paced, modern writing without offending, and just a gripping story.
If you read any Charles Stross this has to be the book.
Highly recommended!
LibraryThing member ben_a
Just 50 pages in, and I find it so far a more frenetic, more technically interesting, and less humorous Snow Crash. The main character is Mary Sue enough that he probably should be named Hiero Protagonist. I have liked other Stross (A Colder War, e.g.) but I can see myself not finishing this one.
LibraryThing member atticusjame6
All in all, this is a book i don't regret reading, though it's clunky, overdone, and seems to be written in a computer code. Read it for its treatment of technology, and for its hope, not for the more rarefied aspects of fiction.