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60 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very, very, very good., August 17, 2004
This review is from: Singularity Sky (Paperback)
Sometime in the mid 21st century an artificial intelligence arises out of Earth's computer networks. This intelligence scatters the land with strange structures, causes nine tenths of the population to disappear and issues three commandments. Flash forward a few centuries, the missing nine tenths of earth's population were transmitted via wormholes to star systems up to 3000 light years away, travelling one year back in the past for every light year travelled. Earth has recovered from the events of this singularity and is now a sort of central clearing house for trade and information under a reconstituted United Nations.
Martin Springfield is an engineer working for the Navy of the New Republic, one of the civilzations rising out of this diaspora and which despite it's name is more of an empire. The New Republic has banned most information technology and all nano-technology and keeps its citizens backwards in a highly stratified society where advanced technologies are only permitted for military or state security uses.
When a travelling interstellar civilization known as the Festival comes to the New Republic colony world New Rochard the whole social system is kicked over. The Festival wants stories and information, and is willing to trade high tech products that verge on the magical to the inhabitants of New Rochard, which destroys scarcity and the whole hierarchical system. Rather than allow this to happen the New Republic decides to launch a war fleet to take out the Festival. Using faster than light travel the war fleet will arrive at New Rochard before the Festival does, thus saving the day. The only problem with this is that the AI that caused all this, now known as "The Eschaton" explicity prohibits causality violations and has a messy way of dealing with those who risk its wrath, such as by causing their suns to go nova (it is explained that the Crab Nebula is one such result).
Rachel Mansour is a UN intelligence agent who is trying to prevent the New Republic from doing anything stupid that would bring down the wrath of the Eschaton and endanger other star systems. She is thrown together as a military observer with Springfield as the New Republic fleet plans to assault New Rochard.
_Singularity Sky_ is about the efforts of Springfield and Mansour to prevent the actions of the New Republic from causing a catastrophe and is also about what would happen to a planetary civilization if scarcity were abolished and wishes, mediated by advanced technology, could come true. The book is full of lots of great ideas and is a lot of fun to read for those. Stross's examination of what it means to abolish scarcity is also interesting and he demolishes all of the junk space operas out there such as the Honor Harrington series by showing that fighting a truly advanced civilization with a space navy based upon the principles of the British Navy ca. 1805 would be a very short war indeed, with the space navy coming out far the worse for wear.
The only reason I'm not giving this five stars is because I felt that Stross needed to flesh some things out. He put a lot of ideas out there but I felt that some of them weren't adequately examined.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Riveting postmodern space opera - w00t w00t!, October 23, 2003
I blazed through this book. It is playful, irreverent, consumed by more raw ideas and imaginative takes on traditional scifi tropes than I've seen in a dog's age. And it contains the most vivid spaceship command deck combat dialogue I've ever read. If you enjoy the occasional fat mouthful of jargon, you're going to find yourself chewing vigorously throughout Singularity Sky. Mr. Stross is obviously having more fun in some parts of his writing than others, which while noticable, isn't fatal. I think the other reviewers should give this book another read without their Clarion baseball hats on, or at least with them loosened a few notches. Perfection isn't required for enjoyment - just energy and novelty. Maybe they were dissatisfied at the denouement to the Big Space Battle, but that was the point - sometimes, you don't get the lollypop. Singularity Sky is about *bigness*, like John Clute's _Appleseed_, but more accessbile. It's full of little in-jokes and sly tech-culture references, doing for the IETF what _Silverlock_ did for filk. It baps around collectivism, the principles of sovereignty, mutation theory, spy techniques, nanotechnology, Newtonian physics, kangaroo courts, secret police, and a character straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan production. Oi vey! I liked it. I'm looking forward to his next book A Lot. He will only get better. bob
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A bit rough edged, but good, September 8, 2004
This review is from: Singularity Sky (Paperback)
I've been reading Charles Stross's "Accellerando" cycle of short stories in Asimov and have been much impressed. As such, I've been looking forward to reading Singularity Sky.
This is a first novel and much be judged accordingly. It does have its rough edges. Like many hard SF authors, Stross has a love of technical jargon that does, sometimes, get in the way of the story. I must also note that I found the ending to be less than satisfactory and something of a cheat given the events of the story.
That said, the book is brimming with fresh ideas. Stross appears to be one of the few authors who takes the notion of a Vingean Singularity seriously and that comes through in this story to its benefit. He's also better at characterization than most hard SF authors manage (which isn't to say that it couldn't stand some improvement).
It is a book filled with ideas and brimming with a sense of wonder. I don't doubt that as he hones his skills, he will be an author to reckon with.
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