Stross (
Singularity Sky) explores humanity's inability to cope with molecular nanotechnology run amok in this teeming near-future SF stand-alone. In part one, "Slow Takeoff," "free enterprise broker" Manfred Macx and his soon-to-be-estranged wife/dominatrix, Pamela, lay the foundation for the next decade's transhumans. In "Point of Inflection," Amber, their punky maladjusted teenage daughter, and Sadeq Khurasani, a Muslim judge, engineer and scholar, try to escape the social chaos that antiaging treatments have wreaked on Earth by riding a tin can–sized starship via nanocomputerization to a brown dwarf star called Hyundai. The Wunch, trade-delegation aliens evolved from uploaded lobster mentalities, and Macx's grandson, Sirhan, roister through "Singularity," in which people become cybernetic constructs. Stross's three-generation experiment in stream-of-artificial-consciousness impresses, but his flat characters and inchoate rapid-fire explosions of often muzzily related ideas, theories, opinions and nightmares too often resemble intellectual pyrotechnics—breathtakingly gaudy but too brief, leaving connections lost somewhere in outer/inner/cyber space.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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"A new kind of future requires a new breed of guide-someone like Stross."-
Popular Science "Where Charles Stross goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow." -Gardner Dozois, Editor,
Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Charles Stross "can be compared to Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, and Vernor Vinge for the depth of his speculations" (Paul Di Filippo, Science Fiction Weekly
) as proven in such innovative hard SF novels as Singularity Sky
("wonderfully inventive"*) and Iron Sunrise
("[a] hard SF masterpiece"**). Now, expanding upon his award-winning short story cycle from the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine,
Charles Stross presents a startling vision of humanity's inability to cope with rapid technological advancement. 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...
An ideological tour-de-force,
Accelerando is destined to stand beside
Neuromancer and
Snow Crash as one of the most seminal works in science fiction.
*
The Denver Post **
Library Journal
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From the Back Cover
"This new brand of science fiction, like all the best SF before it, is not just about predicting the future or pushing an agenda or even plain old entertaining techno-fun. It is all that, but it's also about expanding the boundaries of the possible, building far-out worlds and then populating them with characters who bring the big ideas down to Earth."-
Popular Science Praise for
Iron Sunrise "A Hollywood thriller with a cyberpunk heart."-
Entertainment Weekly "Excellent use of language kept this novel in my saddlebags for immediate access...Worthy and sympathetic characters...taut plotting."-
San Diego Tribune "[Stross] has the ability to superimpose an intriguing take on contemporary events over an imaginative story peopled by bizarre characters."-
Kansas City Star "Compelling space opera and cutting-edge tech with a tasty dash of satire...Stross skillfully balances suspense and humor throughout, offering readers-especially fans of Iain M. Banks and Ken MacLeod-a fascinating future that seems more than possible."-
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Tense, unpredictable, a mixture of action, slapstick, and histrionics of the kind Stross always choreographs so masterfully...
Iron Sunrise is vintage Stross, boisterous and provocative, opinionated and hilarious, and is likely to enhance his standing still further."-Nick Gevers,
Locus "Fans of hard SF spiced with political intrigue will relish this dish."-Booklist
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About the Author
Charles Stross was born in Leeds, England, in 1964. He has worked as a pharmacist, software engineer and freelance journalist, but now writes full time.
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*Starred Review* During the last five years, Stross has garnered a reputation as one of the most imaginative practitioners of hard sf. Expanded from several stories originally published in
Asimov's Science Fiction, Stross' latest novel follows several generations of the Macx family through the rapidly transforming, Internet-enabled global economy of the early twenty-first century to the human and transhuman populated worlds of the outer solar system a half century later. The saga begins with Macx patriarch Manfred, a freelance "venture altruist," giving away patentable high-tech ideas in exchange for endless handouts while looking forward to the day when nanotech-programmed smart matter surpasses humanity in intelligence and productivity. Fifteen years later, his adolescent daughter Amber is an indentured astronaut trolling the orbit of Jupiter, and by 2070, Sirhan is Amber's permanently space-bound offspring, paying witness to the fruits of his grandfather's early innovations as something ominous and nonhuman is systematically dismantling the planets from Pluto to Earth. Stross has his thumb squarely on the pulse of technology's leading edge and exults in extrapolating mere glimmers of ideas out to their mind-bending limits. His brilliant and panoramic vision of uncontrollably accelerating technology vaults him into the front rank of sf trailblazers, alongside Gibson and Stephenson, and promises to become a seminal work in the genre.
Carl HaysCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Review
“A cornucopia of notions and neat writing.”—
The San Diego Union-Tribune“Makes hallucinogens obsolete.”—Cory Doctorow“Stross sizzles with ideas…whimsical and funny as well as challenging and thoughtful.”—The Denver Post
“Like Bruce Sterling or William Gibson at their best, Stross surfs a wave of ideas and information that seems always on the brink of collapsing into incomprehensibility, but never does—a careening plunge through strangeness in which every page contains something to mess with your head.”—SF Site
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kindle_edition edition.
![Accelerando (Singularity Book 3) by [Charles Stross]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/412diqCqXUL._SY346_.jpg)
