High Tech Books - Page 5

The Reality Dysfunction (The Night's Dawn)

Peter F. Hamilton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 214 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Space is not the only void...

In AD 2600 the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems. And throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace. A true golden age is within our grasp.

But now something has gone catastrophically wrong. On a primitive colony planet a renegade criminal's chance encounter with an utterly alien entity unleashes the most primal of all our fears. An extinct race which inhabited the galaxy aeons ago called it "The Reality Dysfunction." It is the nightmare which has prowled beside us since the beginning of history.

THE REALITY DYSFUNCTION is a modern classic of science fiction, an extraordinary feat of storytelling on a truly epic scale.

Aliens: No Exit (Aliens)

B. K. Evenson

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Editorial Review:

After thirty years of cryogenic sleep, Detective Anders Kramm awakens to a changed world. The alien threat has been subdued. Company interests dominate universal trade. Terraforming is big money now, with powerful men willing to do anything to assure dominance over other worlds. But Kramm has a secret. He knows why The Company killed twelve of its top scientists. He knows why the aliens have been let loose on the surface of a contested planet. He knows that the information he has is valuable, and that The Company will do everything it can to stop him from telling his secret to the world. Haunted by memories of the brutal murder of his family, Kramm is set adrift amid billion dollar stakes . . . with aliens around every corner, waiting for him to make a mistake!

Command Decision (Vatta's War)

Elizabeth Moon

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Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With the Vatta’s War series, award-winning author Elizabeth Moon has claimed a place alongside such preeminent writers of military science fiction as David Weber and Lois McMaster Bujold. Now Moon is back–and so is her butt-kicking, take-no-prisoners heroine, Kylara Vatta. Once the black-sheep scion of a prosperous merchant family, Kylara now leads a motley space force dedicated to the defeat of a rapacious pirate empire led by the mysterious Gammis Turek.

After orchestrating a galaxy-wide failure of the communications network owned and maintained by the powerful ISC corporation, Turek and his marauders strike swiftly and without mercy. First they shatter Vatta Transport. Then they overrun entire star systems, growing stronger and bolder. No one is safe from the pirate fleet. But while they continue to move forward with their diabolical plan, they have made two critical mistakes.

Their first mistake was killing Kylara Vatta’s family.
Their second mistake was leaving her alive.
Now Kylara is going to make them pay.

But with a “fleet” consisting of only three ships–including her flagship, the Vanguard, a souped-up merchant cruiser–Kylara needs allies, and fast. Because even though she possesses the same coveted communication technology as the enemy, she has nowhere near their numbers or firepower.

Meanwhile, as Kylara’s cousin Stella tries to bring together the shattered pieces of the family trading empire, new treachery is unfolding at ISC headquarters, where undercover agent Rafael Dunbarger, estranged son of the corporation’s CEO, is trying to learn why the damaged network is not being repaired. What he discovers will send shock waves across the galaxy and crashing into Kylara’s newly christened Space Defense Force at the worst possible moment.


From the Hardcover edition.

Sunstorm (A Time Odyssey)

Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter

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Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

When Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the greatest science fiction writer ever, teams up with award-winning author Stephen Baxter, who shares Clarke’s bold vision of a future where technology and humanism advance hand in hand, the result is bound to be a book of stellar ambition and accomplishment. Such was the case with Time’s Eye. Now, in the highly anticipated sequel, Clarke and Baxter draw their epic to a triumphant conclusion that is as mind-blowing as anything in Clarke’s famous Space Odyssey series.

SUNSTORM

Returned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw-puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth’s history. Why did the Firstborn create Mir? Why was Bisesa taken there and then brought back on the day after her original disappearance?

Bisesa’s questions receive a chilling answer when scientists discover an anomaly in the sun’s core–an anomaly that has no natural cause is evidence of alien intervention over two thousand years before. Now plans set in motion millennia ago by inscrutable watchers light-years away are coming to fruition in a sunstorm designed to scour the Earth of all life in a bombardment of deadly radiation.

Thus commences a furious race against a ticking solar time bomb. But even now, as apocalypse looms, cooperation is not easy for the peoples and nations of the Earth. Religious and political differences threaten to undermine every effort.

And all the while, the Firstborn are watching...


From the Hardcover edition.

Glasshouse

Charles Stross

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Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

"In the Village" 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Charles Stross's extremely clever, if extremely loopy, "Glasshouse" imagines a far future of travel by teleportation (through assembler gates--wait for it), body alterations, physical backups, and a worm that reprograms people's memories.

The hero is (a male) named Robin who's just gone through memory erasure (perhaps voluntarily). In order to avoid what he believes are assassins pursuing him, he volunteers for an experiment in which people live as they did during the "dark ages." Although the dark ages in question are the 20th and 21st centuries.

Stross has a clever idea: the records from the earlier part of the period, when paper and ink was still the primary method of data storage, will have proved more durable than electronic storage, in which data has been lost due to the constant procession of different, competing storage devices. Anyhow, the world Robin (now a female named Reeve) finds (her)self in has late-20th/early 21st-century tech (mobile phones, microwaves), but a social structure from the period of 50 years before, with men going to work and women staying home.

Robin/Reeve, however, quickly discovers that the danger to (her)self lies precisely within the parameters of the experiment, and not with assassins without. Of course, she tries to do something about this, and the thrills start.

The book's a kick, with wild speculations, hat-tips to Franz Kafka, Alice Sheldon, Paul A. Linebarger, the old "The Prisoner" tv miniseries, and the computer worm that's featured so prominently in the book is named Curious Yellow. But maybe Mr. Stross isn't quite as clever as he thinks he is; sometimes the breathless first-person present-tense narration by Robin/Reeve devolves into cute or technobabble. And the ending feels rushed. But it will sustain your interest over the course of its 333 cramped pages packed with too-small print. (You'll need to visit your opthalmologist when you finally put the book aside.) Some publishers have been improving the look and feel of their small-size paperbacks. This publisher has not joined the party.

Editorial Review:

In the twenty-seventh century, accelerated technology dictates the memories and personalities of people. With most of his own memories deleted, Robin enters The Glasshouse-an experimental polity where he finds himself at the mercy of his own unbalanced psyche.

The Honor of the Queen (Honor Harrington Series, Book 2)

David Weber

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Second in the excellent Honor Harrington series: introducing the Graysons 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

"The Honor of the Queen" is the second book in a wonderful space opera series set some three thousand years in the future and featuring David Weber's best fictional heroine, "Honor Harrington." The books are best read in sequence and I strongly recommend that you start with "On Basilisk Station" which is the first one.

Despite the futuristic setting, there are strong parallels with Nelson's navy. Assumed technology in the Honor Harrington stories imposes tactical and strategic constraints on space navy officers similar to those which the technology of fighting sail imposed on wet navy officers two hundred years ago. The galactic situation in the novels contains strong similarities to the strategic and political situation in European history at the time of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

This seems to be quite deliberate: many thinly veiled (and amusing) hints in the books indicate that they are to some extent a tribute to C.S. Forester, while the main heroine of the books, Honor Harrington, appears to owe more than just her initials to C.S. Forester's character "Horatio Hornblower."

This book introduces the planet Grayson which is to become immensely important in future stories. When Honor Harrington first meets the inhabitants of Grayson in this book, they appear to be boorish, male chauvinist dinosaurs, and she has great difficulty dealing with them. However, it is a challenge which she eventually surmounts with flying colours.

A large number of important characters are also introduced in this book: and not just among Honor's Manticoran compatriots and her new Grayson allies. The two captains who the enemy "Peeps" have sent to stir the pot in Grayson will also feature in most of the forthcoming books - but not necessarily on the same side.


In this second book of the series, Honor Harrington has been promoted after her victory in Basilisk, and given command of the brand new heavy cruiser "H.M.S. Fearless." She is also the senior officer of the military force escorting a diplomatic mission under her old mentor, Admiral Raoul Courvisier, to persuade the planet Grayson to ally with her home country, Manticore, against the looming threat from the People's Republic of Haven (Peeps.)

Grayson, in the Yeltsin system, was settled by religious fanatics. It turned out to have a highly poisonous ecosystem, which forced their descendants to amend some of their principles in order to survive. But their remaining prejudices, especially against women, initially make them difficult to deal with.

However, the Graysons are sweetness and light compared with the male rulers of the planet Masada in the neighbouring Endicott system. Descended from Graysons who went into exile after refusing to make the compromises necessary to prevent the planet killing them, the Masadans' ruthless sexism and intolerant bigotry make the Taleban look like a bunch of Episcopal feminists. They are still bent on revenge - and the People's Republic of Haven is only to happy to help them secure it.

Honor Harrington is going to have to go into battle against horrendous odds - again ...

This is another clever story with wonderful and believable characters, brilliantly described space battles, and a well crafted set of explanations of how the tactical situations in which the characters find themselves relate both to the technology their ships use and the political dynamics which set up the conflicts between them.

Many people read Weber for the space battles, and this book scores very highly here. In some of the later books of the series when describing major fleet actions, Dave Weber sometimes writes a bit too much like the wargame designer he once was, but he is superb when describing single-ship or squadron-level actions such as those in "The Honor of the Queen."

Two aspects of this book may make some readers a little uneasy. At this stage of the series Weber gives full vent to his distrust of politicians, especially left-wing ones.

In later books, apparently to broaden the appeal slightly, he creates some extreme ultra right-wing reactionary politicians who he can criticise from the left so as to counterbalance his criticisms of socialists and liberals from the right. Weber thereby places the views of most of his sympathetic characters in the moderate centre of the Manticoran political spectrum. From book ten he also writes in one or two sympathetic liberal politicians! However, when he wrote "The Honor of the Queen" he had not made these adjustments.

Anyone with liberal or left wing views about economics or defence and security issues and who isn't willing to put them aside to enjoy a novel may be irritated by the political slant of the book. However, this slant is not as strong as that taken by some other military SF writers such as John Ringo.

The other aspect of the book which may be slightly uncomfortable for a minority of readers is the role of men and women. In respect of Grayson, the novel looks from a viewpoint totally committed to absolute equality between men and women at how a society which has gone down a different road can be persuaded to reform. In respect of Masada, their status as the bad guys is confirmed by their horrible crimes against women.

If you like this book, you will want to read the rest of the series. At the time of writing there are thirteen full length novels and four short story collections in the "Honorverse" as the fictional galaxy in which these stories are set is sometimes known. The main series which tells the story of Honor Harrington herself currently runs to eleven novels; in order these are

On Basilisk Station
The Honor of the Queen
The Short Victorious War
Field of Dishonour
Flag in Exile
Honor among Enemies
In Enemy Hands
Echoes of Honor
Ashes of Victory
War of Honor
At All Costs

The four collections of short stories set in the same universe, not all of which feature Honor Harrington herself, are

More Than Honor
Worlds of Honor
Worlds of Honor III: Changer of Worlds
Worlds of Honor IV: The Service of the Sword

The two spin-off novels are "Crown of Slaves" (with Eric Flint) which is a story of espionage and intrigue featuring a number of characters first introduced in earlier Honor Harrington books or short stories, and "The Shadow of Saganami" which is a kind of "next generation" novel featuring a number of younger officers in the navies of Manticore and her ally Grayson.

For amusement, if you want to try to look for the parallels to nations and individuals from the French revolutionary period and the Hornblower books, one possible translation would be:

People's Republic of Haven during books 1 to 3 = Bourbon France
People's Republic of Haven from book 4 onwards = Revolutionary France
Star Kingdom of Manticore = Great Britain
Gryphon = Scotland
Grayson = Portugal

Prime Minister Alan Summervale = Pitt the Younger
Hamish Alexander, later Earl White Haven = Admiral Edward Pellew
Honor Harrington = Horatio Hornblower
Alistair McKeon = William Bush

Crown loyalists and Centrists = Tory supporters of Pitt
Conservative Association = isolationist/hardline High Tories
New Kiev Liberals = Whig Oligarchists
Progressives and traditional liberals = Whig radicals

Anderman Empire = Kingdom of Prussia
Silesia = Poland
Solarian republic = United States of America

Editorial Review:

On the planet Grayson to participate in diplomatic talks between the Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven, Honor Harrington discovers that she is stuck on a fiercely patriarchal, misogynist planet.

The Short Victorious War (Honor Harrington Series, Book 3)

David Weber

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Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Another Great Honor Harrington Book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Short Victorious War is another great piece of the honor Harrington Pie. It is the strongest of the first three plot wise, I think, and the best at developing Honor's character. A great battle and personal conflict only add to the universe that Weber is so gifted at creating.

Third in the excellent Honor Harrington series: all-out war begins 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

"The Short Victorious War" is the third book in a wonderful space opera series set some three thousand years in the future and featuring David Weber's best fictional heroine, "Honor Harrington." The books are best read in sequence and I strongly recommend that you start with "On Basilisk Station" which is the first one.

The title is, of course, highly ironic. Weber explains at the start of the book that it comes from a comment from the Russian Minister of the Interior to their Minister of War in 1903, "What this country needs is a short victorious war to stem the tide of revolution."

So the Russians attacked Japan, got their backsides well and truly kicked by the Japanese Navy, and set off the 1905 Russian Revolution.

However, the main parallels in this book are not with the Russo-Japanese war, but with those of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In particular, the Royal Manticoran Navy in which the heroine services is clearly based on the Royal Navy at the time of Nelson.

The technology of space travel and naval warfare in the Honor Harrington stories has been written so as to impose tactical and strategic constraints on space navy officers similar to those which the technology of fighting sail imposed on wet navy officers two hundred years ago. Similarly the galactic situation in the novels contains many similarities to the strategic and political situation in European history in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

This seems to be quite deliberate: many thinly veiled (and amusing) hints in the books indicate that they are to some extent a tribute to C.S. Forester, while the main heroine of the books, Honor Harrington, appears to owe more than just her initials to C.S. Forester's character "Horatio Hornblower."

During the first two books in the series it was made clear that Honor Harrington and most of the other sympathetic characters in Manticore expect within their lifetimes to have to fight a war against the People's Republic of Haven or "Peeps" - an agressive superpower which has been gradually conquering the small nations on it's borders in bitesize chunks. In the first chapter of this book, the Peep government decides it's time to launch that war.

Meanwhile Honor Harrington is given command of the Battlecruiser HMS Nike and made Flag Captain to an admiral who is second in command of the fleet at Hancock, one of the most important points in Manticore's defensive alliance. So when the war starts she is bound to be in the thick of the action. This is also one of the few books when she finds a little time for a romance.

A few more important characters are also introduced in this book. One of the early Havenite attacks is commanded by an Admiral Pierre, whose father, Rob S. Pierre is to be an important figure in future books. Another is directed against a convoy whose escort is commanded by Captain Helen Zilwicki. Her husband Anton and four year old daughter, also called Helen, are on board one of the ships of the convoy and also play important roles in future Honorverse books.


Another great story with strong and believable characters, brilliantly described space battles, and good explanations of how the tactical situations in which the characters find themselves relate both to the technology their ships use and the political dynamics which set up the conflicts between them.

Many people read Weber for the space battles, and most of the battles in "The short victorious war" are excellent. Dave Weber sometimes writes a bit too much like the wargame designer he once was, and this book starts to demonstrate that problem, but in general the battles are grippingly described and plausible.

One other feature in this book is a 16 page annex at the end with a lot of technical detail about how the assumed space travel and technology works in the series, with such details as how big a battlecruiser as opposed to a superdreadnaught is. Space warfare anoraks, or anyone interested in understanding how, for example, a single dreadnaught wipes out four battlecruisers in a quarter of a second during the course of the book, can read it: those who are not particularly interested in that sort of detail can give it a miss.


At the time of writing there are thirteen full length novels and four short story collections in the "Honorverse" as the fictional galaxy in which these stories are set is sometimes known. The main series which tells the story of Honor Harrington herself currently runs to eleven novels; in order these are

On Basilisk Station
The Honor of the Queen
The Short Victorious War
Field of Dishonour
Flag in Exile
Honor among Enemies
In Enemy Hands
Echoes of Honor
Ashes of Victory
War of Honor
At All Costs

The four collections of short stories set in the same universe, not all of which feature Honor Harrington herself, are

More Than Honor
Worlds of Honor
Worlds of Honor III: Changer of Worlds
Worlds of Honor IV: The Service of the Sword

The two spin-off novels are "Crown of Slaves" (with Eric Flint) which is a story of espionage and intrigue featuring a number of characters, including Anton and Helen Zilwicki, first introduced in earlier Honor Harrington books such as this one, and "The Shadow of Saganami" which is a kind of "next generation" novel featuring a number of younger officers in the navies of Manticore and her ally Grayson.

For amusement, if you want to try to look for the parallels to nations and individuals from the French revolutionary period and the Hornblower books, one possible translation would be:

People's Republic of Haven = France
Star Kingdom of Manticore = Great Britain
Gryphon = Scotland
Grayson = Portugal

Prime Minister Alan Summervale = Pitt the Younger
Hamish Alexander, later Earl White Haven = Admiral Edward Pellew
Honor Harrington = Horatio Hornblower
Alistair McKeon = William Bush

Crown loyalists and Centrists = Tory supporters of Pitt
Conservative Association = isolationist/hardline High Tories
New Kiev Liberals = Whig Oligarchists
Progressives and traditional liberals = Whig radicals

Legislaturist rulers of Haven = Bourbon monarchy and nobles in France
Rob S. Pierre = Robespierre
Committee of Public Safety = Committee of Public Safety

Anderman Empire = Kingdom of Prussia
Silesia = Poland
Solarian republic = United States of America

Wall of Battle = Line of Battle
Ship of the Wall = Ship of the Line
Battleship = "4th rate" sailing warship (in each case too small to form part of the main force in a fleet action, but powerful enough to defeat anything else.)
Battlecruiser = frigate (5th rate)
Cruisers and destroyers = 6th rate and smaller warships.

Editorial Review:

Banking on a short, victorious war to replenish their depleted treasury, the ruling class of the People's Republic of Haven do not count on coming up against Captain Honor Harrington and the Royal Manticoran Navy.

Young Miles

Lois McMaster Bujold

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

MIles Comes of Age 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Several years ago, Baen Books began releasing Lois McMaster Bujold's tales of Miles Vorkosigan in omnibus form, each volume containing several adventures arranged in story chronology order. Young Miles contains three tales, the novel The Warrior's Apprentice, the novella "The Mountains of Mourning", and another novel, The Vor Game. Chronologically these stories occur after Barrayar and before Cetaganda.

In The Warrior's Apprentice, Miles fails to meet the physical requirements to be accepted into the Barrayaran Military Academy. Through a series of screwball comedy-like events, where one damn thing just snowballs into another, in short order he attracts a cadre of misfits and former losers, dedicated personally to himself, and eventually creates and leads the Free Dendarii Mercenaries under the assumed identity of "Admiral Naismith". This is Bujold's first exploration of the idea that, like T.E. Lawrence (on whose personality he's partly based), Miles is an "enabler", drawing to himself people who perform under his influence better than they might have otherwise.

Warrior's is an immensely fun book, a coming-of-age tale, a comedy, a tragedy, and a military SF novel all rolled into one. A word about the "tragedy" part of the equation. Shortly into this novel, my favorite character in the series thus far dies. I've been told (by the lady who turned me on to Bujold, and has messiah-like done the same to as many others as she can) that one woman simply quit reading at this point, just refused to continue either the book or the series, she was so pissed-off this character was killed. I can understand that. I was if not angered at least shocked and saddened to see this character go. But with 20/20 hindsight I can see why it happened. There's simply no way Warrior's, or most of the subsequent events in Miles' life that Bujold wanted to occur could have happened with this character around. So Bujold achieved a wrenching death scene AND cleared out the problem this character presented all in one fell swoop.

"The Mountains of Mourning" was originally published as one-third of the Borders of Infinity collection. Miles is forced by his duties as Lord Vorkosigan to play detective, to investigate and solve a murder. I have to admit, at least to me, the mystery wasn't much of a mystery, I had the killer pegged from their first appearance; and I think my solution to their eventual punishment would have been much more "an eye for an eye" than Miles'.

The Vor Game is the longest and most complex story in the book. The first thing you need to know about The Vor Game, it won the Hugo award for Best SF Novel of 1991. I'm not sure I would have voted for that, myself. Structurally the book is divided into two parts quite different in tone. The first tells the story of Miles' initial assignment as a Barrayaran officer, and, with the discovery of a dead body and a packet of unknown contents, as Bujold puts it in her Afterword, "tried very hard to turn into a military murder mystery." In the first draft, the packet contained money. Bujold's test readers were jumping up and down, waiting to find out what happened next - and couldn't understand her insistence that NOTHING was supposed to happen next, the dead body and packet weren't really important (!). Finally, she changed the contents of the packet to something totally non-mysterious and moved on with the tale. I was, frankly, at this point in the story settling in for a thoroughly enjoyable murder mystery myself, and, like the test readers couldn't understand why it never materialized. So there that dead body and packet sit in the middle of the first section of The Vor Game, about as useful as a vermiform appendix. This fascinating set-up should either have been allowed to run its own course or removed entirely.

The main problem I have with The Vor Game is that, in its second part, the event precipitating Miles' adventures is that, out of all of explored space, he just happens to find himself thrown into the same cell on a space station jail (in a completely different star system than Barrayar) as his childhood friend, the runaway Emperor of Barrayar! This is a coincidence of such staggering proportions, the book should have been called Deus Ex Machina, a plot twist so hamfisted all I could do was shake my head and think, "You have GOT to be kidding me." But there it is. And this book won a Best Novel Hugo!

Most of the rest of The Vor Game is set-up; it's not until the last 70 pages that at long last we get to see what we're really after, Miles back in the saddle as Admiral Naismith. At which point the book begins to absolutely ROCK, as Miles juggles 50 plates in the air at once, with the fate of star systems balanced in his hands. The second part of The Vor Game is much more fast-paced, lighter and more amusing than the first. NAISMITH LIVES! Eventually.

Editorial Review:

Hugo and Nebula winner! Being a Vor lord on war-torn Barrayar wasn't easy, nor was being an officer in the military, nor a mercenary leader. But young Miles Vorkosigan did it all at once!

Flashforward

Robert J. Sawyer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 70 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

New Favorite Author 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My habit as a reader is to track down everything written by an author I find I enjoy--the problem being, I run out of authors and books. That is why finding someone I've never encountered before, who already has been writing for years, is such a treat. Robert J. Sawyer fills this need for me. He does wonderful characters, using intriguing premises which he explores fully, in ways that make sense when read, but which I (for one) would never think of in advance. That's what happens here--given the opportunity to look ahead, would you take the opportunity? What would be the ramifications? Sawyer writes books not only for hard-core SF fans, but also, as I've learned by passing his stuff on to others, he also writes SF for people who profess to hate the stuff. I've chosen this title at random to comment upon; all of his work is well worthwhile.

Editorial Review:

Robert J. Sawyers award-winning science fiction has garnered both popular and critical acclaim. The New York Times Book Review called Frameshift filled to bursting with ideas, characters and incidents. His novels are fixtures on the Hugo and Nebula ballots. Sawyer now brings us Flashforward, the story of a world-shattering discovery. In pursuit of an elusive nuclear particle, an experiment goes incredibly awry, and, for a few moments, the consciousness of the entire human race is thrown ahead by about twenty years. As the implications truly hit home, the pressure to repeat the experiment builds. Everyone wants a glimpse of their future, a chance to flashforward and see their successes ... or learn how to avoid their failures.

Accelerando (Singularity)

Charles Stross

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Total reviews: 85 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Accelerando certainly didn't accelerate... 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I've never read Stross but I had high hopes going in to this one. I couldn't have been more let down.

His writing is so complexly written that it is barely readable. And I don't mean he needed to dumb it down. I mean his sentence structures were convoluted enough to make Accelerando seem worse than it was. A few examples:

"A standard network of independent companies, instantiated as cellular automata within the Ring Imperium switched legal service environment." (Pg. 206)

"Economics 2.0 apparently replaces the single-direction layer of conventional money, and the multiple-inderection mappings of options trades, with some kind of insanely baroque object-relational framework based on paramatized desires and subjective experiential values of the players, and as far as the cat is concerned, this makes all the transactions intrinsically untrustworthy. (Pg. 341)"

"...and in this reincarnation-intermediated traditionalist polity for the hopelessly orthohuman, you can score credit for formality. (Pg. 382)"

Add to that a dizzying amount of "ideas" for virtually everything, such as suitcases and handbags that have emotions, lobsters that talk, ghosts of yourself everywhere collecting information, spaceships the size of a coke can, or duplicating yourself and having different lives and consciousness. It is all too much and drowns out any possible storyline that is hiding behind all the superfluous ideas.

A quote on the back of the book says "Stross sizzles with ideas...", unfortunately that is all there is to this book. I might try another book of his but it may be a long time coming because of how boring and slow this one was, and if I do it will be with trepidation, knowing that I will probably find the same style of writing. Not a recommend.

2.5 stars.

Editorial Review:

Expanding on his award-winning short story cycle from the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction, Charles Stross delivers the story fans and peers have been expecting with Accelerando, a novel destined to change the face of the genre.