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Accelerando Book Review

Accelerando (Singularity) is expanding upon the author's 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.

Synopsis: 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.

Socrates' Verdict: I have rarely read a book with such a broad plot horizon (spaning time and space across the whole universe), with such a dazzling imagination (fed by the latest and greatest bleeding edge of science and science fiction), and with such deep implications for the whole of humanity.

Therefore, without any hesitation I will give Accelerando (Singularity) 10 out of 10