Wednesday, 19th of November, 2003

So Charlie Stross’s first published novel is out! I’ve been lucky enough to read another two of his novels (well, one novella) in draft form already, and read the sequel to this one directly afterwards, thanks to the generosity of the man himself. I was half-expecting this to be, well, just ok but disappointing - after all, it’s pretty much impossible to beat the gonzo radical hard speculative pre-and-post-Singularity science fiction of his Accelerando series of short stories published in Asimovs, which cram trilogies’-worth of mind-expanding speculation into each paragraph. *
Fortunately, all worries can be thrown away within the first paragraph.

The day war was declared, a rain of telephones fell clattering to the cobblestones from the skies above Novy Petrograd. Some of them had half-melted in the heat of re-entry; others pinged and ticked, cooling rapidly in the postdawn chill. An inquisitive pigeon hopped close, head cocked to one side; it pecked at the shiny case of one such device, then fluttered away in alarm when it beeped. A tinny voice spoke: “Hello? Will you entertain us?”

And entertain us Stross does, for 313 pages.
This novel and its sequel Iron Sunrise are set in the same universe as the amazing short story “Bear Trap” (see Toast), a different one from Accelerando. The Singularity happened some centuries ago, and the resulting godlike Artificial Intelligence, dubbing itself the Eschaton, has made its mark immediately on the world. “In the far future,” says the cover copy, “information demands to be free.”
It would be giving too much away to talk closely about much of the plot at all, but it’s vintage Stross. Revolutionary libertarian socialism (hello Ken MacLeod) mixes with Extropianism in a wilfully backwards monarchic planetary system ironically called The New Republic. Spies for the UN (a trade convention of sorts, post-singularity), the Eschaton itself and the New Republic get involved in time-like loops and pre-emptive strikes (Charlie’s always one step ahead of the political satire game), with a rather sweet love story, a bizarre fairy tale parody and much more on the sidelines, while the mysteriously-motived Festival (a collection of AIs and uploaded humans) and its hangers-on cause havoc.

All in all, lots of fun and strongly recommended for all interested in cutting-edge political science fiction, the New Space Opera those Brits are pumping out, spy fiction, futurism, or, frankly, anything else. Well, maybe. It might be a bit way if you’re not used to this sort of thing.
Singularity Sky and the three other sf books that will follow it in the next few years are published by Ace in the US. They’ve now been picked up by Orbit in the UK, with Singularity Sky due out about when Iron Sunrise comes out in the US. The schedule’s being pushed forward after that I believe, so hopefully at some point in the future we’ll be able to get editions with the proper spellings around the same time the US editions come out ;)

*Exciting news is that Accelerando will be published in novel form by Ace in 2005. Still quite a wait though! But if you’re new to Stross, there’s lots to keep you busy in the meantime…

Comments are closed.