Accelerando - Charles Stross
Accelerando is a collection of nine stories, first published in Asimov's and "fixed up" into a novel, many of the stories have been award nominees on their own. I had previously read, and enjoyed, the super dense high-tech post-cyberpunk first chapter "Lobsters" so I was eagerly awaiting the novel.
The novel is divided into three parts, the first third following Manfred Macx, the second third his daughter Amber and the third well, I'll let you find out.
One thing that these stories are full of is ideas. This will come as no surprise if you have ever read any of Charles Stross's science fiction, but you may not be prepared for the sheer onslaught of science-fictional ideas. It's a veritable machine gun of head spinning SF riffs. Ideas that other authors have spent entire novels exploring are mixed into the pot with out a pause. At times I thought of The Night's Dawn trilogy, Permutation City, Culture novels and so on, although there are also plenty of new twists and variations thrown in too.
Personally I liked the near(er) future first third of the book. As the human race passes the Singularity and things get exponential it became harder for me to appreciate the vastness of the ideas, even though we are focussing on the left-over dregs of the human race. At seventy five percent of the way through I was beginning to loose interest, however Mr. Stross picks it back up for the last story which is satisfingly out there in the far future.
I have a few complaints, one is that the novel definitely feels like nine shorts (or novellas), despite the over-arcing plot. The second complaint is that I lost interest in the characters, perhaps through a lack of empathy? Also the emotional resolution to the whole plot fell flat for me, I was left thinking "so what?" longing for a Kim Stanley Robinson crescendo of emotion.
However, overall Accelerando is must-read Science Fiction, full of ideas, with parts incredibly relevant to our world right now. I recommend that you read it.
A footnote about the novel's availability. Accelerando is available for free download at accelerando.org, in the same style that Cory Doctorow has released his books. I decided to download it, print it out and read it. I couldn't face reading the whole thing on a screen! However, if I could have bought the paperback I would have, much my prefered way, but unfortunately the paperback isn't published in the UK until June 2006 and I couldn't wait. All of which is my unscientific proof that releasing books online is a "good thing" for authors.
