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Singularity Sky (Eschaton #1)

by Charles Stross

3.68 · rating details · 2,242 ratings · 174 reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Set 400 years in the future, Scottish author and computer journalist Charles Stross' debut novel, Singularity Sky, is a highly intelligent space opera with a decidedly twisted sense of humor. It poses the question: What happens when visiting aliens demand to be entertained?

After humankind discovers faster-than-light travel, a godlike race of p

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Paperback, 400 pages

Published February 3rd 2005 by Orbit (first published 1991)

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Jun 03, 2009

Noah M. rated it

Charles Stross's first novel is a very good first novel. Packed full of crazy ideas. Espionage. Space battles. Post-Singularity humanity with all its craziness. Just a crazy book in general.

I'm doing a poor job of reviewing this.

There are quite a few POV characters in this book, and while they're all distinct, I developed some favorites early on and was not usually pleased when I had to spend a chapter or two with other, less interesting characters. So, I suppose it...more

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Oct 04, 2008

Nicolas rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: space-opera, guerilla, fin-du-monde, nano, voyage, top, rayon-fantasy-et-sf

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Ben alors ça, c'était une sacrément bonne surprise !
C'est vrai que la quatrième de couverture laisse sous-entendre qu'il s'agit d'un space-opera un peu déjanté, avec son Festival qui envoie des téléphones demandant de le distraire.

Mais cette mise en bouche n'est rien à côté d'un récit dans lequel l'explosion de la machine à couverts en plastique n'est que le symptôme le plus évident d'un univers complètement barré qui, pourtant, sert un récit d'une sacrée cohérence, malgré des ...moreBen alors ça, c'était une sacrément bonne surprise !
C'est vrai que la quatrième de couverture laisse sous-entendre qu'il s'agit d'un space-opera un peu déjanté, avec son Festival qui envoie des téléphones demandant de le distraire.

Mais cette mise en bouche n'est rien à côté d'un récit dans lequel l'explosion de la machine à couverts en plastique n'est que le symptôme le plus évident d'un univers complètement barré qui, pourtant, sert un récit d'une sacrée cohérence, malgré des prémices un peu folles.

Mais reprenons du début et méfiez-vous des spoilers glissés dans ce texte.

Le Festival arrive donc sur une planète arriérée, colonie d'un empire galactique reprenant les codes d'une espèce d'empire soviétique étrangement modifié, et refusant les technologies "post-singularité". Cet empire, naturellement, considère cette arrivée comme une invasion et compte y répondre militairement avec toute la force et la vigueur possible. Et deux des personnages principaux, originaires d'autres endroits, vont faire en sorte que ce plan échoue.

Dit comme ça, ça donne une intrigue téléphonée, avec soldats héroïques et obéissance à tous les étages, comme dans une histoire d'Honor Harrington. Encore plus si je vous dit qu'en ayant revu en même temps A la poursuite d'octobre rouge, j'ai clairement vu une partie de l'héritage dont se réclame ce roman. Enfin héritage, le terme est peut-être un peu fort. En tout cas, d'autres courants sont venus se mêler à ça : un côté NSO cherchant à intégrer les outils du cyberpunk et des éléments de hard-science là-haut, dans l'espace; et puis aussi une espèce de distanciation qui m'a fait penser à La Culture de Banks. Voilà, c'est tout-à-fait ça : la Culture rend visite à ses cousins arriérés - qui la considèrent bien sûr comme une espèce de version dégénérée de leurs nobles traditions militaires. Et encore, je ne parle là que des influences qu'on peut retrouver dans le récit spatial. Parce qu'il y a à côté une espèce de contrechant terreste, montrant les vraies conséquences du passage du Festival. Et là, la vraie inspiration, c'est évidement Alice au pays des merveilles.

Bon, enfin, je vous parle là des inspirations, mais Stross n'est évidmeent pas un simple copieur, sinon je n'aurais pas autant apprécié ce bouquin. C'est aussi un auteur qui sait, avant tout, donner de la crédibilité à tout son univers. De la Nouvelle-république, dictature soviétoïde, aux errements moraux de ses personnages, tout semble parfaitement "vrai". Tenez, même son Eschaton, dont on ne sait ni ce qu'il est, ni ses pouvoirs, ni rien, a une force, une présence dans ce récit que je trouve stupéfiante.
En même temps, ce truc qui est la plus proche version d'un dieu incarné semble régner sur la partie de l'univers où vivent les humains, et intervient d'une manière bien plus visible que d'autres artefacts quasi-divins.

Ah oui, j'allais oublier de vous parler d'un concept marquant : la singularité. J'en avais déja vaguement entendu parler, mais je n'avais encore jamais lu de roman l'utilisant comme base d'une évolution menant à cet état du récit. C'est frappant, c'est un peu dingue, et c'est totallement impressionant.

Et enfin, cette sinularité, cette histoire, ces personnages, tout ça fait de ce roman un bon, un très bon, un excellent roman à lire absolument.(less)

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Mar 13, 2011

Peter added it

Stross & The Festival have arrived: Rachel Mansour is a UN diplomat based incognito in an interplanetary Russian-ethnic society based on a historical model of class-structure and aristocratic inherited privilege. Martin Greenfield is also working undercover within the society for a mysterious paymaster called Herman.
At the outset of the novel a presence arrives in orbit around one of these Russian worlds and showers the planet with mobile phones. The bemused natives are told on the phones that ...moreStross & The Festival have arrived: Rachel Mansour is a UN diplomat based incognito in an interplanetary Russian-ethnic society based on a historical model of class-structure and aristocratic inherited privilege. Martin Greenfield is also working undercover within the society for a mysterious paymaster called Herman.
At the outset of the novel a presence arrives in orbit around one of these Russian worlds and showers the planet with mobile phones. The bemused natives are told on the phones that The Festival has arrived and that they will grant requests for anything if they can only be entertained.
Soon, the Victorian-industrial world is thrown into chaos, revolution and worse by a plethora of advanced technological items given to the inhabitants.
On the homeworld, the Emperor decides to send his fleet to destroy the Festival and quell the insurrection. Martin, who has been waiting for his papers to be processed so that he can work in the flagship's engine room, is suddenly summoned aboard, as is Rachel, who has abandoned her disguise and announced herself as a UN observer to claim a place on the flagship, ostensibly to ensure that that the military of the New Republic do not contravene any of the Eschaton's laws.
It is only gradually that we realise that the Eschaton is not the ruling body of this interstellar multi-cultural society, but is something else entirely.
Stross succeeds admirably in blending satire, drama, political intrigue and outrageous science fiction concepts in a cleverly constructed novel.
One's understanding of the history of Humanity's interstellar cultures is revealed piece by piece and the jigsaw Stross puts together for us is weird, funny, fast paced and politically astute.
As a debut novel it's not the explosive start one might have expected from Stross who has made a reputation for himself through his short fiction. It is, however, an original and refreshing piece of work, which works well on every level.
Most importantly it's intelligently written, peppered with wit and the occasional post-modern reference.
(less)

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Jan 18, 2012

Jason Pettus rated it

Shelves: contemporary, sci-fi, weird, smart-nerdy, hipster, personal-favorite

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

I recently had the chance to acquire every single book ever written by trippy sci-fi author Charles Stross, and so have decided to spend the year actually reading and reviewing them here for the blog; and I've decided to read them in chronological order, too (or, the general books by chronologi...more(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

I recently had the chance to acquire every single book ever written by trippy sci-fi author Charles Stross, and so have decided to spend the year actually reading and reviewing them here for the blog; and I've decided to read them in chronological order, too (or, the general books by chronological order, then take on the themed series one at a time), which means that first up is his 2003 novel debut Singularity Sky, which along with his other early classic Accelerando are the ones that really first established him as a major genre force, and that helped cement the cliche of the SF "British Invasion" of the early 2000s. And so that's what makes it an even bigger shock than normal to find out that the novel is not a serious-minded brainteaser, like I think of whenever I think of the other Stross novels I've already read, but rather a very funny absurdist comedy along the lines of late-period Robert Heinlein. Not actually a story about Ray Kurzweil's famous theory of the "Singularity" (that is, the moment in the future that computers gain sentience, and thus usher in a new blazingly fast era for humanity where the mechanical and the biological blur into unrecognizable forms), the novel instead takes this Singularity moment as its historical start, and the fact that humans quickly figure out how to time-travel, at which point a mysterious alien force known as the Eschaton literally create a human diaspora to stop such development, by taking 90 percent of Earth's population and magically scattering them on various inhabitable worlds across the cosmos, these people now free to develop whatever kinds of societies they want but with "the big E" stepping in again whenever a "law of causality" is about to be broken, doing things like wiping out entire star systems to ensure that these stupid hairless apes don't accidentally erase the universe's existence.

Our actual tale, then, takes place hundreds of years after the events just described, when this scattered humanity have formed an endless series of different governments, tech capabilities, and even corporeal forms; to be specific, it's the story of a race of post-human creatures known as "The Festival" who exist mostly as forms of pure information as they travel the cosmos, who literally create new fantastical bodies whenever they stop at a new star system, then proceed to create a kind of benevolent chaos in that new system for awhile (the actual "Singularity Sky" of the book's title), swapping unheard-of technology for new info about the universe from that new system before finally getting their fill, dumping their temporary bodies, and taking off again for yet another century-long flight to the next habitable system, in this case the recipients being a militaristic quasi-fascist colonial dictatorship who shun technology and who clearly resemble the Bush administration that was in power when this novel was first published in the US.

As always with Stross, this is a lot of infodump to take in at once, with the above recap only scratching the surface of this expansive storyline, and with my promise that the whole thing becomes much clearer once you read the actual book; but like I said, the biggest surprise is that Stross plays all this mostly for laughs, a sort of ridiculous adventure tale about a backwards military that purposely builds outdated tech into their warships for the purpose of "tradition," and who then tries to fight a conventional war against a group that can barely fathom what the concept of "war" even is, and who are so technologically advanced over their opponents that they see the traditional battles as little more than you or I swatting at a pesky fly on a hot summer day. I know this all sounds a bit disjointed in a small write-up like this, but trust me when I say that the whole story when written out is a comic masterpiece; and it's easy to see why this made such a big splash when it first came out, after a 1990s that saw perhaps the lowest point of SF in its entire history. It comes highly recommended, and needless to say that I'm looking forward to the next book on the list, 2004's Iron Sunrise which just happens to be a direct sequel to this volume. (less)

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Nov 21, 2011

Andreas rated it

It is hard to tell what this one is about from the blurb. Between the covers is postmodern science fiction well grounded in current physics. A mysterious entity known as “The Festival” arrives on the backwater colony of a neo-Victorian Empire, quite literally showering manna from heaven on the populace in return for “entertainment” in the form of information. The Empire attempts to retaliate, and all the while a pair of agents, one for the UN, hover and observe. These agents work a pair of myste...more

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Jun 14, 2011

Kevin Veale rated it

I've been reading Charles Stross' books for a while, and I'd never run into the Eschaton series simply because other books of his had been recommended to me earlier.

I found myself captivated by 'Singularity Sky' within sentences, which is a great achievement. The book opens with: "The day war was declared, a rain of telephones fell clattering to the cobblestones from the skies above Novy Petrograd."

The earliest concept of the setting is that a deliberately eng...more

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May 03, 2011

Daniel Roy rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: sf

The opening of Singularity Sky is as gripping as they come: one day, on the backwater planet of Rochard's World, telephones begin raining down from the sky. Everybody who picks one up is given a simple order: Entertain us, and we will grant your wish. And just like that, money, bicycles and replicator machines begin falling from orbit, and Rochard's World falls into chaos.

Soon, the New Republic, a strict dictatorship, dispatches a fleet to deal with the enemies 'attacking' their colony. But in s...moreThe opening of Singularity Sky is as gripping as they come: one day, on the backwater planet of Rochard's World, telephones begin raining down from the sky. Everybody who picks one up is given a simple order: Entertain us, and we will grant your wish. And just like that, money, bicycles and replicator machines begin falling from orbit, and Rochard's World falls into chaos.

Soon, the New Republic, a strict dictatorship, dispatches a fleet to deal with the enemies 'attacking' their colony. But in so doing, they put their entire civilisation at risk: for in trying to gain an advantage on the Festival, they plan on delving into time-travel, a technology sternly prohibited by the Eschaton, a transcendant AI controlling the fate of Humanity itself.

Sounds good so far, doesn't it? Unfortunately, that's pretty much the point where the whole novel grinds to a halt. It's a sad statement on Charles Stross' storytelling abilities that he would go on to tell such a boring story based on such a strong setting, but here it is: the major part of the novel gets lost in cliché spy vs. spy stories aboard a capital ship run by two-dimensional military types.

One major problem with Singularity Sky is determining whether Stross is serious or satirical throughout his novel. A lot of the happenings aboard the ship are one-sided and flat, and as far as espionnage stories go, they make James Bond look realistic. It's bad enough that Rachel Mansour, the sympathetic UN delegate, actually uses some sort of miraculous replicator luggage to do everything from staging a rescue to fabricating an escape pod. I kept having flashbacks to Rincewind's Luggage in Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Is the novel satire, then? It might well be, and it certainly includes some part that seem to be aimed for comedic effect. The major problem with satire, though, is consistency: Stross seems to alternate between moments of satire and seriousness, and it makes any attempt at emotional connection with his main characters totally impossible. At no point do they exceed the stereotypes they are meant to represent, and the relationships that eventually grow around them are unconvincing and bland.

I understand that Stross is pretty popular with today's geek crowd, much like Cory Doctorow. Just like Doctorow, however, I find Stross entirely too rooted in modern ideals for my SF tastes. It seems that Stross built his future world not so much as an argument for his own view of the world, but as a vindication of it. It's at its most obvious when, near the end of the novel, his "good guys" engage in a totally one-sided argument with the representative of a controlling dictatorship, where the heroes treat their adversary like a child who has yet to discover that "information wants to be free," and other such truisms. Such blatant geek wish-fulfillment might please other readers, but for me, it totally steals away my ability to suspend disbelief. I love SF novels that raise thought-provoking debates (of which Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is possibly the epitome); in the case of Singularity Sky, though, the whole thing is built as a one-sided monologue, and so accomplishes as much as the propaganda it so strongly decries.

Another annoying tendency of Stross is to throw away references to modern times with total disregard to credibility. It's cheap, and it feels like Stross is pandering to the crowd by sacrificing the timeless qualities of his story. For instance, when describing some sort of exotic technology, a character reflects that the thing has:

"...rather more computing power than the whole of the pre-Singularity planetary Internet."

That's well and dandy to give the readers a point of reference, but the reason most of the SF authors avoid such device is because it sounds as silly as if I went around claiming my word processor has "more writing power than 2 medieval cloisters full of monk scribes". It just doesn't make sense for future characters to refer to events and technologies that are so far in their own history.

As a whole, Singularity Sky is as chock-full of bizarre and interesting ideas as the reviews made it out to be. Unfortunately, the grand canvas of ideas that Charles Stross has created is used to paint a boring story that never provides emotional resonance. Add to it a number of annoying writing habits, and all I can say about Singularity Sky is that it totally fails to live up to its own hype.(less)

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Feb 13, 2011

Freddie rated it

Shelves: fiction, revolution, sci-fi, politics, time-travel, war

Only my second Stross novel and not the best. The sci-fi elements were great - believable physics, nice causality elements, sentient machines etc., with only one major miss that my clumsy reading spotted (hours in space in a suit designed merely to keep air in and he didn't freeze to death before anything else happened to him?). The story was somewhat interesting and the New Republic while hideously charicatured were scarily believable. The festival, unexplained intruders threatening the stabili...more

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Aug 17, 2010

Ceridwen rated it

Recommends it for: the Matrix

Shelves: red-scare, sci-fi, space-the-final-frontier, the-future-is-now, what-are-you-doing-dave

I swear I missed the class on the technological singularity when I was matriculating at Nerd University. Actually, come to think of it, I probably didn't so much miss the class as fell asleep the second they got to time travelling sentient whatnot transhuman exhuman time-like wave forms of skimming technobabble that exists in a quantum loop fix over the cornucopia ansible machine....zzzzzzzzzzzz...

*snort*

What? This is not an interesting or new critique, not at all, but ...more
I swear I missed the class on the technological singularity when I was matriculating at Nerd University. Actually, come to think of it, I probably didn't so much miss the class as fell asleep the second they got to time travelling sentient whatnot transhuman exhuman time-like wave forms of skimming technobabble that exists in a quantum loop fix over the cornucopia ansible machine....zzzzzzzzzzzz...

*snort*

What? This is not an interesting or new critique, not at all, but Lord, is the prose associated with hard sf boring as shit. I've been reading this as an antidote to crafted prose, the kind of reading one does in ten minute chucks while too sleepy to consider engaging with the emotional upheavals of a woman going out to buy flowers for a dinner party. I may sound like I'm making fun of Mrs. Dalloway here, but I'm not. Singularity Sky is chock-o-block with space rays and battles and hair-breath escapes and all manner of vorpal snicker-snack, but the almost gleaming optimism one finds in sf, even the stuff that's ostensibly more darkly imagined, sits in very strange contrast with the quiet lapping oceans of emotion that Woolf conjures in her almost relentlessly prosaic fiction. Dalloway is all depth, and this is all surface. But I read for all kinds of reasons, and sometimes those reasons are “entertain me with space-rays” and sometimes those reasons are “break my heart” and sometimes those reasons create one another.

I'm not trying to set up an unfair contrast between writers of obviously different skill levels and concerns, and I'm not trying to straw-man Stross here at freaking all. Stross is pretty good at what he does, and there were tantalizing moments of great peppered in the mix, and also tantalizing moments of shit. (Er, you know.) I was grabbed like hell at the beginning: the phones falling from the sky, the smart commentary about technology bearing ideology, the ways that cultural wish-fulfillment goes pear-shaped once those wishes are fulfilled. Mostly, these sort of narratives crush their stick-thin characters like the matchsticks they are, but there were exactly two characters in here that weren't see-through as rice paper, and two is usually two more than these sorts of fictions contain. It may sound as though I'm faint-praising the hell out of Singularity Sky, and I guess I am, but these characters are emblematic of Stross's frustrating skill set against his weaknesses. He can write real characters – you can see them right there – but then he doesn't for anyone else in the book, and several characters go to caricature in stupid ways, and it seems a shame and a waste.

It's especially true when you look closely at Rachel. Stross writes compellingly her frustrations of being an intelligent, educated woman in a society that wants her to be pretty and have babies. Plus, she's a spy! With wicked cool spy gear! Early in the book, she reminded me a little of Cordelia from Bujold's books, especially because there's a competent little love-story with the other fully realized character. Maybe I don't even need to say this, but I've found that most love stories make me want to strangle everyone I can get my hands on, starting with the authors. Sci fi love stories often amount to no more than an excuse to write about sex in zero-g, and this story never got my hands itching for the garrote or the eyemuffs. Put more positively, I was pulling for those kids, especially because I never did see them have sex in zero-g. If that's your thing, try Heinlein.

But dammit, why does Rachel have to be the only woman in the entire freaking universe? She's not, of course, but you wouldn't know it from the cast of characters. (I'm ignoring the slug thing with tusks that's given a female pronoun, because, did I mention it was a slug thing with tusks? I'm not even going to engage in arguments that this is a female character, because that is stupid.) See what I mean? Stross can write a female character who isn't a set boobs bouncing without the constraints of gravity, but then he completely wanders off into the all-male playset of space opera like he didn't get what he himself was saying. I'm hesitant to get out my handy feminist ray-gun and cut Stross down, because I really do not want to disembowel writers just for getting something half-right. But it makes me super sad, because half-right means that it is still half-right, but then it's also half-wrong.

Okay, back to the singularity. This story doesn't deal head on with the singularity – which, as I learned from cribbing from my husband's notes, because he managed to stay awake in class, is the moment when technology goes sentient in this big post-human event, and then people are obsolete, but then they still exist or something, and it's a big deal. His notes were really hard to read, but he definitely said “Matrix” a lot. Then I fell asleep again while doodling “Mrs. Ceridwen Mieville” in the margins. What this is all coming back to is that I don't get the singularity, and I'm the wrong person to ask about the whole thing. Anyway, I didn't understand what the singularity was doing here in this story, because it seemed like this big unknowable distraction from the much cooler story that was going on in the space opera. The central conflict was between a bunch of aristocratic asshats, and how they declared war against the intergalactic telephone system because they didn't understand that the intergalactic telephone system was not a government or an ideology in any way they could ever understand. There's actually a lot of fun stuff in here about the U.N., oddly enough, and also a couple of really glaring infodumps & sermonizing about information wanting to be free and terrorism, infodumps that I seriously enjoyed, I'll have you know. But then, why the eff bring up the technological singularity at all? I mean, it was structurally important, in that the Eschaton, the singularity in question, was the big boogyman. But, um, could someone explain this again? I'll work very hard at staying awake, and if I close my eyes, I'm still listening. Really.
(less)

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May 30, 2010

Benjamin added it

Shelves: audiobook

In Stross's Eschaton series, of which this is the first book, humanity has been scattered by an omnicompetent intelligence called the Eschaton which enforces one basic law: no causality paradoxes. (The Eschaton is possibly a descendant of human evolution/creation, so its just protecting its own coming-into-existence.) This novel is the story of how one of those scattered colonies (the transhuman, multi-species Festival) gets involved with another colony (the luddite, patriarchal, monarchical New...more

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May 12, 2010

Stephen rated it

An unusual foray into Sci-fi for me. I enjoyed this, and certainly found it readable enough. I was a little let-down by the scope of its ambition. The topics it's based around are huge - in particular the concept of cornucopia machines and time-travel via faster-than-light. Unfortunately, though, these aren't really explored to their full extent (although, to be fair, I guess time travel is a pretty well-worn trope by now).

Stross actually manages to work his limited exploration into th...more

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Aug 14, 2009

Jacqie rated it

This book introduced the concept of singularity into S/F at large and set the tone for the new science fiction. Other writers who use concepts similar to Stross include Vernor Vinge, Iain Banks, and Karl Schroeder. But I read this book first and it holds a special place in my heart because of it. Stross uses this work to mock the Far Left, the Far Right, conventional military S/F, and the Perky Girl Heroine tropes. Among other things. He also examines the consequences of Singularity on the ...more

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Feb 25, 2010

Brendan rated it

Shelves: 2010, book-club, fiction, scifi

The idea of singularity rides roughshod through modern science fiction. As one fellow enthusiast I know put it, “Anyone writing a futuristic story now has to deal with the question of singularity. Did it happen? If not, why not?” For the uninitiated, the singularity is the moment (and brief aftermath of that moment) when technological progress accelerates so rapidly as to create a sea change in society at the blink of an eye. This possibility is often connected with some sort of A.I. that c...moreThe idea of singularity rides roughshod through modern science fiction. As one fellow enthusiast I know put it, “Anyone writing a futuristic story now has to deal with the question of singularity. Did it happen? If not, why not?” For the uninitiated, the singularity is the moment (and brief aftermath of that moment) when technological progress accelerates so rapidly as to create a sea change in society at the blink of an eye. This possibility is often connected with some sort of A.I. that can build machines — once we can make machines that make machines, everything we hold dear breaks down and our future becomes uncertain.

In Stross’ world here, the singularity resulted in cornucopia machines, which allow the user to make, well, anything. As you can guess, once you can make anything, nothing is scarce anymore, and the balance of society changes completely. For a book-length meditation on this effect, check out Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Stross tells the story of a luddite world visited by an informational omnivore called “The Festival,” which exchanges stuff for information, and wreaks havoc on the world. We follow a few enlightened souls and a few despotic remnants as they try to deal with the upheaval the Festival brings.

* This isn’t hard sf, but it’s got a heavy strain of military SF, which can be kind of a drag. I found a few places where the military dialogue about incoming missiles and stuff got a little too detailed, but what can you expect from a story about a military expedition?
* I loved Stross’ choice to transplant the pre-revolution Russian society to the “New Empire,” to overlay the Communist secret police structure onto it, and to foment a new peoples’ revolution in the middle of the visit from the Festival.
* I really enjoy SF novels that include a lot of little detail ideas. The vast scale of the Festival, with its solar energy harvesting and its planet-consuming cornucopiae was fun to contemplate; the parasitic plants and beings that follow along with the Festival are pretty amazing in their own right.
* And then there are the Mimes. There’s a small sequence, mostly unresolved, that reveals one of the groups following the festival seems to be a circus… of death. There are mysterious characters called Mimes who seem to leave havoc and violence in their wake, and the circus itself causes no end of grief. But we don’t get much more out of the story than that. I’m reminded a lot of the Carnival of Industrial Destruction in B.F. Slattery’s Liberation.
* I’m also amused by the irresponsible gorging the people of the planet do once they get cornucopiae. Having only heard third-hand stories of old technologies, they ask for all sorts of things they don’t really understand, and thus the Festival (with no solid knowledge of human idiom and custom) builds all sorts of crazy contraptions to meet their requests. Someone asks for a way to surveil the city (like London’s CCTVs, for instance), but since they don’t really know what system they’re asking for, they end up with organic cameras and telepathic worms that bring the camera feeds into their minds. Like an Orwellian Babelfish, I guess.

A delightful read, with solid characters and an intriguing universe. Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in modern SF and its treatment of the singularity.(less)

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Aug 02, 2011

Mjhancock rated it

Shelves: sci-fi

Aliens land on a totalitarian human colony and present a simple bargain: entertain them, and they will grant whatever the human desires. What follows is predictably chaotic, as the local government, the rebel forces, Earth government, and agents of a semi-insane computer that rules humanity from the future all scramble for control. There's a lot of interesting ideas here--see, for example, the semi-insane computer. And I like the basic premise, which has a nice fairy tale feeling. But the pl...more

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Feb 02, 2012

Apatt rated it

My first attempt at reading a Stross novel was Accelerando. I abandoned it after about 50 pages, we just did not get along. I had some problems with the prose style, the characters and the confusing plot. Still, I have always intended to give this author another try as I have been reading his blog for a while and I like them, no problem with the writing style there. Also, he is one of the most respected sf authors of the newer generation working today. He comes highly recommended by David Brin a...moreMy first attempt at reading a Stross novel was Accelerando. I abandoned it after about 50 pages, we just did not get along. I had some problems with the prose style, the characters and the confusing plot. Still, I have always intended to give this author another try as I have been reading his blog for a while and I like them, no problem with the writing style there. Also, he is one of the most respected sf authors of the newer generation working today. He comes highly recommended by David Brin and others.

I have always been interested in the subject of singularity, especially as a science fiction theme. As mentioned earlier I attempted to read Accelerando and failed miserably. Happily I found Singularity Sky much more to my liking, and shed much light upon the ramifications of the singularity for me. The story is set in a post singularity universe where a posthuman species called the Eschaton wield God-like power and scattered a vast proportion of the human race to the four winds, across space and time on planets light years apart forcing said human to colonize wherever they are placed. The story starts when a totalitarian and backward human colonies is visited by a transhuman race called Festival. The Festival offer the colonist absolutely anything they want in exchange for "entertainment" in the form of stories, philosophies, jokes or any information they find interesting. The goods they give in exchange for "entertainment" are produced by "cornucopia" machines which remind me of the nanotechnological assemblers from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. As anything can be had practically just for the asking, the planet quickly reaches an economic singularity where possession, employment, property and commerce is no longer meaningful.

This is a fascinating scenario where a single event causes huge planet wide changes, and it is just the tip of the iceberg where outlandish scifi ideas are concerned. Including a question of human sapience, where a posthuman creature hilariously poses the question of whether humans are "zombies or zimboes?", not to mention the Eschaton outlawing of "causality violation" which is basically cheating by time travel via Faster Than Light technology. A lot of the hard science went right over my head but it did not hamper understanding the plot as far as I can tell.

The writing style is somewhat workmanlike for the most part, but enriched by some witty dialog. The main characters are likable without being particularly noteworthy. While not an "sf comedy" the book does have a lighthearted feel to it. The whole endeavor is worth about 4.5 stars for me.

The next Stross book I read will most likely be The Atrocity Archives which looks like a hoot. I may get back to Accelerando once I have accumulated sufficient goodwill for Mr. Stross.(less)

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Dec 29, 2010

Ariana Deralte rated it

Shelves: classic-scifi, scifi

I'd have given this a star higher if it weren't for the random useless scenes scattered through the book, especially every interminable scene on the bridge of the space ship. It got to the point that as soon as I reached those, my eyes glazed over, and I have a huge tolerance for technobabble.

This book has two very well characterized main characters whose plot and story were entertaining to follow. Other scenes with other characters were less successful, though there were moments of b...more

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Jul 22, 2009

Andrew rated it

I've enjoyed Charlie Stross's Lovecraftian stories he keeps online, and was keen to read a full novel. Decent: it kept me reading and I finished fairly quickly.

I liked most the ideas in the book. Cornucopia machines, grey goo weapons, fad-obsessed information-hungry virtual civilisations, libertarian treaty-based citizenship, communication via entangled qubits, a singularity artificial intelligence born when time-looping logic gates were built, and three different ways to travel fast...moreI've enjoyed Charlie Stross's Lovecraftian stories he keeps online, and was keen to read a full novel. Decent: it kept me reading and I finished fairly quickly.

I liked most the ideas in the book. Cornucopia machines, grey goo weapons, fad-obsessed information-hungry virtual civilisations, libertarian treaty-based citizenship, communication via entangled qubits, a singularity artificial intelligence born when time-looping logic gates were built, and three different ways to travel faster than light. There is piles of technobabble, but all of it means something very specific and is consistent with current understandings of science. I wouldn't call it hard sci-fi though; while the ideas have a basis, it's set far enough in the future that no "how" needs explaining, and the science is not really a focus.

The story itself doesn't really go anywhere or accomplish anything grand - which is a bit of a crime here - it's an excuse to tour one small piece of the setting. There are four or five story threads with loads of potential that just meander and peter out.

The relationship of the Eschaton to the timeline and the conduct of the Festival are thought-provoking; they are "alien" yet have comprehensible motivations.

The socio-economic consequences are intriguing, but lightly described. The setting is a Russia-in-the-stars, undergoing a technologically stimulated revolution. Stross mixes socialist forms and Marxist rhetoric with post-technological capitalism to comic effect - a cyborg revolutionary declaims grandly that "the free market is under threat". It's cute and quaint, but doesn't go deep; I was unconvinced by the over-the-top oppressive and self-destructive ruling class.

I wanted to find out more about the patchwork contractual libertarian political structures on Earth, but that was not to be. The main characters spruik for a technologically facilitated laissez faire socio-political system, borrowing "information wants to be free" hacker slogans, but this theme is abortively pursued.

The characters tend toward caricature; without trying situations or a meaningful story, the colorful personalities amount to little. Additionally, this book has the most awful love-scene I have ever read; artificial, forced, and just unnatural.

I'll forgive the failings for the ideas; it's an easy, stimulating read.(less)

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Jan 17, 2011

Mattias rated it

· review of another edition

En väldigt annorlunda berättelse om ett framtida samhälle. The New Republic är en hårt styrd värld och till stor del kommunistisk. Kommunikation är en bristvara och republiken överlever endast på det faktum att staten har full kontroll på allt.

När den märkliga entiteten "The Festival" anländer och uppfyller allas önskningar ställs allting på sin spets och revolutionen är ett faktum. I detta utspelas ett antal sammanvävda berättelser, personliga öden, agenter på uppdrag...
...more

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Feb 06, 2010

Peter Hiller rated it

This book is very interesting and positively bursting with ideas. The execution at times falls a bit flat at times though. The romance aspect between Martin and rachael is interesting but seems extremely forced.

The eschaton sections though as simply fantastic. This weakly godlike being is never really explained (but then thats the idea), and the way that it proclaimed itself to mankind is simply cool. I've rarely heard of a more interesting way for either an AI or a supreme being to ...more

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May 19, 2011

Emanuel Landeholm rated it

“The Festival isn’t human, it isn’t remotely human. You people are thinking in terms of people with people-type motivations; that’s wrong, and it’s been clear that it’s wrong from the start. You can no more declare war on the Festival than you can declare a war against sleep. It’s a self-replicating information network. Probe enters a system: probe builds a self-extending communications network and yanks the inhabited worlds of that system into it. Drains all the information it can get out of th...more

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Jan 18, 2011

Adam rated it

Singularities and the exploration of their onset and ramifications are nominally the topic of interest here. That I was more drawn to the passages dealing with self-replicating technology and 'Grey Goo' applications suggests to me that this book didn't push its central idea far (or interestingly) enough.

Overall, this is a fair introduction to a series dealing with a complicated cast of species, entities and technologies, but as a single book this was a little ho-hum. Frustrating ...more

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Nov 02, 2007

Jason Kelley rated it

Betsey is right. Charles Stross is a great big brainiac. An awesome exploration into the concept and possible results from a singularity explosion. I also appreciated his delving into causality tampering and the possible consequences.

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Feb 06, 2012

Kelly rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, first-in-series

This is a solid, fast-paced story that still inspires plenty of deep thinking and consideration of ideas. The Festival has arrived at a colony planet of the New Republic. The New Republic is a Russian-like state encompassing an entire planet, complete with Russian character names and uniforms. The New Republic is not on the planet Earth, and Earth has no real governmental entity, perhaps a Libertarian way of life (I don't know a whole lot about Libertarianism, but that's what I concluded). The N...moreThis is a solid, fast-paced story that still inspires plenty of deep thinking and consideration of ideas. The Festival has arrived at a colony planet of the New Republic. The New Republic is a Russian-like state encompassing an entire planet, complete with Russian character names and uniforms. The New Republic is not on the planet Earth, and Earth has no real governmental entity, perhaps a Libertarian way of life (I don't know a whole lot about Libertarianism, but that's what I concluded). The New Republic has split from Earth to form their own government. The New Republic sees the Festival as an enemy, and a fleet is sent to attack it.

The Festival is simply asking the colonists for information: stories and myths; in return, they grant 3 wishes, genie-style. And one farseeing colonist asks for the technology that allows the Festival to grant the wishes, his own wish-granting machine. This is the basic plot, but the author describes it all much more scientifically and technologically than I am in my review.

And that's an aspect of the book I really like. There's a lot of technical jargon, and even my degree in engineering didn't prepare me for this. But I understood the basics, and I could follow along for the most part. It's difficult to write graspable technobabble, and I'm impressed with Charles Stross's ability to do so in this novel.

The story follows Martin Springfield and Rachel Monsour, two people who on the surface appear to just be against the New Republic's attack of the Festival, but perhaps they both have other motives. The reader follows the two on board the battlecruiser Lord Vanek as it illegally traverses through time to get to the colony just as the Festival is arriving.

This 300 page book packs an incredible amount of story in its seemingly simple pages. We've got a whole lot of Singularity going on (as if the title didn't give that away), some old-fashioned Revolution, father-son issues, time travel, age prevention, forbidden weapons, talking rabbits, and Baba Yaga just to name a few. There's a lot of deep-thinking, too, about unintended results and enemies we can't begin to understand.

I'm very happy that I picked up this book at the library. The only other book of Charles Stross's that I've read is Saturn's Children, and I frankly didn't finish it -- it just wasn't working for me. After this read, I'll definitely pick up the other book in the series, and hopefully some others!(less)

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May 24, 2011

Bill Hayes rated it

I thought this was an OK, but not a great read - I nearly stopped halfway though before the action picked up. I think 'Iron Sunrise', the sequel (based in the same universe anyway), is a better read.
This book had some interesting pieces, such as the very advanced but reclusive AI called The Eschaton
(created at Earth's singularity event), FTL (faster than light) space travel allowing time travel,
and a mysterious group called the Festival that visits planets and grants people wishe...more

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Jan 04, 2009

Jean-marc Liotier rated it

· review of another edition

I was awestruck by the telephone rain and went on to finish the book the same night. I expected exploration of post-humanism and got all that was expected. Socio-technological musings kept me entertained too. There were quite a few obvious winks at other authors, and probably quite a few others I missed. The universe felt a bit like Vernor Vinge's. Readers of Iain Banks will find themselves right at home too, although Charles Stross' writing is quite a bit less intricate and the characters less ...more

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Oct 07, 2010

Larry rated it

After going through a number of cyberpunk books now it seem that information singularity is the next wave of interest, Vernor Vinge I believe is the originator of the concept and Charles Stross does a decent job of working his story around the concept with warnings about technology run rampant in a society not prepared for the transformation. I enjoyed the book as he had a couple of interesting characters and even his bad guys were better than average, though they weren't really bad guys, just u...more

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Sep 27, 2010

Christopher McKitterick rated it

· review of another edition

Speaking of inventiveness, this one wins the prize for 2003 novels. It's dressed up like space opera, but is really an anarcho-political-evolution comedy about human colonization and the threats we might face, the greatest being ourselves. This would be a laugh riot if made into a movie, but it is less so in the written word; still, it's a great pleasure and exciting romp. Weaknesses include a bit of clumsy pacing and writing (for example, I noticed one passage switched perspective without chang...more

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Jan 02, 2012

Amanda Webb rated it

This is the first 'set in space' book I've read by Charles Storss and I want to read more now. It reminded me a bit of Iain Banks, at times Niel Gaimen and there a couple of flashes of the Global Village in there too. However it still had it's own voice.

Within it is contained one of the best descriptions of anarchism I've ever read, and some stuff that just made me laugh 'Multicoloured sporks of the revolution'. There's also a sort of non-spiritual god character 'The Eschanton' Wik...more

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Sep 12, 2009

Ben Babcock rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: english-3950, own, 2009-read, science-fiction, space-opera, artificial-intelligence, hugo-nominee

From the first line, this book hooked me: "The day war was declared, a rain of telephones fell clattering to the cobblestones from the skies above Novy Petrograd." A post-Singularity descendant of humanity, the Festival, arrives in orbit around the backwater Rochard's World. The Festival's willingness to share anything in return for information results in economic and social upheaval as the repressed citizens of Rochard's World find they can have anything they want: technology, money...more

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Sep 01, 2011

Voodoochilli rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: immortality, artificial, intelligence, singularity, space-opera

Well maybe it's just me but I got bored of this book about 3/4 of the way in. I thought maybe I should just keep reading till the end, but I just couldn't do it. There's some great ideas here, but the story seemed a bit confused and I found it difficult to remember all of the characters, let alone relate to them. I read this book after someone said it was like Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep. I disagree. Also I would say if you want to read a Stross novel, check out Glasshouse which is awesome...more

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About Charles Stross

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.

Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams...more

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Quotes from Singularity Sky

“Accelerating to speeds faster than light was, of course, impossible. General relativity had made that clear
enough back in the twentieth century. However, since then a number of ways of circumventing the speed
limit had turned up; by now, there were at least six different known methods of moving mass or
information from A to B without going through c.” — 1 person liked it

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