Singularity Sky

Rating:
Summary: a book review in the form of scattered factoids
Review: - citizens living on a repressive semi-feudalistic planet
- post-humans uploaded into small crystalline starships
- Millions of bright plastic phones reentering the atmosphere,
chirping, and saying "tell us amusing stories and we will give
you anything you want"
- Babba Yagga's hut
- The UN taken over by the IETF
- Marxism
- Libertarianism
- Anarchism
- Private protection services
- Spies
- Universal assemblers
- Time travel
- a non-causal-logic hyper-AI trying to make sure that it's not
retroactively aborted.
- Waste products rapidly encountering a fan

It's not a perfect book, but the cool-meme-density is pretty high.

Rating:
Summary: Starts well...
Review: ...then it drags, then it ends pretty predictably.

I just love all the notions that are thrown out in the first few chapters: assemblers, disruption of the political economy, value-adding critics, God-like beings stomping on time travel before it stomps on them, the effects of initial conditions on the internal structure of universes. These are all fun notions.

Then the fleet travels, and the book unravels. Fast.

In fact, I found myself wondering whether the author hadn't simply come up with some great opening chapters - enough for a novella - and then thought "What now?"

Anyway, the book has a good-enough beginning to suck you in until the end. Though you will probably find yourself thinking "It's got to get better. It's got to get better." about half-way through.

Rating:
Summary: Space Opera Meets The Singularity
Review: About 250 light years from Earth a planet called Rochard's World is being 'attacked' by an entity going by the name of "The Festival", which gives the inhabitants of Rochard's World almost anything they want in exchange for seemingly very little. Rochard's World is a colony of "The New Republic" which, in this far future novel, prohibits, due to religious beliefs and philosophy, imports and use of technology above a certain level, including life extension medical benefits. The New Republic, in their reactionary way, sends starships across time and space to defeat The Festival, not even knowing the true nature of the 'enemy'. One of the technologies outlawed by The New Republic is nanotechnology, so it may seem they are at a disadvantage from the beginning. They spend much of their time on board ship polishing their extensive brass fittings, laughable. Martin and Rachel, two of the primary characters, have excellent banter between them. Martin is an engineer and Rachel is a U.N. representative, neither are citizens of The New Republic. Lots of intrigue along the way, keeps it interesting. Another power to be reckoned with is the Eschaton, an omnipotent artificial intelligence, which forbids most kinds of time travel for a good reason, The New Republic stands to recieve their wrath for using time travel in their attempt to defeat The Festival.

This is all great reading, part of it old-fashioned space opera of The New Republic and their pre-nanotech strategies as they go against post-singularity nanotech. I took one star off of my review as I thought Charles Stross at times had an unclear writing style, sometimes I had difficulty making some sense of what I was reading, but this is a minor criticism, this novel is very good and well worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Anticipate a fast-paced, politically-driven plot
Review: Charles Stross' Singularity Sky is not the hard science fiction one might anticipate from its title, so readers beware. Instead it's a space opera combining interstellar war, spies, and alien invasions of a different nature. Anticipate a fast-paced, politically-driven plot with romance peppering an unusual story of discovery.

Rating:
Summary: wild ride!
Review: Charlie Stross was clearly having fun, and when an author has fun writing a book the reader can't help buf follow through (although I did find myself wishing that Imperial Russia wasn't quite as proficient in being a posterchild for boneheadedness and buffoonery - it seems to be used by so many writers to personify these traits...) Michael Swanwick, in his blurb review, called the book a "joyous romp" and that's precisely what it is, with a serious edge to it, too. I enjoyed, much, even though I rarely read the cutting-edge hard SF books any more these days. But I do recommend this one for the sheer entertainment value... and a couple of sharp psychological insights thrown in to spice the mix.

Rating:
Summary: fascinating space opera
Review: During the mid-twenty first century, a superhuman intelligence that calls itself the Echelon makes it's presence known to the inhabitants of Earth in a big way. Nine of the ten billion people on Earth disappear and it is discovered that they are involuntary colonists on thousands of worlds. The Eschaton warns the humans that if they try and figure out causality (time travel) and use it, they will be destroyed.

When one planet did exactly that, the Eschaton destroyed thirty planets making up that solar system. The empire of the New Republic wants no part of advanced technology and it keeps the inhabitants in the member worlds on a level with Tsarist Russia. One of the most technologically backward planets of The New Republic, Rochard's World, is being deluged by an information plague known as the Festival. The fatherland planet is sending its warships to destroy the festival but two people onboard one of the starships have a different agenda that must be carried out if they don't want the Eschaton to take hostile action.

SINGULARITY SKY is a fascinating space opera that immediately grabs and keeps the attention of the reader. The Eschaton is an ingenious concept and it would be terrific if the author would write another book involving it at a more intimate level. The idea of the Festival, a non-sentient communication repair machine is very original and it is interesting to see how the people of Rochard's world react to the information overload. Charles Stross is a very creative and innovative storyteller.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A decent journeyman effort
Review: Enjoyable overall, but recommended only with reservations. As noted by others, the continual anachronistic references to life in the late 20th /early 21st centuries is grating. Whatever term people will use for their instantaneous communications 300 years from now, I'm sure it won't be "email." In general, we have here an interesting concept, but the novel should have received another two iterations of critical editing. Sometimes, somebody just needs to tell an author, "No! Don't DO that!" (The episode of the pie-throwing mimes cost this book an entire star.)

Rating:
Summary: dissapointed, yet some good parts
Review: First let me say that I love Stross' Manfred stories in Asimov. The stories are absolutely fun and wildly interesting. He does a bang up job describing transhumans. He fits that niche well. And despite my dissapointment with this novel, I am still going to seek out other books by him. I will also continue to look forward to his short stories.

This is the first novel of his that I've read, and I was somewhat dissapointed. I was expecting something on the order of the Manfred stories, yet this novel was a run-of-the-mill military science fiction novel with bits of boring military-technical-info dumping here and there. The future tech speculation wasn't particularly new compared to his short stories.

The characters are human, all to human; and I kept waiting for the payoff for reading all the way through to the end.

There are some good things about the book which is why I've bumped up my review to 3 stars rather than two. His insight into the problems the rigid feudalistic society faces when thrust into a post-scarcity world was good. Though I wonder if people really would be that stupid. I could see children behaving in the fashion of some of the revolutionaries who ask for enhancements without any thought of the repercusions -- children are notorious for lacking impulse control and having an inability to understand delayed gratification. However -- adults?

I had an unwilling suspencion of disbelief that *all* adults would behave without any common sense, and that none of the adults with common sense would thing to put a damper on the crazy people. And, I had an even worse sense of disbelief that NO ONE would ask for information. That's absolutely crazy.

Despite that, the end of the novel was worth it. If you don't like hearing about the end of novels then please stop reading here. SPOILERS ahead.

There is a comment by the UN special agent about how the Festival has destroyed the societies with extremely low technological threseholds. The ending was very satisfying -- the colony survived. And despite returning to a lower tech axiom than they could have obtained with more wisdom, there were sublime small changes. Promises that the common man could live a more satisfying life despite the hell the colony had just gone through. I loved that.

Rating:
Summary: Not My Cup of Tea
Review: First, let me say that I've read very little from Mr. Stross prior to picking up this novel. Second, I'm the type of reader who enjoys character driven stories rather than plot or technologically driven stories. So this is probably why I didn't enjoy this book. That and I hate to read futuristic stories with modern cliches in them. And this book was LOADED with them.

The crux of the story focuses around Martin Springfield (an engineer) and Rachel Mansour (a U.N. diplomat) as they travel aboard a spaceship toward Rochald's World, which has been overrun by technology and fancy by the arrival of something called 'The Festival'. The Festival are information gatherers and, in return for information, they give back...well...whatever your heart desires (youth, health, intelligence, an impenetrable home, etc.). For a world that is stuck in the post-industrial age, this is disastrous. And the military dispatches a fleet to deal with this 'Festival' and bring Rochald's World back in line.

Of course, all does not go as planned. Everyone has a different agenda as to how to deal with this threat and the future of the planet.

And that's about it. Really. Oh sure, you can go on about how great the author developed the post-industrial society, the time travel technology, the corruption of governments in order to keep themselves in power. But lost amongst this...this...this mess, were the characters! Mr. Stross seems to enjoy telling us about every switch that gets set, and every lever that gets pulled. He often loses us when he goes on and on and on about how certain technologies work. This pulls us away from the characters for so long that we lose site of the story itself (at least it did for me!).

Example: 'The gamma-ray traces lit up on the main screen, labeled icons indicating their position and vector relative to the system ahead. One-point-three gees wasn't particularly fast, but it was enough to send cold shudders up Mirsky's spine: it meant serious high-delta-vee propulsion systems, fusion or antimatter or quantum gravity induction, not the feeble ion drive of a robot tug . . .'

If you're a bit perplexed by this, don't be too concerned. I don't consider myself a genius, but nor am I a 'dope' either. I read a lot of material every year and even if I don't enjoy a book, I usually don't feel completely lost. In Singularity Sky, I felt as though I were adrift in Mr. Stross' universe, but with reference points that only he (the author) felt comfortable with. I just couldn't make it from point-A to point-B.

All that said, I'd be willing to bet that there are some incredibly techno-savy folks out there who would absolutely love this book. But not me. The characters have to come first for me.

D-Rating

Rating:
Summary: Riveting postmodern space opera - w00t w00t!
Review: I blazed through this book. It is playful, irreverent, consumed by more raw ideas and imaginative takes on traditional scifi tropes than I've seen in a dog's age. And it contains the most vivid spaceship command deck combat dialogue I've ever read. If you enjoy the occasional fat mouthful of jargon, you're going to find yourself chewing vigorously throughout Singularity Sky.

Mr. Stross is obviously having more fun in some parts of his writing than others, which while noticable, isn't fatal. I think the other reviewers should give this book another read without their Clarion baseball hats on, or at least with them loosened a few notches. Perfection isn't required for enjoyment - just energy and novelty. Maybe they were dissatisfied at the denouement to the Big Space Battle, but that was the point - sometimes, you don't get the lollypop.

Singularity Sky is about *bigness*, like John Clute's _Appleseed_, but more accessbile. It's full of little in-jokes and sly tech-culture references, doing for the IETF what _Silverlock_ did for filk. It baps around collectivism, the principles of sovereignty, mutation theory, spy techniques, nanotechnology, Newtonian physics, kangaroo courts, secret police, and a character straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan production. Oi vey!

I liked it. I'm looking forward to his next book A Lot. He will only get better.

bob