Accelerando

Charles Stross

Average Rating 9/10 (1 Review)

His most ambitious novel to date, Accelerando is a multi-generational saga following a brilliant clan of 21st-century posthumans. The year is some time between 2010 and 2015. The recession has ended, but populations are ageing and the rate of tech change is accelerating dizzyingly. Manfred makes his living from spreading ideas around, putting people in touch with one another and leaving a spray of technologies in his wake. He lives at the cutting edge of intelligence amplification technology, but even Manfred can take on too much. And when his pet robot cat picks up some interesting information from the SETI data, his world - and the world of his descendants - is turned on its head.

Review by Paul Lappen (100509) Rating (9/10)

Review by Paul Lappen
Rating 9/10
Set in the near future, these related stories are about an Earth where technology has run rampant, and humanity's inability to keep up. Computing power, and artificial intelligence, have passed the limits of human intellect. Nanotechnology is everywhere, reprogramming and replicating at will. Posthumans, with all sorts of biological implants, have rendered people extinct. Corporations have become alive and sentient. New resource allocation algorithms, collectively called Economics 2.0, have replaced capitalism and communism.

This book is about three generations of the same family. Manfred is a freelance broker in intelligence amplification technology in a world where everyone must be 30 seconds ahead of everyone else. Years later, his teenage daughter, Amber, signs up as an indentured astronaut on the first exploration ship heading to Jupiter. It is to get away from a domineering mother who insists that Amber have a 'normal' life on Earth. Her son, Sirhan, finds his destiny intertwined with all of humanity. Along the way, most of the planets in the solar system are systematically taken apart by various sorts of mini-robots and nanomachines. There is also a multi-year journey to a specific brown dwarf star a long way away. Building a ship with sufficient life support for people, and propelling it at any reasonable portion of the speed of light is not possible. Therefore, the 'passengers' have been uploaded into a nanocomputer the size of a Coke can, and that is sent to the stars.

I thoroughly loved this novel. Cyberpunk fans will also love it. It does a fine job at the near future speculation, it's cool, it's high tech, and it's got a good story. What else does a reader need?
Paul Lappen (10th May 2009)