Singularity Sky Charles Stross Stross’ debut novel takes place in a universe shaped by the intervention of the post singularity entity known as the Eschaton. This strongly superhuman intelligence has perpetuated a human diaspora far out into the light cone of Earth. This creates many new civilisations of vaguely like minded people out among the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,2,50,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b","category-books","category-fiction","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Singularity](\"http:\/\/treefell.com\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/04\/singsky.thumbnail.jpg\")
<\/span>Stross’ debut novel takes place in a universe shaped by the intervention of the post singularity entity known as the Eschaton.
\nThis strongly superhuman intelligence has perpetuated a human diaspora far out into the light cone of Earth. This creates many new civilisations of vaguely like minded people out among the stars.
\nOne such civilisation is the New Republic, where technology (or the lack of) is used to keep the population firmly under the control of a centralised aristocracy. When the colony of Rochard’s World is visited by the unknown force that is the Festival people’s wishes are suddenly granted in exchange for stories, entertainment and information of all kinds. This the New Republic views as an attack on their sovereignty. In retaliation they are prepared to defy the Eschaton and the prohibition on causality violation by attempting to arrive in the system just after the arrival of the Festival.
\nOn board the attacking fleet are Earth’s UN inspector Rachel Mansour and drive engineer Martin Springfield who both have hidden agendas.
\nThis book is piled with ideas and some great humour. Unfortunately it’s let down by some mind blowingly dull "action" sequences and characters with large roles to play that don’t even make it to cipher level. It’s something that Stross has since gotten much better at.
\nI’d recommend this to lovers of idea rich science fiction and in light of the fact that the sequel is a much better book in the same setting.<\/p>\n