We’ve just entered the tail end of 2013, fast approaching the middle of decade the second of the twenty-first century. Few of the changes Charles Stross lays out in this book have come to pass, which isn’t surprising. Many of them are still possible within our lifetime, though, which is interesting.I’ve felt rather burnt out when it comes to posthuman SF ever since my last foray into the subgenre. Postsingular just left me feeling quite cynical about the potential for such stories. I had an epiphany that I swore, in my hubris, I would never experience. Others wiser than me in the ways of posthumanism have written about it before, and I should have listened. But I was too enchanted by the siren song of nanotechnology, mind uploads, and strong AI. I had been lucky, in that I had read several great posthuman stories and very few poor ones. As I read more widely, I began to understand the conundrum that many science-fiction writers face.Stross addresses this problem in an essay that, I believe, made it into the afterword of my edition of Scratch Monkey (I don’t have my copy at the moment, so I can’t double-check, and I don’t know if it’s available online somewhere). He remarks that, after a certain point, nanotechnology essentially becomes magic in a Clarkian, sufficiently-advanced kind of way. It’s perhaps a corollary to that adage: sufficiently advanced technology can let you escape any plot hole. (This is particularly evident in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) Once you have the ability to manipulate matter at the subatomic and quantum levels, you are essentially a wizard. This makes you very powerful, and thus from a story perspective, somewhat uninteresting. How do you threaten your protagonist when the answer to everything is, "Nanotechnology!"?Then there’s the other side of the posthuman coin: the Singularity. Now, I don’t necessarily believe the Singularity will happen (and I think that is rather beside the point), nor do I particularly agree with the concept that the Singularity is a boring or unrealistically utopian vision of the future. It’s a mistake to refer to the Singularity in earnest as the Rapture of the Nerds, and Singularitarians who remain convinced that the Singularity will bring about the eternal prosperity of a post-scarcity economy are kidding themselves. The whole point of the Singularity is that it is a massive paradigm shift in the way humans relate to the world, to the extent that we cannot predict what society will be like after it occurs. No one mentioned the shift would make the world perfect. It’s entirely possible the Singularity could leave humanity worse off, endangered or extinct, particularly if it involves a strong AI.This is the path that Accelerando treads. Even though Stross’ blithe use of nanotechnology frustrates me, his grounded notions of what a Singularity could mean for the human species are very appealing. This is a posthuman novel that is fun and optimistic in one sense but also twisted and dark in another. In short, it’s a posthuman novel for the postmodern age. It has flaws—particularly, I think, because of its nine-part novella-like structure—but it still packs enough punch to make it worth reading.Accelerando, as the title implies, aptly demonstrates how certain technological innovations within the next few decades could combine to create a snowballing effect of accelerated change—a rolling Singularity, if you will, with no clear beginning or end. To name a few such innovations: simulation of consciousness, to be followed by mind uploading; weak AI based on primitive neural networks; easier and more reliable cryptography becoming tied to one’s identity, which will in turn become distributed through nanotechnology and wearable computers on one’s person. Stross demonstrates how, over the course of a single lifetime, so much can change that the world—and humanity—becomes unrecognizable.As I said before, I’m not too impressed by the book’s near-future setting (at least for the first part) or some of Stross’ specific predictions. I’m not one to complain when an author gets such predictions wrong, but I’m wondering what motivated Stross to make such predictions about a world only twenty years from the time he was writing. Did it really seem like we would advance to that point by then? Or was it just a convenient length of time?The specifics, and indeed the speed at which these changes and innovations occur, are immaterial to the actual point of the book. Even if it took longer for everything that happens in Accelerando to happen, the result is still the same: Earth being disassembled for computing power by the "Vile Offspring" of humanity.Because that is the paradox of posthumanism. By definition, we cannot become posthuman until we give up that which makes us human. But if we don’t, and we elect to remain human (or even mostly human), we risk being left behind in the cognitive arms-race, so to speak, of self-enhancement. Having reached the point where we effectively control our own evolution, it is difficult for us not to walk down that path. Stross makes some interesting observations about some of the "most logical end points" for such evolutionary decisions. It might be difficult for some people to comprehend, this idea that we would disassemble moons and entire planets for use in computing. That’s a byproduct of the public misconception of what computers are—all silicon and electrons whizzing about microprocessing units. Even though I’m aware of some of the deeper theories that underpin the subject, the various Turing this-and-thats, I admit that a lot of the jargon used in this book is beyond me. However, if you can work past this obstacle to understand that, yes, hungry posthuman intelligences will probably disassemble some or all of our solar system, then you start to realize how humanity as we know it might be threatened. If we’re not careful, we could build, design, and simulate ourselves to death.And then there’s the cat, Aineko. It isn’t a cat so much as an AI in a cat’s body. It has become self-aware and started modifying its own programming. It has also discovered that it can manipulate humans, particularly by using its physical form’s adorable nature to catch them off guard. At the beginning, Aineko is an ally, then a trickster, and finally a thorn in the characters’ side. By the end, with its true power and nature more apparent, we can see that it has been manipulating the characters for the entire time. Once again, Stross points out that any AI, whether created by us or an accidental amalgamation of algorithms, is not necessarily going to be our friend. At worst it will be Skynet; at best it will be a helpful, God-like protector (as if we could trust it). But it will probably be like Aineko or the Vile Offspring, two examples of "amoral" and disinterested intelligences who will use humanity if it suits their purposes or ignore it as long as humanity isn’t in the way.With Accelerando, Stross plays with a lot of high-concept ideas about the future. Not all of them will come to pass, but some of them might, if we make it long enough. Designer babies are on the way, and with Europe and the United States both investigating the secrets of consciousness, mind simulation and uploading remains a possibility for now. I’m not in love with the story that Stross tells with these concepts. The characters aren’t great—I never really sympathized with any of them, and I found the behaviour between Manfred and Pamela practically bizarre and inexplicable, shenanigans with AI cats notwithstanding. And this is by no means a "feel good" flick that will leave you burgeoning with hope for the future of the human species. But I think it has restored some of my faith in Singularity-driven posthuman fiction. It’s demonstrated that the Singularity by no means removes the obstacles facing our survival as a species. The problems we currently face might seem daunting, but we can probably overcome them. And then we’ll face more.
OK, let's start with the fact that the book jacket compared Charles Stross's writing with William Gibson and Neal Stephenson at their best.As a reader who has a serious crush on Stephenson's writing, I instantly had an expectation was set up in my mind, as you can imagine.However, this novel was thoroughly disappointing. I like hard SF and cyberpunk that explores social mores and the impacts of technology and science upon society. And can do so with humor (or irony). The science was so outlandishly bad (e.g. generating sufficient power to run manufacturing plants on a satellite of Jupiter by wrapping conductors around the satellite, across the poles, to create a conducting loop to move through Jupiter's magnetic field), and the belief in the Singularity so without skepticism, that I stopped drinking the Kool-Aid at about page 220, and had to gut out the last half of the book without the necessary suspension of disbelief that is why I read science fiction in the first place. As the book proceeds use of science or IT concepts becomes increasingly absurd as the main characters (who are nearly impossible to feel any sympathy for) are rescued, Deus ex Machina style, from ridiculous crises with unexplored implications that abuse the reader's time and effort placed in attempting to understand what has been written.The ability to dash out clever metaphors and create a story around a compelling idea (like the Singularity) does not guarantee that the story will be good. Stross has moments of true humor and irony, but the characters are leaden and locked in epoch-long neuroses that persist whether the character is in "meatspace" or has re-instantiated itself as an orangutan or a flock of passenger pigeons (I'm not making this up). There is also a level of omniscience and confidence in the main characters that suggests they know everything that has happened and will happen. While this may be a device to make the post-humans off-putting to us as human beings, part of the reason to write a book is to get humans to read it, and most real humans won't soldier through a book with know-it-all characters they cannot care about, who already have figured out everything that will happen to them, and seem unbelievably bored by anything except for their family squabbles. The middle third (from around page 200 through 300) really lacks coherence and cannot be readily followed by any but the most careful reading. And, upon careful reading, you are not rewarded. This is not Pynchon or Faulkner; this is geek speak that does not connect with ideas that matter. At the point where the travellers encounter alien intelligences, the entire story completely falls apart and has to be rescued, again, from its own excesses.I have spent too much time writing about this. If you read this review, you have been warned about what to expect in reading this book. I will not be picking up another Stross novel any time soon.
What do You think about Accelerando (2006)?
Hard SF. Three generations of an entrepreneurial family invent and scheme and survive the singularity, the point where artificial intelligence power bypasses old-fashioned organic brains, and humans first augment themselves, then disassemble the planets to build a solar-system wide computer and become something else entirely.What a disappointment. I can forgive unapproachable characters in hard SF, and frequently have. I tried hard to cut some slack, because the point of the book is the screamingly insane pace of progress and just how fast and how far we would change into something entirely different. But indeed, I did have the revelation, around the three-quarter mark, that not only didn't I care whether any of our protagonists permanently bit it or not, but the supposedly precarious fate of the entire human race also made me yawn copiously.But when I forgive that failing in hard SF it's because the big ideas are awesome enough. And these ideas were big, sure, all intergalactic packet-switched router systems and AI cats and what all. But there was something so . . . smug? Self-involved? I can't really put my finger on it, except that a lot of this book was so in-jokey to such a specific stripe of internet-age scifi geekery that it tipped over from pleasing into masturbatory. Something like that.Does Stross have anything better to offer?
—Lightreads
Many people recommended this highly to me. I found that the plot and ideas, as summarized on Wikipedia, were brilliant and mind-expanding. The writing of the book was intolerable. I couldn't get past page 20. It was like reading Wired Magazine--Stross drops every current technology name and buzzword, apparently without a deep enough understanding to know which might have staying power 15 minutes into the future. When "slashdot", "open source", "bluetooth", "wimax", "state vector" and more terms all appeared on the same page, I felt like I was reading a Bruce Sterling novel. This guy's trying to impress or snow me with dumb vocabulary, rather than telling a story. I hope he drops the silly vocabulary and trashy sci-fi sentence structure to expand his great ideas in the other books. More Arthur C. Clarke and less Bruce Sterling, please.
—Morgan
Full of interesting ideas, but no satisfying conclusion. Although to be fair, I'm not sure how he could have satisfactorily ended it after the mind-expansion of the first half of the book. Unlike in something like Dune or Ender's Game, where the interjections provide context and depth of meaning, the boldfaced exposition in Accelerando seemed tedious and simply repeated what the previous chapter had already stated. The idea of augmenting our minds with add-ons (as the cell phone and computers are already starting to do) was carried into the far future, but many of the other technologies of the future were not expanded upon in depth. I found myself loving many of the ideas, but not enjoying the story much. Surely there could have been something more compelling to work with than legal battles? I would love to see some of the ideas in this novel unpacked into greater depth in a parallel-running series. Edit 8/29/13: I'm boosting this to 4 stars because despite still agreeing with everything above, this book has really stayed with me.
—Traci Loudin
