Ever discover an author through another medium, like TV or Twitter or the author’s blog, and realize you want to read everything this author has written and you want to read it yesterday? That’s how I feel about Charles Stross. It’s similar to my evaluation of William Gibson in my last review; Stross writes about the present changes facing humanity in such an interesting way. I don’t always agree with him, and his stories don’t always grab me as narratives, but he is definitely near the top of the heap when it comes to authors of posthuman fiction.Toast is an intense but somewhat uneven collection of Stross stories. Perhaps the introduction, “After the Future Imploded” is the most valuable part of the book: it has exactly the type of lucid futurist speculation I was talking about above. Stross plays his “what if” game fancifully but also with some sincerity. He sees not only the capabilities that we have today but the capabilities we might have tomorrow, and where that might lead us—not only the issues that we’ll confront, like the rights of uploaded personalities, but what will happen when the present becomes our past.The two technologies that Stross emphasizes in most of his fiction are nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The former will be a revolution in computing, because we’ll truly free computers from the “dumb terminal” model we use now. In Toast stories, people’s clothing and coffee cups—everything—are computers. Humanity is wetwired, part of the grid and the Web in an entirely new way. The latter technology is a lot more controversial and amorphous in its definition. Trying to determine what exactly “artificial” intelligence denotes is a difficult chore. But if it, too, happens, then it will be another revolution—and not just because of the possibility of the Singularity. As far as we know, we are the only intelligent beings on the Earth—and perhaps in the observable universe. An artificial intelligence would be something new, something alien and strange. That would be fascinating and frightening.After coming off the high of Toast’s introduction, I was excited by the first story, “Antibodies”. The moment a character exclaimed, “Someone’s come up with a proof that NP-complete problems lie in P!” I grinned and knew the story would be good. Many science fiction authors are also physicists, or have a strong science background, which makes them comfortable talking about the physics that underlies their plots. Stross’ background is in computers, and it shows in these stories. He speaks the hacker lingo, but more interesting for me, he draws in the deeper mathematics upon which algorithms rely. Plenty of science fiction stories talk about neutrinos and exotic matter, but how many reference P versus NP in a meaningful way? So “Antibodies” was a big hit with me.I wish I could say I was as impressed with the rest of the stories. I was really excited when I started reading, and some of the stories are good, but they don’t hit my buttons the way “Antibodies” did. “Bear Trap” is set in Stross’ Eschaton universe (best known for Singularity Sky). It’s good, but the conflict and the way Stross depicts the wider universe are both so vague and ill-defined that I never got invested. Similarly, “Extracts from the Club Diary” was enjoyable—despite Stross’ questionable faux-Victorian diction—but its direction was somewhat predictable and never quite paid off. “Lobsters” is slightly better, because it raises the intriguing questions surrounding uploaded personalities—both human and non-human. I also like the main character, who is a study in how the Internet is changing the role of the deal broker. Finally, “Big Brother Iron” examines what might happen to the world of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four if Big Brother invented a computer to run the government. Like the other stories I’ve mentioned, it has a really neat premise against which the story doesn’t quite measure up.Stross writes mostly in the first person, and as a consequence his narrators often sound the same to me. (That might just be me or the mood I was in while reading the book.) It probably doesn’t help that his characters are often the same mould: middle-aged male stuck in a mid-level position, usually has some technology expertise of some kind, who gets into trouble because of external events and has to use his wits to survive. I really need to read one of his novels with a female protagonist, like Halting State. But I suspect my complaint emerges from the similarity in themes among the stories of Toast. They are, in a sense, about looking back during or just after the transition between our current era and whatever comes next (Singularity or not).Toast isn’t the book I would recommend for a newcomer to Charles Stross (Singularity Sky is pretty good in that respect). Yet if, like me, you are fascinated by ruminations upon our potential posthuman prospects, this anthology might be right for you. It isn’t as amazing as I had hoped. However, it still has that dose of lucid speculation that I’ve come to regard as a hallmark of Stross and of great science fiction in general.
This is a book of short stories, so it's hard to give it a single review, because all the stories are of different quality. But there's an underlying theme to all the stories. Stross himself in the introduction describes them all as "outdated" stories. That is, they're science fiction stories that illustrate where science fiction story-writing was at some point in the past, showing outdated fears of their day. So the cyberpunk story is VERY dated, as is the Y2K story. However, the best story of the lot "A Colder War" is no less chilling and awesome for being about the Cold War (being fought with the Mutually Assured Destruction of Lovecraftian gods and monsters, rather than just nuclear weapons). This is clearly something Stross developed further into his Laundry Series (still my favorite Stross series), but this short story is a lot more bleak and more fully deals with the utter insanity of the cold war. It's also fun, for being so bleak.Other standout stories are "Antibodies," which is one of those first person stories where the reader can figure out a lot more than the narrator realizes--always one of the hardest things to pull off, and "Big Brother Iron," which projects the world of "1984" into the early computer age.Not all stories work: a couple have the exact same set-up: Narrator goes to a science convention, and it's crazy what kids are getting up to these days (in the future). And the last story of the book is actually the first chapter of "Accelerando." Now, "Accelerando" is one of the greatest science fiction novels of the 21st Century so far, so that's not really a huge complaint, but it's not an alternate earlier version of the story, as far as I can tell. It feels like it was there to pad out the book and convince you to buy "Accelerando." Which you should do, right now, but still, you should probably just get that book instead of reading it in "Toast." The rest of the stories are also, good, though.However, if you have to only restrict yourself to one Stross short-story collection, pick up "Wireless" instead, because it contains "A Colder War" as well, and also contains the great companion piece "Missile Gap," which takes a great set-up, and just runs with it. Don't read too much into the setup: The Earth of the 1950s is picked up, peeled like a grape, and placed on a flat disk many millions of lightyears away. Space travel can't happen anymore, ICBMs don't work, and the US and the Soviet Union freak out at each other but also have to deal with the incredibly changed conflict between them. It's a great setup, and the novella then plays out how that would change everything, rather than spending a lot of time trying to figure out why it all happened.You can probably tell I'm reading "Wireless" right now.
What do You think about Toast, And Other Stories (2005)?
Toast is a collection of Charles Stross' earliest short stories—a glimpse into the origin myth of one of our most dazzling SF superheroes. As such, it felt a little awkward to read the way I did, long after I was exposed to his more polished later work, and a full decade after its initial publication (though the edition I picked up is actually the "2005 remix" according to the Afterword).But the roots of those later works are here—you can see inklings of Stross' Laundry novels in "A Colder War," for example, and the basis of Accelerando in "Lobsters," which became that book's first chapter. There's also "Big Brother Iron," an extended riff on 1984, and the worst-case Y2K scenario "Ship of Fools," and his first published story, "Yellow Snow," from all the way back in 1990... even the Introduction, "After the Future Imploded," is pretty killer analysis.Stross has been around, paid his dues; these are some of the dues he's paid. And while I wouldn't necessarily give Toast to someone now as their first experience with Stross, I would definitely recommend it to Stross' fans, as a way to go back and fill in the blanks in a very interesting history.
—Alan
This is a collection of fairly early short stories by Stross mostly united by the theme of the future passing them by. The vision that they were describing has already been overtaken, such as in Ship of Fools, which is about the Y2K bug. Other stories stand up better, such as the one set in the Eschaton universe and his Lovecraft-inspired stories, particularly the whimsical A Boy and his God. Overall, this is a thought-provoking and enjoyable collection of stories, full of Big SF ideas and a good introduction to Stross' work.
—Raj
I've been trying to get over my distaste of Stross's books. I kept wondering: was it just the Laundry universe I just couldn't get into? Maybe if I try something else it'll be okay... so when my husband got a copy of Toast (long story, he didn't mean to because he doesn't really enjoy Stross either), I figured I'd give it one more shot. I managed to finish two stories out of ten ("Antibodies" and "Bear Trap"). I just couldn't stand the rest. I'd read "Lobsters" a long time ago, and it's a one-shot one-trick story for me; no point reading it again since I still remember it clearly. "Lobsters" would have been #3 on my list, I suppose. Or not. It was a while ago and I was a little less discerning then.I really need to learn that no matter how good certain authors are supposed to be, reading is a personal experience. Some people don't like certain foods; I hate celery unless it's in soup, and I detest bell peppers unless they're very finely chopped and mixed in with wild rice as a casseroule/baked dish. In the same way, I just don't mesh with Stross's books. Unfortunately (for me or him?) I still have one more book to go. Wireless is also a collection of short stories. I am hoping for something better than Toast, but we shall see. By the way, the ending to Bear Trap was absolutely GROAN-WORTHY.
—February Four
