- Hardcover: 452 pages
- Publisher: Orbit (4 Aug 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841493902
- ISBN-13: 978-1841493909
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13 x 4.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 604,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Accelerando
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
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.
About the Author
Charles Stross was born in Leeds, England, in 1964. He has worked as a pharmacist, software engineer and freelance journalist, but now writes full time.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Breathtakingly powerful, though not for the faint-hearted,
By protorp (France) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Accelerando (Paperback)
Don't believe the detractors, this is one of the most far sighted, visionary and original pieces of SF to emerge in the past 20 years.
Accelerando takes the reader into a future not so far from our own in subjective time (most of the book is set less than 100 years in the future) but through, as another reviewer said, tackling the idea of the technological singularity head on Stross delves into a world which by its very definition is at an incomprehensible remove from that of the reader. His masterstroke lies in sustaining this sense of alien change whilst keeping enough of a thread of understandable humanity runnning through the story. Be prepared to have to re-read passages and to take the time to do a bit of side research on his ideas, technical details and vocabulary, but prepare also to be rewarded by a true 'sense of wonder', that of standing teetering on the brink of a fathomless gulf of experience over and above and beyond your ken . . . Woven through these towering ideas there is a hugely powerful thread of character, for those who read carefully enough . . . the Macx family with its forks, twists and disfunctions is presented, in a way, as a reflection of the future shattering of human values as we currently understand them. And, whilst trying not to give anything away, the thread which ties all this together is a character who I think is one of the most believably, spine chillingly developed images of an alien intelligence yet written. My caveat would be that this is not a book for those who are just starting to delve into sci-fi. There are both explicit references to and subtle echoes of many previous works of SF. Some obvious authors (again, as others have said) who have influenced Stross and the genre he writes in are William Gibson, Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson and Ian M. Banks, and these all offer their own delights which are, for the most part, easier to tackle and digest than Accelerando. But if you put the effort into understanding it, the vision, innovation and control of ideas in Stross' writing will leave you reeling. Addendum: If the book's world were true the Amazon sentient class action lawsuits might come knocking at my door for this - the full text of Accelerando has been made available with full permission of author and publisher at accelerando dot org for free download. Good to see Stross backing the convictions on drm expressed in the book for real!
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great singularity SF, if a little uneven,
By mpgc (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Accelerando (Paperback)
Vernor Vinge created something of a problem for SF authors with his idea of a technological singularity. Accelerando is possibly the first novel to tackle this head on. Starting in the near future, it narrates along the exponential curve of computer power that rapidly leads all the way to solar-system-spanning AI. Stretching characters and a plot across such a canvas is a tall order, and inevitably the story is a little ragged at times, particularly toward the end. However, Stross really manages to pull it off remarkably well. This is SF that takes the idea of exponential progress and runs with it further and deeper than anything I've seen before. It's not a perfect book, but if you like the SF of ideas, you'll enjoy the ride.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly far-sighted,
By
This review is from: Accelerando (Paperback)
Stross's talent of extrapolating possible futures from current technological trends is both far sighted and creative.
The concept of the Matrioshka brain (nanotach that turns a whole solar system into computing power) is beautiful, and its ramifications well thought through. Other concepts like the Immam who ventures into outer space are great too. The only downside of this book for me was the slightly soapiness of it, somehow the human interplay seemed a little out of place in the high tech surroundings. Still an amazing read though, but you'll have to think. Anyone who knows anything of Von Nueman or Turing should love this book. Kinda like Gibson & Banks rolled into one.
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