Not a fan of this novel. Although there are some very interesting ideas in this novel, the narrative ultimate lacks a certain cohesion due to the fact that the novel is made up of separate stories. The excessive technobabble doesn't help either. In spite of this, I still might try Glasshouse or one of his later novels one day. ( )

Having recently finished reading my first Charles Stross novel, Glasshouse, which purports to be a loose sequel to Accelerando, I was keen to read this story to get some more information about the posthuman universe featured in both books.

Rather than strain my already bursting bookshelves further than necessary, I elected to read the freely available e-book version directly from my computer screen. I always find it somewhat more difficult to read books in this format, which probably helps to explain why I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Glasshouse. I found it to be a very interesting and thought-provoking story although quite confusing in places due to the sheer volume of new ideas that were being presented at every turn (exacerbated by the difficulty of reading on-screen without too much skimming).

With these two novels under my belt, I'm certainly keen to read more of what Charles Stross has to offer. ( )

This book contains some really interesting ideas on posthumanity, but also drags a little in the plot department at points. ( )

Wow! I have never had a single book make me feel so uncomfortable and unsure of the future. It was like having futureshock in text form. The characters and ideas were compelling. Simple things like dating things in second and mere decades really had an impact. It was both space opera and down to earth. This book stands unique in my collection. I am very excited to spread the word to others. ( )

In 1957, Raymond Chandler wrote a cutting one-paragraph parody of sf. (Sample: "I check out with K 19 on Aldabaran III, and stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop.") Accerlerando is a lot like that, but novel length. It relies a lot on current and not-so-current tech speak. (Serdar Argic is name-checked.) In 5 years, this will be dated. In 10 years, it will be incomprehensible. The character development is not much better with Manfred and Amber being straight-up geek wish fulfillment. By the way, what the hell are the inner solar system AIs doing with all their computer power? Based on the evidence in the novel, the answer seems to be nothing. (Their scheme for interfering with the Saturnians is ridiculously low-tech.) In short, this is more a compendium of silly high-nerd received ideas about the evolution of society than an actual novel or a serious extrapolation of what future tech and its social matrix might be like. ( )

Not a fan, here. The problem with everything being possible is that nothing ends up all that interesting.

Stross has written some really fun books- but I didn't think this was one of them. ( )

“His reputation is up two percent for no obvious reason today, he notices. Odd, that. When he pokes at it he discovers that everybody’s reputation—everybody, that is, who has a publicly traded reputation—is up a bit. It’’s as if the distributed Internet reputation servers are feeling bullish about integrity. Maybe there’s a global honesty bubble forming.”
(I'd short it. -C.)

Fascinating speculations about the future of the human race. Would have been a five-star book without the obtrusive political lecturing. In a future in which the solar system has been disassembled and the human race is on the verge of extinction, Stross feels a need to get in a lecture on... 9/11 and how it shattered America's "myth of invulnerability." Or something. (Stross, it seems, is a free-thinking genius who has never heard of Pearl Harbor.)
The book is full of such gratingly out-of-place lectures that instantly suck you out of the story. So, having created a superb Merlot with excellent dryness and fruitiness, Stross pisses in it.

Why do authors feel a need to do this? ( )

Quite possibly my favorite book. Not the best book, but the best in competition for my heart. ( )

This was an exquisitely mediocre book, featuring just enough suspense and philosophizing to keep things moving, although without much in the way of originality.

The book uses the “lives” of three “generations” of the Macx family as the frame from which it hangs a story of humankind’s future. I have to resort to quote marks back there because the book posits that technology will soon allow people to essentially be uploaded into and “live” in virtual environments, split off into different “copies” when needed and downloaded back into new bodies, among other things.

The basic plot focuses on the people who avail themselves of this technology but still try to maintain some kind of essence of what it means to be human, as opposed to the fully “posthuman” entities that “live” entirely within technologically created digital environments. Things eventually turns into a case of irreconcilable differences, and the “real” humans look for ways to leave the solar system and avoid disassembled by the posthumans for use as dumb matter in building their (the posthumans’) structures.

There’s some alien interaction, too, which gives the “real” humans insight into their predicament.

But, especially considering the book was 400+ pages long, there just wasn’t much new. It was like reading an older, shallower, blander William Gibson novel, albeit one that extrapolates much farther into the future than Gibson usually takes things. And, to be fair, I think it’s the time scale of Stross’ book that prevents him from creating characters as strong as Gibson’s.

Also, the whole “uploading people” meme has been around at least since Frederick Pohl’s Heechee series.

And making a key character a Muslim religious scholar struck me as pandering a bit to the times, as well as a recycling of a semi-common trope in sci-fi: having a non-judeo-christian character attempt to integrate his/her religion into the new technology and vice-versa, all in a way that’s supposed to bring a new viewpoint to all of us materialistic Westerners. Somehow, these characters always end up getting better treatment than would a similarly religious man/woman with a J/C background.

My final nit to pick: Most of the book seems to support a wider concept of what it means to be human, or at least sentient, in terms of rights, duties, etc. Except in a couple of key places: For example, one of the characters has “copied” herself in such a way that one of her goes exploring interstellar space while another remains behind. When years pass and the space voyager comes back to find the home copy dead, she finds herself legally responsible for the home copy’s legal liabilities.

And, at the very end of the book, a character faces what should be a very difficult moral problem: Should he let another character, not human and much more technologically advanced, “run off” a copy of himself for experimental purposes, knowing that, for plot reasons, the copy will be killed at the end of the experiment. The “human” character blithely agrees, with very minor qualms about the situation.

Bottom line: A perfectly readable book that doesn’t quite have enough breadth to make up for what it’s missing in depth. ( )

Set in the near future, this group of related stories is 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? ( )

I read several of these chapters when they went by in Asimov's earlier this century; only now in 2009 did I finally read them as fixed-up together in novel form.

Madly inventive, but these portions are not much more coherent in a single serving than they were spread out across several years of Asimov's.

Einstein places hard limits on the stories an author can tell about the exploration of the galaxy; humans are too puny and too ephemeral to inhabit stories that span star systems.

Stross side-steps the problem by having his characters sail to the stars as computer downloads aboard a can-sized starship, capable of high g's and tiny payload mass.

But once the characters are computer simulations of themselves, it becomes increasingly hard to take their adventures seriously.

But then I realized that "rebootable software emulations of real characters" is actually a pretty good definition of the entire enterprise of "fiction". ( )

The story is strange and not as compelling as books whose purpose is entertainment--this book shows the actual future. =)

No, really. Kind of. ( )

A fix-up novel examining humanity's ever-increasing technological development throughout the 21st century and beyond, culminating in the conversion of most of the mass of the solar system into "computronium". Three generations of the Macx family live through these changes and try to survive the Singularity and the actions of humanity's AI descendants.

The concept of the technological Singularity has been used in a lot of stories in the past decade, but Accelerando is the most complete look at how it could happen and what the effects could be. It starts out in the 2010's with Manfred Macx just starting to utilize always-networked wearable computers and software agents that become primitive extensions of himself and quickly moves on to a point where most of a person's personality may not reside in their physical body at all. The technological extrapolation is fascinating and technological change is portrayed as something moving forward almost with a life of its own that will drastically change the lives of everyone who survives it, but also shows that most of humanity may not survive the changes.

The book is probably not for everybody though. It seems to be specifically aimed at a techno-geek audience. If you don't already have some idea of what computronium is before reading the book, you are likely to end up lost and overwhelmed with all the concepts being thrown around. It is very much a book of concepts without much character development and a plot that still strongly shows its origins as individual stories. If you have some background in technology and recent hard SF concepts this is a must-read book. ( )

This is one of my favourite Sci-Fi novels from recent years. I really like the way he takes the singularity concept and turns it into a human story, showing how people change as the singularity takes over. I think he gets the psychology wrong in places, but I think that about nearly all sci-fi.

The story does get a bit patchy at times as it jumps from one time line to the next, but I quite like this in a novel, although David Mitchell is more accomplished at it. ( )

Just 50 pages in, and I find it so far a more frenetic, more technically interesting, and less humorous Snow Crash. The main character is Mary Sue enough that he probably should be named Hiero Protagonist. I have liked other Stross (A Colder War, e.g.) but I can see myself not finishing this one.

An exuberant, radically optimistic look at the Singularity; the best book of its' kind. ( )

Wow! Computers are becoming more intelligent all the time and the rate of gaining intelligence is increasing. This is a great book.

Fast paced, modern writing without offending, and just a gripping story.

If you read any Charles Stross this has to be the book.

Highly recommended! ( )

http://tpi-reads.blogspot.com/2008/09... ( )

Accelerando combines science of the brain, economic theory, any amount of hardware, and aliens. It's post-Internet and post-Neuromancer, and moves so fast and so far and so strangely that it's main pleasure for me, not an inconsiderable pleasure, was the constant sense that it was going to spin out past the point where I could follow what was happening to its increasingly post-human world, and the thrill of feeling that I was almost keeping up. I just read that Charles Stross's previous book, Glasshouse, is one of the twenty science fiction novels that will change your life. It must be a humdinger if it's better than this, because this one certainly presents a future, or a range of futures, that are way beyond plausible or likely, and I would have thought until now way beyond imaginable. Like Neal Stephenson at his most exuberant, the book teems with ideas and inventions that seem to be generated and squandered for the sheer thrill of invention. (It does have a plot as well, and a satisfactory romantic thread or two.) ( )

If you're looking for a book to unwind with, you may want to keep looking. Accelerando is dense with new and strange concepts, scattered across paragraphs in passing like confetti, and, for the most part, you aren't getting any kind of explanation of what they are or how or why. For the bits where you really need to understand what's going on to follow the plot, you get /just/ enough explanation to bluff your way through if you stretch a bit, but you may be at risk of a small bout of future-shock of your own, anyway. (This does appear to be more or less intentional though, so just sit back and enjoy the side-effects.)

I enjoyed it, though. The plot is a little bit bumpy in a couple of spots - the book is apparently a number of shorter stories bolted together and tightened up until they squeak - but it's about as far-reaching as it gets, arcing from near-present to beyond singularity, each thing building on the previous in a logical enough way that soon enough adds up to a post-singularity Frankenstein, and it's going to take more than a mob with pitchforks and torches to sort this one out.

Well worth the time and effort. ( )

Stross slamming you with one idea after another. Makes your head throb because it's so good. ( )

For the first hundred pages I thought the writer, instead of writing himself, had just developed a computer program that took random text snippets from Slashdot discussions and mixed them to generate some kind of literary nonsense. Cause the book is no more than a lot of technobabbling mixed with some explicit sex passages.

The last 300 pages are more technology chatter but now said chatter comes straight, and raw, from the writer's imagination and it gets worse and worse, think miniaturization plus space travel, as he seems not to know where he wants to take the story.

If anything the books explores a little bit into the post-scarcity economics issue, but that doesn't make the book as a whole any better. ( )

Excellent hard science fiction. A lot of brilliant and original concepts. Stross' guess at where we are going based on today's science, economics and trends is quite impressive and thought-provoking, taking today's concepts and technology to it's possible ultimate consequences. The story starts slowly and I must admit the first part wasn't really gripping. However the main body of the book is very good stuff. However the last quarter of the book he looses it again a bit. On the whole however a must read. - 23/5/2008 ( )

Accelerando mixes the cosmic scale of Stephen Baxter's Manifold series with the transhuman glee of Cory Doctorow. The book begins with Manfred Macx, living in 2010, somewhat transhuman, yet quite understandable. Flip flop goes time and we're looking at Amber Macx, Manfred's daughter, whose augmented and implanted mind is a lot harder to understand and her life in simulation spaces something far beyond ours. Then there's the third generation, living in post-singular world completely unlike our own.

It's an amazing novel, full of brilliant ideas and incomprehensible transhuman ways of life. There's an arc, but as the novel is made of nine linked novellas previously published separately, the plot isn't the strongest point (if you want transhumans and singularity with a strong plot, Glasshouse is an excellent choice). It doesn't matter, because the barrage of ideas is so strong and tempting.

There's an obscene amount of praise for this book, and I can see why. I enjoyed it, though I admit it wasn't able to keep my attention all the time - parts of it were a tad long-winded. Still, the sheer audacity of the book is something worth experiencing. Accelerando could be new Neuromancer, a visionary novel that keeps on being referenced. If you want a glimpse of one possible transhuman post-singularity reality, read this book.

Accelerando is available as a free download at Accelerando web site. Accelerando Technical Companion helps with the wacky technical concepts - only a real nerd can read Accelerando without needing to google stuff.

(Original review at my review blog) ( )

http://www.accelerando.org/_static/accelerando.html

Wow. Mind blowing. Oh, and don't get a cat. It may grow on you slowly at first, but stick with it, it is well worth it. This is the first book I can think of that had lobsters as characters, and I think that was where I first came across the author, in one of the Dozois Year's Best anthologies, where one of the stories that were changed to make this novel was published. The evolution of humanity, society, economics and others via the impacts of technology.

This is Neuromancer and Snow Crash good.

Accelerando : Lobsters [Macx Family] - Charles Stross
Accelerando : Troubadour [Macx Family] - Charles Stross
Accelerando : Tourist [Macx Family] - Charles Stross
Accelerando : Halo [Macx Family] - Charles Stross
Accelerando : Router [Macx Family] - Charles Stross
Accelerando : Nightfall [Macx Family] - Charles Stross
Accelerando : Curator [Macx Family] - Charles Stross
Accelerando : Elector [Macx Family] - Charles Stross
Accelerando : Survivor [Macx Family] - Charles Stross

A way ahead of the curve ideas man helps out some intelligent sea types.

5 out of 5

Man(nie) on the run.

4 out of 5

Two women and a cat? On top of trying to keep up with everything? That's tough.

5 out of 5

Life aboard the Field Circus for Amber, with some occasional advice from dad.

5 out of 5

Cat networking.

4 out of 5

Amber, the Field Circus, galactic routers, and a cat that is a definite worry.

4 out of 5

Family history.

3.5 out of 5

Manfred and Amber deal with resurrection, resimulation, and the ever changing and rapidly evolving galactic situation.

4.5 out of 5

Bad kitty.

4.5 out of 5

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2006/11/accelerando-charles-stross.html ( )