Thursday, November 10, 2005

Book — Accelerando — by Charles Stross

This is more like it! Iron Sunrise doesn't compare.

The book comes over as an uneasy — edgy — mix of Gibson and Baxter. The post-Cyberpunk ideas flow thick and fast to the Singularity and immediately after, into the ruins of an alien Singularity. And then there is the phase transition, imagination fails. the left behind humans — weakly posthuman — are presented in a straitened state, for all the alien magitech they have to hand; culturally impoverished, retreating to hearth and family.

Not since Star Maker does the experience of the transcendent, or recounting it, seem to have enriched anyone; the authors seem scorched by the flame as they draw back. But at least I felt drawn to devour it in a single sitting.

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