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Accelerando Singularity Charles Stross Books

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Accelerando Singularity Charles Stross Books

Why can't I find good science fiction in my older years. This was the third science fiction novel recently recommended to me that proved to be markedly disappointing. Where are the provocative and educational sci fi authors of my youth....the Isaac Asimov's, the Arthur C. Clarke's, the Ray Bradbury's? Even actual scientists could write better science fiction than "Accelerando", e.g., Fred Hoyle's "The Black Cloud" or Carl Sagan's "Contact." Oh well, I guess I'll keep searching. But anyway, despite some flashes of imagination (thinly) scattered throughout Charles Stross's "Accelerando", the book, at least to me, is a conglomeration, more accurately a disjointed jumble, of connected and disconnected plots enlivened, or more precisely obscured, by a fertile multitude of scientific labels and terms throughout the book. He just tosses off stuff left and right without even deigning to explore and explain the mechanisms and "the hows" of the various post-human and super-intelligent scenarios he describes. In my view, I think he tries to do too much in this book, by virtue of his multi-faceted scientific fantasizing, to lead to any semblance of coherence. The many positive reviews on this site mystify me. There must be a book out there that deals with a world characterized by, say, 10 million MIPS per gram of matter, i.e., almost a totally computational world, that's both coherent AND imaginative, but in my view this isn't it.

On a silly note, it is noted in the early stages of the acceleration to the Singularity that Manfred, the genius inventor and innovator, has developed a set of "algorithms" that enables the "non-coercive" central planning of an economy. Of course, toward the end of the book after much more accelerating technical progress, the same Manfred, in order to explore an extra-galactic world, says (P. 370): "If we win the election, we'll have the resources we need to do that." Apparently, the non-voters for his scheme somehow will not be coerced into giving up those resources, or perhaps Manfred (and Stross) have a different definition of coercive.

On a final note, this book attempts to explore the power, and potential malevolence, of trans-human (accelerated AI) intelligence. Perhaps we humans should be fearful of all-powerful trans-human intelligence. I've read that there's a cult in California (where else!) that pre-emptively worships super-AI, so that "we (humans) will be treated as pets and not livestock."


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Accelerando Singularity Charles Stross Books Reviews

If readability were the only factor I considered in rating this book, I'd have given it only two stars. Frequent naps were needed to get through the book because it kept making me drowsy. But the author did try to imagine the unimaginable - that is, to conjure up a picture of the post-singularity future. So I'll give him credit for taking a stab at the impossible. That vision, unfortunately, lacks even the tiniest smidgen of credibility. It's just out-of-control imagination, and it's very tedious to read.

Iron Sunrise was by far the best book of the series. Its plot line and characters were intriguing, and it hinted that some race (the Remastered or perhaps their "gods") was able to hide events from the Eschaton and maybe even threaten or destroy them. This turned out to be a major, dangling plot thread that was never addressed in Accelerando. The lack of follow-up was very disappointing.

So Accelerando is the back-story for books 1 and 2. Pre and post singularity events play out, starting on Earth and spreading out vastly, that presumably lead to the rise of the Eschaton. But that eventuality is only very loosely implied by the ending, and the Eschaton is never actually encountered in book 3.
I'll mention the bad stuff first. This book, particularly the first half, was a difficult read. I was considering stopping reading it at about halfway through because it was so tedious, and that was a fair investment of time I had already spent because this is a long book, my said it should take about 19 hours for the whole book. However, about halfway through, when I got to the part where the characters that were uploaded people in a shoe box size space ship flying to the edge of the solar system find a router built by some other advanced civilization, I decided I had to see how it finished.

Then, I started seeing the beauty in it. It was just so far out. Charles Stross seemed to try to shoehorn every Singularity-oriented technology out there into the story. It was a bit clumsy that way, but there were some new ones I was made aware of. Like automated contracts. The book mentions them a lot, and it's difficult to understand partly because of vagueness that most likely has something to do with the technology not being in existence yet, but I found on the internet that the same technology that Bitcoin uses to make transactions for money can be used for contracts too.

One of my favorite topics is the theory that sentient beings can be simulated and much to my delight that was brought up a couple times in the book. The first time is when one of the characters mentions the concept in a discussion about theism. The second time it is mentioned one of the characters explains that the evolution of theory of mind, that's the ability to figure out what someone else is thinking, progressed because there is an advantage to a predator knowing what it's prey is thinking. Eventually when the species ends up fighting itself, an advanced theory of mind is a simulation of themselves. That's pretty deep, and it's just one of the many profound ideas in the book.

I don't want to spoil the story at all because there is a nice twist at the end. But, to demonstrate how far out this book is, the bad guys are the Vile Offspring who are advanced AI beings that oppressed and possibly drove to extinction whatever organic life-form created them. The Vile Offspring are also turning all the dumb matter in the solar system into something that they can upload consciousnesses to because they need the space.

Charles Stross does very well with setting up an entire culture in this super-advanced society that includes an Economics 2.0 that only AI's can understand and a political system. Since the characters are uploaded consciousnesses in the last half of the book, the environment gets pretty crazy with characters taking the form of a flock of pigeons or other animals. The characters can also change their environment to whatever they want. This gives the author a lot of space to make the settings very unusual and fun, much like Micheal Moorecock did in his "end of time" series fantasy books by giving the characters creation rings. It works, and made the last half of the book much more enjoyable than the first.

Another thing I noticed is that there is a reference to Russia still using Microsoft, --- remember this is in the future ---, and there was a reference to a company with a name that was kind of an anagram for Apple, but I do not remember seeing any references to anything that sounded remotely like Google.

I wouldn't recommend this book to everybody, but the people who might like it probably already know who they are. Anyone who does get through more than a few hours of it and is struggling, I'd suggest to keep going because the last half of the book is better and the ending ties things together well.
Why can't I find good science fiction in my older years. This was the third science fiction novel recently recommended to me that proved to be markedly disappointing. Where are the provocative and educational sci fi authors of my youth....the Isaac Asimov's, the Arthur C. Clarke's, the Ray Bradbury's? Even actual scientists could write better science fiction than "Accelerando", e.g., Fred Hoyle's "The Black Cloud" or Carl Sagan's "Contact." Oh well, I guess I'll keep searching. But anyway, despite some flashes of imagination (thinly) scattered throughout Charles Stross's "Accelerando", the book, at least to me, is a conglomeration, more accurately a disjointed jumble, of connected and disconnected plots enlivened, or more precisely obscured, by a fertile multitude of scientific labels and terms throughout the book. He just tosses off stuff left and right without even deigning to explore and explain the mechanisms and "the hows" of the various post-human and super-intelligent scenarios he describes. In my view, I think he tries to do too much in this book, by virtue of his multi-faceted scientific fantasizing, to lead to any semblance of coherence. The many positive reviews on this site mystify me. There must be a book out there that deals with a world characterized by, say, 10 million MIPS per gram of matter, i.e., almost a totally computational world, that's both coherent AND imaginative, but in my view this isn't it.

On a silly note, it is noted in the early stages of the acceleration to the Singularity that Manfred, the genius inventor and innovator, has developed a set of "algorithms" that enables the "non-coercive" central planning of an economy. Of course, toward the end of the book after much more accelerating technical progress, the same Manfred, in order to explore an extra-galactic world, says (P. 370) "If we win the election, we'll have the resources we need to do that." Apparently, the non-voters for his scheme somehow will not be coerced into giving up those resources, or perhaps Manfred (and Stross) have a different definition of coercive.

On a final note, this book attempts to explore the power, and potential malevolence, of trans-human (accelerated AI) intelligence. Perhaps we humans should be fearful of all-powerful trans-human intelligence. I've read that there's a cult in California (where else!) that pre-emptively worships super-AI, so that "we (humans) will be treated as pets and not livestock."