The Book Depository Accelerando by Charles Stross

Author: Jeremy Minton

Rating: 5

Review: For me, one of the hallmarks of greatness is that a book can be read and re-read multiple times, and on each occasion you are going to find something new and valuable in it. I have just read Accelerando for the fifth time and I am still being startled by its depth, imagination width and scope. For me, it is Stross's best book and fully merits a five star rating. It will be interesting to see, as the century wanes, just how closely the trajectory of history really mimics that laid out in this progression of family photographs, this procession of stories describing three generations of one family in a technologically run-away future. One can only hope that the answer is, "Not too closely" because, underneath the fun, the jokes and the ferocious bursts of invention there lies a profoundly sobering message about the limited prospects of both human and the human ecosystem in an environment of consistently accelerating change. This is not a book for everyone. It will prove difficult for those who do not have some kind of handle on computing and biotechnology. It will seem unlovely those who love lyrical writing or careful delineation of character. The people who populate this book are etched in lines of laser light, bursts of colour on the eyes of the imagination rather than detailed pen-and-ink engravings. Above all this is a book which is aimed at the cognoscenti. It would be as inadvisable to give this book to a reader with limited experience with SF as it would be to take a novice skier onto a black run. Stross throws out speculations, inventions and bits of technology (some real, some entirely fictitious) at a rate which is every bit as fast as his "venture-altruist" hero Manfred Macx, and the torrent is likely to over-awe and, quite possibly, drown the man or woman who has not spent a fair amount of time learning to kayak through speculative waters. He knows the tropes and idioms of SF and both subverts and extends them. Amongst many other things, this book includes descriptions of first contact between humans and aliens, and the prospects opened up by an inter-galactic network, only to treat both with a relentless bathos which radically transforms the genres traditional handling of such tropes. At times it can feel as if the book has become an example of the very themes it seeks to illustrate. The pace at which the ideas come at you can leave you feeling disorientated and confused. But those with the skill and experience to handle the ride will be rewarded with some mind-expanding ideas and and a book which manages to connect the cosmic with the personal and political in a way unmatched by almost anything else which I have read.

Author: Peter D.

Rating: 3

Review: I am enjoying this book for the second time, but here in 2020 it has dated a lot already. Still, as a possible future from the ancient times of 2009/2010 it's still a good book that hides philosophy and ethics lessons behind futurism and humour.