Singularity Sky 416
| Singularity Sky | |
| author | Charles Stross |
| pages | 313 |
| publisher | Berkley Pub Group |
| rating | 9.9 |
| reviewer | Matt Grommes |
| ISBN | 0441010725 |
| summary | A semi-sentient space travelling information gatherer called The Festival comes to a backward planet and instigates 1000 years of technological change in a month. The rulers of the world are not too happy and will use any means they have to stop the Festival, even if it means incurring the wrath of the super-AI that watches over the universe. |
The main idea of the story, that a semi-sentient information-gathering alien system called the Festival comes to a backward farming planet and begins granting wishes -- in the form of advanced technology -- in exchange for stories and information, is only the seedbed for the larger exploration of the societally backward planetary system and what happens when the revolution you hoped to lead finally comes and it doesn't need you.
As a lifelong reader of science fiction, I hate that most SF is just as backward-looking as most Fantasy. Part of the problem with recent SF work is that we've come to a point in science where a lot of what made science fiction new has been done and what's coming is almost impossible to imagine, which I'll get to in a second. Space exploration can still be exciting but most new space stuff has been infected with the Star Trek Syndrome, as I call it, where everyone is boring and has no flaws, and the status quo rules. People just don't look to space exploration as exciting in real life so that translates to the SF work that people do. Real life science is changing so fast that it leaves even science fiction people in the dust. The result is the rise of 'Fantasy with robots and aliens' and 'Space Opera,' two facets of SF that seem to be dominating the landscape. Even Neal Stephenson, who was at the forefront of real technological future SF with The Diamond Age and Snow Crash has gone backward with Quicksilver and to a lesser extent Cryptonomicon.
The issue is The Singularity. This is Vernor Vinge's idea that technological progress proceeds at an exponential rate until there is a complete break with what came before. The End Of History, as people call it. This comes with the creation of a human-level AI that quickly proceeds past human-level, the invention of Upload technology that will allow us to live in computer systems and artificial bodies, something of that nature that we can't imagine. The problem with writing futuristic work in the time before a Singularity is that you can't see beyond it. Everything is different, so much so that all we can hope for is the fire up our imaginations to the point where we can begin to think in new ways.
One of the main goals of science fiction as I see it is to prepare us for the future. You can't hope to cope with the future if you've never been innoculated with new ideas. Singularity Sky is one of the first post-Singularity novels I've read that takes the idea seriously and examines it, allowing us to open our minds to the vast possibilities. Stross doesn't shy away from it like so many others. He uses the Festival's coming to show the speed of the change that comes with a technological Singularity and what happens to people in the aftermath. He also shows a culture trying desperately to hang on to old ways and the futility of doing that in the face of such rapid change.
There are problems with the book, mostly in the perennial bugbear of science-fiction, character development, but the rush of ideas glossed over that for me. This is only Mr. Stross's second book, I believe, the first being a collection of short stories called Toast: And Other Rusted Futures, that is high on my Must Read list. Charles Stross is a name that you will hopefully hear a lot more from in the coming years. His imagination is up there with the best and brightest and with his work as an accelerant my mind can't help but burn with new ideas. I hope more science fiction writers see this book and decide to move forward to meet him.
You can purchase Singularity Sky from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Play nice with Piers Anthony (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh for christ's sake (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool! (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks!
Heinlein Doesn't Suck! (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously I have a lot of respect for the authors stated above, since they all have stong scientific backgrounds and truly understand the human condition. I just had to respond, don't hate me for message.
try again (Score:4, Insightful)
This is nothing new. The man you extol as being a fresh creative force for the beleagured sci-fi genre is doing the same thing every author has done for the bast 80 years.
Is this a book review? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is: most x suck, where x can be anything you like (TV programs,
Re:Try branching out.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Baxter earned my unending adulation for whatever part of "The Light of Other Days" he contributed with Clarke, and "Manifold: Time" sealed the deal. Favorite writer of the 1990s for me.
Piers Anthony (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Heinlein Doesn't Suck! (Score:4, Insightful)
Pshaw! next you'll try to tell us that not all reality television is real, or that pro Wrestling isn't a sport.
Most of everything is not the Best of anything. Get a clue. It's reading the rest that makes the best such a treasure.
And lay off Piers Anthony. He ain't Heinlein or Asimov, but neither is William Gibson. Nobody is. That's why Heinlein and Asimov are important.
why knock down others in a "Review"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your introduction slams other authors for no aparent good reason. If you are reviewing a book you can easily say it is better or worse, in your opinion, than some other works.
It is not necessary to drag in some other persons works and knock them down.
Re:Oh for christ's sake (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, if you look at the Ringworld cycle as juvenile, I have nothing but pity for you. If you disdain Manifold: Time and The Light of Other Days, I scorn you. And if you buy into the reviewer's hypothesis that a higher percentage of scifi sucks than ANY OTHER POP CULTURE FORMAT, I laugh at you.
We seem a little tender today, don't we? (Score:3, Insightful)
But still I agree with you, partly: badmouthing is not needed to contrast praise.
Re:Ecology of Slashdot comments (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Play nice with Piers Anthony (Score:3, Insightful)
With each further volume however he "progressed" more and more toward his standard goofey fantasy style, which is fine for a book or two of light reading, but that's about it. It gets old, in a hurry.
So, while in essence I agree with you, I nonetheless found the series as a whole dissapointing.
KFG
Piers Anthony (Score:4, Insightful)
* Macroscope
* The Apprentice Adept (books 1-3 only)
* Incarnations of Imortality (books 1-4 only)
I'm omiting from this list books that were entertaining but not really good, and books that are clearly fantasy and not sci fi. Of this list only Macroscope is what I'd call pure sci fi, containing no fantasy elements, but it was really quite good, one of his first.
Most of his sci fi is really quite tollerable and an enjoyable read. When in doubt skim the first chapter, and if the word panties is mentioned skip the book.
I did of course also quite like his lighter fluffier stuff, it was a staple of my reading from ages 12-17 when I bought anything he wrote.
Sorta agree with both points of view (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as space opera, I just finished David Weber's "Path of the Fury", and while it doesn't stand up there with Lois McMaster Bujold or C.J. Cherryh, or Weber's other works (comes off somewhat as though put together out of spare parts to turn a buck), it was a great way to spend a 6-hour airplane ride. Best thing I could have done with the time.
I've spent many an otherwise-wasted hour reading good and bad SF, and I cannot honestly say I regret ANY of it, even *shudder* half of Battlefield Earth (as a research project in "Gods below, surely the book wasn't THAT bad, the filmmaker musta taken liberties... Gaah, he didn't, it was, it was!"). Consider the alternatives, like Harlequin romances, USA Today, and broadcast TV. Even bad written fiction is better than most TV, and it lets us exercise our imaginations instead of rotting our minds.
SF for adults, please. (Score:4, Insightful)
My main problem is not the stories themselves, but the quality of the writing. That many of them are written for 14 year olds doesn't help (although this in itself doesn't make it poor writing).
We need SF book for adults, for people who have actually become somewhat literate in their dotage. I know they're out there, because I own a few.
Re:We seem a little tender today, don't we? (Score:5, Insightful)
What sucks (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh for christ's sake (Score:1, Insightful)
You cry about "Space Operas", could we hope for anything less than the "Star Trek World". Perfection is not an un-noble goal. Even with realism and effort the negative sides of the human existance can be overcome.
Some us have forgotten that that world is not here yet, or believe that good in this world cannot now be done before things get better. The true point of science fiction is to look at what's wrong, and prove that it can get better.
The social concepts in the original Star Trek seem almost laughable. A race which is black on the left and white on the right, battling to the death with a race which is white on the left and black on the right? And yet we still burn crosses, we still commit hate crimes. And many of those who don't condone them saying "We can't do anything to stop this".
After the attack on the Two Towers an Indian Sheik was gunned down in the street, solely because "he looked like one of them". Be them "Japs", "Gooks", "Krauts", "Rag Heads", we haven't gotten far. We continually make peace with one race, African Americans, the Japanese, the Germans, only to wage war and destruction on another, Muslims, the Chinese, the Koreans. And let us not forget the continued oppression on the Jewish people, and the Palestinians.
Perhaps the problem with Science Fiction isn't that things have gotten so much better, but that reading it is a bitter reminder that in fact nothing has changed at all, we've come no closer to the exploration of strange new worlds, the seeking of new life, and forms of civilization, because we haven't gone where no man before has gone before, a unilateral acceptance of ourselves and humanity.
Re:why knock down others in a "Review"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I completely disagree. Having a reviewer state up front who they think rocks or sucks, let's you "calibrate" the review to your own tastes.
I totally agree with the reviewer about Piers Anthony, and so that makes me think that I will probably agree with him about the rest of his review. (of course, there are those who who will consider PA high literature, but as the saying goes, YMMV. Some people watch American Idol, too.) I personally outgrew PA when I was about 12, so I have strong opinions about him.
Of course, it works conversely: one reviewer called a book "The worst thing since David Weber!". I enjoy DW, so I gave it a shot. (mind you, I don't consider his work mindbending or provocative, just an entertaining read. Like Laurel K. Hamilton, for e.g.)
Like I said, YMMV. Which is kind of the whole point.
m-
Re:Early Works by Anthony (Score:3, Insightful)
ttyl
Farrell
Re:Does it so well? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't live in the past. If you enjoyed the books at the time you were reading them, they fulfilled their purpose. What else exactly would you have done if someone had convinced you that you'd dislike them later? Probably nothing nearly as much fun as the reading you actually did.
Re:Play nice with Piers Anthony (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Play nice with Piers Anthony (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I liked his Tarot books as well, though.
Re:Try branching out.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Fine, I'll look you in the eye and tell you that I can't stand reading David Brin. His characters are flat and lifeless, altered however necessary to get across whatever "insightful" political or philosophical point he wants to emphasize this paragraph. Sundiver was okay, but Startide Rising and the Uplift War were absolutely hideously dry. Not only can he not do characters, he can't do plots or interesting situations either. I had to struggle to finish both of the above.
I'll look you in the eye and tell you that 90% of Greg Bear's stuff is written to capitalize on "market trends". How? You can tell when he's writing something because he WANTS to - then you get masterpieces like "Moving Mars" or "Songs of Earth and Power", and not tripe like Eon, or Anvil of Stars, or Slant.
I'll look yo in the eye and tell you Gregory Benford is a hack. His Galactic Center series was muddled and poorly-written.
All of the above are why sci-fi sucks. They're excellent examples of the "Plot? Characterization? Who needs those! We've got SCIENCE!" school of thought. They're so wrapped up in how scientifically accurate they are that they totally forget that scientific accuracy is not and has never been an element of an engaging story. Especially since their "accurate" predictions usually get disproven or debunked by scientists within six months of publication anyway.
And don't try telling me that they're pondering about the human condition, or how things might turn out, because that's crap. To do that, you need characterization and plot, and they don't give a damn about that. They just want to coerce little geeks like you into thinking you're so smart and so sophisticated, reading a book that's so scientifically accurate and nodding your head and going "yeah, that's so true".
Re:Piers Anthony advocates DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
What's that got to do with whether you enjoy his fiction? It's like the Seinfeld where Elaine refuses to eat at Poppy's pizza place because he's against abortion.
Hell, I like some of L Ron Hubbard's stuff, and we all know what a psycho he was (he invented scientology, in case you didn't know).
The fact that he was even willing to discuss stuff with you is pretty impressive, even if you disagree. You may have no idea what other authors feel about your pet political issues, because they never interact with the public. Piers should be punished because he does interact with his fans?
Re:Try branching out.. (Score:5, Insightful)
And just as an aside, Benford's Timescape was superb.
Loss of your inner child (Score:2, Insightful)
It's like if you suddenly stopped liking Legos and Video Games. It's OK to not play with them as much as you used to, but if you truly think of such things as childish and beneath you and uninteresting even for a few fleeting moments you've lost something vital. If you never liked such stuff to begin with, then you're OK. Otherwise, you're repressing something.
Of course, you could just be someone who's gotten to the point where they don't want to admit they like that stuff any more. That's OK. You'll grow out of that stage, too.
Re:Piers Anthony advocates DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
His favoring of DRM is completely counter to everything he claims to stand for. I also try to avoid funding DRM advocates on general principle. I'll grant that is difficult these days but I will boycott the more obvious ways of giving Disney money for instance.
I'll even still read his stuff but only if I can pick it legitimately without funding him. I'm thinking of things like libraries and used bookshops.
Re:Double edged sword (Score:2, Insightful)
I actually like fantasy quite a bit myself, but I agree with the rest of your post. Here's my list of the biggest flaws with almost all SF (and especially Star Trek), as I see it:
1. They seem to think that the point of life developing at all is for a species to develop our kind of intelligence.
2. They seem to think that the point of intelligent life developing must be to develop technology.
3. Most SF authors show a terrible ignorance about other cultures and anthropology when they attempt to show how alien some non-terrestial society is, or else adapt human cultures to aliens and then pretend that it' still alien ("today is a good day to die" is a millenium-old cliche).
4. They also have an unfortunate tendency to simply take our future to extremes; we're all goody two-shoes with an "evolved sensibility", or either the future is really, really bad, man. Yet the people are somehow pretty much the same. What about simple change in beliefs and customs?
5. Characterization; I'm so tired of cookie-cutter humans who are deliberately bland to make the aliens look more alien. It has the opposite effect - the aliens wind up looking more human, and the humans wind up looking like a species of school pincipals, nannies and lawyers. (The cool thing about some fantasy stories, and some SF too, is when the author shows us what a truly different and new human culture might be like.)
6. Big animals, whether from a different planet or from our own prehistory, don't exist just to eat us. Predators do not pursue prey contiually for hours or days at a time. That's in the realm of the so-called "intelligent" creatures, such as humans.
7. Many SF stories revolve around things going very wrong with computers, and thus the author reveals his or her ignorance about the computers we have now. Come on, writers, read a little about Unix and then you'll realize why half of the computer freakout stories should be infeasible if they have a decent OS with any security built-in.
8. Technobabble. New ideas are great, but it's just nonsense when you use a bunch of tech-sounding doubletalk to solve the big problem.
9. Technobabble that's utter nonsense. Antimatter radiation; if you're nerdy enough to know which series and episode I mean, then I'm sure you get the point. If you're going to use technobabble at all, don't make up stuff that we know isn't true *now*.
10. Psionic powers that are like magic. Psionics, yes, but a little research into the subject quickly reveals that no one has ever been known to be so incredibly powerful as in a lot of the SF about it.
Unfortunately most SF has one or more of the above themes in the story, so there's not that much SF out there I like anymore. The time is long past to break away from these cliched plot conventions and imagine something new. Once upon a time, all the cliches and conventions were new, so it can be done.
Re:Piers Anthony advocates DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
It's your right of course, and I agree with you on Disney, for more than just their DRM stance. The ironic thing with Piers is just that you would never know what his position was unless he had taken the time out of his day to answer your missives. Your sort of attitude is probably one reason many authors don't go to the trouble. They're bound to offend some people with whatever views they hold.
As far as DRM goes, I think you're putting the cart in front of the horse. It's more important (to me) that the copyright terms be reasonable in the first place than whether they use some silly copy protection scheme or proprietary formatting scheme.
If there was a reasonable law that said all copyrighted material had to be published into the public domain after a reasonable time, say fifteen years, who cares about DRM? Good luck getting that out of the Disney Congress though.
Re:Does it so well? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you missed the whole IMAGINATION part.
Fiction doesn't require the environment to be cartoonish or absurd, nor does a detailed and realistic environment rule out detailed and realistic characters.
Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October has plenty of character interaction, and it's all played out in the amazing environment of real 1980s submarine technology and real 1980s international politics. When I was at the Naval Academy, midshipmen (the students) were required to read it for the many interacting issues of technology, politics, leadership styles, organizational structure, etc.
Now imagine something similar to Hunt for Red October but stretching to predict the technological, political, social, economic etc. circumstances of a generation or so from now. (And all of those aspects drive each other and provide real motivations for the characters.)
Assume a Clancy-like author who will put as much effort into his predicted details as the real Clancy does into his fiction. Despite the inevitable forecasting errors, a good, well-informed, careful Clancyish author who did a lot of interviews and a lot of study could create a story that would be far more interesting than just character interactions in the semi-void of a poorly developed environment.
Personally, I thought 2001 was incredibly boring.
I don't admire the plot, just the creation of realistic vignettes (based on what was known at that time) of a possible future. As soon as it got beyond Jupiter, it was just random noise as far as I was concerned, but those aspects aren't what I'm referring to.
If you want factually based forward thinking literature, go read NASA manuals.
I have, which is why I'm no longer satisfied with today's SF comic books. I think real life is far more interesting, and that goes double for realistic speculations on our future lives.
I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by NASA people when I was a kid, back when 2001 (movie) came out. I assure you that the NASA folks were entranced by the scenes from 2001 of the space station docking maneuvers, of the interactions of the human crew with the onboard computer (HAL) and other aspects of the movie. It spurred a lot of discussions.
Imagine such a movie or novel created today. Forget about aliens and hokey telepathic beings and other nonsense. If space is involved, it should just be a reasonable near-Earth industrial and scientific environment. The real thing is more amazing than any alien stories or other hokum. Or, just keep it on Earth.
Extrapolate today's infant technologies, social movements, economic changes, political changes, etc. with imagination and Clancy-like attention to detail, then (unlike 2001, but like Clancy) have a real plot with real characters against a background that seems even more plausible to the well-informed than to the general public....