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    Accelerando
    Accelerando
    Accelerando
    Audiobook16 hours

    Accelerando

    Written by Charles Stross

    Narrated by George Guidall

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day. Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity. For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 4, 2014
    ISBN9781470380229
    Accelerando
    Author

    Charles Stross

    Charles Stross was born in Leeds, England, in 1964. He has worked as a pharmacist, software engineer and freelance journalist, but now writes full-time. To date, Stross has won two Hugo awards and been nominated twelve times. He has also won the Locus Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Novella and has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke and Nebula Awards. He is the author of the popular Merchant Princes and Empire Games series, set in the same world. In addition, his fiction has been translated into around a dozen languages. Stross lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife Feorag, a couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of obsolescent computers.

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    Reviews for Accelerando

    3.5/5

    1,097 ratings64 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I was pretty annoyed that they just stuck 9 short stories together without any editing to make them into a whole. The plot is consistent and continuous; I don't need to be reminded at the beginning of each chapter about what I just read in the previous chapter.

      This book is very dense with ideas. Some of the plot points are far-fetched or contrived, but he ties them together pretty well.
    • 4/5
      Apparently I liked this book a lot better than some people did, since i finished it. It was pretty slow going, as all the tech stuff was pretty dense. I would read for what seemed like an hour and find I'd only read maybe ten pages.

      The biggest mistake I made was that I began reading it while concurrently reading Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I do not recommend this! I finally decided to finish Cryptonomicon and then read something lighter before continuing with this one.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 1/5
      It's a sci-fi book, and tosses around words like singularity and wetware and all kinds of words that seem to be required knowledge for reading sci-fi (since I recognise them from Ken MacLeod's books). To be honest, I'm rapidly discovering I'm out of my depth with a lot of sci-fi. I'm alright with Le Guin, Alastair Reynolds, Tad Williams and Asimov, but a lot of the rest is beyond me.

      Most of the book basically flew right over my head. The characters weren't that special, either. About half way through the book I got more interested in it all -- perhaps because I finally got into the world and characters a little.

      I'm pretty sure that for someone who reads more sci-fi, or maybe does physics and also knows a bit about business/law, it would have been a really, really interesting book. Some of the ideas intrigued me. It felt very, very fast paced -- which makes sense, considering the speed of the world its set in -- and felt to me like a succession of ideas, none of which were fully realised.

      Really, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that I am not the target audience for the book. It's not keeping me from picking up one of Charles Stross' other books, Singularity Sky, but that's only because I already have it. I don't think I'd buy it.
    • 4/5
      Hard to follow in some places due to the concepts of multiple identities but well written.
    • 4/5
      Interesting read to say the least..."The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.For something is systemically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form."The stories are written in an anthology form. They were obviously well-thought-out and well put together. The author has a very new age style of writing which is very eye catching and edgy. The scientific terms used in the writing style are almost at the point where the layman would not understand what's going on but not quite there. The stories flowed very well with each other and was easy to read from one story to the next.Ugh yet another dystopian novel that I didn't really care for. Perhaps the dystopian genre in general is just not for me. I don't know. All I know is that these novels seem very cliche and repetitive and most of them including this one seems like the author is almost trying too hard to be edgy and hip. I would definitely recommend to somebody who likes dystopian novels but this book just holds no interest for me personally.
    • 2/5
      normally i love stross books, but this was one i just couldn't finish. i even gave it twice the amount of rope i would give others, and there just wasn't anything to enjoy after 33% of the book had been read... not sure if it was the world being portrayed or an inability to care for the main character... i suppose at some point i'll try again, but not today...
    • 4/5
      cyberpunk, not easy to read, author very clever and extremely creative but also not always easy to follow; reminded me of Seth Lloyd's book on the universe as a computer, as well as Gibson's books of course; interesting book, but plot was not very intriguing; his unique ideas were what really seemed to hold this book together
    • 1/5
      Couldn't finish this one, I got about halfway through and I just didn't care about the characters or the plot. I may return to it someday.
    • 3/5
      This is Stross on the transition to post-humanity as waves/generations increasingly augment themselves with computer assistance to memory and personality, including running different versions of themselves or their children. I found it weird and unaffecting, which may be in part because it’s really nine shorter stories stapled together, though it’s nice to see someone care about economics in future sf.
    • 4/5
      A good pre/during/post singularity book and one of my first. I'd definitely read more by him (and have been encouraged to do so).
    • 3/5
      Stross trowels on just enough mortar - much of it in the clunky form of offset, bolded exposition - to make a more or less coherent generational tale out of the original short stories. You're surfing a tsunami of future-tech-jargon, but it is at least consistent jargon which makes for a suitably bewildering atmosphere. The ideas are super-fun, although some of them are victims of their own success in that they've since become clichés reminiscent of The New Space Opera bot (uploaded cats, borganisms etc.) In general, though, the concepts here have dated pretty well over the 15 years since publication, with the hilarious exception of the blogosphere still being a thing in the 2020's. I adore all the mad stuff with people uploading their minds into a flock of pigeons or an orangutan, kids impaling each other in the playground because they can just be resurrected afterwards, all that cool stuff that comes from not being caged inside the too too solid flesh. An amusing cameo from HP Lovecraft when he is resurrected on Saturn without his consent.Unfortunately all the fun stuff comes with a downside, which is that when everyone is effectively immortal with no serious resource constraints, the tension leaks from the narrative like air from a punctured spacesuit. The book becomes a mere cabinet of wonders as the characters indulge their whims without any real skin in the game. Sure, there's this idea that the "Vile Offspring", Stross's terrific term for the incomprehensible AI arising from the singularity, want to chase the plucky posthumans out of the solar system altogether - but even then, they end up in a pretty cushy place. The story spans the galaxy but doesn't really go anywhere.
    • 3/5
      At its best, this book is a wonderfully imaginative "what if?" that takes the ideas of posthumanists/accelerationists/singularitarians seriously enough to think through how unappealing their future might actually be. But much of the time I found myself struggling through too much density of jargon, pseudo-physics and sci-fi cliches to enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      Interesting read to say the least..."The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.For something is systemically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form."The stories are written in an anthology form. They were obviously well-thought-out and well put together. The author has a very new age style of writing which is very eye catching and edgy. The scientific terms used in the writing style are almost at the point where the layman would not understand what's going on but not quite there. The stories flowed very well with each other and was easy to read from one story to the next.Ugh yet another dystopian novel that I didn't really care for. Perhaps the dystopian genre in general is just not for me. I don't know. All I know is that these novels seem very cliche and repetitive and most of them including this one seems like the author is almost trying too hard to be edgy and hip. I would definitely recommend to somebody who likes dystopian novels but this book just holds no interest for me personally.
    • 4/5
      So what if the characters are paper-thin and there's no wall of separation between dialogue and narration? It's so full of ideas from the first page to the very last that I'll forgive pretty much any sin related to the virtues of fiction.
    • 4/5
      Hard to follow in some places due to the concepts of multiple identities but well written.
    • 3/5
      "From the book itself:

      "An old-fashioned book, covering 3 generations, living through interesting times... A work of postmodern history, the incoherent school at that - how do you document people who fork their identities at random, spend years dead before reappearing on the stage, and have arguments with their own relativistically preserved other copy? ... I thought that perhaps as a narrative hook I'd make the offstage viewpoint that of the family's robot cat."

      Yep. That about sums it up.
      (That quote is not from the blurb, btw, but from within the text.)

      It's an ambitious book - but, overall, an annoying one. It's so self-consciously uber-hip, saturated with today's geek-speak. Although it aims to be a sort of "accelerated future-history," it already feels dated. The story - such as it is - really takes a back seat to the concepts - which could be OK, except that the concepts are really quite unbelievable, to the point of being uninteresting.
    • 3/5
      If I had stopped reading after the first section, this would have gotten 5 stars for sure. I was blown away by the first three chapters, but unfortunately the brilliance faded for me after that.
    • 1/5
      Didn't finish. Didn't even come close. Didn't like it. Wasn't impressed. Was pretty annoyed by this author and his characters.Manfred Macx travels the globe and stays in swank hotels without any money whatsoever because he's given anything he wants by everyone in the world. Why? He's an idea man and is constantly coming up with new ideas and instantly patenting them. But instead of holding onto them and making bank, he turns over the patents to a group like an open software group, which allows anyone who wants to access the info in the patents and become rich. So he has essentially made millions of people millionaires. As a result, the IRS says he owes them nearly 13 million and they are after him. His ex-fiance is a dominatrix who makes a reappearance early in the book. They've had plenty of S&M sex, but have never actually had intercourse and have never even climaxed, because exchanging bodily fluids is gross. I know. Stupid as hell. The thing that makes it even more stupid is that virtually as soon as they meet back up for the first time in who knows how long, they go to his hotel room where they resume their S&M routine, but this time, they actually do it and have orgasms because she wants to get pregnant. Even though he pretty much disgusts her. Makes no sense. And the Russian Microsoft Windows NT User Group is after him for help defecting. To where, he doesn't know. Or care. But the thing that's truly confusing is that they're actually lobsters (I'm not kidding) that are being uploaded onto the net by researchers in America, apparently as a precursor to uploading pretty much anything and everything at some point. And everything revolves around bandwidth. God, if I never go another day without hearing that term, I'll be grateful as hell. The author must use that term twice in every paragraph in the book and he uses it for EVERYTHING! It's annoying as hell. To makes matters worse, the book is full of techno-babble, as though he pulled out a tech dictionary and decided to put every word he could find in it -- and in Wired magazine -- into the book in arbitrary scenes to impress and confuse the reader. But it's useless, pointless trash. I doubt even he knows what he's talking about. Frankly, the blurbs on and in this book make it sound like Stross is as good as Gibson and some of the others, but that's not true. Not even close. He's got some interesting ideas, but he's boring, the book's boring and stupid, and I'm not wasting my time wading through this crap anymore. Not recommended.
    • 3/5
      The three middle chapters could not fascinate me totally but the last kind of made up for that.
    • 4/5
      This was great, although it kind of sputtered out at the end.
    • 3/5
      according to most people who care about this stuff, is the point in time where technology progresses at such a rate that it becomes impossible to understand what happens next for people who are living *before* the singularity.I humbly propose an alternate explanation: it's the point in time after which I stop caring about the characters in a science fiction novel. So, in this case, the Singularity happens around page 120.From then onwards, I was reading on autopilot... the author is good at describing mega-homungous-hyper-concepts and has surely a good grasp of a large number of scientific fields, a vast arrays of memes and is happy to throw in-jokes at his Slashdot crowd... problem is, when things get really really very advanced, life and death stop to have meaning, reality can be bent at will and everything (and everyone) is a virtual machine running some sort of simulation sofware, possibly on a stack of other virtual machines simulating everything above and below every layer of reality....Who cares?Not me. I suppose that The Culture could be considered post-singularity, but -maybe by injecting a good dose of Good Old Space Opera tropes, Banks succeeds in keeping me interested in his characters and plots. Or at least it does most of the time.
    • 4/5
      Family businesses are always complicated and computational power can only make them worse. Take a good plot, mix it with a accelerating technological evolution and tell it using plenty of tech buzzwords. I found the result entertaining and kind of geek-fun.
    • 2/5
      Uneven and shows its roots as a story collection. Act 1 is a muddled free-information screed that reaches its peak in one of the most embarrassingly bad scenes to present sex as political commentary. Act 2 becomes a rollicking space opera, Acts 3 and 4 seem to lose steam.
    • 4/5
      Really good opening with some fantastic ideas, but seriously tails off towards the end. The idea of a man - and his descendants - who are key to all the major events as humanity escapes its earthly bounds is a sound one that is developed well. The discussions of what constitutes the 'singularity' and what it takes to define Artificial Intelligence are woven into the story effectively. However, I was left unmoved: the writing and the conclusion were just not good enough to propel it into the top flight. I liked 'Halting State' and I'm sure that I'll be reading more of his work, but on this acquaintance I'm pretty sure that Charles Stross will never be counted as one of the greats.
    • 4/5
      Very dense read. Bits I understood far outweighed by the bits I didn't, lol. Went along for the ride, and enjoyed it for the most part. The cat was great, and often was the best bit in its sneaky and totally robot kitty way.
    • 1/5
      My expectations were set too high with this book and it could be argued that my low rating is a bit exaggerated. I stand by it, however, because WOW did I not enjoy reading Accelerando. Stross was highly recommended to me by people whose opinions I hold in high regard and I loved the shit out of his A Colder War novella. I was strapped in for a hard sci-fi ride!Yeah. I wasn't thrilled very quickly and I plodded along in the hopes that things got better. I hated the characters to whom we were introduced. The rapid-fire high vocabulary became tiresome after a few instances. I did learn a few new words throughout the barrage, so it wasn't a futile endeavor. I understand that those passages were meant to show how on-the-ball and superior Manny was, but I can be reminded that I'm dumb only so often in my leisure reading before I surrender and venture forth in search of windows to lick.I was thrilled when Stross took a page out of Asimov's Foundation series and leaped forward a generation because I hoped I would like this new protagonist. Nope. Add on heaps and heaps of politicking and a brief nod to the question of what makes a person and I just clicked the page bumper on my Kindle hoping it would get better eventually.It didn't. At least for me. More characters I couldn't stand (and some who would simply disappear without a trace!), more situations I couldn't bother to ponder, and more apathy toward the conclusion. I couldn't even muster enthusiasm for the threat of the explosive annihilation of the Macx family at one point.So maybe I'm not a hard sci-fi fan. Eh, it happens. I'm not going to hold it against Stross because he still comes highly recommended and did I mention I loved the shit out of A Colder War? On to The Atrocity Archives for redemption.
    • 2/5
      This book, too many words about world building, too little characterisation, and I know Stross can do it because I've read another of his books. Interesting but not satisfying, no-one is particularly engaging and the deus ex machina is kind of a let down.
    • 5/5
      A geek's delight.
    • 3/5
      I don't really remember anything about this book except that there were SPACE LOBSTERS.