Charlie Stross's Accelerando

Accelerando by Charles Stross

A number of people have tried to portray the accelerating rate of technology as humanity approaches the Vingean singularity and the absolute strangeness of such a society. None have done it better than Charlie Stross in Accelerando.

Accelerando is a fix-up novel based on a series of short works by Stross, several of which have been Hugo nominees. It manages – using both style and detail – to capture the growing strangeness of the next few hundred years, but in the same time drawing you into those situations, making you feel at least somewhat at home amidst the bizarreness.

The story starts not very far in the future from now. Computer connectivity is everywhere, and some people are in constant connection to the world-wide network. The main character in the first part of the novel – Manfred Macx – is one such person. He lives in a world of constant connectivity, one in which he has access to unheard of amounts of information at his request. But he is also an heir to the open source movement. He wanders the world, coming up with brilliant ideas and giving them away. He makes no money, but has done so many things – given away so many ideas that have made others rich – that he never needs anything. What money he has is no good anywhere; he can get anything he needs for the asking.

The novel as a whole follows Manny and his extended family – his first lover, then wife, then ex-wife Pamela, his daughter Amber (in several versions – by a third of the way through the book, humans can download and fork extra versions of themselves), his lover Annette, his grandson Sirhan, and his artificial cat (soon to become a metahuman intelligence) Aineko. As the novel progresses, change accelerates. What seemed like an off-the-wall idea by Manny in the early part of the book – that humanity should destroy Mercury, Venus, and Mars to make computronium (intelligent nanocomputers) – comes to pass. With each passing chapter, the world is torn asunder and new, strange things come to pass.

The characters – particularly Manny and Amber – are well done and interesting. The plot moves along quickly. And, as noted above, the details are incredible. Stross invokes our sense of wonder and does an incredible amount in a surprisingly short space, accomplishing in just under 400 pages what might take other writers a series of books.

And, of course, since the novel is by Stross, it has moments of geeky humor. This ranges from terminology (group minds are called “borganisms”) to method, as when historical simulations are resurrected and given a FAQ to read to explain their situation. This FAQ is several pages long and is perhaps the funniest part of the novel. My favorite quote is: “Note that fictional resimulation is strictly forbidden. If you have reason to believe you may be a fictional character, you must contact the city immediately.” He also has an invention that I want now. At a time when humans are wearing many connections to computer such that computers can have some control over how they perceive reality, they have the ability to add people at parties, etc. into their kill file. At that point, they don’t see the kill-filed person (if they look that way, they just see a blur) or hear anything they say. They kill-filed person is effectively no longer there.

This is a great novel, and I think it is going to be remembered as one of the great, original novels of the last five or ten years. It’s currently number one on my Hugo nominations list.