Singularity 1 - Singularity Sky

In his first novel, British author Stross, one of the hottest short-story
writers in the field, serves up an energetic and sometimes satiric mix of
cutting-edge nanotechnology, old-fashioned space opera and leftist political
commentary reminiscent of Ken MacLeod. Spaceship engineer Martin Springfield
and U.N. diplomat Rachel Mansour hail from an Earth that has gone through
the Singularity, an accelerated technological and social evolution far beyond
anything we can imagine. The Singularity was triggered by the Eschaton,
a super-powerful being descended from humanity that can travel in time and
that essentially rules the universe. Springfield and Mansour meet on the home
world of the New Republic, a repressive, backwater society that has outlawed
virtually all advanced technology other than that necessary for interstellar
warfare. When one of the New Republic's colonial worlds is besieged by the
Festival, an enigmatic alien intelligence, the Republic counterattacks,
using time travel in an attempt to put its warships in position to catch the
Festival by surprise. Springfield and Mansour, working for different masters,
have both been assigned the task of either diffusing the crisis or sabotaging
the New Republic's warfleet, no matter what the cost. As a newcomer to long
fiction, Stross has some problems with pacing, but the book still generates
plenty of excitement.


Singularity 2 - Iron Sunrise

Best known for his short fiction, Stross shows that he's a master of the novel
form as well in this exciting sequel to 2003's acclaimed Singularity Sky,
serving up compelling space opera and cutting-edge tech with a tasty dash of
satire. In the 24th century, a McWorld ("bland, comfortable, tolerant...
boring") called New Moscow apparently has been destroyed by trade rival New
Dresden.but not before New Moscow launched its own Slower-Than-Light (STL)
counterstrike: a massive ship accelerated to 80% the speed of light. The U.N.,
now central Earth government, knows New Dresden was set up. They need the STL's
recall code, now known only to a handful of New Moscow's ambassadors.but
someone has been systematically assassinating them. U.N. special operative
Rachel Mansour and her husband, engineer Martin Springfield, must protect the
last living ambassador and find out who's really responsible for the whole
mess. Stross skillfully balances suspense and humor throughout, offering
readers.especially fans of Iain M. Banks and Ken MacLeod.a fascinating future
that seems more than possible.


Singularity 3 - Accelerando

Stross (Singularity Sky) explores humanity's inability to cope with molecular
nanotechnology run amok in this teeming near-future SF stand-alone. In part one,
"Slow Takeoff," "free enterprise broker" Manfred Macx and his soon-to-be-
estranged wife/dominatrix, Pamela, lay the foundation for the next decade's
transhumans. In "Point of Inflection," Amber, their punky maladjusted teenage
daughter, and Sadeq Khurasani, a Muslim judge, engineer and scholar, try to
escape the social chaos that antiaging treatments have wreaked on Earth by
riding a tin can.sized starship via nanocomputerization to a brown dwarf star
called Hyundai. The Wunch, trade-delegation aliens evolved from uploaded lobster
mentalities, and Macx's grandson, Sirhan, roister through "Singularity," in which
people become cybernetic constructs. Stross's three-generation experiment in
stream-of-artificial-consciousness impresses, but his flat characters and
inchoate rapid-fire explosions of often muzzily related ideas, theories, opinions
and nightmares too often resemble intellectual pyrotechnics.breathtakingly gaudy
but too brief, leaving connections lost somewhere in outer/inner/cyber space.

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