I'll mention the bad stuff first. This book, particularly the first half, was a difficult read. I was considering stopping reading it at about halfway through because it was so tedious, and that was a fair investment of time I had already spent because this is a long book, my Kindle said it should take about 19 hours for the whole book. However, about halfway through, when I got to the part where the characters that were uploaded people in a shoe box size space ship flying to the edge of the solar system find a router built by some other advanced civilization, I decided I had to see how it finished.
Then, I started seeing the beauty in it. It was just so far out. Charles Stross seemed to try to shoehorn every Singularity-oriented technology out there into the story. It was a bit clumsy that way, but there were some new ones I was made aware of. Like automated contracts. The book mentions them a lot, and it's difficult to understand partly because of vagueness that most likely has something to do with the technology not being in existence yet, but I found on the internet that the same technology that Bitcoin uses to make transactions for money can be used for contracts too.
One of my favorite topics is the theory that sentient beings can be simulated and much to my delight that was brought up a couple times in the book. The first time is when one of the characters mentions the concept in a discussion about theism. The second time it is mentioned one of the characters explains that the evolution of theory of mind, that's the ability to figure out what someone else is thinking, progressed because there is an advantage to a predator knowing what it's prey is thinking. Eventually when the species ends up fighting itself, an advanced theory of mind is a simulation of themselves. That's pretty deep, and it's just one of the many profound ideas in the book.
I don't want to spoil the story at all because there is a nice twist at the end. But, to demonstrate how far out this book is, the bad guys are the Vile Offspring who are advanced AI beings that oppressed and possibly drove to extinction whatever organic life-form created them. The Vile Offspring are also turning all the dumb matter in the solar system into something that they can upload consciousnesses to because they need the space.
Charles Stross does very well with setting up an entire culture in this super-advanced society that includes an Economics 2.0 that only AI's can understand and a political system. Since the characters are uploaded consciousnesses in the last half of the book, the environment gets pretty crazy with characters taking the form of a flock of pigeons or other animals. The characters can also change their environment to whatever they want. This gives the author a lot of space to make the settings very unusual and fun, much like Micheal Moorecock did in his "end of time" series fantasy books by giving the characters creation rings. It works, and made the last half of the book much more enjoyable than the first.
Another thing I noticed is that there is a reference to Russia still using Microsoft, --- remember this is in the future ---, and there was a reference to a company with a name that was kind of an anagram for Apple, but I do not remember seeing any references to anything that sounded remotely like Google.
I wouldn't recommend this book to everybody, but the people who might like it probably already know who they are. Anyone who does get through more than a few hours of it and is struggling, I'd suggest to keep going because the last half of the book is better and the ending ties things together well.
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Top reviews from other countries
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in India on May 8, 2016
Hard science fiction. It's a very dense and tough ...
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LalalauraReviewed in Spain on November 8, 2020
Ha llegado muy bien
Format: Mass Market PaperbackVerified Purchase - AshleyReviewed in Australia on February 20, 2015
If you love sci fi you have to read it
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Patrick StrasserReviewed in Germany on December 10, 2014
Kreativität pur
Format: Mass Market PaperbackVerified Purchase - Jeremy MintonReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2014
Amazingly rewarding for those who can appreciate it.
