Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, Orbit, 拢12.99, ISBN 1841493333 Reviewed by David Langford
SINGULARITY SKY is UK author Charles Stross鈥檚 first novel: an imaginative, melodramatic and often hilarious space opera. It is set centuries after our technological progress accelerates beyond comprehension into a 鈥渟ingularity鈥� (today鈥檚 favourite SF concept) that changes everything.
Yes, now there is a God. The Eschaton is an artificial intelligence that jealously guards its own existence, forbidding violations of causality that might cancel its 21st-century emergence. But when an interstellar travelling circus called the Festival offers terrifying freedoms to a human colony world, the local overlords adopt forbidden tactics. Planetary extinction could be the penalty, but letting the proletariat enjoy uncontrolled Utopia is really unthinkable. Laden with undercover agents and secret motives, a lumbering battle fleet challenges the Festival鈥檚 unknowable resources鈥�
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Meanwhile, Utopia isn鈥檛 easy. Tell the Festival a story, and it grants your wish. Canny folk request nanotech 鈥渃ornucopias鈥� that can manufacture anything; careless wishers, as in fairytales, meet blackly comic fates.
Highly enjoyable though awkwardly constructed, Singularity Sky reached the 2004 Hugo award shortlist. Stross shows great promise.