Singularity Sky
Posted October 15th, 2008 by admin
Singularity Sky
The Story
The book centers around two settings, the colony world experiencing the singularity and a battleship en route with a fleet sent to win back the colony world through military intervention. On the colony world we follow the antics of a revolutionary journalist who initially welcomes the Festival. On the ship we follow the real protagonists of the story: an engineer named Martin on contract from an Earth company sent to assist the fleet in getting to the colony world faster, and a Earth government agent named Rachel who is sent along to observe that certain rules of engagement are observed.
The back-story is basically this: Humans have been scattered around the galaxy -- or at least this section of the galaxy -- by a super-intelligent human-created technological singularity that occurred sometime in the last few hundred years. This being -- called the Eschaton -- does not allow humans to violate causality (which is possible in the book's universe through faster-than-light travel). When they do so, bad things happen to them (usually before they do so...damn time travel!), including catastrophic meteor strikes, supernovae, etc.
The crutch of the story is that the battleship, part of a backwards and totalitarian faction of humanity, wants to use causality violation to land at the colony world immediately after the Festival arrives, taking them by surprise. This is possible through some nifty engineering installed by our hero, Martin. They consider this to be walking the line on the Eschaton's proclamation, but worth doing. Rachel feels that this is not a good idea, and has her own plans. And who knows, maybe Martin is up to something as well!
The Review
So how about the book? Well, I enjoyed it enough, but I think it's a case of back-story being more interesting than the main meat of the book. I found myself hoping I would learn more about the Eschaton and how it came to be, yet I spent a good part of the book dealing with dialog between the ships crew, e.g. "ship at 6:00 o'clock sir!! Permission to fire!" ... "Make it so." ... "Got another blip on radar!!!" (Those are not direct quotes from the book, obviously). I really didn't care about the crew and various officers that got too much air-time in this novel.
Stross also has the habit of explaining esoteric technologies in the book that don't really need to be explained. I could care less how a certain weapon works or how exactly the Navy ship can see enemies using LIDAR. Tell me about the Eschaton, dammit! Where did the Festival come from? What were the conditions that led to humanity's singularity?
And now to our protagonists. Needless to say, because they are male and female, they fall in love. I guess this is an inevitability in books. I just wish more authors would tackle the situation like William Gibson did in Neuromancer: just have them screw once and then get on with the story.
However, as characters go, I thought they were well fleshed out and for the most part, their motivations were believable. However, I thought Rachel's various implants and other tech seemed tacked on, almost like Stross made them up as he was writing.
As for the Festival, I never really figured them out. Or the Critics, an alien, walrus-like race that hitches a ride with the Festival and "criticizes" the societies that the Festival includes in its web. However, the whole side of the story that takes place on the colony world is both surreal and darkly comedic. I think Stross did a good job of painting an eerie and unique landscape.
In the end, I enjoyed the book and found that I had no problem finishing it. It made me look forward to reading more of Charles Stross, whose writing style and subject matter I enjoy a lot.
