Accelerando by Charles Stross Search Amazon for other books by or about Charles Stross. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

The time is the near future and a self-selected few have begun to experiment with computer implants, thereby allowing them not only to upgrade the speed, power and scope of their own thoughts but also to connect directly to the vast and increasing resources of the worldwide web. In the knowledge-based economy that has increasingly settled across the globe, money has become less important than ideas and, specifically, a reputation for integrity. Manfred Macx is able to obtain whatever he wants, for example, because despite having no money of his own, he has a well-deserved and nourished reputation for having ideas that will make other people rich. This has made him both popular and careful about his privacy, since many interested parties are keen to take advantage of his ideas and his reputation. Not least among these is his ex-wife and the lawyerly tricks she is able to employ to subvert him to her will--this is a society in which market niches and lawsuits are so advanced as to become semi-sentient creatures in their own right. Manfred, meanwhile, is busily trying to change the world by creating economics 2.0, which treats as a purely technical matter the inability of a command economy to allocate resources efficiently. If he is successful, it would have huge repercussions for the governance of millions.

This is only the beginning of a novel which is not so much overflowing with ideas but has to be kept in a locked box to prevent them all flying away like the troubles flying from Pandora's Box. Several generations of descendants rapidly follow, together with a robotic cat, lobster intelligences released into the internet and a search across space and time for alien intelligence. Barriers between time and space, reality and fantasy and individuality and group minds are blurred and break down on occasions. The robotic cat, in particular, knows more than it is saying and the aliens may be more disappointing than illuminating. The only constant in society appears to be the increasing rapidity of change which must, nevertheless, approach a limit as all available matter and space is converted into computronium, which maximises the amount of computation (i.e. machine-enhanced thought) that it is possible to concentrate within the physical universe. Under these circumstances, what manner of men are these?

Charles Stross has emerged in recent years as one of the more entertaining, energetic and idea-profuse science fiction writers currently plying the trade. This book, which appears to have been originally quite an early one in his development as a writer, is a great read full of insights, quips and enjoyable moments. The plot itself may be considered to be enormously ambitious in scope but probably is better described as remaining on the right side of becoming a mess. It is sufficiently robust to enable Stross's plans to envisage and describe long-term and large-scale societal change to take place. The alien interludes, in particularly, appear to be plot devices engineered to cause some characters to miss out on a stage of intellectual evolution and to counterpoint them with others who have passed through that stage. Further, the fact that the principal characters are mostly new generational versions of older characters tends to make it different to understand where one begins and the other ends, which is meaningful in terms of the plot but problematic in trying to keep clear who is saying what to whom. However, these are comparatively minor points in the terms by which it may be assumed the book would wish to be judged, which is as a repository of fresh thinking about the future and what it is likely to do to us as individuals and as groups of people. In those terms, this is a splendid, readable, and fascinating journey.