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

When the Festival arrives at New Rochard, a planetary colony of the New Republic, it announces its arrival in the form of a rain of mobile phones. People pick up the phones, which are a novelty for them and find that they can ask for anything they like, so long as they entertain the being on the other end of the line. For a world kept under strict control by hereditary privileged classes which have restricted access to technology and promoted state-sponsored religion and other forms of social control in its place, the end of the world (or at least the end of the prevailing social order) appears to have arrived. Soon, the cornucopia machines are delivering powerful weapons, enormous amounts of luxury and food and a replacement wife capable of laying golden eggs. The revolution is not televised, largely because the people are too busy seizing the means of production in their own hands and turning it replica or imaginary bourgeois lifestyle simulators.

Into this world come Rachel Mansour, former UN weapons inspector, and Martin Springfield, an agent for an unearthly power occupying a role as a simple contactor engineer. They soon become entangled in the efforts of the extra planetary government to wrest back control of New Rochard through mounting a thoroughly doomed military expedition--an expedition which is the equivalent of throwing stones at main battle tanks or charging horses into the machine guns. What makes a quixotic adventure alarming in cosmic terms is that the New Republican army may resort to causality threatening means (i.e. through travelling back in time to stamp out the danger before it properly arrives) and this might attract the attentions of the Eschaton--an alien entity which reacts badly to any threat to its own existence by contraventions of history. Reacting badly, in the case of the Eschaton, means planetary extinction not just of the people of the world concerned but anyone else in a radius of several dozen light years. It is a thorough and rather ruthless alien presence.

In Charles Stross's first book (after a number of highly-acclaimed short stories), he produces seemingly effortlessly a variety of different cultures and creatures that are credible while also being obvious stereotypes of themselves. He is no stranger to his field and his references include Iain M Banks and Dan Simmons (not least for the character of Rachel Mansour) and also Monty Python. He integrates faux Marxist analysis into his creation of societies and, just as has subsequently been the case with his excellent Hidden Family series of books), a central theme is the radical revolution brought about by innovation and technology and the struggle for control over the means of production (it is no surprise that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is a fan, because of the wit and humour intermixed with grown-up representations of economics--science fiction has for too long been forced to suffer the inane and dangerous nonsense of "libertarianism" masquerading as freedom as portrayed by such as Robert Heinlein).

Stross has leaped to the forefront of contemporary science fiction with his characteristic brand of profusion of ideas, extrapolations of technological trends, humanity and wit and stands alongside luminaries such as Iain M Banks and Stephen Baxter (well, they are personal favourites of mine, anyway). Rachel and Martin appear in another novel, Iron Sunrise, which I have yet to read but intend doing so--indeed, I would be quite happy to read all of his books and plan to snap them up whenever I see them.