{"id":371,"date":"2007-01-23T13:09:57","date_gmt":"2007-01-23T13:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=371"},"modified":"2012-02-27T14:23:14","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:23:14","slug":"accelerando","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=371","title":{"rendered":"Accelerando"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>Accelerando<\/em> by Charles Stross<\/h3>\n<p>On January 23, 2007 the FACT reading group discussed           <em>Accelerando<\/em> by Charles Stross. Everybody in the           reading group has read at least some part of           <em>Accelerando<\/em>. About 2\/3 of the people finished           it. Others were planning to finish. Everybody has read           Charles Stross before.<\/p>\n<p>The common opinion is that <em>Accelerando<\/em> is too           discontinuous to be called a novel. The stories that           make up <em>Accelerando<\/em> revolve around the same set           of characters, but there is no plot arch to unify them.           Some readers didn&#8217;t like this. Others found unexpected           advantages in this structure: it made the novel as a           whole not predictable. A reader said &#8220;You had no idea           where Stross was going<!--more--> [with the story]. It was not           predictable. It was a slow read, because you don&#8217;t want           to flip to the end. It wouldn&#8217;t make any sense. It&#8217;s           not like it all comes together.&#8221; This unpredictability           may naturall follow from the fact that the overarching           narrative of <em>Accelerando<\/em> is, in the words of one           reader, a narrative of ideas. It had hardly anything to           do with any of the characters. And because of that,           some readers thought the &#8220;infodumps&#8221; &#8212; the passages in           bold print where the technological revolution taking           places in the Solar system is recapped in a format of a           popular science essay ! &#8212; were some of the most           interesting passages in the book, and contained the           most beautiful writing.<\/p>\n<p>Yet everyone agreed that the characterization in           <em>Accelerando<\/em> was nowhere near as good as in           Charles Stross&#8217; some other work. One reader said it was           a sad comment that by far the best character in some of           the later stories was Aineko, the AI cat.<\/p>\n<p>But the mediocre characterization is more than           compensated by innovative ideas, which           <em>Accelerando<\/em> is chockfull of. The readers were           most impressed by:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Charles Stross&#8217; portrayal of the technological           Singularity. A reader said: &#8220;He&#8217;s taken a good swing at           the issue that a couple of other writers have taken a           stab at. There&#8217;s a running debate among writers and           readers whether it&#8217;s possible to write about the           Singularity. Vernor Vinge explored in how many           different ways we can postulate the possibility of           Singularity, and then write around it. Like in Marooned           in Realtime, where some people stepped out for lunch           and weren&#8217;t there when it happened. Some other people           have tried writing about posthuman cultures living on           the edge of transcendency. Karl Schroeder has taken a           stab at it a couple of times. Some of Stross&#8217; other           works were about humans living in a shadow of           transcendency. This was writing from the experience of           the people who lived through it, not from the innermost           core &#8212; you can&#8217;t really write that story, but about           humans who lived more or less human lives in the shadow           of that event.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Stross comes up with an answer to the Fermi           paradox. If alien civilizations are out there, how come           we haven&#8217;t seen signs of any? In <em>Accelerando<\/em>, as           the humankind goes through Singularity and converts the           Solar system into <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Computronium\">computronium<\/a>,           they discover that if they were to travel in space,           they won&#8217;t have enough bandwidth. So they stay where           they are.<\/li>\n<li>On a lesser scale, people were amused by Stross&#8217;s           lawyer humor. A reader said: &#8220;I thought one little           detail was really wonderful: when Amber was a queen of           her little piece of rock around Jupiter, and her legal           system required combat to solve lawsuits. And Pierre           was, thank God, I don&#8217;t know any martial arts! We&#8217;re           gonna upload some martial arts thing and kill each           other. And she said, no. You get to choose the weapon,           and the weapon I want you to choose is some kind of           economic profit-making scheme! I thought it was a cute           point.&#8221; Stross provides similarly humorous treatment of           various today&#8217;s annoyances, such as spam, pyramid           schemes, and IRS. Another person said: &#8220;[Stross] really           must have a thing against taxes, because the IRS agent,           Manfred&#8217;s wife, is the most horrible human being, the           worst character I had run into in a long time. There&#8217;s           nothing good about her, except that she&#8217;s good at her           job.&#8221; Pamela&#8217;s character must be memorable indeed,           because another reader ! said she asked Stross (when he           was in Austin for ArmadilloCon) &#8220;if his potrait of           Pamela was how he saw the US and the American people.           At that time America was engaging in activities sort of           like Pamela was: if you don&#8217;t give it to me, I&#8217;ll take           it!&#8221; But Stross said, no, that wasn&#8217;t what Pamela was           supposed to represent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some people thought that parts of Stross&#8217; futuristic           vision were too sketchy. Especially Economics 2.0,           which, many readers agreed, was explained in no more           than a hand-waving fashion. You can read more about it           <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geekitude.com\/gl\/public_html\/article.php?story=20070227145124189\"> in this review<\/a> on my web site.<\/p>\n<p>Everybody acknowledged that this book is not for mass           audiences. Its extremely high &#8220;geek quotient&#8221; prompted           such comments as these:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It definitely is rapture of the nerds.<\/li>\n<li>You have to have a background in sciene fiction to           understand it. Mainstream book clubs shouldn&#8217;t read it.           Stross is not pandering. Well, he&#8217;s pandering to a geek           audience. If you&#8217;re not reading science fiction and           you&#8217;re not getting any of this, he doesn&#8217;t care.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s definitely written for a SF computer nerd.           Specifically, computer science SF nerd. 90% of           reference he makes are computer science references           that&#8217;s he&#8217;s playing around.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Somebody also observed that despite being set in the           future, <em>Accelerando<\/em> is very closely tied to           <em>today<\/em>&#8216;s technological and pop-culture landscape:           &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure you can understand if you don&#8217;t read           Dilbert and Slashdot. I&#8217;m not sure if a bright person           who&#8217;s not from that community would understand it.&#8221;           Which may be seen as a drawback for this book, as it           unnecessarily narrows down the audience that might be           able to enjoy it otherwise. For the same reason the           book may not age well, as in 20 years Dilbert           references may be obsolete.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211;Elze Hamilton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Accelerando by Charles Stross On January 23, 2007 the FACT reading group discussed Accelerando by Charles Stross. Everybody in the reading group has read at least some part of Accelerando. About 2\/3 of the people finished it. Others were planning to finish. Everybody has read Charles Stross before. The common opinion is that Accelerando is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}