Accelerando

Expanding upon his award-winning short story cycle from the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Charles Stross-author of such revolutionary science fiction novels as Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise-delivers the story fans have been anticipating with Accelerando, a novel destined to change the face of the genre.

For three generations, the Macz family has struggled to cope with the rampant technological achievements that have rendered humans near obsolete. And mankind's end encroaches even closer when something starts to dismantle the nine planets of the solar system in an effort to annihilate all biological lifeforms.

"Stross (Singularity Sky) explores humanity's inability to cope with molecular nanotechnology run amok in this teeming near-future SF stand-alone. In part one, 'Slow Takeoff,' 'free enterprise broker' Manfred Macx and his soon-to-be-estranged wife/dominatrix, Pamela, lay the foundation for the next decade's transhumans. In 'Point of Inflection,' Amber, their punky maladjusted teenage daughter, and Sadeq Khurasani, a Muslim judge, engineer and scholar, try to escape the social chaos that antiaging treatments have wreaked on Earth by riding a tin can — sized starship via nanocomputerization to a brown dwarf star called Hyundai. The Wunch, trade-delegation aliens evolved from uploaded lobster mentalities, and Macx's grandson, Sirhan, roister through 'Singularity,' in which people become cybernetic constructs. Stross's three-generation experiment in stream-of-artificial-consciousness impresses, but his flat characters and inchoate rapid-fire explosions of often muzzily related ideas, theories, opinions and nightmares too often resemble intellectual pyrotechnics — breathtakingly gaudy but too brief, leaving connections lost somewhere in outer/inner/cyber space. Agent, Caitlin Blasdell. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

An expansion of Stross's award-winning short story cycle. The novel both his fans and peers have been waiting for.

Expanding on his award-winning short story cycle from "Asimov's Science Fiction" magazine, the Hugo Award-winning author of "Glasshouse" delivers a novel destined to change the genre.

A new kind of future requires a new breed of guide-someone like Stross. (Popular Science)