Singularity Sky

First 100 pages are very uninspiring but then we get a classic Strossian rant-vista A year or so later, the polite cosmologist had been murdered by Algerian religious fundamentalists who thought his account of the universe a blasphemy against the words of the prophet Yusuf Smith as inscribed on his tablets of gold... Somewhere along the line she, too, had changed. She’d spent decades— the best part of her second life —fighting nuclear proliferation. Starting out as a dreadlocked direct-action activist, chaining herself to fences, secure in the naive youthful belief that no harm could befall her. Later, she figured out that the way to do it was wearing a smart suit, with mercenary soldiers and the threat of canceled insurance policies backing up her quiet voice. Still prickly and direct, but less of a knee-jerk nonconformist, she’d learned to work the system for maximum effect. The hydra seemed halfway under control, bombings down to only one every couple of years, when Bertil had summoned her to Geneva and offered her a new job. Then she’d wished she’d paid more attention to the cosmologist—for the Algerian Latter-Day Saints had been very thorough in their suppression of the Tiplerite heresy-but it was too late, and in any event, the minutiae of the Standing Committee’s investigations into chronological and probabilistic warfare beckoned... She’d done her share of shooting, too, or at least directing the machinery of preemptive vengeance, wiping out more than one cell of atomic-empowered fanatics—whether central-Asian independence fighters, freelance meres with a bomb too many in their basement, or on one notable occasion, radical pro-lifers willing to go to any lengths to protect the unborn child. Idealism couldn’t coexist with so many other people’s ideals, betrayed in their execution by the tools they’d chosen. She’d walked through Manchester three days after the Inter-City Firm’s final kickoff, before the rain had swept the sad mounds of cinders and bone from the blasted streets. Fun, but not nearly as mind-bending as his or Egan or Vinge's best. Every few months Stross lets rip apocalyptic prophecy on his blog. Anyone else, and I'd probably stop reading. It's not that I think he's right, it's that his chains of thought are the kind of thing which are sometimes right.

This is a book about society, authoritarians, and revolutionaries. Or maybe, it’s a book about space-time and causality, space colonies, and viral techno pseudo-societies. Or maybe it’s a romance between an engineer and a diplomat, thrust together in a space backwater as an empire starts to crumble. It’s all three, and quite enjoyable. As usual with Stross, the writing is good, the questions are pertinent, and there are plenty of interesting semi-hard sci-fi things interested with societal complexity to make you think a bit. The biggest real question for society is what the role of revolutionaries and authority are in a world with no scarcity. It is more asked than answered, and I would have loved to see more time spent on that and less on the space opera aspects. In the end it was an enjoyable, well written book, though.