Accelerando and Glasshouse fall in a "the ideas of one feed into the next" sequence that I find interesting to read in sequence... the first four of which are available on the web.<p>COMP.BASILISK FAQ <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/44964" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/44964</a><p>BLIT <a href="https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm</a><p>Different Kinds of Darkness <a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-of-darkness/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-o...</a><p>Accelerando <a href="https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...</a><p>("Luckily, infowar turns out to be more survivable than nuclear war – especially once it is discovered that a simple anti-aliasing filter stops nine out of ten neural-wetware-crashing Langford fractals from causing anything worse than a mild headache.")<p>Glasshouse by Charles Stross<p>(side trip to The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge as additional material for an alternative singularity)<p>Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams (mentions averting a Vingeian singularity, though I see it more of a Strossian singularity that's at risk - and you've got suggestions of plot lines and backstory in Glasshouse that are not suggestions but rather main plot elements in Implied Spaces)
It's kinda wild to me that Stross literally wrote about cryptocurrency, smart contracts (the legal corporations in Accelerando written in Python 3000, AKA what is now called Python3) and cryptocurrency thefts (the robbing of a decentralized bank due to a bug at the beginning of "halting state"). All of this was years before Bitcoin, not to mention Ethereum, which is where most of that smart contract stuff started.
The first time I read this was over GPRS on an HTC Typhoon smartphone running Windows Mobile during my 2-hour commute to my first job in tech after university, and anything seemed possible. Surprised to be sitting here years later feeling much the same.
Read this years ago and reread the first two chapters just now. Brilliantly written and within the conceit of "what if technological and aerospace advancement continued beyond the materials limits to the thermodynamic limits and private entities became exponentially emancipated from states and the old moral panics never re-emerged" the content of the book is almost all good but for one thing that we now know to have aged horribly. That thing is augmented reality.<p>Every augmented reality device more advanced than subdermal hearing aids to have ever been built has found only a very small minority of users who actually enjoy the damn things. Most of the human race doesn't like augmented reality technology, smart vision, heads-up displays or VR in any way.
A friend picked this for our neighborhood book club. Having read it, I told him that he should provide a cheat sheet for less technically inclined readers, covering for example "Thompson hack" and "Turing-complete". He did not--I think that he might have suggested that I draw it up--and it became one of the least popular books to have been read in the club's history.
I think this is a classic by now, with reason.<p>I think some of the concepts in the book are both very prescient and very disheartening, e.g. the autonomous corporations that keep haggling with each other way past their usefulness to the beings who created them.
Charlie is on Mastodon, toots regularly and actually replies to others<p><a href="https://wandering.shop/@cstross" rel="nofollow">https://wandering.shop/@cstross</a>
I tried reading it some months ago but quit after some chapters. At a certain point, it gave me the impression of randomly throwing in some technical terms (not related to CS, there's also other stuff) just to sound smart. I can have got the wrong impression of course, but it didn't meet my taste.
When reading this for first time (like two years ago) it struck me how many issues of accelerando world we actually have right now in ours. In fiction they are just hyperboled to extreme (sometimes for comedic appeal).
Read this book for the first time recently, a huge amount of prescient ideas in there.<p>I wrote a blog post exploring how far away glasses like Manfreds are: <a href="https://fleetwood.dev/posts/a-first-principles-analysis-of-consumer-smart-glasses.mdx" rel="nofollow">https://fleetwood.dev/posts/a-first-principles-analysis-of-c...</a>
I remember this being an incredible book when I read it back on my moto droid phone in 2009ish on Kindle app...time to listen to it on audible. The biggest thing I remember is it invoked some deep thoughts from me on what is conscious and whether transferring consciousness to another medium would still the same person. Seemed (and still seems) to me that continuity would be broken...but isn't that true when we go to sleep and wake up? I loved this book because it provoked a lot of questions like this. Been meaning to revisit it for years.
Discovered this here a few years ago, wound up basically taking up the next 2 days ploughing through it unable to put it down.<p>A case where the title implies a journey it'll deliver on.
You'd think of all the ideas introduced, the money-making ones would be the first.<p>Why haven't algorithmically-maintained corporate swarms destroyed liability law yet?<p>Did it happen and I didn't notice, or was it simply judged unnecessary since we extended the concept of limited liability so far with corporate actors?<p>If you haven't delved, this author's entire bibliography is fantastic.
FYI guys, this excellent author posts here on HN :-)<p>This is my fav of his books, but his others are often just as gripping. Glasshouse is my 2nd fav.
Best (fiction) book I ever read, and I will always associate it with the amazing psychill album I discovered at the same time (Easily Embarrassed - Idyllic Life).
WTF, I started reading this yesterday! Talk about coincidence.<p>I won't read other comments here because I want to go in blind, but I'm afraid I already spoiled something for myself (even though I supposed the book would take that turn) just by looking at the comment page.<p>At the moment it looks like run-of-the-mill post-cyberpunk-near-future fare, but I suppose it will take a different direction altoghether.
Just always remember: it's a dystopia. It's not a happy positive uplifting book: the conclusion is intended as a genocidal, catastrophic nightmare.
These size books by Charlie Stross are great fun, especially with the quick pacing.<p>For some reason on longer journeys I keep trying his longer ones and don't get on with them at all.
ok so I've been hearing of this for a while. Seems to be somehow similar to Diaspora, which I didn't enjoy that much and I have currently put on hold (I am around halfway through). Wonder if I would like it.