Accelerando

Accelerando is a collection of nine interconnected short stories.

"A new kind of future requires a new breed of guide – someone like Stross." – Popular Science

"Where Charles Stross goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow." – Gardner Dozois, Editor, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

Charles Stross "can be compared to Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, and Vernor Vinge for the depth of his speculations" (Paul Di Filippo, Science Fiction Weekly) as proven in such innovative hard SF novels as Singularity Sky ("wonderfully inventive", The Denver Post) and Iron Sunrise ("[a] hard SF masterpiece", Library Journal).

Now, expanding upon his award-winning short story cycle from the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Charles Stross presents a startling vision of humanity's inability to cope with rapid technological advancement.

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.

Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity.

For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...

An ideological tour-de-force, Accelerando is destined to stand beside Neuromancer and Snow Crash as one of the most seminal works in science fiction.