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Review - Accelerando
Apr. 18th, 2008 02:18 amJust finished reading Accelerando, by Charles Stross. It's a sci-fi book, and tosses around words like singularity and wetware and all kinds of words that seem to be required knowledge for reading sci-fi (since I recognise them from Ken MacLeod's books). To be honest, I'm rapidly discovering I'm out of my depth with a lot of sci-fi. I'm alright with Le Guin, Alastair Reynolds, Tad Williams and Asimov, but a lot of the rest is beyond me.
Most of the book basically flew right over my head. The characters weren't that special, either. About half way through the book I got more interested in it all -- perhaps because I finally got into the world and characters a little.
I'm pretty sure that for someone who reads more sci-fi, or maybe does physics and also knows a bit about business/law, it would have been a really, really interesting book. Some of the ideas intrigued me. It felt very, very fast paced -- which makes sense, considering the speed of the world its set in -- and felt to me like a succession of ideas, none of which were fully realised.
Really, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that I am not the target audience for the book. It's not keeping me from picking up one of Charles Stross' other books, Singularity Sky, but that's only because I already have it. I don't think I'd buy it.
Most of the book basically flew right over my head. The characters weren't that special, either. About half way through the book I got more interested in it all -- perhaps because I finally got into the world and characters a little.
I'm pretty sure that for someone who reads more sci-fi, or maybe does physics and also knows a bit about business/law, it would have been a really, really interesting book. Some of the ideas intrigued me. It felt very, very fast paced -- which makes sense, considering the speed of the world its set in -- and felt to me like a succession of ideas, none of which were fully realised.
Really, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that I am not the target audience for the book. It's not keeping me from picking up one of Charles Stross' other books, Singularity Sky, but that's only because I already have it. I don't think I'd buy it.
