In my review of The Atrocity Archives, I mentioned that Stross's voice annoyed the hell out of me. Unfortunately, he writes with the same voice in Singularity Sky. And, again, the main character is yet another obvious wish-fulfillment fantasy. (Technical worker? Check. Smart and funny? Check. Good with the ladies? Double check.)

What makes Singularity Sky better than The Atrocity Archives is its display of Stross's seemingly boundless imagination. Part of the fun of the book is working out its history, so I won't say too much here. But I'll say this: Humanity has spread (or, more accurately, been spread) to the stars. One day a totally wacky civilization "attacks" an outpost planet by basically dropping tons of nanomachines that obey people's wills. The somewhat distant and vaguely Russian government with jurisdiction over that planet decides to attack this wacky civilization. But it does so by doing some dodgy time traveling, which a hideously advanced intelligence known only as the Eschaton forbids. The aforementioned wish-fulfillment character is an engineer on the lead warship for this vaguely Russian government. He also doubles as a spy for some mysterious opponent. And, to continue the wish-fulfillment angle, there is some government diplomat (UN, I think?) who is female and a fortiori a total hottie.

Singularity Sky is hard science, but only because it completely dumps character and plot in favor of a gorgeous fetishization of science. The science itself is indeed quite hard, but also wholly fanciful, with lots of talk of light cones and warp zones that, come to think of it, bear a disturbing similarity to law geeks discussing federal jurisdiction. Seriously, I think the book spends more time drooling over its speculation of time-travel space battles than it does over the budding relationship between the aforementioned engineer and his Stross-mandated hottie.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Stross's strength is is outrageous speculation, and he writes those passages surpassingly well. (The final space battle is a real doozy.) Who cares about the motionless plot, the superficial characters, the still-grating wise-ass tone of the entire book? Some of us read science fiction for its breathtaking visions of the future, and in Singularity Sky, Stross puts on a spectacular show.

Copyright © 2005 Steven Wu