Stross, Charles: Accelerando
Accelerando
Writer: Charles Stross
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 415
A few things to note: if it's available, I'm going to start providing the link to the author's website in these entries. Just click on the author's name above, and if everything works as it should, you'll be catapulted to their site. And in this particular case, Charles Stross has Accelerando, as well of his other titles, available to read online.
Charles Stross’ Accelerando is a book that’s been nibbling at my curiosity for a long time. Aside from being hopelessly attracted by the clean, abstract design of the cover, I knew the book offered another take on post-humans. And since I’d already read Joel Garreau’s Radical Evolution, I was familiar with the other premise of Stross’ book, and that’s the singularity.
But, as is the case with books popularized by the market, I held back. I’d go to the bookstore, flip through the paperback, and set it back on the shelf for another day. I finally decided to pick it up to read on a rainy day, but a couple things pushed the book to the forefront. The first was that I read a short story of Stross’ in the January 2007 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, and my reaction to the story wasn’t great. Then pantlessjohnny and I started talking about it, and we came up with the idea of reading Accelerando together to see how different it would be from said short. And when it came time to whip up a required reading list for SHU, I smacked Accelerando on it first thing, because I’d be “forced” to finish it then.
I should make one thing clear, cause it seems silly that I purposely read a book by a writer whose style I know I’m not into: I knew going into this I most likely would not be fond of the book. Gut-feeling, based on some of the other, newer SF that’s come across my plate during the past year. But, I firmly believe in keeping an eye on the market, and if something’s getting lots of attention, I want to know why. SF writers should be aware of current trends as well as the history, and it’s doubly important for me, since I’m trying my hardest to ignore all the trends out there (can you hear the sarcasm in that sentence?).
So I read it. It’s taken me a full week, and that’s saying something to the complexity and density of this novel. Fortunately, I was well-prepared thanks to Stross’ “Trunk & Disorderly.” And despite the time it took me to trudge through this, I didn’t dislike Accelerando. But I didn’t like it either.
It boils down to the fact that I am not the target audience for this book, and it’s painfully obvious. And the timing is ironic: while at residency, cpcarey was explaining how he used to work at a Barnes & Noble located right next to Microsoft, and how those computer programmers would come over during lunch (or whenever) and buy lots of SF, which made it the most popular-selling genre in the store. We then had a discussion about how if the core audience for SF right now are these computer programming type people, what does that say to the kind of SF that will be getting published?
But that’s another story: the point is, when I read Stross’ biography at the back of the book, I had a very good laugh (and moment of fear) when I read that he’d worked at one time as a computer programmer.
There’s a lot I can’t grasp in this book, and I’m happy enough to admit it: reading Accelerando is the equivalent, for me, of reading a medical textbook written for experienced doctors: I’ll understand the general idea of what’s going on, but I’m lost on the details and there’s nothing grounding me to the text to propel me forward except my own drive. And Accelerando is jam-packed with so much detail and information that I was really glad I could hold on to what little I understood of the plot, because I would’ve been lost otherwise. And while I might blast other writers for such over-saturation, I have to give credit where credit is due: Stross knows who his target audience is, and I do not believe in dumbing down the literature for the sake of pacifying readers, like me, who simply aren’t at the same level.
But Stross throws me a bone here and there: the structure of this book gives it a good shape and a predictable expectation. Divided into three parts, each part is divided into three rather lengthy shorts (novellas? Novelettes? I can never remember…), all of which were published individually in Asimov’s Science Fiction. Each short has its own arc, and the problems that are introduced are, for the most part, tied up at the end. Meaning, once I saw the pattern of Stross’s writing, I knew I would have a snowball’s chance in piecing this book together, despite the overwhelming amount of world-building, technological, and scientific detail that goes into this.
And then I got another bone: humor. While I rarely laughed out loud (though I remember a distinct time I did, but sadly, can’t remember what for), Stross got a grin out of me. After all, despite my ignorance of technology, I am familiar with the whole music and piracy thing, so his Mafiya cracked me up. There’s also some snark about society and the human race that I very much appreciated.
And then, the best bone of all: Aineko, the cat. While I feel Stross’ own description of the book, “series of nine stories, each set an average of 5-10 years apart, covering three generations of a dysfunctional family as it makes its way through the singularity - told from the point of view of the family cat,” is a little misleading (we only get Aineko’s point of view once), I love that Aineko is what connects each story together. S/he’s a smart-ass too, which doesn’t hurt. Course, I’m also a huge fan of felines, so I guess you could say Stross had me at “meow.” ;)
There are lots of interesting ideas in this. Different technologies, how humans evolve, their ability to send out ghosts of themselves to live out other parts of their lives (now that deserves a book all its own: one person and his or her ghosts). I think Amber was my favorite character out of the human ones, simply because she was the one I could most easily relate to (any girl with a control-freak mother will). But character really isn’t the strong suit of this, simply because there’s so many of them and they’re so wrapped up in each other that it’s hard to relate. There’s also quite a few extraneous characters (as well as some seemingly extraneous plots), but I’ll forgive it because it’s not handled badly. It’s just there, take it or leave it.
But ultimately, this book falls off the radar for me: despite the stuff I enjoyed, I was always a certain distance out of this story, which made it harder for me to connect. Stross crams a LOT into this novel, and I mean more than just detail: it’s nine different shorts with their own stories, but they all link together, and they span at least three generations. That’s a lot of material. So it’s a credit to Stross that he manages to pack it all in 415 pages, but there’s an awful lot of telling and summarizing in order to get us through it all. The SF, despite what I'm sure is fascinating extrapolation based on current trends, feels more like fantasy to me than anything, but that's to be expected. I can't imagine how all of this is possible, but I'm sure people in the "know" can.
Like I said, not my kind of SF. It’s a book I would recommend with caution to those SF readers chomping at the heels of the cyberpunk movement (post-cyberpunk?), those SF readers who are looking for something completely different from the usual fare of space-opera-esque tales, and those readers, like me, who simply want to follow the trends so they can cry themselves to sleep at night over the knowledge that what they’re writing is NEVER going to get published if stuff like Accelerando is what’s popular. :) I should note, though, that I don’t think stuff like Accelerando is the pinnacle of SF: rather, it’s a sub-genre. I know some people groan at the term, but really, there are so many different kinds of SF out there that just because you’re an SF reader doesn’t mean you’ll like everything that comes out. The target readership for Accelerando isn’t likely to overlap much with the target readership of, say, Ursula K. Le Guin.
Still, I learned one valuable lesson from this book, aside from the reminder that SF writers shouldn’t have to dumb-down their prose to appeal to a wider audience, and that lesson is that libraries are a GOOD THING. There’s lots of books, like Accelerando, that I’m curious about, but really don’t need to be forking over the money to buy. While the closest, decent library is about forty minutes away, it may be worth it to give some of these other, acclaimed titles a spin for 21 days before moving on to something else. And the good thing about libraries is that if I don’t like what I’m reading, I won’t feel the compulsive urge to finish it because I didn’t put any money into it. Unless, of course, the urge isn’t tied to money, and rather some internal sickness that I really need to be cured of. ;)
A final note: I haven’t crossed Stross off my list of writers to read. I won’t rush out to read everything he publishes, but because I know he writes a variety of work, I won’t hesitate to taste-test a few other titles. But those will probably come from the library. :)
Next up: Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, edited by Lou Anders