[intensityxx]

I've been looking for other 'post-singularity' fiction, and came across Ken MacLeod's name. A search of the forum gave me mostly the 'other' MacLeod results, so I'll ask you all...do any of you read Ken MacLeod or Charles Stross or other 'post-singularity' fiction and have recommendations?

[Hereford Eye]

Okay, I admit it; I have no clue what "post-singlarity" fiction might be. Can you provide a synopsis?

[Dawnstorm]

Both MacLeod and Stross have caught my attention with short stories. Might buy a book if I come across it in a bookstore.

Isn't Cory Doctow one of the crowd?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think post-singularity SF has something to do with technological changes, specifically AI and nano-tech, changing the world in ways so that the world's no longer recognisable. Sentient houses; your body's immunity system's got a mind of its own; categorising people according to gender might no longer work...

For example, there's a short story "Flowers from Alice" (Storss & Doctrow? can't remember) in which the flowers aren't flowers and Alice isn't Alice...

Intensity, do you know Ian MacDonald? Writer of the nineties, therefore too old for post-singularity; but many of his novels and short stories use those tropes.

For an introduction, I'd try the short story collection Speaking in Tongues (the title story is about an AI trying language in various ways; lots of great stories in there...). Something that gets close to what post-singularity does today is Necroville (Terminal Café in the USA). Back then people have referred to him as Cyberpunk (which is plausible for some stories, but generally doesn't quite work out).

[intensityxx]

Sorry. In a place like this I always assume everyone knows waaay more than I do. :) I'm just learning about this term myself. Because I'm fascinated by the sociological impacts of recent technology and cyberculture, I find this edgy stuff fascinating.

Here's the classic article written by Vernor Vinge in 1993: Singularity (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html) The first line is: Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. Vinge wrote the first Singularity fiction in the 80's, and recent writings are now called post-Singularity fiction.

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom inspired my searches. Doctorow and Stross have apparently done many collaborative stories in this area, Stross having written Singularity Sky and its newer sequel. In Down and Out, Doctorow's characters are interfaced to a central computer which makes it possible to do everything we do on our computers, and probably more. With a glance one can pull up any information, like a web search, check voicemail, or by subvocalizing, carry on a private conversation with another person. His world is post-scarcity and post-death. So our entire economies and governments no longer have meaning.

(This is the book club book this month, and it's very short, very fast if you're interested in participating.)

Dawnstorm, I'll take a look at the works and authors you mentioned, thanks!

[Archren]

The person I've read who does explicitly post-singularity SF is Charlie Stross. I loved his "Singularity Sky," and can't wait to read "Iron Sunrise." He writes with great wit and really interesting plots. Highly recommended!

[knivesout]

Ken MacLeod's most recent novel, Newton's Wake is definitely what you'd call post-singularity sf. It takes place in the aftermath of a mass technological singularity, called the Hard Rapture. It's a well-paced sf adventure, and great fun, but it does get a little awry towards the end, I think.

[Monty Mike]

I've read Ken Macleod's Engines of Light Trilogy and loved it. I'm reading his 'Fall Revolution Series' now and would without a doubt recommend him. Do you know of Iain M. Banks at all?

[intensityxx]

For anyone interested, there's a new Locus issue out, I just got mine today, and Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross have pics on the front cover and are interviewed separately.

As for Ian Banks, I get all those Ians mixed up, also Vinge, Vance, and Varley. I suppose reading them would help me keep them straight. :o

[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

Charles Stross is definitely an author that I've been looking at for a while, but up until now I've just been collecting his books and stories, waiting for the right time to start reading them. Last week, I finally read his [*Macx Family] story "Lobsters," and I have to say that it did not disappoint! Looking over his website, I see that there are 9 stories in all in this series, all published in Asimov's, and that they will be published in book form in the fix-up novel ACCELERANDO, forthcoming this summer from Ace Books. It has often been described as THE post-Singularity book. Has anybody out there read these stories yet?

[Soon Lee]

ACCELERANDO:
It's *really* good. The main reason I took out a subscription to ASIMOVS (http://www.asimovs.com/) was to read short stories by people like Charles Stross, Connie Willis & Kage Baker.

The SINGULARITY:
Most commonly refers to the 'technological singularity'; there are others, the most famous singularities being the black hole singularities.

The idea being that technological progress accelerates to such a state that it hits an event horizon; the singularity. Beyond the singularity is such an alien place that pre-singularity people have no frame of reference to relate to the future post-singularity environment. The future is a different country, and then some. Not only that, post-singularity is so beyond our experience that we have no frame of reference to predict what post-singularity life could be like.

Some have argued that this has already happened. More than once. For example, what would a pre-Bronze Age hunter-gatherer make of New York?

An associated concept is the transition to a non-corporeal higher state of existence. VERNOR VINGE used it in his "MAROONED IN REALTIME" story which deals with the people left behind by a 'singularity', after the majority of the human race have vanished.

IAIN M. BANKS' "CULTURE" books refer to it as 'subliming'; the idea that civilisations progress to a point where they either 'retire' from galactic affairs and and senesce or 'sublime' i.e. transition to an energy state and leave the material universe.

DAVID BRIN's "UPLIFT" novels also delve into this to some extent.

Stross' journal has a mention of the genesis of the ACCELERANDO (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi/2003/12/25).

He say's the ACCELERANDO is a novelette trilogy of trilogies,

Each group of three novelettes would study one generation of a dysfunctional family, living through a period of rapidly accelerating technological change -- a Vingean singularity.

(Oh yeah. Did I mention that the conventional wisdom in interested circles, since Professor Vinge coined the term, is that it's impossible to successfully treat this topic in SF? There's nothing like biting off more than anyone believes it's possible to chew ...)