A humorous look at the Singularity from the minds of Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross!! The novel is available free on Doctorow's website, as a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND download. http://craphound.com/rotn/Cory_Doctorow_and_Charles_Stross_-_Rapture_of_the_Nerds.html The pitch:
What the hell is going on in that quote? I went to the website, and all I saw was a heavy text version of this place: Parallax Colony The higher... the fewer! All joking aside, eh, it doesn't look very good. I read some of it, and the text is just way too pretentious. It's as if the author tried to be as full of shit as possible. I understand using a wide variety of nouns and verbs to add a unique flavor to a work, but if it's so bogged down by unnecessary idioms, what's the point? I just couldn't find very much humor in it. Mostly, I found boredom and tedium. No offense, RAMA. I mean, if you like it, that's cool. I just don't see it. I mean, seriously: LAUGH AT MY ANTICS FOR I AM WHIMSY!
Stross who helped popularize the Singularity meme in SF has lately been somewhat critical of it, I think the story is a clever way of "having your cake and eating it too"...having a post-SIngularity society and not and reflecting upon it. I think we need a lot more of this type of exploration with Singularity's themes, humor is a good way to accomplish it, because the implications can be epic or grave. Interestingly, the reviews for the story are very good in the critical realm (Publihser's Weekly, starred review Booklist, Library Journal, Barnes and Noble reviews, Quill and Quire linked below, et al), fans tend to have a lesser opinion, but in both cases the story(ies) are agreed to fit into the general pattern of exploration of the individual writer's and are a worthwhile addition to their milieu. This story is not their top work really, but I simply couldn't pass up the summary...the one I quoted. http://www.quillandquire.com/reviews/review.cfm?review_id=7771 https://tbaliteraryjournal.wordpres...ross-and-cory-doctorows-rapture-of-the-nerds/ Barnes and Noble reviews: RAMA