Rapture of the Nerds – Cory Doctorow, Charlie Stross
If you’re a science-fiction writer and you want to write about Singularity, you have to know how people and civilization works. If you don’t, your story doesn’t mean much and it’ll be impossible to read. Thankfully, both Doctorow and Stross knows this very well, plus, they have a very good sense of humor.
Other than making sense at technical level and telling their story beautifully, those two points at the paragraph above makes this novel a perfect one. If you’re interested in technological singularity fiction and you want to read something ‘absurd’ but makes a lot sense (like Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ books), you have to read this.
RotN captures the current situation of our civilization and gives us a very plausible possible future with technological singularity. If you read the book and laughing at the “plausible” part, just think about it. Do you think a civilization messed up like this one (don’t get me wrong, I love our civilization but we have to accept that) can do better than that? For me, RotN build on a very realistic ground and this is the main reason why story seems absurd at first glance.
If you want a clue about the book, just look at this quote:
As you can see, the genome of the said item is chimeric and shows signs of crude tampering, but it’s largely derived from Drosophilia, Mus musculus, and a twenty-first-century situationist artist or politician Sarah Palin.
Or this:
“Turns out we gotta prepare the way for holy war in cyberspace,” Sam says. Huw boggles. “Cyberspace? Who even says ‘cyberspace’ anymore?” “The Prophet, that’s who,” Doc says.
You can find a lot more like these in the book. Go get it. (Buy or Download CC licensed version.)
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