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Charles Stross Interview

Posted by michael on from the rapture-of-the-nerds dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet: a very interesting interview with author Charles Stross, whose current cycle of singularity-based stories Accelerando (featuring character Manfred Macx) is as tightly-packed with cutting-edge speculations as Bruce Sterling's work. An excerpt from the first of those stories is currently available on the Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine website."

6 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Singularity by The+World+Will+End · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For some background on the coming technological singularity, and some general good reading, see The Meaning Of Life

    For a while this was the link Jeeves gave you if you asked him the meaning of life, it was the only useful thing I ever found using that search engine.

    --
    Man, with his flaming pyre, has conquered the wayward breezes.
    1. Re:Singularity by dexter+riley · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The picture you describe of the singularity is prosaic, but here are two other options.

      Maybe our machines will leave Earth to go someplace where humanity can't bother them, and leave humanity here to rot. The high atmosphere of Venus, or the asteroid belt, or the mantle of the Earth...the smart assemblers could quickly adapt to many possible different homes. Sure, the humans could eventually follow and start annoying the smart nanobots, but if they can think as fast as some people think they might, they could quickly evolve into something even further beyond us (Femtotech? Machines based on the strong nuclear force? WTF-tech?) and leave us mouth-breathers mired in molecular molasses while they colonize the core of the sun, or quit the universe altogether!

      Perhaps more likely is the idea that it would deliberately disassemble the OLD biosphere as raw material to build the new one. I don't mean an accidental "gray goo" scenario, but rather a deliberate decision by the most advanced 'life' form to dismantle a collection of obsolete machinery to free up space. After all, we've consciously done something similar to countless other species in the name of progress, too.

      I wouldn't hold my breath hoping that "we" will find out what's on the other side of the singularity...even if the first group to build nanotech doesn't use it to kill 99.99% of us because they want mansions with BIG front lawns, then it's possible our tools will simply 'get uppety' and decide that they simply don't need us anymore.

      When I hear discussions about how we will all see a utopic future brought about by some future technology, I'm reminded of the Sci-fi classic "When Worlds Collide". I'm sure that many of the people building the rocket to take humanity to the new world (and away from the doomed Earth) thought they were going to get a seat for themselves. But in the end, almost everyone in the world got left behind when the fateful moment arrived.

      -dexter "Two thousand zero zero, party almost out of time" riley

  2. Sterling's strength is not by ctar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    his cutting-edge speculation. Sci-Fi writers with cutting-edge speculation and interesting futurist ideas are a dime a dozen. Sterling's strength is in making it fun to read! And creating a very detailed and believable context for the ideas to be presented in.

  3. Speaking of news sites dying... by HorsePunchKid · · Score: 3, Interesting
    <CBG>
    Worst S/N ratio ever!
    </CBG>

    Just to stay on-topic to some extent, here's his story in Asimov's . Definitely worth a read! Has a sense of humor that reminds me of Stephenson.

    --
    Steven N. Severinghaus
  4. 2000 story by apsmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Coincidentally, I saw this /. item just as I had finished reading Stross's "Antibodies", a short story, in a collection of the best science fiction of 2000. I'd never heard of the guy before, but his writing is wonderfully close to my experience and that of most /.'ers - I guess he's a bit new as a recognized author so not many of us know much about him. What I've read so far seems very promising though!

    --

    Energy: time to change the picture.

  5. Re:I administer Charlie's webserver by charlie · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Hey, nobody warned me that I was going to be slashdotted!

    Incidentally,I have it on good authority that the Oxford English Dictionary is going to cite "Lobsters" as the first use of slashdot as a verb -- turns out that the OED editors have still got this quaint prejudice in favour of hardcopy, so being in a book in the British Library (or US Library of Congress) gets you into the OED, and being on slashdot itself doesn't.