Journal lucasw's Journal: The Stone Canal by Ken Macleod
If I had bothered to look up the facts I would have realized The Cassini Division was the third book in a series and some of my comments about concepts only being sketchily explained were unfounded.
The Stone Canal is the second book in the series, which by random luck of the library reserve system I'm reading in reverse order.
I liked The Stone Canal significantly more than The Cassini Division. The Jon Wilde and Dave Reid characters and their relationship were much more interesting than Ellen May Ngwethu.
The flashback parallel story line was also interesting, starting in England in the mid-seventies and then converging on the main plotline hundreds of years in the future (or tens of thousands in real space...). The British political references were a little overbearing, especially since I lack familiarity with even the more popular parties there.
(spoilers)
Dave Reids speech to the liberated workers had the interesting concept of harnessing the singularity as fire was harnessed- and there's the plotline that runs through all of the books is that of the singularity going pretty poorly the first time off. Superintelligent life not necessarily being super-wise, and going insane or repeatedly lashing out irrationally against conventional humanity is a good sf-generator idea. The fact that it's all the scientists, technicians, geeks, etc. that make up the minds to go post-human and ending up the way they do is a refreshing change from other more unambigously positive depictions in other books and stories.
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'The Human Front' is a short story by Ken Macleod I recently got around to reading in last years 'The Years Best Science Fiction'. It seems a little like the Charlie Stross Cold War Cthulhu story initially, except with the U.S. and allies fighting with the help of Roswell-type aliens and Marxist insurgents making a stand not only for their ideology but for all of humanity- but that's only the superficial picture. The alternate history is compelling enough even without the alien intereference. Things turn stranger, but less sinister, with the protagonists internment on an not-quite-alien world, and an meager explanation for the constant war and suffering finally offered up.
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The Stone Canal by Ken Macleod
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