- Stross, Charles.
Singularity Sky.
New York: Ace, 2003.
ISBN 978-0-441-01179-7.
-
Writing science fiction about a society undergoing a
technological singularity or about humans living
in a post-singularity society is a daunting task. By its
very definition, a singularity is an event beyond which it is
impossible to extrapolate, yet extrapolation is the very essence of
science fiction. Straightforward (some would say naïve)
projection of present-day technological trends suggests that
some time around the middle of this century it will be possible,
for a cost around US$1000, to buy a computer with power equal to
that of all human brains now living on Earth, and that in that
single year alone more new information will be created than by all of
human civilisation up to that time. And that's just the start.
With intelligent machines designing their successors, the slow
random walk search of Darwinian evolution will be replaced by directed
Lamarckian teleological development, with a generation time which
may be measured in nanoseconds. The result will be an exponential
blow-off in intelligence which will almost instantaneously dwarf that
of humans by a factor at least equal to that between humans and insects.
The machine intelligences will rapidly converge upon the fundamental
limits of computation and cognition imposed by the laws of physics,
which are so far beyond anything in the human experience we simply
lack the hardware and software to comprehend what their capabilities
might be and what they will be motivated to do with them. Trying to
“put yourself into the head” of one of these ultimate
intellects, which some people believe may emerge within the
lifetimes of people alive today, is as impossible as asking
C. elegans
to comprehend
quantum field theory.
In this novel the author sets out to both describe the
lives of humans, augmented humans, and post-humans centuries after
a mid-21st century singularity on Earth, and also show what happens
to a society which has
deliberately
relinquished technologies it deems “dangerous” to the
established order (other than those, of course, which the ruling
class find useful in keeping the serfs in their place) when the
singularity comes knocking at the door.
When the singularity occurred on Earth, the almost-instantaneously emerging
super-intellect called the Eschaton departed the planet toward
the stars. Simultaneously, nine-tenths of Earth's population
vanished overnight, and those left behind, after a period of chaos,
found that with the end of scarcity brought about by “cornucopia
machines” produced in the first phase of the singularity, they
could dispense with anachronisms such as economic systems and
government, the only vestige of which was the United Nations, which had
been taken over by the
IETF
and was essentially a standards body. A century later, after humans
achieved faster than light travel, they began to discover that the
Eschaton had relocated 90% of Earth's population to habitable worlds
around various stars and left them to develop in their own independent
directions, guided only by this message from the Eschaton, inscribed on
a monument on each world.
I am the Eschaton. I am not your god.
I am descended from you, and I exist in your future.
Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone.
Or else.
“Or else” ranged from slamming
relativistic impactors
into misbehaving planets to detonating artificial supernovæ to
sterilise an entire interstellar neighbourhood whose inhabitants
were up to some mischief which risked spreading. While the “Big E”
usually remained off stage, meddling in technologies which might
threaten its own existence (for example, time travel to back before its emergence
on Earth to prevent the singularity) brought a swift and ruthless
response with no more remorse than humans feel over massacring
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
in the trillions to bake their daily bread.
On Rochard's World, an outpost of the New Republic, everything was very much settled
into a comfortable (for the ruling class) stasis, with technology for
the masses arrested at something approximating the Victorian era, and
the advanced stuff (interstellar travel, superluminal communication) imported
from Earth and restricted to managing the modest empire to which they
belong and suppressing any uprising. Then the Festival arrived. As with most
things post-singularity, the Festival is difficult to describe—imagine
how incomprehensible it must appear to a society whose development has
been wilfully arrested at the railroad era. Wafted from star to star in
starwisp probes,
upon arrival its nanotechnological payload unpacks itself, disassembles
bodies in the outer reaches of its destination star system, and instantiates
the information it carries into the hardware and beings to carry out
its mission.
On a planet with sentient life, things immediately begin to become extremely
weird. Mobile telephones rain from the sky which offer those who pick them
up anything they ask for in return for a story or bit of information
which is novel to the Festival. Within a day or so, the entire social and economic
structure is upended as cornucopia machines, talking bunnies, farms that float
in the air, mountains of gold and diamonds, houses that walk around on chicken
legs, and things which words fail to describe become commonplace in a landscape
that changes from moment to moment. The Festival, much like a eucaryotic organism
which has accreted a collection of retroviruses in its genome over time, is host to
a multitude of hangers-on which range from the absurd to the menacing: pie-throwing
zombies, giant sentient naked mole rats, and “headlaunchers” which infect
humans, devour their bodies, and propel their brains into space to be uploaded
into the Festival.
Needless to say, what ensues is somewhat chaotic. Meanwhile, news of these events
has arrived at the home world of the New Republic, and a risky mission is mounted,
skating on the very edge of the Eschaton's prohibition on causality violation, to
put an end to the Festival's incursion and restore order on Rochard's World. Two
envoys from Earth, technician Martin Springfield and U.N. arms inspector Rachel
Mansour, accompany the expedition, the first to install and maintain the special
technology the Republic has purchased from the Earth and the second, empowered by
the terms under which Earth technology has been acquired, to verify that it is
not used in a manner which might bring the New Republic or Earth into the sights
of the Big E.
This is a well-crafted tale which leaves the reader with an impression of just
how disruptive a technological singularity will be and, especially, how fast
everything happens once the exponential take-off point is reached. The
shifts in viewpoint are sometimes uneven—focusing on one subplot for
an extended period and then abruptly jumping to another where things
have radically changed in the interim, but that may be deliberate in an
effort to convey how fluid the situation is in such circumstances. Stross
also makes excellent use of understated humour throughout: Burya Rubenstein,
the anarcho-Leninist revolutionary who sees his entire socio-economic utopia
come and go within a couple of days, much faster than his newly-installed
party-line propaganda brain implants can adapt, is one of many delightful
characters you'll encounter along the way.
There is a sequel, which I look forward to reading.
February 2011 