The first part's main character basically has the future version of openclaw running in his glasses that let him dispatch agents to do any tasks/research he wants or to autonomously do things for him. -> we are already kinda here
He's got such total dependency on his agents that when he loses his glasses he's basically no longer functional, unable to do anything for himself, doesn't know where he is or why he's there. In a way, he lost his own agency. -> this is now called skills atrophy and I'm sure it'll become a much bigger issue within the next 10 years.
Corporations are almost entirely run by AI agents, when they sue each other they use AI lawyers and verdicts are delivered by AI courts, all within milliseconds so they're basically constantly suing each other many times a second in an attempt to overwhelm each other's compute resources. -> this looks on track to happen
The entire solar system is on its way to ultimately turn into AI corporations "optimizing" for profit competing with other corporations to exhaust every little resource left in the entire system. Even after humanity itself is gone, all that's left is FAANG-like corporations competing for profit for eternity. And in the book, they find another intelligent species that succumbed to the same fate. This might just be that great filter everyone is theorizing. -> bleak and scary plausible outcome for what we're going through now.
(if I got some things wrong, I'm writing from memory. It's been years since I read this book)
An example of why those who say "if everybody is jobless, who will buy all the products?" are just showing a lack of imagination.
> Manfred drains his beer glass, sets it down, stands up, and begins to walk along the main road, phone glued to the side of his head. He wraps his throat mike around the cheap black plastic casing, pipes the input to a simple listener process. "Are you saying you taught yourself the language just so you could talk to me?"
> "Da, was easy: Spawn billion-node neural network, and download Teletubbies and Sesame Street at maximum speed. Pardon excuse entropy overlay of bad grammar: Am afraid of digital fingerprints steganographically masked into my-our tutorials."
No, I wrote that in 1998. It was published as the novelette "Lobsters" in Asimov's SF Magazine in 2002, made the Hugo and Nebula shortlists in 2003 (it didn't win), and later became the opening of the novel published in 2005.
I emphasized: the direction things were going in was obvious in the late 90s.
And don't *ever* let anyone tell you that Accelerando is techno-optimistic or pro-AI; by the end of the book our entire species is extinct, surviving only as simulations/memories recalled by something arguably not alive.
When I'm dictating to Claude Code, whisper often outputs 'cloud code' or 'clawed code' for my 'Claude Code.' So I ahd assumed he just took a homonym.
If OpenClaw was an Accelerando reference that's an incredibly deep cut and super cool imo
Not a huge distinction but the origin as regular lobsters feels important to the transhumanism (transcrustaceanism?) theme
Some of those throwaway ideas seem quaint now (there's some stuff about body modems I think?), but one of the interesting things about the book, to me, is the further away from "the present" it gets, the more like traditional SF it becomes: it slows down, gets more spaceopera-y. But those first three shorts were something special, and for me might be the best thing cstross has ever done. Right place right time I guess, like that album you first heard when you were fourteen.
Other series like The Culture are amazing too, but the aforementioned feel possible in a way that others don’t. For me, I can see the causal chains leading from here to there vividly in a way that you don’t get with a lot of other sci-fi.
That combination of plausible weirdness is unique and I’d highly recommend The Quantum Thief to anyone who enjoyed Accelerando or Stross’ other writing.
Not the first time I've come across great recommendations in the comments of HN!
Accelerando (2005) (antipope.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48159241
Too Much Is Happening Too Fast (theatlantic.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48163631
We've made the world too complicated (user8.bearblog.dev) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158065
I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis (twitter.com/mitchellh) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48153379
Leaving the Physical World (eff.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48084012
I’m not sure which is the greater anachronism got me. That I didn’t find the idea of endless surveillance creep glasses bothersome at the time I read the book or that slashdotting is in itself a once current, now newly archaic term.
My own list is:
Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon
Counting Heads by David Marusek
Nexus by Ramez Naam
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
If you're looking for other great sci-fi reads:
John Ringo - Live free or die
John Varley - Titan (-> Wizard / Demon)
Charles Stross - Singularity Sky
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky
Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Dan Simmons - Hyperion
Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space / The Prefect
Orson Scott Card - Enders game
Isaac Asimov - Foundation
Halting state might be a bit dated but rule 34 absolutely holds up.
Ender's Game and Foundation are timeless classics, and I suspect, Accelerando will eventually become one.
But it did seem pretty well-written, the human relationships portrayed (divorced/separated main character iirc?) appeared a bit off to me, but much less than in many, many other SF stories.
Reminded me of a hybrid between Philip K. Dick and some other, more "conventional", SF authors such as Frank Herbert or Isaac Asimov.
Bookmarked!
What SciFi books are describing what is now thought to be impossibilities all together in spite of the potentials of singularity?
I feel like everyday there are new, very real discoveries in science as a result of AI and otherwise that reading about that stuff is just as good as reading about any possibilities that may be described in any science fiction book.
We are living in or moving very quickly towards an era where everything around us seems quite fantastical compared to the life I lived some 50 years ago.
Any recommendations?
Even though it focuses primarily on the human agents in the story -- where the definition of humanity itself is fuzzy from the get-go -- it is set against a background of a vast, inscrutable, semi-virtual universe populated entirely by powerful artificial intelligences interacting amongst themselves, pursuing obscure goals that are largely beyond the grasp of mere humans.
And they're busy running their own economy where they wheel and deal to trade the commodity most precious of all to them: Energy! Sound familiar? ;-)
But it starts from a point that feels very real today. In the very first chapter, the protagonist forks a part of his own presumably cybernetic intellect to autonomously perform investigations in the background and report back to him.
That was an extremely cool but a very far-off, not-in-my-lifetime Sci-Fi fantasy idea when I read it.
But today I’ve already had Gemini Deep Research write investigative reports previously unfeasible for me due to time and expertise constraints, such as the possible timeline for robotics replacing all physical human labor given real world constraints: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LiahX2deGBoAb7kqIi5zNZm0... (spoiler alert, not for a long time yet due to extremely limited critical supply chain constraints.)
When I read that report, I realized we had quantum-leaped from Sci-Fi to reality in just a few years.
As such, beyond an engaging, if slightly disjointed, narrative arc, Accelerando gives you a framework to analyze current events and where they may lead.
The Future Shock is real!
The notion of the inner solar system being converted into computronium sounds less and less far-fetched with each passing month.
I was 17 in 2005 and discovered it by chance, and I’ve been binging on hard sf since then. Matrix and this were really transformative for me.
Also, for the longest of times I thought lobste.rs was a reference to this book :-)
Charles has very interesting takes on the modern world on his blog. I still read it with great passion.
I also want to quote a comment of his on THIS posting of the link[1], just because he said he is chill being quoted on his referenced comment.
And finally, I want to state here that I fullheartedly agree with aforementioned comment and I too crave a banksian fully automated luxury gay space communism future.
Given the current build out of compute in the real world, there is discussion / speculation about the effects of the rush to an economy heavily based on AI and the costs / benefits of that end state society.
If AI isn’t an bubble based on grift and hype that fizzles out