This was a frustrating book to read and not in the ways a lot of people accuse it of being (I don't think it's valid to criticise a sci-fi book for using technical terms). Each of its nine chapters was originally written as a short story, meaning the pacing is unfortunately completely wack and sometimes you go from a really interesting story to something completely unrelated. I also have some problems with the way the story itself is told, and the future being envisioned, but despite my complaints I devoured the book in only a few days and enjoyed reading.
Accelerando is an unending deluge of interesting and amazing ideas about the future of technological progress. It is about the singularity from its beginning to its end, and it is fascinating and really fun reading about how it progresses. The civilisation comes out of the other end is unexpected and kind of frightening. Every decade or so in the story there are asides which tell you about the state of the solar system. The speculative civilisation simulation is the main draw here and it is genuinely engaging, though there is also a human story. I do have criticisms of the future imagined in this book, which I'll talk about later. It also is a little bit dated in a few places, especially at the beginning.
The human story has highs and lows. It's frustrated very badly by the disjointed chapters, and is usually less interesting than the civilisation progression. It's especially bad in the last third, where I think the characters become less engaged with the technological progression and things kind of of become a bit more conservative. I actually don't think the characters are all that bad. I really liked Manfred and I related to Amber, though I didn't really care for Sirhan. Maybe it's because I'm coming off of other sci-fi novels with ridiculously flat characters, but I think the ones in this book are pretty good and engaging.
The problem comes from how they turn the plot into family drama. I was not looking for family drama when I started this book, and it massively overstays its welcome (I thought Amber's relationship with her mum, who's the most annoying cuckservative ever, was engaging, but everything to do with Sirhan is just frustrating). My favourite parts of the story were the beginning with Manfred, and the part where Amber is on the spaceship (I liked this part a lot, it was fun), because these are the parts in which the plot is allowed to be about actually interest
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.