Book Review: Accelerando, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross by Charles Stross
These three books are all pretty interesting. If you haven't read Accelerando, you certainly need to. For those that don't know, these books all feature the technological singularity as a primary plot element. The technological singularity is the point at once artificial intelligence surpasses man's own intelligence, and continues to increase at an exponential rate, leading to machine intelligence so rapidly and so vastly exceeding our own intelligence that we can hardly begin to imagine the changes that result. Ray Kurzweil has written extensively about the singularity, including his own book The Singularity is Near, which I highly recommend.
Charles Stross brings those concepts to life in his books. Once you've read his books, it will profoundly change the way you perceive science-fiction. Since then, every sci-fi book I've read feels a little less believable - they frequently take place in what would appear to be hundreds of years in the future, and yet technology, and especially artificial intelligence, has hardly progressed at all. That's just laughable once you've read The Singularity is Near and Accelerando.
So please read them, because they are fantastic books. But prepare to be changed.