Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
01/07/2004 . Source: Sue Davies 

pub: Orbit/Times Warner. 389 page hardback. Price: £12.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-84149-333-3.

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Rochard's World is in the backwater of the galaxy and nothing much happens. The Government like it that way. The people live in an enforced feudal existence and power is centralised. However, the Universe has other plans. There's a revolution coming and it isn't what anybody expects.

The Festival arrives. Sitting on the outskirts of the star system, it starts to drop mobile phones onto the ground. The first person to pick one up learns he can have his heart's desire simply for some information. What follows is realisation of everybody's dreams and some people's nightmares.

Burya Rubenstein has been plotting revolution for years and is in internal exile for his pains. Now he finds his aims have been superseded as the planet collapse in anarchy around him and he must try to make the best of it.

Meanwhile, the Government has its own plans to stop the revolution which involves breaking causality by sending a fleet of spaceships three weeks into the past to engage with the Festival. If only it were that simple. The best laid plans and all that...

Caught up in all this is Martin, ostensibly an engineer working on the space fleet. He, too, has an agenda. He meets Rachel, a well-preserved agent of the UN, who despite her better judgement finds herself warming to him. They become embroiled in the causality problem and, on a more positive note, each other.

Another space opera it isn't. 'Singularity Sky' manages to engage the brain extensively. Occasionally it overdraws on the cerebral cortex and requires me to say, 'Eh what?' There is a considerable amount of political theory squashed into a not insignificant amount of story. It also has human interest. In other words, 'lurve' but not too much to put off the more macho reader. Contrasting with the nuts and bolts science, it also features a giant rabbit and a large tusked animal called a 'Critic' that moves around the world in a shed on legs.

The Critic comes with the Festival and gets involved at ground level. I can't help feeling that Charles Stross has been to Edinburgh and yes, there is also a rather dangerous 'Fringe'. Most of the cultural references flew over my head without stopping but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The book also has multiple viewpoints but always maintains them in the third person keeping its distance which occasionally made it rather cold and analytical.

Reservations notwithstanding, this is certainly a different and rather refreshing novel that is richly entertaining. The drama is certainly muted by how involved you feel with the characters and it is not a dramatic death or glory storyline. The plot is more sarcastic than catastrophic. It is clever without being too smarmy and it gives good value for its 389 pages. Mainly then, I was pleased not to have to read 1000 pages+ to get strong characters, a plot-rich story and incisive dialogue.

The sequel 'Iron Sunrise' follows some of the characters introduced in this book into a new story based in another part of the Universe. It looks to be a darker story than this and has the harder edge missing from this first story. I'm looking forward to it.

A sequel due in July of this year.

Sue Davies