Is Charles Stross overrated?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I've read a few of Charles Stross's works lately, and I find that the more I read of him, the less I enjoy what I'm reading. I started out with the Atrocity Archives, which is really enjoyable and quite funny, even if it is soaked in Computer Science Major wank. Then I read about half of the short stories in his collection Toast before I had to stop, and the only one I enjoyed happened to be the embarrassingly over the top story about how AI + internet = singularity = deity that controls a multiverse just by computing so hard. We all know that Stross is one of the poster boys for the Singularity phenomenon in Sci Fi, and not in a subtle Vernor Vinge kind of way. Now I'm reading the Jennifer Morgue, and it saddens me that an author I once enjoyed so much is so frustrating to read.

My take on the problem is, he uses so much technobabble, jargon, purposeful obscurity, and stream of consciousness writing that it's hard to get a grip on what's actually happening. His characters think the way aol tards write, and the entire story is told through his characters' thoughts. Also, the entire setting is just once big, slow jerk over how cool computer science is, with a little Lovecraft thrown in. It was amusing in the first book because that book was funny and you could sympathize with the character. In the second book, I'm only about 200 pages through and I've had at least 6 or 7 times where I've had to completely stop because the characters thoughts or actions are a complete non sequitur that make absolutely no sense, often followed by dialog that has nothing to do with the previous thought or topic. It's very distracting, and the fact that the character is a bit too much of an in-your-face smelly computer geek with a ton of arrogance and no social skills makes him even harder to care about.

Now, is this just me? Am I just reading his bad books? What do you think?

[Ford Prefect]

I think A Colder War is pretty cool, and I was amused by how obviously silly Accelerando was. However, I can't say that I've heard many people gushing over Stross in the same manner as Banks, Herbert or even Dan Simmons.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Well, lots of people were gushing over him at the last LA Worldcon, and he is often referred to as an up-and-coming great of the genre... at least in magazines like Publishers Weekly, etc..

Considering how I feel about Dan Simmons, and all the books Herbert wrote except for Dune, I am prepared to consider the possibility that it's just me.

On the other hand, love is the fifth nuclear force??? Jesus, Dan, what were you on?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Oh yeah, and I mostly liked a Colder War, too, except for the fact that the narrative broke down just as things were getting really interesting, and then skips years ahead to a totally unsatisfying conclusion.
I guess that's the problem i have with him; some cool shit will be going down and we'll be left reading about what some character on the very periphery of the action is thinking about, often while he is completely cut off from what would make the story awesome.

Also, too much ambiguity can turn your story into a cue card for a writing assignment. If I can't even tell if something has happened, let alone what has happened, I don't consider it a story at all.

Some of his writing reminds me of a Ray Bradbury horror story that follows along the lines of "some guy who worked at a carnival badmouthed a midget, and then we flash to some other time period and the midget is at home and unhappy. The next day some girl at the carnival is wondering where the guy is." Or a Dennis Etchison horror story that sums up as "this dude met this girl at a bar on the beach and she looked really creepy and they went out, or didn't, and they had sex, but maybe only in his mind, and she was really creepy, and then a month later he saw her walking next to some other dude on the beach." Aaaannnnnnnnn
d? This really frustrates the piss out of me!



Sorry if I'm ranting a bit, but I needed to vent. I bought the hardcover and I can't return it, you see.

[weemadando]

His Atrocity Archives/Colder War/Jennifer Morgue arc is pretty cool. In fact, fucking cool. I love it.

However, he does have a seriously dark side.

I tried to read Accelerando - the first 1/3 was damn good. The middle 1/3 very much middling and the final 1/3 made me stop reading. Please note that this is the first time that I have stopped reading a book that I can remember.

[Stark]

However, he does have a seriously dark side.

Does 'dark side' mean 'can't write for shit'? It's appalling how much grindstone-soapboxing authors can get away with once they've established an audience - this is why many fiction authors have a good breakout first book or two, and then sink into their own mastubatory ivory towers to sell their philosophy to the faithful with the rest.

I tried to read Accelerando - the first 1/3 was damn good. The middle 1/3 very much middling and the final 1/3 made me stop reading. Please note that this is the first time that I have stopped reading a book that I can remember.

Sounds like a personal problem to me.

[weemadando]

However, he does have a seriously dark side.

Does 'dark side' mean 'can't write for shit'? It's appalling how much grindstone-soapboxing authors can get away with once they've established an audience - this is why many fiction authors have a good breakout first book or two, and then sink into their own mastubatory ivory towers to sell their philosophy to the faithful with the rest.

If he stuck to writing decent mythos-spy fiction then I'd be happy. But his rambling cyber-punk/sci-fi epics are just painful.

[Gullible Jones]

He's not bad, but he's not amazing. I wouldn't call him overrated, if only because I've never seen him rated amazingly high.

As for his books... Some are good, some not. Iron Sunrise was entertaining but not great. Glasshouse was good, if perhaps a bit sloppily written in parts. Accelerando was made of magic and wank, and had teh annoyin superintelligent kitteh, lol! A mixed bag in general.

I do agree though that the Singularity stuff is getting very tiresome. It's getting to the point where I start to lose interest in a story the moment I see nanotech mentioned; the believability factor just goes out the window. It was a fun trope for a while, now it's swiftly heading the same way as cyberpunk, for the same reasons - it's getting dated and formulaic.

(Yes, I said dated. Come on, it's 2008! Show to me the amazing new technological developments, oh futurists!)

[Junghalli]

The only work of his I've read is Missile Gap, which I thought was pretty good.

[Sriad]

I'd rate him as an A-minus sci-fi writer, personally, slightly above Stephen Baxter (Stross can write characters!), roughly on par with Peter Hamilton. He isn't a writer I'd promote to someone who doesn't read a lot of SF already, not an Iain Banks or Neal Stephenson or Dan Simmons. (Is it just me, or is there a strong correlation between atheism and dislike for the end of the Hyperion books?) But I haven't yet read a book by him I didn't like enough to finish. They're good on their own terms: Singularity Sky or Iron Sunrise as new-idea-every-paragraph popcorn roller-coasters, Clan Corporate books as world builder/thrillers... Even Accelerando (which I recognize is weaker than most of his books, especially in the 3rd act) is laudable as an attempt to tackle the Singularity from a firm (not hard, not soft) procedural point of view.

To be honest about Singularity sci-fi, it was happening for decades before Vinge's paper, but now there's a little box to shove stories that change too much, that occupy the weird marshy ground between hard science fiction and soft space-fantasy. Those stories are nothing new, singularity tropes DEFINE a lot of classic science fiction.

Childhood's End? The Singularity before people started thinking it would happen with AI.
I Have no Mouth and I must Scream? 100 fucking percent post-singularity dystopia.
The Last Question? Oh no, omnipotent supercomputer that doesn't comply with physics!
Lord of Light? Post human immortals bio-nano-quantum-whatsit enhanced to pretend to be gods!!

What's a Singularity story really? Something happens, then everything changes; or everything is already changed and we find out what happened. That simple. Imagining that it's inevitable in the next few decades is just a new flavor/setting that SF is learning to use, and as time goes by it will fade into the genera gestalt like post-nuclear-holocaust survivor stories, or tales of near-future solar-system exploration.

TBH, my feeling is that 90% of the time people talk about how tired they are of the Singularity it's shorthand for how tired they are of wankers who think Accelerando is as hard as Arthur C. Clarke's orbital-mechanics thrillers were, but I'm not going to go telling any one person I know what they're thinking better than they do.

...anyway.

I like Stross, but not enough that I've wolfed down everything he's written, and not enough that it seriously compromises my opinion of people who don't like him. When he uses stream-of-consciousness it is an immersive reflection of fucked up characters, and generally enjoyable. (IMHO) When he uses big science words- technobabble is so nakedly antagonistic... when a computer scientist (Stross) or mathematician and engineer (Baxter) stick jargon in the narrative it's usually in an informed way that hangs together on some level and explains what's going on rather than serving as a Star-Trek style bullshit-shield hack filler. Too many big-science-words can trip up the narrative like clumsy dehydrated versions of Neal Stephenson's infodumps though, I'll give you that.

I haven't read many of his near-future things, Atrocity Archives or Halting States. Maybe I'll agree with your take on them and move on to other authors, but I think it's just a matter of taste. Not everyone I like enjoys sushi either, what can you do?

[Gullible Jones]

(Is it just me, or is there a strong correlation between atheism and dislike for the end of the Hyperion books?)

I think it's more that love as a literal fundamental force is just an incredibly stupid idea. Although, if one already believes in silly things like gods, it probably seems a bit less stupid.

As far as being tired of the Singularity goes... You do have a point, but I think that current Singularity SF has become formulaic - to a certain degree, it's all the same. The same technologies, the same problems, the same assumptions about AIs and the like... There's nothing really new being introduced. It's almost like sword & sworcery in that way. Granted, some of it (e.g. Glasshouse) is damn good sword & sorcery, even breaking out of its niche a bit, but I think my point still stands regarding the formula aspect.

Also - if I sound a bit crankier than normal, it's because I just finished reading Walter Jon Williams' Implied Spaces. Stross gave this book a rave review. I thought that it read like a ripoff of his and Cory Doctorow's stories, plus memory backup technology (which IRL is no better than having clones of yourself in cryogenic storage, but nobody wants to admit that) and extra pop culture references. I guess I'm just suffering from a lurking feeling that these authors are writing themselves into a small and soon-to-be-irrelevant corner.

[Sriad]

(Is it just me, or is there a strong correlation between atheism and dislike for the end of the Hyperion books?)

I think it's more that love as a literal fundamental force is just an incredibly stupid idea. Although, if one already believes in silly things like gods, it probably seems a bit less stupid.

A more charitable interpretation would be that "love" is how humans experience the fifth force, in much the same way kinesthesia is how they experience inertia. I thought it was a fairly elegant in-universe explanation for most of the psychic manifestations, violations of causality, conservation of energy, and cryptic motivations that begged to be addressed.

It isn't meant as a knock on atheists, just an observation that there might be a connection between an anti-religious view and throwing out the series' most explicitly god-like feature, rather than taking it in stride with the godlike omniscience of the series' Christ figure, godlike artificial intelligences, godlike avatar of Pain, and godlike Gods warring at the end of time for control of the fate of the universe.

As far as being tired of the Singularity goes... You do have a point, but I think that current Singularity SF has become formulaic - to a certain degree, it's all the same. The same technologies, the same problems, the same assumptions about AIs and the like... There's nothing really new being introduced. It's almost like sword & sworcery in that way. Granted, some of it (e.g. Glasshouse) is damn good sword & sorcery, even breaking out of its niche a bit, but I think my point still stands regarding the formula aspect.

Also - if I sound a bit crankier than normal, it's because I just finished reading Walter Jon Williams' Implied Spaces. Stross gave this book a rave review. I thought that it read like a ripoff of his and Cory Doctorow's stories, plus memory backup technology (which IRL is no better than having clones of yourself in cryogenic storage, but nobody wants to admit that) and extra pop culture references. I guess I'm just suffering from a lurking feeling that these authors are writing themselves into a small and soon-to-be-irrelevant corner.

I think my comparison to nuclear holocaust sci-fi was particularly apt: it's a similarly limited story/setting which proliferated when it seemed like something that had a decent chance of happening, but ran into limitations and saturation issues. Lots of amazing SF classics (as well as steaming piles of shit) were written in a post-cataclysm world, but the best of them transcended their settings. "A Boy and his Dog" and "A Canticle for Leibowitz" could hardly be more different; I expect we'll see Singularity stories become increasingly about compelling and interesting human characters dealing with whichever side of the latest apocalypse they happen to find themselves on.

Anyway, it's more fun to read about that kind of apocalypse than Peak Oil, which is their other obvious choice.

Stross' two takes on the Singularity already take the piss out of the concept a bit. In Accelerando the Singularity leads to an evolutionary dead end devastated by a pyramid-scheme virus imported by the Superintelligent Kitteh; in Singularity Sky/Iron Sunrise it poops forth a Strongly Godlike AI who promptly fucks off into the æther, scatters mankind across thousands of years of space-time, and only publicly interacts with mankind by protecting its own origin-causality chain with genocidal force.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I'd rate him as an A-minus sci-fi writer, personally, slightly above Stephen Baxter (Stross can write characters!), roughly on par with Peter Hamilton.

I don't know... I tend to think Hamilton is a better writer, if only due to his greater range of ideas and characters. Plus, when Hamilton latches on to a faddish brainbug, the results tend to be more hilariously cheesy than annoying.

On the other hand, I haven't read all that Stross has to offer, so I don't know if he gets a lot better.

He isn't a writer I'd promote to someone who doesn't read a lot of SF already, not an Iain Banks or Neal Stephenson or Dan Simmons. (Is it just me, or is there a strong correlation between atheism and dislike for the end of the Hyperion books?)

I hope you aren't recommending Dan Simmons to non SF fans. Actually, I tend to think all three of those authors would be bad for first-time SF readers for various reasons.

I think there is actually a stronger link between people who are easily disappointed in a novel that turns into embarrassing shit as it progresses due to the blatant lack of planning on the part of the author as well as the horrible lack of continuity and good taste, and people who dislike the end of the Hyperion books. Same thing with Olympos ruining Illium. It also doesn't help that Simmons tries to hijack the literary work of others and wank all over it in an attempt to be literary himself.

And, for fucks sake, "poets rewrite the universe by observing it"? It wouldn't be so bad if this were just the poet waxing on about his own importance, but then his claims are proven true when he uses poetry to defeat the Pain God Robot and bring peace to the denizens of Cyber-Hell.

(snip)
...anyway.

I like Stross, but not enough that I've wolfed down everything he's written, and not enough that it seriously compromises my opinion of people who don't like him. When he uses stream-of-consciousness it is an immersive reflection of fucked up characters, and generally enjoyable. (IMHO) When he uses big science words- technobabble is so nakedly antagonistic... when a computer scientist (Stross) or mathematician and engineer (Baxter) stick jargon in the narrative it's usually in an informed way that hangs together on some level and explains what's going on rather than serving as a Star-Trek style bullshit-shield hack filler.

Yes, normally that's what it would be, but in Jennifer Morgue, the technobabble is just technobabble, usually consisting of a Lovecraft reference slapped onto a computer science term followed by the reference of some mathematician or theorem. When he mentions a character wielding an "Erich Zahn" containing "Hilbert space manifolds" or some shit, I get that it's going to be a musical instrument that does things, but I have no idea what things. Turns out, it does whatever the plot needs it to. It kills bad guys, destroys electronics, unties prisoners, removes curses, etc.

In the first Atrocity Archives book, the effect worked because the book was funny in tone and because he described what something like SCORPION STARE does (which rocked) rather than make you guess for half the book. In the second one, the story takes itself seriously enough that it only comes across as a Deus ex Machina when some character rattles off technobabble to explain why a violin just solved every point of conflict in the book at once. The CIA is controlling an assassin by possessing her with a demon? Violin. The main character has had his destiny entangled with someone else as a means of controlling him and causing him to deal with issues of character and internal conflict? Violin.

Too many big-science-words can trip up the narrative like clumsy dehydrated versions of Neal Stephenson's infodumps though, I'll give you that.

Exactly.

I haven't read many of his near-future things, Atrocity Archives or Halting States. Maybe I'll agree with your take on them and move on to other authors, but I think it's just a matter of taste. Not everyone I like enjoys sushi either, what can you do?

The first Atrocity Archives book (titled The Atrocity Archives, funnily enough) is really good and I recommend it to you.

[Luzifer's right hand]

I often recommend Dan Simmons and Ian Banks to non-SF readers , a reader can start with one of their awesome non-SF book after all.