The Singularity became a popular setting concept in science fiction in the 1990s, pioneered by such writers as Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, and Ken MacLeod. In case you are not familiar, it posits that at some point in human technological development, artificial intelligence takes off, following an exponential path and exceeding its biological origins. It is often accompanied by the transformation of humans into posthuman form, through synthesis with AI, biological uplift, upload or download. I...

I loved this book. I felt it threw me in at the deep end a bit, as Macleod seems to do a lot, but I loved it.

I wanted some chewy scifi (nothing hard enough to require work, just something a bit toothsome). This got the job done – post singularity wormhole explorers playing in the remnants of godlike AI’s, space communists, mass consciousness uploads, etc. Second cousin to Stargate original flavor with a certain Kage Baker-ish soupcon to the protagonist, the faintest touch of the gigglies, and some deliberately terrible folk music as a bonus. Nothing groundbreaking or particularly new or exciting, but i...

I am so confused. It was all going well until the last few chapters, and then the story metamorphosed into a bizarre garden of shards of reality, and I lost the plot entirely.Singularity and post-Singularity fiction does not seem to be my friend these days! In Newton’s Wake, the Singularity—which Ken MacLeod refers to as “the Hard Rapture” here—happens, and a vast percentage of the Earth’s population are involuntarily uploaded to machines. The AIs bootstrap themselves into faster-than-light star...

Ok, so I really tried. I finished it this morning and I still don't know if i enjoyed it or if I would recommend it to anyone. He's a good writer, with a brilliant imagination. I enjoyed the tech, the world is different to anything I've encountered... but I think it stresses the idea of a space 'opera' too much, it read like a bloody opera. Just too much drama, and too much random unconnected events.But I'll give MacLeod another chance before finalizing my opinion.

Ended up with only 3 stars because it starts to drag around the half-way mark. I hugely enjoyed the beginning, I liked the concept and the posthuman history - I like having me my post-singularity explained and shown in sprinkled detail.But once the Lamont plot strand kick in, I'd have wished for a more speedy execution. Everything just seems to take too long - a sign that I'm getting impatient and not being invested enough in the story.I couldn't bring myself to enjoy the Ben-Ami/Winter/Calder s...

Not only is Newton's Wake: A Space Opera bad, it is positively obnoxious. The story is breathtakingly unoriginal and its technology is farcical. When need comes to resurrect two folk singers whose personalities have long since been digitized, the process is thus: (1) dump "two heavy paper sacks labelled 'Human (dry)—Sterile if Sealed,'" into a tank; (2) add water. I shit you not.Need I say more? But I will. Several of the characters speak in a thick Glaswegian brogue that, when rendered in print...

The story starts well but spirals into a chaos made of it's own cleverness. It's the science fiction equivalent of a man-drawer...full of curious ideas and interesting bobbins, none of which belong or work together. Ken almost got me to care what happened to Lucinda Carlyle but fell short. I quite like fallible heroes but it's not good when they blunder about ineffectually, not managing to influence their own outcomes positively in the least.Perhaps the biggest drawback is the proportion of the

Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod has some good ideas and interesting characters within it's pages but in the end it can't find an ending or a villain to cheer for when the good guys possibly win the day.Taking place in the future where singularities, faster than light travel and backing yourself up before going out on a dangerous mission the story is quite simple: A group of combat archeologists find a world named Eurydice that was cut off from Earth after a devastating war and bit by bit everyone f...

Space opera tale of a universe where human society was almost wiped out by machines it created. In the aftermath, there are several groups vying for control and several bear tongue in cheek names to organizations we would recognize. Apparently, when the machines had almost destroyed Earth, some human chose to stay and fight and the others, believed to be cowards, fled to another galaxy. Wormholes, which are sort of like short cut tunnels or teleportation, discover these cowards who have created

High concept space opera that loses steam in a big way two-thirds of the way through.Newton's Wake is one on a flurry of science fiction novels in the 2000s that tried to explore what a post-Singularity universe might look like from the perspective of the left-behinders. MacLeod has written here an intriguing rendition of it - at parts slightly satirical and trope-savvy; at others strikingly optimistic in its outlook on human survival.But as in may of Macleod's works the tone set from the outset...

My 2004 review-notes, from when the book was new:"A": MacLeod's best yet -- gripping far-future space-opera, all the good KenMac stuff with hardly any of the bad. The only serious fault is a murky ending. Don't miss!I don't have much to add to a bunch of rave reviews, here and elsewhere. Forex, "It was the small hours of the morning before I closed this book, which is probably the highest praise I can give a novel. I could babble on for a bit about how well written it is, how inventive, but real...

The book presents an some interesting ideas, but the author has a long way to go to make truly wonderful science fiction. The potential is there.The story doesn't really seem to start until about halfway through the book. The beginning section provides some information about the world of the book, but it does not provide anything to the story or the characters. It is often muddy, dragging, and really doesn't have a direction.There is also a story line about singers that seems forced into the boo...

While I am a fan of MacLeod's work (his Corporation Wars books were super), NW was a bit of a let down. In fact, it read a lot like a Charles Stross novel on the idea front (MacLeod thanks Stross in the acknowledgements), especially regarding the 'singularity' and post-humans. In NW, the 'singularity' or 'rapture' as it is called here by the survivors, essentially destroyed earth as military A.I.s first waged war between the USA and Europe and then absconded to where ever posthumans go, leaving

So this is a difficult review to write. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but it has some pretty deep flaws, so a pro/con list is probably the best way to do it.Pro: The setting. This is a fairly original space opera setting in the sense that is captures most of the traditional points of the sub-genre (interesting factions, FTL, grand battles, larger than life machines, etc) but puts a modern spin on them (injects transhumanism, a surprising degree of intellectual/scientific rigor, less accepting...

Reminded me a bit of Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon The Deep_. (A favorite of mine.) For the most part enjoyed the first 80% of the novel. After that though it became unclear what was going on, and more especially _Why_. We are left with soft, dream-like imagery with no real conflicts to speak of. Along that line, the conflict we should be speaking of, the one the novel sets up pieces and relationships for, builds up for most of the work, passes by quickly once it happens, almost a non-event (aside...

This was a novel I wanted to like much more than I ultimately did.I like Ken MacLeod's other novels very much. The Fall Revolution series was excellent; I taught one of the books at the end of my British novels seminar. These are richly imagined tales with intricate plots and challenging world-building, combining deep knowledge of left politics with science. I didn't appreciate some of his later titles as much, but liked that way they handled blogging (Learning The World, The Execution Channel)....

Resurrections had to be sponsored. It was a big responsibility, bringing people back from the dead. This was one reason why it wasn’t done very much.A novel with some nifty ideas, but which did not quite generate a corresponding level of excitement.I suppose it has to do with what rings your bell. In my case I can only speculate. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I didn’t get super-excited about all the cultural and social quirks of the Eurydiceans, or about all the “Returner” vs “Reformer...

I was surprised to read a number of negative reviews of this book... very surprised. This is good, classic, entertaining Space Opera with a twist.We are in a future, post-apocalyptic, Universe. The machines became sentient aka "Terminator" and things just became more interesting (as in the Chinese saying) as a result. Humanity has divided into a number of specialised "clans" and we are asked to join the Carlyles (who control the skein, or interweaving wormhole, which makes travel interesting - n...

As a sci-fi/classic space opera, this had some interesting ideas with spotty execution. But as a satirical exploration of art and historiography in a post-Earth society, this was a romp. Calling the Entertainment Copyright Control Board "The Mouse" was just tip of the iceberg.This reminded me a lot of The Hyperion Cantos, but not as carefully orchestrated. I kept feeling like chunks of explanation were missing and that I didn't quite care about certain things as much as the story needed me to. M...