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The Rapture of the Nerds
A tale of the singularity, posthumanity, and awkward social situations
Cory Doctorow(0)
About
A brilliant collaboration from the two defining personalities of post-cyberpunk: Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross.
Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century.
Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming dense thinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun.
The splintery meta consciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander...and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.
So until the over minds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy techno virus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.
Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century.
Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or another of the swarming dense thinker clades that fog the inner solar system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun.
The splintery meta consciousness of the solar-system has largely sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander...and when that happens, it casually spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole industries, cultures, and spiritual systems. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who'll take a bite from the forbidden apple.
So until the over minds bore of stirring Earth's anthill, there's Tech Jury Service: random humans, selected arbitrarily, charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury, a task he does his best to perform despite an itchy techno virus, the apathy of the proletariat, and a couple of truly awful moments on bathroom floors.
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Reviews
"There's a superhuman energy and intelligence to Makers that I haven't see since mid-period Bruce Sterling."
Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians
"If imagination is the key to success for a writer, Charles Stross has it in spades."
The Times (London)