Eschaton

Hugo Award winner Charles Stross delivers a brilliant space opera replete with groundbreaking concepts and energized by an imaginative vision of the future. In the 21st century, the perfection of faster-than-light travel and the rise of a prodigious artificial intelligence known as the Eschaton altered the course of humankind. Now, far off in the vastness of space, the technology-eschewing New Republic is besieged by an alien information plague. Earth quickly sends a battle fleet-but is it coming to the rescue, or is a sinister plot in motion?

Not only is Charles Stross' Iron Sunrise a science fiction masterpiece, it's also a thriller with a cyberpunk heart. PlanetMoscow is vaporized by an unnatural star explosion, prompting those who escaped to counterattack the likely culprit-planet New Dresden of the neighboring system. But New Dresden wasn't to blame, and as worlds go to war, an unseen enemy labors to destroy the universe itself.