Although published more than two decades ago, Singularity Sky (Ace Books, 2003) still feels fresh and brilliant in its cutting-edge SF and explicitly libertarian vision.
A strong write-in candidate for Best Novel in the year it was first published more than two decades ago, Singularity Sky has been nominated for the first time for the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
Fabulously inventive and sophisticated in its cornucopia of world-building, Stross’ widely acclaimed first novel successively introduces a wild variety of clashing cultures, divergent interests, hidden motives and compelling characters. Although some story elements might seem fanciful or within the realm of fantasy, all are ultimately rooted in plausible science fiction.
A CORNUCOPIA OF SF IMAGINATION
A savvy adventure brimming with imagination, humor and wit, Stross’s impressive first novel interweaves solid storytelling, intelligent space opera, romance, and some humor with an ingenious blend of SF concepts.
Among them: artificial intelligence, bioengineering, immortality, nanotechnology, time travel via faster-than-light starships, self-replicating information networks, and above all the Singularity, (first popularized by Vernor Vinge but nicely imagined and detailed by Stross).
Kaleidoscopic and epic but also nuanced and intimate in its human drama, Singularity Sky is set in the 25th century after a post-Singularity humanity has been disrupted by forces beyond its control – most notably, the mysterious super-intelligence named the Eschaton, a godlike A.I. that first developed self-awareness on Earth in the 21st century.
Perhaps most impressively, Stross imagines a fascinating variety of cultures and levels of civilization coming into contact and conflict. That includes a libertarian Earth without coercive government and functioning exclusively through private contracts, several waves of radically alien visitors, and The New Republic, a reactionary and repressive set of Victorian-era-level colonies with secret police, a ruthless bureaucracy, and no Internet.
RECOGNIZABLY HUMAN (AND LIBERTARIAN!) CHARACTERS
At the sympathetic and most recognizably human center of the complex story is spaceship engineer Martin Springfield, an Earth-based contractor hired to provide technical work for the New Republic’s fleet, and who finds himself forced to join a ship heading for battle.
During preliminary vetting and questioning by New Republic officials, who simply can’t imagine the possibility of a functioning society without authoritarian government, Martin reveals his very different and libertarian perspective about the realities back on his home planet:
“Government?”
Martin rolled his eyes.
“I come from Earth. For legislation and insurance, I use Pinkertons, with a backup strategic infringement policy from the New Model Air Force. As far as employment goes, I am incorporated under charter as a personal corporation with bilateral contractual obligations to various organizations, including your own Admiralty. For reasons of nostalgia; I am a registered citizen of the People’s Republic of West Yorkshire, although I haven’t been back there for twenty years. But I wouldn’t say I was answerable to any of those, except my contractual partners – and they’re equally answerable to me.”
Among the hundreds of human colonies scattered across interstellar space – some more or less authoritarian, but all ultimately dramatizing Stross’ insights from an implicitly pro-freedom, pro-peace, pro-civilization perspective – is static backwater Rochard’s World, loosely modeled after 19th-century Russia.
A WOW OF AN OPENER
In one of the freshest and most whimsical opening chapters of almost any SF novel of the past generation, Singularity Sky sets up its framing mystery when alien cell phones begin dropping out of the sky onto Rochard’s World.
Gradually, its naive, unsuspecting, impoverished, oppressed citizens are exposed to a dizzying cascade of super modern goods and ideas by the alien Festival, an unusual group of advanced interstellar visitors who use cell phones to communicate with and seduce each planet’s citizenry.
Using orbiting Cornucopia machines to manufacture any conceivable technology, desirable goods or imaginable biological transformations, the Festival grants any and all wishes, however fantastical. Their only requirement: that others have something they find worth trading for – specifically, interesting new information, including art, culture, ideology and beliefs.
“We are seekers of information. We trade,” the Festival informs one of the planet’s citizens.
“You trade?” Burya glanced up, a trifle disappointed. Interstellar capitalist entrepreneurs were not what he had been hoping for.”
A WITHERING OF THE STATE
Burya Rubenstein is a leading revolutionary among Rochard’s World’s underground of neo-Marxist and Soviet-commune-style revolutionaries, who’ve been biding their time to liberate their colony from the New Republic.
As the Singularity transforms his world, Burya is far from the only one struggling to navigate “through a wasteland (that) had recently gone from bucolic feudalism to transcendent post humanism without an intervening stage” and drifting “through a dream of crumbling empires.”
One visitor to Rochard’s World, eager to help, belatedly reveals Earth’s initial intentions (before the Singularity) “to ship power tools to their own home-grown libertarian underground for a decade now.”
Contra Marxist theory, Stross even wittily portrays a real-world “withering away of the State” – one that “wasn’t destroyed by committees or soviets or worker’s cadres; it was destroyed by people’s wishes going true” – along with the elimination of the cadres, who become superfluous after the planet’s radical transformation by “about a thousand years of progress in less than a month.”
AN AUTHORITARIAN EMPIRE IN CRISIS
A rigidly hierarchical and aristocratic empire, The New Republic has suppressed modern technology on its colony worlds for generations. Yet, the elite use starships and some forbidden technologies as needed to protect their authoritarian rule.
The stakes rise when a crisis is sparked from The New Republic’s rash decision to take violent actions to defend its empire and stop the Festival’s distribution of prohibited technology.
When the regime schemes to engage in illicit time travel to send its fleet into the past to stop the Festival before it has substantially disrupted Rochard’s World, only a few people recognize such actions could provoke a wider disaster.
THE ESCHATON’S WARNING
Earth’s representatives, at least, take seriously the Eschaton’s ban on time travel to protect the timeline by keeping it clear and paradox-free, and thus prevent any threats to its own extinction. Moreover, if anyone truly crosses the line, the Eschaton has a track record of resorting to a scale of planetary extinction that can affect many other worlds within a radius of many light years.
At least, the Eschaton offers a clear and far warning, placed on large permanent monuments on every human colony planet:
1. I am the Eschaton. I am not your god.
2. I am descended from you, and I exist in your future.
3. Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.
Also representing Earth’s interests and wiser concerns is Rachel Mansour, a U.N. diplomat pre-stationed within the New Republic. Both Rachel and Martin share a libertarian perspective, a decency and compassion reflecting Earth’s freer and more advanced society and a greater understanding of the Eschaton and its dangers.
A LIBERTARIAN CONVERSATION
Explaining her libertarian views to a recalcitrant New Republic true believer, Rachel says: “…what you’re protesting about boils down to a dislike for anything that disturbs the status quo. You see your government as a security blanket, a warm fluffy cover that’ll protect everybody from anything bad all the time. There’s a lot of that kind of thinking in the New Republic; the idea that people who aren’t kept firmly in their place will automatically behave badly. But where I come from, most people have enough common sense to avoid things that’d harm them; and those that don’t, need to be taught. Censorship just drives problems underground.”
What a beautiful and insightful statement about the distorted and narrow thinking of authoritarian cultures, contrasted with the more optimistic and human attitudes of a free society!
A back-and-forth conversation among Rachel, Martin and Vassily, a New Republic loyalist, is similarly illuminating – and poignant:
“We’ve been trying for years to tell your leaders, in the nicest possible way: information wants to be free. But they wouldn’t listen,” she said.
“For forty years we tried. Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it….
“But information isn’t free. It can’t be,” Vassily objects.
“I mean, some things – if anyone could read anything they wanted, they might read things that would tend to deprave and corrupt them, wouldn’t they? People might give exactly the same consideration to blasphemous pornography that they pay to the Bible! They could plot against the state, or each other, without the police being able to listen in and stop them!”
Martin sighed.
“You’re still hooked on the state thing, aren’t you?” he said. “Can you take it from me, there are other ways of organizing your civilization?”
THE GENIUS OF STROSS
Known for his impressive constellation of big ideas, intelligently deployed for suspenseful and imaginative hard SF, Stross also excels at incorporating so-called ‘social SF” tropes exploring and contrasting the impact on humanity and social behavior of various political-economic systems – and in the process, revealing the relatively greater efficacy and ethics of freedom, with its corresponding greater accountability and responsibility.
With so many characters, cultures and plot twists as well as flashes of wit and humanity, Singularity Sky expertly juggles its dizzying array of elements.
Although part of the middle section focus a bit more on space battles than those who aren’t fans of military SF might prefer, even here the novel packs a cumulative punch while weaving deeper threads that amplify the overall dramatic arc and achieves a satisfying climax – and a wistful, hopeful epilog.
A REAL RELATIONSHIP
As a bonus, Stross balances his big ideas with the intimacy and caring of a very human relationship that develops between Martin and Rachel, two people I came to care about very much.
Although each has their own goals and motives, these two Earth-culture-based libertarians learn to connect, develop some genuine chemistry together and work toward a common end, beyond mere survival.
Both Martin and Rachel face suspicions and misunderstandings, with Rachel further discounted by the patriarchal New Republic, simply because the male bureaucrats and starship crew aren’t used to smart, independent women who speak up when they sense danger.
Among the most intriguing misunderstandings, from the perspective of libertarians, is how the New Republic views Rachel’s U.N. affiliation as governmental, when actually the United Nations in this future is described by Earth citizens as a private agency operating through contracts but without state enforcement power. (And I suppose, if you’re a libertarian who favors an extremely limited government – rather than anarchocapitalism – then it should be easy for you to view the U.N. as described here as actually pretty close to that ideal, too.)
THE POLITICS OF ADULTHOOD
More profoundly, Stross explores and accurately contrasts the psychology of authoritarians and libertarians, framing the key difference as a choice between the rational, responsible politics of adulthood and the irresponsible, infantilizing politics that reduces adults to babies controlled by a Big Brother, Dominating Daddy or Smothering Mother State.
For instance, a New Republic military officer, brought up his entire life to accept the reactionary assumptions of a command-and-control society, continues to flounder and is unable to grasp the new realities of a world of freedom and adulthood that he never has experienced and never imagined:
Vassily glanced to them in bewilderment, his ears beginning to glow bright red,
“You’ve got a lot to learn about the real world, kid,” Martin tells him.
“Will you stop calling me a child!”
Rachel hunched around in her chair and stared at him.
“But you are, you know. Even if you were sixty years old, you’d still be a child to me. As long as you expect someone or something else to take responsibility for you, you’re a child. You could fuck your way through every brothel in New Prague, and you’d still be an overgrown schoolboy.”
She looked at him sadly.
“What would you call a parent who never let their children grow up? That’s what we think of your government.”
Ultimately, through Rachel and Martin’s eyes, readers of Singularity Sky come to appreciate more clearly the flaws of repressive and regressive regimes while opening up our minds to new vistas of freedom and human possibility.
Note: Singularity Sky, initially a contender in 2003 for Best Novel as a write-in candidate (written in on the finalist ballot when it was discovered by LFS members after the normal mid-February nominating deadline), is one of 10 nominees for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
The Hall of Fame finalist judging committee is expected to select and announce next year’s slate of finalists by the end of the year.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:
* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt), Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future – and in some ways can be even more powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, individuality and human dignity.
