About the Author

Charles Stross was born in Leeds, England, in 1964. He has worked as a pharmacist, software engineer and freelance journalist, but now writes full-time. To date, Stross has won three Hugo Awards and been nominated twelve times. He has also won the Locus Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Novella, and has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke and Nebula Awards. His books include the Merchant Princess series, the Laundry Files series, the Singularity series, and several stand-alone novels.

Reviews

“A cornucopia of notions and neat writing.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune“Makes hallucinogens obsolete.”—Cory Doctorow

“Stross sizzles with ideas…whimsical and funny as well as challenging and thoughtful.”—The Denver Post

“Like Bruce Sterling or William Gibson at their best, Stross surfs a wave of ideas and information that seems always on the brink of collapsing into incomprehensibility, but never does—a careening plunge through strangeness in which every page contains something to mess with your head.”—SF Site

Manfred Macx, a 21st-century intelligence amplification entrepreneur, lives partly in the physical world and partly in the virtual world of artificial intelligences, the Internet, biotechnology, and molecular nanotechnology. His 12-year-old daughter Amber, who seeks independence from her controlling mother, indentures herself to a company aiming to extract a fortune from the resources of Jupiter. Decades later, Amber's son Sirhan, a victim of multiple virtual childhoods, researches his dysfunctional family and uncovers a sinister new life form that threatens the continuation of biological life in the universe. Expanding on his award-winning short story cycle that appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, Stross (Singularity Sky) reveals a vision of the future that encompasses and expands on the newest technologies and explores the possibilities of humanity's future. Joining the ranks of William Gibson (Neuromancer), Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash), and Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix), Stross fuses ideas and characters with cheerful abandon and creates a high-tech galactic adventure that belongs in most libraries. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

"A cornucopia of notions and neat writing."-The San Diego Union-Tribune"Makes hallucinogens obsolete."-Cory Doctorow"Stross sizzles with ideas...whimsical and funny as well as challenging and thoughtful."-The Denver Post"Like Bruce Sterling or William Gibson at their best, Stross surfs a wave of ideas and information that seems always on the brink of collapsing into incomprehensibility, but never does-a careening plunge through strangeness in which every page contains something to mess with your head."-SF Site