Just read: Singularity Sky

One of my birthday gifts was a gift certificate to a Big Book Store. I used part of it to buy Singularity Sky by Charles Stross (see also this Wikepedia article).

This was a top notch read, highly recommended. It's a post Singularity story. The background includes an "ascended" AI called the Eschaton. The Eschaton doesn't much give a rip about humanity even though one of its first acts was to remove 90% of the population of Earth and distribute them across the galaxy.

There are a couple of cute little jokes in the book (like a passing reference to the only remaining government on Earth, the UN, having been taken control of by the IETF).

The book is also chock full of hard science.

After reading this I really need to go find the Robert L. Forward novel that includes an appendix on "light cones".

Update: just putting the paragraph breaks back in... not sure where they got dropped. Possibly between the brain and keyboard.