Singularly unconvincing
★★☆☆☆ The singularity assumes ever-accelerating technological change (hence the title), but after a fairly solid beginning it was a fatally dumb idea to spend a chunk of the book on a long space voyage. It’s beyond the author’s imaginative skills to cover what happens! Gibson’s solution to techno-overload is to focus on “The street finds its own uses for things”; Strosser’s is to move the action far from the inner workings (literally – advanced economics takes place near the center of the solar system). There are some ideas (tiny spaceships, smart lobsters), but it’s not thought through.
And the usual irritation of people in the future always choosing to dress and act retro solely to be familiar to us peons in the 20th century. Aggh.
Cybercrap
★☆☆☆☆ More rubbish that brings discredit to the term “cyberpunk.” People’s personalities get digitally transmitted to inhabit “sleeves,” including our protagonist to solve a perfect crime in a turgidly unimaginative noir crime (billionaire, sultry wife, hardboiled yet sexy cop partner, various goons, kill me now). Lots of ultraviolence. But since the sleeve is rented or borrowed, there’s no consequence to the death and destruction, and there’s a lot of unconvincing handwaving why everyone doesn’t get cloned into multiple sleeves at once. The best character is an artificially-intelligent hotel, and that is terrible too. Just awful.
