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Wireless
First published 2009 · 384 pages
A dizzying, high-velocity plunge into alternate histories, post-human futures, and bureaucratic cosmic horror.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like plugging your brain directly into a high-speed data stream of brilliant, terrifying, and darkly hilarious ideas. The pace is brisk and relentless, throwing the reader into fully realized alternate histories, post-singularity futures, and Lovecraftian cold wars with zero hand-holding. The mood swings wildly from the wry, bureaucratic absurdity of a robotic Jeeves and Wooster to the suffocating, dread-soaked paranoia of cosmic horror. Stross writes with a dense, jargon-laced prose style that demands your full attention, rewarding careful readers with mind-bending concepts and sharp satirical bites. It is a perfect fit for hard sci-fi junkies and cyberpunk fans who want their imaginations stretched to the absolute breaking point by a master of speculative fiction.
- Mood
- cerebral
- paranoid
- darkly comic
- mind-bending
- Tone
- wry
- satirical
- intellectual
- cynical
- inventive
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- technological singularity · bureaucratic absurdity · cosmic insignificance · alternate histories · post-human evolution
- The writing
- Dense, jargon-heavy, and sharply witty, firing off high-concept ideas at a dizzying rate.
- The arc
- Moves from darkly humorous technological satire to profound, chilling existential dread.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave hard science fiction that blends cutting-edge technological speculation with Lovecraftian horror and biting satire.
Content notes
- existential dread
- cosmic horror
- apocalyptic scenarios
- violence
About the book
Science fiction guru Charles Stross “sizzles with ideas” (Denver Post) in his first major short story collection.The Hugo Award-winning author of such groundbreaking and innovative novels as Accelerando, Halting State, and Saturn’s Children delivers a rich selection of speculative fiction— including a novella original to this volume— brought together for the first time in one collection, showcasing the limitless imagination of one of the twenty-first century’s most daring visionaries.
Description from Open Library.
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