The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross
book, review, goodreads, science-fiction
This review was originally posted at Goodreads and imported here later with next to no spell/grammar checking.
3/5 stars
I like everything I’ve ever read by both Cory Doctorow (which is most of what he ever wrote) and Charles Stross (mostly just the Laundry Files). I didn’t know what to expect of their joint effort, but the premise sounded neat: the singularity has happened, people uploaded their consciousness to the Cloud and the ones who remained on Earth were trying to maintain the balance between keeping their humanity pure while still benefiting from the occasional technology coming down from the Cloud above (and trying to figure out which of those two any new tech is).
It was enjoyable, but a bit weaker compared to their solo books. It’s definitely skewed more towards the weirder end of spectrum (compared to e.g. Little Brother).
The Rapture of the Nerds is taking the piss out of Singularity as well as some of the crassness and aesthetic sensibilities of the internet culture. Which is very much appreciated. But I found the plot was switching gears a bit too quickly and none of the characters really caught my fancy.
Still, I liked it. Also, it uses the term "cloud botherer" for people trying to convince you to upload your consciousness to the Cloud. That is excellent.
