Singularity Sky

A century and a half after the Singularity — when nine-tenths of humanity vanished overnight along with the birth of transcendent AI — the New Republic, a colonial power still running on Industrial Revolution-era technology, finds one of its worlds visited by the Festival: a posthuman entity that grants any wish in exchange for being entertained. The result is chaos — instant technology handed to a population its own government spent generations keeping backward — and the New Republic responds by declaring war on a threat it doesn't understand.

Rachel Mansour and Martin Springfield, agents sent to enforce the godlike Eschaton's one rule — no technology that enables time travel and threatens causality — are on the ground as the fleet advances into a fight that could erase them all. Charles Stross's debut novel pairs space opera with a sharp satire of colonialism and rigid hierarchy.