This book started out as separate stories published on Asimov’s. I had already read most of them, but they do have a much greater impact in book form.

The book is basically the story of the next one hundred years, as lived by the several generations of the Macx family. Sounds traditional, cozy even? Forget about it. It’s probably the most information dense book I’ve ever read. I was familiar with almost all concepts in the book, which scared me a bit. I didn’t know I was this close to lunacy (lunacy in its best form, of course).

This is the best singularity book ever. While most authors don’t manage to face the singularity itself, Stross handles it beautifully head on. It’s also very diverse, putting a whole lot of sciences back into science fiction – besides the usual extrapolations on physics, there are also deep incursions into economics, medical science, sociology, computer science, law, and political science. Stross does have a very diverse background – my kind of guy.
The book is already available as a hardcover, or you can download it for free (although the author encourages you to buy a paper version if you enjoyed the electronic version).

The only shortcoming of the book is that in transforming the several stories into book chapters, some explanations (which make sense in separate stories) should have been condensed. As it stands, there is some (not much) needless repetition.