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tarostar's review against another edition
5.0
I read Lobsters and then all the other Charles Stross short stories in this series and it was the perfect timing as I was immersed in posthumanism, transhumanism and living on the Extropy mailing list and reading Slashdot daily. I was young and the future was exciting and radical.
rotorguy64's review
2.0
2.5 stars. I really didn't like this story. Good things first: The crustacean KGB-AI, the idea of uplifting and then uploading animals and the way the topic of human rights for said animal-uploads was handled were great. If only the story had focused on them, instead of trying to give the spotlight to what feels like a dozen plot points and items at the same time. Needless to say, spotlights don't work that way. In just over twenty pages, Charles Stross tried to deal with the aforementioned speculative issues, delivered jabs against both anarchocapitalism and communism (neither was interesting), talked about alien intelligence, post-scarcity economics and abuse of the IP laws of the future, discussed whether tax responsibility and romantic responsibility are comparable (an issue he never resolved) and whether we should terraform Mars or turn everything into computronium. There's a particularly terrible romance subplot too, which was resolved with a gratitious BDSM-rape scene and the threat of paralyzing the protagonist for life. Speaking of which, the protagonist was completely forgettable, and so was his ex. So was everyone besides the lobster-KGB-AI-refugee, who almost pushed this story up to three stars for me, but sadly, that's not enough.
Lastly, some of the prose - including the technobabble - is pretty bad:
My problem here is not that this is incoherent. I'm sure Stross knows his science. Nor do I find it too hard to understand. I know what a hypothalamus is and I quickly figured out what a metacortex is supposed to be. Besides, I can enjoy similar levels of technobabble in the works of [a:Peter Watts|27167|Peter Watts|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. However, in Watts' stories, it feels far less gratitious. I don't know why that is, but it's nevertheless my impression.
Lastly, some of the prose - including the technobabble - is pretty bad:
The Teledesic satellite cluster was killed by cheap balloons and slightly less cheap high-altitude solar-powered drones with spread-spectrum laser relays.
She knows she can have this effect on him any time she wants: she’s got the private keys to his hypothalamus, and sod the metacortex.
This is what it’s like to be tetraplegic, Manfred. Bedridden with motor neurone disease. Locked inside your own body by nv-CJD. I could spike you with MPPP and you’d stay in this position for the rest of your life, shitting in a bag, pissing through a tube. Unable to talk and with nobody to look after you. Do you think you’d like that?
My problem here is not that this is incoherent. I'm sure Stross knows his science. Nor do I find it too hard to understand. I know what a hypothalamus is and I quickly figured out what a metacortex is supposed to be. Besides, I can enjoy similar levels of technobabble in the works of [a:Peter Watts|27167|Peter Watts|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. However, in Watts' stories, it feels far less gratitious. I don't know why that is, but it's nevertheless my impression.
arkron's review
5.0
Synopsis: Manfred Macx is a genius in coming up with ideas, and realizing them instantly to patents, only to giving them away to other people to get rich off, and also to the public. He doesn't earn money but lives comfortably off the generosity from his benefactors, e.g. a provided luxury appartment in a hotel, free public transport, free shopping. The setting is a near future Netherlands somewhere shortly before the singularity. Uploading minds is nearly there and already started with an experiment of uploading lobsters ("one neuron at a time") and turning cats into war machines. Exactly those lobsters contact Manfred to help them escaping humans into space. Meanwhile, Manfred's ex-financee Pamela visits him and tries to change him to a responsible, capitalistic life.
Review: A revised version of this novelette started Stross's famous novel Accelerando.
The story is chock-full with futuristic ideas which superpose content and characters. The author's staccato of futuristic terms will probably be hard for most readers, a Bruce Sterling on crack, similar in style to Hannu Rajaniemi.
I found the concept of exponentially accelerating development very convincing: The novelette was published more than 15 years ago. In that decade, technologies developed and spread out that nobody really believed in then: Smart phones, natural language processing, machine learning, autonomous cars, robotics, just to name a few. That kind of acceleration is visible right now. People in general can only extrapolate linearly, they don't grog an exponential development; The Second Machine Age : Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies names that acceleration as "living in the second half of the chess-board".
Yes, the time-frame of the novel seems a little rough - uploading minds or reaching singularity within only a couple of years from now on seems as unbelievable as converting the planets of our solar system into a single computronium within a hundred years. In this, the author succeeds: exponential acceleration taken to extremes, invoking scepticism.
Although the concepts in this story are extremely dense, other qualities are fascinating as well. One is the contrasting juxtaposition of the characters of innovative Manfred and conservative Pam, bound together in a SM bondage relationship. In the end, it is a romance fiction. The other is the storytelling with its perfect timing, ending in an unexpected but satisfying plot twist.
Review: A revised version of this novelette started Stross's famous novel Accelerando.
The story is chock-full with futuristic ideas which superpose content and characters. The author's staccato of futuristic terms will probably be hard for most readers, a Bruce Sterling on crack, similar in style to Hannu Rajaniemi.
I found the concept of exponentially accelerating development very convincing: The novelette was published more than 15 years ago. In that decade, technologies developed and spread out that nobody really believed in then: Smart phones, natural language processing, machine learning, autonomous cars, robotics, just to name a few. That kind of acceleration is visible right now. People in general can only extrapolate linearly, they don't grog an exponential development; The Second Machine Age : Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies names that acceleration as "living in the second half of the chess-board".
Yes, the time-frame of the novel seems a little rough - uploading minds or reaching singularity within only a couple of years from now on seems as unbelievable as converting the planets of our solar system into a single computronium within a hundred years. In this, the author succeeds: exponential acceleration taken to extremes, invoking scepticism.
Although the concepts in this story are extremely dense, other qualities are fascinating as well. One is the contrasting juxtaposition of the characters of innovative Manfred and conservative Pam, bound together in a SM bondage relationship. In the end, it is a romance fiction. The other is the storytelling with its perfect timing, ending in an unexpected but satisfying plot twist.
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