The Ends of Invention

In recognition of her recent elevation, S will now be known as Dr S. While on the way in to town to celebrate this the other night, we saw an unusual busker:
( Cut for image )

It's a good way of drawing attention to yourself, although it's probably a bit hot and smelly, and I wasn't too sure about the acoustics. He was singing an Oasis song, but we gave him some money anyway. There also seemed to be any number of hen parties out on Riverside last night. Never thought of Cambridge as a hen party destination before.

Last night, the BBC screened Parting of the Ways, the final episode in the new series of Doctor Who. ( Cut for spoilers )

Charlie Stross (known as autopope in these parts) has released his latest novel, Accelerando, on his website. I've been reading it on and off all weekend. My opinions might be skewed by that peculiar disassociation which sets in when you're reading about the Singularity at 3 am in the middle of a heatwave, but I rather liked it. I found the earlier, near future, chapters more fun than the software iiiin spaaace stuff. The bits about cats were always good. The software iiin spaaace parts reminded me of Greg Egan's Diaspora, though Stross's characters aren't as clinical as Egan's, which makes them more bearable.

The book shows signs of an SF writing singularity, whereby books become incomprehensible to people from primitive cultures where they don't know what slashdot is (perhaps a better description would be "unsullied", rather than "primitive", in that case). I'm not quite sure what someone who hadn't spent most of their life in geekdom would make of it. Perhaps someone who meets that description could read it and tell me?

In any case, it's a wonderfully exuberant book, and worth a read.