• Short story collection containing such gems as "Antibodies," "Bear Trap," "Extracts from the Club Diary," "A Colder War," "TOAST: A con report," "A Boy and His God," "Ship of Fools," "Dechlorinating the Moderator," "Yellow Snow", "Big Brother Iron", "Lobsters".

From Publishers Weekly

The title of Stross's provocative new SF collection—a revised, expanded version of a 2002 title of the same name—is a mordant reference to catastrophes at the climaxes of these 11 stories. In "A Colder War," a stand-alone sequel to Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness," monsters from outside space and time are liberated as weapons of mass destruction by Russia and the Middle East. In "Antibodies," a mathematical theorem undermines the foundations of all computer encryption systems, forcing fugitive behavior from the narrator who has depended on the anonymity they hitherto ensured. "Ship of Fools," written in 1995, evokes the epic scale of Arthur C. Clarke's fiction in its projection of dire technological fiascos that rock the world at the turn of Y2K. In Stross's worlds, virtual reality is the new frontier, AI is a fact of life and everyone is fluent in the sometimes impenetrable technogeek-speak that goes with the territory. For all that, his characters are familiar and sympathetic hackers, slackers and opportunists, whose lives have not been improved by their technological expertise, and whose adventures he interweaves seamlessly with the circuitry. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

• Short story collection containing such gems as "Antibodies," "Bear Trap," "Extracts from the Club Diary," "A Colder War," "TOAST: A con report," "A Boy and His God," "Ship of Fools," "Dechlorinating the Moderator," "Yellow Snow", "Big Brother Iron", "Lobsters".

From Publishers Weekly

The title of Stross's provocative new SF collection—a revised, expanded version of a 2002 title of the same name—is a mordant reference to catastrophes at the climaxes of these 11 stories. In "A Colder War," a stand-alone sequel to Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness," monsters from outside space and time are liberated as weapons of mass destruction by Russia and the Middle East. In "Antibodies," a mathematical theorem undermines the foundations of all computer encryption systems, forcing fugitive behavior from the narrator who has depended on the anonymity they hitherto ensured. "Ship of Fools," written in 1995, evokes the epic scale of Arthur C. Clarke's fiction in its projection of dire technological fiascos that rock the world at the turn of Y2K. In Stross's worlds, virtual reality is the new frontier, AI is a fact of life and everyone is fluent in the sometimes impenetrable technogeek-speak that goes with the territory. For all that, his characters are familiar and sympathetic hackers, slackers and opportunists, whose lives have not been improved by their technological expertise, and whose adventures he interweaves seamlessly with the circuitry. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Award-winning author Charles Stross is one of today's most exciting and entertaining writers. This collection, Toast, brings together some of his best short stories originally published between 1989 and 2001, including his Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon Award nominated work "Lobsters", the first of his many near-future cyberpunk Accelerando stories. Bruce Sterling on speed? The imagination of Sterling squared? All of the glitz, glibly tossed-off newly invented, or hybrid tech-terms thrown at the reader like an info blizzard at hurricane force, but with more core storyline than in some of Sterling's "Deep Eddy" stories.
Contents:
Introduction: After the Future Imploded (2002) • essay by Charles Stross
Antibodies (2000) / short story by Charles Stross
Bear Trap (2000) / novelette by Charles Stross
Extracts from the Club Diary (1998) / short story by Charles Stross
A Colder War (2000) / novelette by Charles Stross
TOAST: A Con Report (1998) / short story by Charles Stross
A Boy and His God (1997) / short story by Charles Stross
Ship of Fools (1995) / short story by Charles Stross
Dechlorinating the Moderator (1996) / short story by Charles Stross
Yellow Snow (1990) / short story by Charles Stross
* Big Brother Iron (2002) / novelette by Charles Stross

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