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Scratch Monkey
Oshi Adjani works for the Boss doing odd jobs, fomenting a revolution here, confronting a mass murderer there. Her field of operations is the Milky Way galaxy, and the Boss is a Superbright, one of the man-created super-intelligent artificial intelligences who regard this galaxy as their property. She has been rigorously trained, her body filled with nanotechnology that augments her senses and enables her to communicate with the ubiquitous Dreamtime encoders. Sometimes, that’s enough.
Now the Superbrights are confronted with the enigmatic Ultrabrights, artificial intelligences as far beyond the Superbrights as the Superbrights are beyond ordinary humans. The Superbrights are engaged in the inevitable struggle with them for control of the galaxy and the DReamtime.
Oshi has been drafted into this vast conflict. She has been sent to a human colony that the Boss has projected to be in the path of the Ultrabright blackout. But the colony is in chaos, their Superbright has gone mad, and not even the Boss cares if Oshi lives or dies, because she is only a scratch monkey.
Scratch Monkey is the 2011 Boskone book by Guest of Honor Charles Stross, with cover art by Official Artist Gregory Manchess.
Now the Superbrights are confronted with the enigmatic Ultrabrights, artificial intelligences as far beyond the Superbrights as the Superbrights are beyond ordinary humans. The Superbrights are engaged in the inevitable struggle with them for control of the galaxy and the DReamtime.
Oshi has been drafted into this vast conflict. She has been sent to a human colony that the Boss has projected to be in the path of the Ultrabright blackout. But the colony is in chaos, their Superbright has gone mad, and not even the Boss cares if Oshi lives or dies, because she is only a scratch monkey.
Scratch Monkey is the 2011 Boskone book by Guest of Honor Charles Stross, with cover art by Official Artist Gregory Manchess.
175 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1993
8 people are currently reading
300 people want to read
About the author
Charles Stross
177 books5,796 followersCharles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.
Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.
SF Encyclopedia: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_...
Tor: http://us.macmillan.com/author/charle...
Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.
SF Encyclopedia: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_...
Tor: http://us.macmillan.com/author/charle...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
March 28, 2012
I’m terrible at explaining orally what books are about. Two people, the sort of people who don’t read books like this, asked me what Scratch Monkey is about while I was reading it, and I stumbled over my reply. “It’s a far-future posthuman story featuring nanotechnology and strong AI,” I mumbled, knowing that this explanation would make no sense to them and is more an over-generalization of the setting than any useful description of plot or story. This is why I write reviews, but unlike Oshi, I cannot simply beam the content of my review into someone’s wisdom implant. (I have been known, when asked what I thought of a book, to look up my review on my phone and shove it at someone’s face—but this has not exactly become an acceptable social convention yet, so I do it sparingly.)
Scratch Monkey is a far-future posthuman story featuring nanotechnology and strong AI. Specifically, it’s the spiralling narrative of Oshi Adjani, a human agent of an AI she calls “the Boss”, which belongs to a category of AIs called the Superbrights. As humanity spread out at sublight speeds across the stars, colonizing worlds in advance through the judicious use of Von Neumann probes, they used planet-sized processors to create a cyberspace afterlife: the Dreamtime. As the Dreamtime became more complex, it gave rise to AIs—the Superbrights—who have gradually co-opted it for their own survival. Humans are thriving, and in most cases functionally immortal, but their destinies are no longer their own.
Oshi begins to see through the veil of the Superbright beneficence, so she becomes expendable data—a scratch monkey. Her Boss dispatches her to a system under threat by the Ultrabrights, AIs expanding outward from the old core of human civilization whose processing power is far superior to that of the Superbrights—and, hence, they are that much more alien. Oshi’s ordered to figure out what’s happening and report back. Or, you know, die trying. Oshi’s job sucks.
Like a lot of its ilk, there aren’t any concepts in Scratch Monkey that haven’t been seen so many times in posthuman fiction. We’ve got AIs, mind uploading, nanotechnology, fast cloning of human bodies, etc. The Gatecoder is a nifty idea as a mechanism by which minds travel between systems (similar to the idea of “needlecasting” in Altered Carbon , but with a clone of your body grown when you arrive instead of being downloaded into any old sleeve). I can also see echoes of this plot in some of Stross’ other works, notably Singularity Sky , where the main character is an agent of the Eschaton. Despite his conclusion that strong AI will be so advanced it will essentially start running the show, Stross seems fairly confident that humans will always be necessary as intermediaries and physical agents. It’s interesting to see the direction he takes with Oshi.
Oshi is really quite a damaged person. It all goes back to her childhood as a blind beggar—blind because her uncle gouged out her eyes to make people more sympathetic for her. After being rescued by some of the Boss’ agents and put into a training program, her graduation mission goes awry. We get treated to some fairly extensive flashbacks (and these seem more like a strategy of padding out what was originally a novella into a novel-length work of fiction than meaningful parts of the narrative) that detail what goes wrong and why it’s screwed up Oshi so badly. After arriving in the Ridgegap-47 system, Oshi finds herself in the middle of a crisis even her Boss couldn’t predict: the system’s Superbright has gone mad, setting itself as an Egyptian god, and a lethal Ultrabright probe is on its way.
I’ll hand it to Stross: for all his obsession with infodumping, he still manages to keep the story moving at a clipping pace. The last third of Scratch Monkey is a harried race against time for survival, first as Oshi and her ragtag band of untrained resistance fighters square off against Anubis, then as they attempt to hijack the Ultrabright probe and use it to evacuate their minds from the system before the Ultrabright itself moves in. The stakes just keep getting higher and higher, the situation worse and worse, with each plan of Oshi’s madder than the last.
It all seems very exciting. I just wish I knew what the hell was going on. As the book raced to its abrupt, somewhat dangling denouement, I felt like comprehension was increasingly slipping away from me, growing further out of reach with each page. I think this happened because, despite the constant exposition, I never did develop a good sense of what the rules were in this universe. Stross is keenly aware of and loyal to the realistic, relativistic mechanics that would govern space travel and space warfare—but, you know, I admit I’m not. So Oshi would say, “We have to do x,” as if it were obvious that x is the only correct course of action in that situation—and to anyone in her universe, it would probably make sense. For those of us who regard relativity as a nifty scientific theory but don’t actually comprehend how it applies to everyday life, Scratch Monkey requires a great deal of nodding and smiling, much more than I remember in Singularity Sky.
Perhaps this roughness comes from the book’s origins as a novella that Stross initially did not sell then dusted off and expanded into this story. I can’t really speculate. In his afterword, Stross discusses how he’s glad the book didn’t sell when it did, because the manuscript needed a lot of work. And I can see that. The first chapter, “Year Zero Man,” which I think was the original novella, is my favourite part of this book. It’s a very satisfying vignette that shows Oshi kicking ass against fairly substantial odds, with an antagonist who sufficiently challenges Oshi’s sense of moral superiority. But “Year Zero Man” is just the prologue for the main plot of Scratch Monkey—and that, sadly, is not as interesting.
My edition is a limited edition published by the NESFA Press and purchased through Subterranean Press. It also includes Stross’ series of blog posts/essays on the subject of common misconceptions about publishing. As a writer who entertains the notion of one day producing a story worth publishing myself, I found the posts interesting and informative to a degree. Stross is certainly a very opinionated writer. While I don’t always find myself agreeing with the positions he takes, I like that he tries to support his arguments using coherent appeals to hard data, rather than appeals to pathos or ethos.
Charlie Stross is really cool, though, and made this available online. You can read Scratch Monkey online in its own entirety. Or just read “Year Zero Man”. Up to you. I’ll recommend this one for Stross fans, but unless, like me, you’re really into posthuman SF, this story probably won’t do much for you. In conclusion, Scratch Monkey provides another fascinating glimpse at Stross’ particular flavour of posthuman SF. But it doesn’t really add anything to the party or say anything compelling that isn’t in his other works. It was, at times, entertaining, but it never really got exciting.
Scratch Monkey is a far-future posthuman story featuring nanotechnology and strong AI. Specifically, it’s the spiralling narrative of Oshi Adjani, a human agent of an AI she calls “the Boss”, which belongs to a category of AIs called the Superbrights. As humanity spread out at sublight speeds across the stars, colonizing worlds in advance through the judicious use of Von Neumann probes, they used planet-sized processors to create a cyberspace afterlife: the Dreamtime. As the Dreamtime became more complex, it gave rise to AIs—the Superbrights—who have gradually co-opted it for their own survival. Humans are thriving, and in most cases functionally immortal, but their destinies are no longer their own.
Oshi begins to see through the veil of the Superbright beneficence, so she becomes expendable data—a scratch monkey. Her Boss dispatches her to a system under threat by the Ultrabrights, AIs expanding outward from the old core of human civilization whose processing power is far superior to that of the Superbrights—and, hence, they are that much more alien. Oshi’s ordered to figure out what’s happening and report back. Or, you know, die trying. Oshi’s job sucks.
Like a lot of its ilk, there aren’t any concepts in Scratch Monkey that haven’t been seen so many times in posthuman fiction. We’ve got AIs, mind uploading, nanotechnology, fast cloning of human bodies, etc. The Gatecoder is a nifty idea as a mechanism by which minds travel between systems (similar to the idea of “needlecasting” in Altered Carbon , but with a clone of your body grown when you arrive instead of being downloaded into any old sleeve). I can also see echoes of this plot in some of Stross’ other works, notably Singularity Sky , where the main character is an agent of the Eschaton. Despite his conclusion that strong AI will be so advanced it will essentially start running the show, Stross seems fairly confident that humans will always be necessary as intermediaries and physical agents. It’s interesting to see the direction he takes with Oshi.
Oshi is really quite a damaged person. It all goes back to her childhood as a blind beggar—blind because her uncle gouged out her eyes to make people more sympathetic for her. After being rescued by some of the Boss’ agents and put into a training program, her graduation mission goes awry. We get treated to some fairly extensive flashbacks (and these seem more like a strategy of padding out what was originally a novella into a novel-length work of fiction than meaningful parts of the narrative) that detail what goes wrong and why it’s screwed up Oshi so badly. After arriving in the Ridgegap-47 system, Oshi finds herself in the middle of a crisis even her Boss couldn’t predict: the system’s Superbright has gone mad, setting itself as an Egyptian god, and a lethal Ultrabright probe is on its way.
I’ll hand it to Stross: for all his obsession with infodumping, he still manages to keep the story moving at a clipping pace. The last third of Scratch Monkey is a harried race against time for survival, first as Oshi and her ragtag band of untrained resistance fighters square off against Anubis, then as they attempt to hijack the Ultrabright probe and use it to evacuate their minds from the system before the Ultrabright itself moves in. The stakes just keep getting higher and higher, the situation worse and worse, with each plan of Oshi’s madder than the last.
It all seems very exciting. I just wish I knew what the hell was going on. As the book raced to its abrupt, somewhat dangling denouement, I felt like comprehension was increasingly slipping away from me, growing further out of reach with each page. I think this happened because, despite the constant exposition, I never did develop a good sense of what the rules were in this universe. Stross is keenly aware of and loyal to the realistic, relativistic mechanics that would govern space travel and space warfare—but, you know, I admit I’m not. So Oshi would say, “We have to do x,” as if it were obvious that x is the only correct course of action in that situation—and to anyone in her universe, it would probably make sense. For those of us who regard relativity as a nifty scientific theory but don’t actually comprehend how it applies to everyday life, Scratch Monkey requires a great deal of nodding and smiling, much more than I remember in Singularity Sky.
Perhaps this roughness comes from the book’s origins as a novella that Stross initially did not sell then dusted off and expanded into this story. I can’t really speculate. In his afterword, Stross discusses how he’s glad the book didn’t sell when it did, because the manuscript needed a lot of work. And I can see that. The first chapter, “Year Zero Man,” which I think was the original novella, is my favourite part of this book. It’s a very satisfying vignette that shows Oshi kicking ass against fairly substantial odds, with an antagonist who sufficiently challenges Oshi’s sense of moral superiority. But “Year Zero Man” is just the prologue for the main plot of Scratch Monkey—and that, sadly, is not as interesting.
My edition is a limited edition published by the NESFA Press and purchased through Subterranean Press. It also includes Stross’ series of blog posts/essays on the subject of common misconceptions about publishing. As a writer who entertains the notion of one day producing a story worth publishing myself, I found the posts interesting and informative to a degree. Stross is certainly a very opinionated writer. While I don’t always find myself agreeing with the positions he takes, I like that he tries to support his arguments using coherent appeals to hard data, rather than appeals to pathos or ethos.
Charlie Stross is really cool, though, and made this available online. You can read Scratch Monkey online in its own entirety. Or just read “Year Zero Man”. Up to you. I’ll recommend this one for Stross fans, but unless, like me, you’re really into posthuman SF, this story probably won’t do much for you. In conclusion, Scratch Monkey provides another fascinating glimpse at Stross’ particular flavour of posthuman SF. But it doesn’t really add anything to the party or say anything compelling that isn’t in his other works. It was, at times, entertaining, but it never really got exciting.
March 12, 2013
I'd only recommend this to completists of Charles Stross, Post-Cyberpunk, and Dystopians. It's an early short novel (padded out with some essays on publishing from Stross's blog), and some of the writing is rough: I think an editor might have told him that characters who say "Ack" to mean "Yes" might get mistaken for Bill the Cat, and there are places where he'll use a Shiny! New! Word! several times in a couple paragraphs, probably just because he discovered it -- things that should have gotten cleaned up prior to a mass-market publication.
It's decidedly grim: darker than Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, which are pretty grim on their own with some humor overlaid. This lacks a lot of the humor. In some ways, Scratch Monkey could be a down the road "If This Goes On" to his Accelerando/Glasshouse pair, but I don't think he'd want to tie those in to this.
There are definitely some great scenes in this book, but great story? Not really.
It's decidedly grim: darker than Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, which are pretty grim on their own with some humor overlaid. This lacks a lot of the humor. In some ways, Scratch Monkey could be a down the road "If This Goes On" to his Accelerando/Glasshouse pair, but I don't think he'd want to tie those in to this.
There are definitely some great scenes in this book, but great story? Not really.
July 15, 2016
Oshi Adjani works for an inconceivably advanced artificial intelligence, doing various jobs like taking out planetary dictatorships and mass-murderers. She believes what she's doing, even though it may require some despicable actions of her own, is for the good of humanity as a whole. And it may well be, but when Oshi discovers a secret about her boss, she can't let it lie. In punishment for questioning, she's given one last dangerous assignment, one that, if she completes it, she can go free. But it's an assignment so dangerous that the odds of surviving it are slim. The boss needs a scratch monkey, an agent that is fundamentally disposable. And that agent is Oshi.
Charles Stross has written some of my favorite books, books that spew novelty from every page and leave readers reeling with the feeling that they've really seen a potential future, past the Singularity where it's impossible to predict or even understand... and maybe you still don't entirely understand it, but you feel as close as someone's liable to come. Unfortunately, a lot of his recent output has been decidedly more grounded, as he's simply not interested in some of the same themes that he used to be. There's nothing wrong with this, but I am still interested, and I was craving something more like the old Stross. Then I discovered Scratch Monkey, an unpublished (but nearly published) novel that he posted for free on his website. I'd heard the name before but somehow I thought it was simply a short story that I may or may not have already read... when I realized my mistake, I was excited. An early Stross novel sounded like it might be right up my alley!
It was almost just what I wanted. I mean, to be fair, it's not as polished as some of his other works. And there are a few of the other hallmarks of earlier Stross, where the novel doesn't seem to flow as one continuous story, but rather it seems like a few shorter tales jammed together. But it does have a lot of the magic from my early days of discovering a favorite new author.
The book starts out almost reading like Stross was attempting to write a pastiche of the Iain M. Banks' Culture stories. As though he really wanted to write a Culture story, but of course writing directly in another author's universe isn't always looked upon favorably, so he reworked some of the underpinnings of the universe, changed a few of the names, but kept it similar enough that everyone would know what he's going for. Considering Stross has done acknowledged pastiches in the past (or, rather, since writing this), it's possible this was exactly what happened, although from a bit of quick googling I can't find any actual evidence, and it is indeed possible it was merely accidental similarity. Suffice it to say though, he did a good enough job that, in the unlikely event someone were to open up the Culture to other writers (somewhat like the book He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, where other writers wrote sequels to Matheson short stories), Stross would be one of the ones I would be most excited to see.
But it doesn't stay as a near-Banks pastiche, that's just the starting point. Stross' own cynicism on superadvanced AI soon comes to the fore, and from then on it takes off in a different direction and becomes more distinctly Strossian, exploring many of the same themes I've read from him in his later works, but with a different story behind it, becoming an exciting grim action-spy adventure in a post-singularity environment, with a good dose of body-horror (and perhaps soul-horror).
In addition to the "multiple short stories" effect (which actually wasn't too much a detriment to me... I almost wish it went even more in that direction, I'd have enjoyed a book that was just a series of independent missions by Oshi), I don't think the book ends quite as satisfying as I'd hoped, and there are a few blips along the way where I lost track of how certain significant characters related to each other, to the point that I was surprised when suddenly that relationship became a bigger deal.
It might be my least favorite of the type of book that I envision when I say "early Stross" (I phrase it like that because Stross is a diverse writer and also has some early works that are completely different and unfair to compare to, including some I simply haven't read just because the premises weren't something I was especially interested in... but when I say "early Stross" I mean far-future SF with singularity-type themes). Then again, I might rank it slightly higher than his first published novel, but it's been quite a while so I'm not sure. Still, if you're like me and hoping for something to scratch a similar itch as Accelerando, and have read all his published work, this might be the thing for you. If Goodreads allowed finer-grain ratings, I'd probably put it somewhere in the high three stars, but since it doesn't, I'll round it up to four.
Charles Stross has written some of my favorite books, books that spew novelty from every page and leave readers reeling with the feeling that they've really seen a potential future, past the Singularity where it's impossible to predict or even understand... and maybe you still don't entirely understand it, but you feel as close as someone's liable to come. Unfortunately, a lot of his recent output has been decidedly more grounded, as he's simply not interested in some of the same themes that he used to be. There's nothing wrong with this, but I am still interested, and I was craving something more like the old Stross. Then I discovered Scratch Monkey, an unpublished (but nearly published) novel that he posted for free on his website. I'd heard the name before but somehow I thought it was simply a short story that I may or may not have already read... when I realized my mistake, I was excited. An early Stross novel sounded like it might be right up my alley!
It was almost just what I wanted. I mean, to be fair, it's not as polished as some of his other works. And there are a few of the other hallmarks of earlier Stross, where the novel doesn't seem to flow as one continuous story, but rather it seems like a few shorter tales jammed together. But it does have a lot of the magic from my early days of discovering a favorite new author.
The book starts out almost reading like Stross was attempting to write a pastiche of the Iain M. Banks' Culture stories. As though he really wanted to write a Culture story, but of course writing directly in another author's universe isn't always looked upon favorably, so he reworked some of the underpinnings of the universe, changed a few of the names, but kept it similar enough that everyone would know what he's going for. Considering Stross has done acknowledged pastiches in the past (or, rather, since writing this), it's possible this was exactly what happened, although from a bit of quick googling I can't find any actual evidence, and it is indeed possible it was merely accidental similarity. Suffice it to say though, he did a good enough job that, in the unlikely event someone were to open up the Culture to other writers (somewhat like the book He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, where other writers wrote sequels to Matheson short stories), Stross would be one of the ones I would be most excited to see.
But it doesn't stay as a near-Banks pastiche, that's just the starting point. Stross' own cynicism on superadvanced AI soon comes to the fore, and from then on it takes off in a different direction and becomes more distinctly Strossian, exploring many of the same themes I've read from him in his later works, but with a different story behind it, becoming an exciting grim action-spy adventure in a post-singularity environment, with a good dose of body-horror (and perhaps soul-horror).
In addition to the "multiple short stories" effect (which actually wasn't too much a detriment to me... I almost wish it went even more in that direction, I'd have enjoyed a book that was just a series of independent missions by Oshi), I don't think the book ends quite as satisfying as I'd hoped, and there are a few blips along the way where I lost track of how certain significant characters related to each other, to the point that I was surprised when suddenly that relationship became a bigger deal.
It might be my least favorite of the type of book that I envision when I say "early Stross" (I phrase it like that because Stross is a diverse writer and also has some early works that are completely different and unfair to compare to, including some I simply haven't read just because the premises weren't something I was especially interested in... but when I say "early Stross" I mean far-future SF with singularity-type themes). Then again, I might rank it slightly higher than his first published novel, but it's been quite a while so I'm not sure. Still, if you're like me and hoping for something to scratch a similar itch as Accelerando, and have read all his published work, this might be the thing for you. If Goodreads allowed finer-grain ratings, I'd probably put it somewhere in the high three stars, but since it doesn't, I'll round it up to four.
December 24, 2010
This is an unpublished book by Charles Stross that can be read for free on his website. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/ficti...
Scratch monkey features a lot of the elements that are present in Stross’s later books in a more unpolished form.
The universe is a post singularity one where humanity is linked by the Dreamtime, a network of a nanites uploads peoples consciousness upon death and can be accessed for information and communication as well. Human minds are ruled over by superbright AI minds who take the form of gods. The main character is a woman called Oshi who works for a Superbright as part of a group that maintains the dreamtime. During a mission to a world where someone is using mass genocide to overwhelm the dreamtime link she discovers a secret of the Superbrights and is given a choice of death or an almost certainly suicidal mission. Naturally she accepts the latter.
The whole thing plays out a little like an old sci fi adventure serial with Oshi getting into increasingly impossible to escape situations and still escaping each time. The difference is that the science is harder and so is Oshi.
One problem with the story is that Oshi is constantly in extreme situations and reacting emotionally to the terrible things that she either has to do or that is being done to her which makes her a hard character to relate to. There is no real sense of what she’s like in a normal situation. That’s actually a problem with the universe as it’s set up as a whole. The only places you go to are places where people are being slaughtered or fighting desperately for survival but you never really see what their life will become if they survive and I got the distinct impression that the universe was so under the thrall of immensely powerful intelligences that any survival or freedom would be hard won and short lived.
It’s the darkest story of Charles Stross that I’ve read, even including his Lovecraftian stories but it’s absolutely packed with fascinating ideas and tense action. There is definitely an unpolished feel to it which is doubtless because it’s still unpublished but you can see the themes of his later works here particularly the highly competent hero fighting impossible odds and the concept of post singularity intelligences that humanity simply can’t compete with fighting vast battles.
If you’re a fan of Stross it’s well worth checking out but if you’ve not read any of his stories I’d recommend something like Accelerendo first.
Scratch monkey features a lot of the elements that are present in Stross’s later books in a more unpolished form.
The universe is a post singularity one where humanity is linked by the Dreamtime, a network of a nanites uploads peoples consciousness upon death and can be accessed for information and communication as well. Human minds are ruled over by superbright AI minds who take the form of gods. The main character is a woman called Oshi who works for a Superbright as part of a group that maintains the dreamtime. During a mission to a world where someone is using mass genocide to overwhelm the dreamtime link she discovers a secret of the Superbrights and is given a choice of death or an almost certainly suicidal mission. Naturally she accepts the latter.
The whole thing plays out a little like an old sci fi adventure serial with Oshi getting into increasingly impossible to escape situations and still escaping each time. The difference is that the science is harder and so is Oshi.
One problem with the story is that Oshi is constantly in extreme situations and reacting emotionally to the terrible things that she either has to do or that is being done to her which makes her a hard character to relate to. There is no real sense of what she’s like in a normal situation. That’s actually a problem with the universe as it’s set up as a whole. The only places you go to are places where people are being slaughtered or fighting desperately for survival but you never really see what their life will become if they survive and I got the distinct impression that the universe was so under the thrall of immensely powerful intelligences that any survival or freedom would be hard won and short lived.
It’s the darkest story of Charles Stross that I’ve read, even including his Lovecraftian stories but it’s absolutely packed with fascinating ideas and tense action. There is definitely an unpolished feel to it which is doubtless because it’s still unpublished but you can see the themes of his later works here particularly the highly competent hero fighting impossible odds and the concept of post singularity intelligences that humanity simply can’t compete with fighting vast battles.
If you’re a fan of Stross it’s well worth checking out but if you’ve not read any of his stories I’d recommend something like Accelerendo first.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 23, 2012
I read this right after Accelerando, another of Stross' books that deals with human society affected by the Singularity.
That one I liked.
This one...
The writing is rough, unpolished. Tenses change in a fashion that is jarring, sentences are occasionally mangled. Way less polished of a read.
Furthermore, the story is brutal and unforgiving in its grimness. Concentration camps, frequent maiming, mass extinction, radiation sickness, grotesque mutations, and lots of eye gouging. These sorts of moments don't just dominate the story, they are the story. Rarely a page passes without some grim or grotesque event.
It's even darker in its theme and pacing.
Oshi, the female protagonist, is a member of Distant Intervention, a sort of space traveling troubleshooting division that works for Superbrights, the super intelligent AIs that run humanity behind the scenes.
She's dumped into one hellish situation after another, first stopping brutal genocides, then later learning her own bosses have far worse crimes they've been hiding.
For learning the truth she's been sent on a suicide mission where she'll face constant brutality and death around her.
It ends rather unpleasantly, too.
Not an easy read at all. It almost feels like it tries to be horror, but instead it comes across as a long, nauseating fall into worse and worse violations until it comes to a very sudden end.
If I were you, I'd pass.
That one I liked.
This one...
The writing is rough, unpolished. Tenses change in a fashion that is jarring, sentences are occasionally mangled. Way less polished of a read.
Furthermore, the story is brutal and unforgiving in its grimness. Concentration camps, frequent maiming, mass extinction, radiation sickness, grotesque mutations, and lots of eye gouging. These sorts of moments don't just dominate the story, they are the story. Rarely a page passes without some grim or grotesque event.
It's even darker in its theme and pacing.
Oshi, the female protagonist, is a member of Distant Intervention, a sort of space traveling troubleshooting division that works for Superbrights, the super intelligent AIs that run humanity behind the scenes.
She's dumped into one hellish situation after another, first stopping brutal genocides, then later learning her own bosses have far worse crimes they've been hiding.
For learning the truth she's been sent on a suicide mission where she'll face constant brutality and death around her.
It ends rather unpleasantly, too.
Not an easy read at all. It almost feels like it tries to be horror, but instead it comes across as a long, nauseating fall into worse and worse violations until it comes to a very sudden end.
If I were you, I'd pass.
October 31, 2009
It's a bit rough (it is a never-published manuscript), but I very much liked it. The first part felt a lot like darker Banks. Not sure if that's a coincidence, but Scottish SF writers have to be a relatively low percentage of the international population.
It's an interesting conception of the future, post-singularity. Humans are absurdly capable, considering how powerless they turn out to be.
It's an interesting conception of the future, post-singularity. Humans are absurdly capable, considering how powerless they turn out to be.
June 22, 2011
Interesting post-Singularity story. Good concept, but could use more polish. I think it's one of his early stories, so I can forgive that.
October 21, 2013
Well, that was a downer. Try and stay away from sharp objects for a while after reading this one.
August 25, 2023
This's Stross's earliest book, unpublished till later after he was already an established writer. As he admits in the afterword, it shows in a poorly-arranged plot.
The premise and setting are interesting: humanity has been driven out from Earth and nearby stars by AI's who might be eating human minds, and those AI's in turn are being outcompeted by even stranger AI's. Our protagonist is on a mission from the first set of AI's, to keep the "Dreamtime" network working, which sustains human mind-uploading and also AI's.
The development could have been better, both in terms of pacing and in terms of showing less gimmicky and more revelatory angles of the setting. (Most of the book is spent on one small station with an AI that's gone insane.) However, I'm still glad I read this.
The premise and setting are interesting: humanity has been driven out from Earth and nearby stars by AI's who might be eating human minds, and those AI's in turn are being outcompeted by even stranger AI's. Our protagonist is on a mission from the first set of AI's, to keep the "Dreamtime" network working, which sustains human mind-uploading and also AI's.
The development could have been better, both in terms of pacing and in terms of showing less gimmicky and more revelatory angles of the setting. (Most of the book is spent on one small station with an AI that's gone insane.) However, I'm still glad I read this.
September 3, 2018
You know how in some movies or tv shows, a character takes drugs or hallucinates, and everything gets confusing and you don't really know what's going on? That's how I felt through about half of this book. Confusing, awkwardly written, and the characters didn't really make a lot of sense. I have another book of the author's in my queue, and I'm seriously questioning if I should even bother...
November 14, 2022
Cyberpunkish space opera. There are some similarities to Altered Carbon.
Lesbians in love.
Lesbians in love.
July 4, 2017
Wonderful. Appalling. Stross.
June 23, 2020
Felt like a lo-fi Culture story. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
April 21, 2022
Very interesting concept and well executed. Definitely something else and in a good way.
March 16, 2016
Scratch Monkey by Charles Stross
What a ride!! Wowzers!! This book was originally written a couple of decades ago, by a much younger Charlie Stross that we are used to reading. But don't let that fool you! What it lacks in subtlety and smoothness, it more than makes up for in pure, raw, angst and energy.
I think it would be fair to say that this short book is really almost a mashup of three different short stories. And there is some much needed, but somewhat awkwardly handled, exposition along the way.
The pace is almost frenetic, the stakes are incredibly high, and the heroes are wonderfully twisted.
The main hero, Oshi Adjani has seen more death and despair than any girl or woman should in a lifetime of lifetimes. Her "Boss" is a rather brilliant, and manipulative cur. But even worse than knowing the "Truth" is dealing with it... to the tune of almost a billion souls. Oh and there is an even much more malevolent evil out there that seems to be simply eating our galactic civilization at will.
Toss in the odd Egyptian God with a dog's head and an appetite for despair, then mix well with some folks who do not trust Oshi, but have to rely upon her, and sprinkle with a love affair that wasn't.
Lastly, for a behind the curtain peek at writing and the business of getting published, DO read the two quick essays at the end!
Now, if only Charlie would write a sequel, set 20 some years in the future of this novel. Please Charlie, bring Oshi back in another book!!!
What a ride!! Wowzers!! This book was originally written a couple of decades ago, by a much younger Charlie Stross that we are used to reading. But don't let that fool you! What it lacks in subtlety and smoothness, it more than makes up for in pure, raw, angst and energy.
I think it would be fair to say that this short book is really almost a mashup of three different short stories. And there is some much needed, but somewhat awkwardly handled, exposition along the way.
The pace is almost frenetic, the stakes are incredibly high, and the heroes are wonderfully twisted.
The main hero, Oshi Adjani has seen more death and despair than any girl or woman should in a lifetime of lifetimes. Her "Boss" is a rather brilliant, and manipulative cur. But even worse than knowing the "Truth" is dealing with it... to the tune of almost a billion souls. Oh and there is an even much more malevolent evil out there that seems to be simply eating our galactic civilization at will.
Toss in the odd Egyptian God with a dog's head and an appetite for despair, then mix well with some folks who do not trust Oshi, but have to rely upon her, and sprinkle with a love affair that wasn't.
Lastly, for a behind the curtain peek at writing and the business of getting published, DO read the two quick essays at the end!
Now, if only Charlie would write a sequel, set 20 some years in the future of this novel. Please Charlie, bring Oshi back in another book!!!
July 31, 2016
This is a strange book. Charles Stross usually seems to have big ideas in his novels, and this one is no different as it tackles relationships between humanity and AI's that see humanity as nothing more than ants, and then another level of AI that sees the first level as ants and humans don't even enter the picture. This is the background behind Scratch Monkey, exhibited through four loosely related long chapters recounting the major interactions of Oshi with various environments. They layout of the story is a bit odd, as the chapters don't go quite in chronological order, but they build up the character as she gets pulled into service by the AI's and then tries to break out. There's lots of action, lots of science fiction ideas put into play, and a surprising amount of pathos involved as well. Oshi is not a stable person, and the situations she goes through are occasionally horrifying. All in all, this isn't a particularly pleasant book to read, but it does offer a lot of food for thought and some fascinating visuals. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the ending, but the book will definitely stick with me. It is a slog to read in some places.
May 15, 2014
I wanted to rate this higher because I really enjoyed it, but it's not as polished as his other work. If I had read nothing else by Stross previous to this I probably would have rated higher.
Once again, his work is incredibly dense. I love that. Plus he never holds your hand, each book introduces some tech it never bothers to detail and you have to figure out out through context.
Also this book does the rare thing of presenting some same sex interaction completely without comment. Both parties have opposite gender past relationships, and there's zero dithering around about it being abnormal. And there's nary a hint of the silly attitude of it being the future so they've risen above such trivial things as sexual preference. It's presented exactly like it would were the characters opposite sex. Excellent job there, Stross!
Once again, his work is incredibly dense. I love that. Plus he never holds your hand, each book introduces some tech it never bothers to detail and you have to figure out out through context.
Also this book does the rare thing of presenting some same sex interaction completely without comment. Both parties have opposite gender past relationships, and there's zero dithering around about it being abnormal. And there's nary a hint of the silly attitude of it being the future so they've risen above such trivial things as sexual preference. It's presented exactly like it would were the characters opposite sex. Excellent job there, Stross!
May 12, 2015
After reading the laundryfiles books, I had been worried that I had read all of the more speculative science novels by Stross, and as much as i enjoyed the lighthearted laundry novels, I much prefer books I can immerse myself in and believe.
I really enjoyed this book, though I am curious to know what the 'this book may offend you, if it does, don't read it' warning at the beginning was all about. I would love to see this turned into a film, though the imagery was vivid, I'd like to let someone else show me what they imagined, especially with the tapeworm towards the end.
I really enjoyed this book, though I am curious to know what the 'this book may offend you, if it does, don't read it' warning at the beginning was all about. I would love to see this turned into a film, though the imagery was vivid, I'd like to let someone else show me what they imagined, especially with the tapeworm towards the end.
September 12, 2012
Creepy and unsettling. If that was the intention then it was technically very good, but I didn't enjoy it. Deals with a lot of the transhumanist themes stross has dealt with elsewhere but in a much less optimistic and enjoyable way. Reminds me a lot of Bank's Use of Weapons. Similar stretched out hopeless feeling ti the protagonist, and unsatisfying unsettling ending.
February 1, 2016
A grim and gruesome story of a soldier fighting for some sort of malevolent superbeing. The verbally dense description of this future world of nanotechnology, self replicating von Neumann machines, bionically enhanced super warriors, and an eternal afterlife of a digital copy of the soul in a virtual reality is almost overwhelming. However, the plot action pulls the reader on and on and on as the external scenery whizzes past.
July 10, 2016
This is a book about death, and the Singularity, and death, and space colonization, and death, and love-is-pain, and death, and the-evil-in-men's-souls, and death, and monsters (literal and figurative), and death, and mortality, and death, and insanity, and death, and moral choices, and death. A dense read with the darkest ending I've read in a very long time. When I went to sleep I dreamt of trying to rescue a young woman from a serial killer.
January 17, 2016
Cool technology, inventive plot... but the love story and ending were absolutely incomprehensible balderdash.
Edit 1/17/2016: Bumped up the rating to three stars. Many of the ideas in the book have stuck with me deeply. The writing may be terrible, but the ideas are unique within literature I've read, and I'm definitely glad I took the time to read the book.
Edit 1/17/2016: Bumped up the rating to three stars. Many of the ideas in the book have stuck with me deeply. The writing may be terrible, but the ideas are unique within literature I've read, and I'm definitely glad I took the time to read the book.
August 8, 2015
Charles Stross put up this rough, "final" draft up on his website since he feels it's good enough for publishing, but probably will never be. The truth is that this is still in need of some revision and it shows: It's uneven and a bit of a slog sometimes, and in general not as brilliant as most of his other work. Still, it's worth a read, specially for the price ;)
October 27, 2016
It's amazing how early this was written! It has a lot of stuff with superAI Gods and Metagods and breaking down distinctions between simulation and reality and organic and artificial. Like we're Always Already Post Singularity or whatever. The ideas are there and the protagonist is great but the structure is a little unsatistfying.
July 17, 2012
Definitely a trunk novel, dark, dystopic, confusing, lack of character motivation. Had this been the first Stross novel I read, it wouldn't have enthused me as did Singularity Sky. Nor would it have turned me off of him. Would have made it less likely that I'd buy in hardcover.
January 31, 2015
While not as good as Stross' later ventures into the cyberpunk/hard sci-fi genre, Scratch Monkey is definitely worth the time. The version I read had a few grammatical issues but that's to be expected considering that I don't think it ever received official publication.
September 9, 2012
Overall a good read, although I'm not sure I like the ending - a bit dark for my taste here.
But some great super-high-tech ideas covered.
But some great super-high-tech ideas covered.
April 14, 2014
Interesting ideas, well-pace, but very dark for my tastes.
April 24, 2014
I generally enjoy Stross, but this one left me cold. The main character was hard enough to understand that I didn't really end up following or caring much what happened next.
February 2, 2017
Dark and heavy.
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