''Neptune's Brood'' is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

novel by

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

author

Charles Stross Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born 18 October 1964) is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy. Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. Between 1994 and 2004, he was also an active writer for the magazine '' ...

, set in the same universe as '' Saturn's Children'', but thousands of years later and with all new characters. The novel was shortlisted for the 2014

Hugo Award for Best Novel The Hugo Award for Best Novel is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published in, or translated to, English during the previous calendar year. The novel award is available for works of fiction of 40,000 ...

Fictional universe

The setting of ''Saturn's Children'' was our

solar system The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

. ''

Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

'' were extinct, and all the characters were

androids An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial being often made from a flesh-like material. Historically, androids were completely within the domain of science fiction and frequently seen in film and television, but advances in robot techno ...

. In ''Neptune's Brood'', set in AD 7000, ''Homo sapiens'' have been resurrected three times, but remain insignificant and are known as the "Fragile". In the novel, "humanity" is used for the "mechanocyte"-based metahuman successor life forms, vastly improved over the original androids. The setting of ''Neptune's Brood'' is the part of the galaxy that has since been

colonized Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...

with slower than light travel. A large part of the plot turns on the question of financing such colonization. Money is entirely cryptocurrency and is known as " bitcoin", an intentional reference by Stross to the real-life cryptocurrency. Money has been divided into three classes: "fast", "medium", "slow". Fast money is ordinary day-to-day cash, medium money is ordinary investment instruments, suitable for use within a single planetary system, and slow money is interstellar investment instruments, understood to take centuries, even millennia, to mature. Slow money transactions rely on a three-way cryptoverification scheme, and so trade at one-third the speed of light. Two thousand years before the main plot begins, one start-up colony,

Atlantis Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and '' Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that b ...

, broke contact without warning or explanation with the rest of humanity, and two attempts to physically contact them also went dark.

Plot summary

The novel presents itself as an extended first-person report by Krina Alizond-114, created by the "incalculably wealthy" Sondra Alizond-1 to be a scholar of

accountancy Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "langua ...

practice

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

. Her clone sister, Ana, has disappeared, and Krina is following her trail.

Reception

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'' wrote: According to '' Kirkus Reviews'': It was described by Saxon Bullock as follows in '' SFX'':

References

External links

* Disputes the economic "realism" of the novel. 2013 British novels 2013 science fiction novels British science fiction novels Cryptocurrencies in fiction Novels by Charles Stross Space opera novels Underwater civilizations in fiction Space colonization literature Novels about androids Ace Books books {{2010s-sf-novel-stub