Hugo Award winner Charles Stross delivers a brilliant space opera replete with groundbreaking concepts and energized by an imaginative vision of the future. In the 21st century, the perfection of faster-than-light travel and the rise of a prodigious artificial intelligence known as the Eschaton altered the course of humankind. Now, far off in the vastness of space, the technology-eschewing New Republic is besieged by an alien information plague. Earth quickly sends a battle fleet-but is it coming to the rescue, or is a sinister plot in motion?… (more)