I found something else Charles Stross hates...

[roseembolism]

...aside from feudalism that is.  And that's David Weber style milporn^H^H^H^H MilSF.  

While slogging throughThe Apocalypse Troll, wincing at  the somewhat less than two-dimensional charaters, and the descriptive prose that could have been lifted from a bad romance novel, I realized that in Singularity Sky Stross is taking a poke at the "whole "invincible starship piloted by a brilliant captain" idea".  

While Stross of course couldn't develop such a fetishistic attention to the details of his space military, there was the similar description of:  the huge space feudalists capital ship, the proud, dedicated and competent personnel manning it, and the tactical genius of a captain...all of which proves to be pretty much irrelevant.  Plus there's the representatives of a more advanced civilization, who futily try to warn the feudalists of this fact because the feudalists just.  Won't. LISTEN.

In the Stross-verse, classic militaries in the Weber sense don't just lose, they get eaten.

Comments

[mithriltabby]

Advancing technology is bad for hierarchies.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Stross' dislikes credit him.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I admit my regard for him rose quite a bit after the one rant in the "Hidden Family" about feudalism by a woman from a noble family. Which boiled down to "Leave my family and the culture I've known all my life to live in your strange world? HELL YES!"

The whole "Family" series was really nice, especially considering I bounced off of "Accellerando".

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I thought Accelerando was a bit too long to be entirely amusing. With Stross' style I'd prefer shorter works.