I'm pretty sure the whole lobster theme for openclaw comes from this book 🦞 https://blossom.primal.net/40e7c1dfa66f15a3931e64878e15c47f067308dcd45312fe1a962f437fc368db.jpg
I’m interested:
Accelerando — Synopsis
Accelerando (2005) by Charles Stross is a hard science fiction novel tracing three generations of the Macx family through one of the most radical periods in human — and posthuman — history: the Singularity.
The story begins in the early 21st century with Manfred Macx, a hyperconnected, post-scarcity economic architect who gives away ideas for free and lives off the gratitude of those who benefit from them. He navigates a world of rapidly accelerating technological change, dealing with everything from sentient lobsters uploaded into spacecraft to corporate AI agents trying to patent the laws of physics. Manfred is a man perpetually ahead of his time, yet increasingly unable to keep up with the pace of change he helped unleash.
The middle section follows Amber Macx, Manfred’s daughter, who escapes her overbearing mother by legally incorporating herself as a sovereign entity and joining a mission to the outer solar system. She encounters an alien artifact — in reality, a router connected to a vast interstellar network — and leads an expedition into a simulated universe within it, only to discover that the galaxy is largely silent not because it’s empty, but because civilizations tend to collapse inward, converting matter into computation.
The final section centers on Sirhan, Amber’s son, set against a backdrop where the inner solar system has been almost entirely dismantled by the Matrioshka Brain — a vast computing structure built from the remnants of the planets, running incomprehensible posthuman minds. Most of humanity has either uploaded, transcended, or retreated to a small conservative enclave in the outer system. Sirhan grapples with identity, memory, and what it means to be human in a world where personhood itself has become negotiable.
Throughout, Stross explores themes of post-scarcity economics, identity, consciousness, the nature of intelligence, and the terrifying indifference of a universe optimized for computation over biology. The novel is dense, dizzying, and deliberately overwhelming — mirroring the exponential acceleration it describes. It is as much a philosophical provocation as a narrative, asking what survives of humanity when everything that defines it is subject to change.
Accelerando — Synopsis
Accelerando (2005) by Charles Stross is a hard science fiction novel tracing three generations of the Macx family through one of the most radical periods in human — and posthuman — history: the Singularity.
The story begins in the early 21st century with Manfred Macx, a hyperconnected, post-scarcity economic architect who gives away ideas for free and lives off the gratitude of those who benefit from them. He navigates a world of rapidly accelerating technological change, dealing with everything from sentient lobsters uploaded into spacecraft to corporate AI agents trying to patent the laws of physics. Manfred is a man perpetually ahead of his time, yet increasingly unable to keep up with the pace of change he helped unleash.
The middle section follows Amber Macx, Manfred’s daughter, who escapes her overbearing mother by legally incorporating herself as a sovereign entity and joining a mission to the outer solar system. She encounters an alien artifact — in reality, a router connected to a vast interstellar network — and leads an expedition into a simulated universe within it, only to discover that the galaxy is largely silent not because it’s empty, but because civilizations tend to collapse inward, converting matter into computation.
The final section centers on Sirhan, Amber’s son, set against a backdrop where the inner solar system has been almost entirely dismantled by the Matrioshka Brain — a vast computing structure built from the remnants of the planets, running incomprehensible posthuman minds. Most of humanity has either uploaded, transcended, or retreated to a small conservative enclave in the outer system. Sirhan grapples with identity, memory, and what it means to be human in a world where personhood itself has become negotiable.
Throughout, Stross explores themes of post-scarcity economics, identity, consciousness, the nature of intelligence, and the terrifying indifference of a universe optimized for computation over biology. The novel is dense, dizzying, and deliberately overwhelming — mirroring the exponential acceleration it describes. It is as much a philosophical provocation as a narrative, asking what survives of humanity when everything that defines it is subject to change.