Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil foresees the dawning of a new civilization where we will be able to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity, combining our biological skills with the vastly greater capacity, speed and knowledge-sharing abilities of our creations. In practical terms, human ageing and illness will be reversed; pollution will be stopped and world hunger and poverty will be solved. There will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality.
In his first novel, British author Stross, one of the hottest short-story writers in the field, serves up an energetic and sometimes satiric mix of cutting-edge nanotechnology, old-fashioned space opera and leftist political commentary reminiscent of Ken MacLeod. Spaceship engineer Martin Springfield and U.N. diplomat
What if the cataclysmic Tunguska explosion of 1908 was caused, not by a meteor or a comet, but by a microscopic black hole?
What if that fantastic object - smaller than an atom, older than the stars, heavier than a mountain - is still down there, orbiting deep inside the earth, slowly consuming the planet?
What if only a rookie government agent and an uncannily-insightful consultant stand between a renegade Russian billionaire and his plans to use the black hole to change history - or end it?
What if it's all true?
Winner of the Gold Medal for Science Fiction in Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards
Winner of the Independent Publishers Association's Ippy prize for Best Fantasy/Science Fiction novel of 2004
Singularity 
