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Singularity's Children #2
Disruption
Disruption, Singularity’s Children Book Two, takes us deeper into an action-packed riot of haves and have-nots; a vivid alternate future filled with Buddhist commandos, stolen Femto-tech, AI Sages and Quantum Consciousness.
A decade after economic collapse sent the world’s governments toppling like dominoes, the corporations are back on top. Their AI farms have relieved society of the drudgery of work, leaving behind a broiling underclass precariat. The Forward governments pacify their rabbles with computer-generated titillation, while channelling legions of the desperate into overseas peacekeeping.
Keith’s reduced circumstances, following an impulsive experiment with corporate disobedience, leave him vulnerable to the Battlesuit which was always stalking him.
Niato’s island utopia is an experiment in pan-species cooperation and a beacon for the hacktivist kin assembling their alternate economy.
When Stella is drawn down into the human slime that underlies this new world order, can a vengeful cetacean, a wounded soldier and two exiled hackers save her from the darkness?
Disruption is subversive, fast-paced action. A provocative excursion into a near-future civilisation struggling to survive the maelstrom of post-human forces its technology is unleashing.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
181 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 2, 2017
8 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Toby Weston
8 books41 followersToby Weston (born May 8th, 1972) is a British writer and technologist.
His work weaves action and philosophy while dealing with the themes of consciousness, utopia, and the technological singularity.
His books are grounded in science, but he is prepared to take excursions into the fantastic.
Before writing books, Toby worked as a parking attendant, spook, tour guide, software engineer and chef (if you count making crab sandwiches).
His academic background spans Software Engineering, Computational Neuroscience, Environmental Biology and Deep Learning.
He is currently based in Switzerland where he writes and works in the field of digital innovation.
His work weaves action and philosophy while dealing with the themes of consciousness, utopia, and the technological singularity.
His books are grounded in science, but he is prepared to take excursions into the fantastic.
Before writing books, Toby worked as a parking attendant, spook, tour guide, software engineer and chef (if you count making crab sandwiches).
His academic background spans Software Engineering, Computational Neuroscience, Environmental Biology and Deep Learning.
He is currently based in Switzerland where he writes and works in the field of digital innovation.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 8, 2018
Disruption (Singularity's Children #2) by Toby Weston
Note: Because I bough the two book set from Amazon, I will review both in one statement here.
Very well done indeed! Both books have some fanciful turns, and a great cast of characters. The characters drive the plot, and are driven by it.
This is near future, and Earth is about what you expect. The Haves have and the Have Nots don't. And it gets worse by the day. But a few brave souls see to cross the threshold, but how much does that cost them? There is cause to celebrate, and cause to be distressed, and you are done before you know it!
So now I am not so patiently waiting for the third book!
Note: Because I bough the two book set from Amazon, I will review both in one statement here.
Very well done indeed! Both books have some fanciful turns, and a great cast of characters. The characters drive the plot, and are driven by it.
This is near future, and Earth is about what you expect. The Haves have and the Have Nots don't. And it gets worse by the day. But a few brave souls see to cross the threshold, but how much does that cost them? There is cause to celebrate, and cause to be distressed, and you are done before you know it!
So now I am not so patiently waiting for the third book!
July 27, 2020
Disruption is the direct continuation of Denial; we follow Stella Sagong, a young entrepreneur esacping poverty; Niato, the filthy rich idealist; Keith, corporate wage slave turned soldier; and Segi and Zaki, who escaped with their mother to the Islamic Caliphate, which stretches out from Pakistan to Morocco. We're still in the alternative world closely resembling ours.
Stella is CEO at Sagong Marine where she works with dolphins and other animals, for example Spray, the very fish-focused seagul. The humans and animals can understand each other through an advanced brain scanning technique which translates ideas to symbols. Via their Spex, a kind of ar/vr system, she keeps in contact with the brothers Segi and Zaki, who rise up in their hacker clan by setting up thousands of Mesh nodes in the technologically challenged Caliphate. Off radar they also work on BugNet, biotech which allows them to communicate with animals and see through their eyes. Not to worry: the animals are getting a fair pay.
Counting less than 200 pages this book is weaving adventure with world-building in a very balanced way. The interesting thing is that while the ideas may seem far fetched they are perhaps more realistic than we think. A dramatis personæ and glossaries on tech and terms used are available on the author's web site [tobyweston.net].
Singularity's Children is a fine example of hard scifi (plausible technology and no broken natural laws) combined with action and authentic British humour: "The end of the world was years ago, and it made us lots of money," we can hear the owner of the ubiquitous BHJ firm saying. Also, one chapter is called 'Cyborg Narwhal' which in itself would be a reason to read this book.
The book could have been fleshed out a bit by elaborating on the characters (they are very ok though) more evenly distributing the action. It sometimes feels like two or three separate parts but the overall idea of disruption being the second phase of change in general is illustrated very nicely.
Stella is CEO at Sagong Marine where she works with dolphins and other animals, for example Spray, the very fish-focused seagul. The humans and animals can understand each other through an advanced brain scanning technique which translates ideas to symbols. Via their Spex, a kind of ar/vr system, she keeps in contact with the brothers Segi and Zaki, who rise up in their hacker clan by setting up thousands of Mesh nodes in the technologically challenged Caliphate. Off radar they also work on BugNet, biotech which allows them to communicate with animals and see through their eyes. Not to worry: the animals are getting a fair pay.
Counting less than 200 pages this book is weaving adventure with world-building in a very balanced way. The interesting thing is that while the ideas may seem far fetched they are perhaps more realistic than we think. A dramatis personæ and glossaries on tech and terms used are available on the author's web site [tobyweston.net].
Singularity's Children is a fine example of hard scifi (plausible technology and no broken natural laws) combined with action and authentic British humour: "The end of the world was years ago, and it made us lots of money," we can hear the owner of the ubiquitous BHJ firm saying. Also, one chapter is called 'Cyborg Narwhal' which in itself would be a reason to read this book.
The book could have been fleshed out a bit by elaborating on the characters (they are very ok though) more evenly distributing the action. It sometimes feels like two or three separate parts but the overall idea of disruption being the second phase of change in general is illustrated very nicely.
September 10, 2020
WOW what an amazing book.
Book 1 set the stage and book 2 blasted off from the get go.
The book is filled with interesting characters and ingenious technology implementations.
The story and action moved around the world quickly but the interconnections were apparent.
I have to tell you that this is the first book I have ever delayed finishing because I didn't want it to end.
Now I am looking forward to book 3.
Bravo to the author.
Book 1 set the stage and book 2 blasted off from the get go.
The book is filled with interesting characters and ingenious technology implementations.
The story and action moved around the world quickly but the interconnections were apparent.
I have to tell you that this is the first book I have ever delayed finishing because I didn't want it to end.
Now I am looking forward to book 3.
Bravo to the author.
June 14, 2025
I started the second book immediately after finishing the first one because I wanted to know how the story unfolds further. The invented technologies and the personas are described in great detail and the story pulls you in. I did love how the story lines met later in the book.
Great work! More please.
I already started the third book "Conflict".
Great work! More please.
I already started the third book "Conflict".
July 25, 2017
Excellent sequel. Looking forward to Book 3.
Love this series! I want to dig a tunnel through to this world. Incredible story and believable characters. First rate sci-fi!
Love this series! I want to dig a tunnel through to this world. Incredible story and believable characters. First rate sci-fi!
August 23, 2020
First things first: this is book two of a series and you absolutely need to read Denial before this.
TL;DR: I like it, I want more! Definitely a three star book and it's edging into four territory for me with the main things holding it back being the somewhat jarring language and the occasional stream-breaker that makes me sit back and wonder if I missed something. The tech and social-structure pondering is a lot of fun and the writing style makes it super-enjoyable to read!
TL: Disruption picks up pretty seamlessly from Denial, although time has passed, approximately 5ish years I think. Things have not gone well for Keith since he made clear his differences with Ben, and he's been forced to join the army as a grunt. Stella's initial introduction to Tinkerbell has borne unexpected fruit and she has become CEO of a very small company, setup by the man whose life she ended up saving, consisting of herself, Marcel and Tinkerbell. They're based on the Farm and have tenuous contact with Zaki and Segi, through whom they obtain a fourth employee: Spray the seagull. Zaki, Segi and their mother have made a nice life for themselves in the Caliphate, with the boys very much following in their father's footsteps in terms of curiosity and ability. And Ben is still a jerk :D
This book is, similar to the first (in that it's a whole lot more setup for the next one) although we get more from the other side this time: less of the Baphmet's and the western governments, more of Niato, the Caliphate and the fringe elements of the Kin. I wasn't thrilled with Stella's story here, I don't have a problem with the content, but I felt that the outcome was a bit out of character for her. I understood it in the end (I think) and, in the interest of not spoiling things, it's hard to say more but I think a little more insight into why could have helped with some weird disassociation. I really liked Keith in book one, and he kinda morphs into a kind of comic relief character in this book. Not in a bad way either, I think he underwent some character development, but provided a few laugh-out-loud moments along the way.
This book expands on the whole BugNet idea, and also fleshes out what Atlantis is and how it's planned to work. Things do get a lot more hand-wavy with regard to the technology, which is ramping up fast. There's some high-level talk about exactly how the neural interfacing might work that we see Blue and friends making use of at the beginning of the story, but things get orders of magnitude smaller and more complex now and the science behind the miniaturisation and interfacing, not to mention the power and communications methodology for a distributed mesh network of live nodes, isn't delved into. Which is fine, because this isn't a hard sci-fi tome like Red Mars, this is more sociological pondering à la Walkaway. I really like the idea of the BugNet and the potential for interacting with non-human entities in an actually meaningful way. Obviously there are huge boundaries to this becoming a reality, both technological and ethical, and there's a nod to that here too, which is nice to see!
The language usage from Denial continues, and I learned a bunch of new words (including pantiles - s-shaped roof tiles - and pelagic - relating to the open sea). This also means there are a bunch of not-quite pithy, but still well-phrased and fun chunks of text like Stella's childhood being described as:
or an excellent and brief summation of the death of idealism in large corporations:
Once again, the book finishes up with a teaser-postscript including the mysterious non-gendered AI entity, although this time around it's CLV7, not CLV2 (which makes sense given what happened at the end of Denial). I really hope that these folk get some major screentime soon, they seem super-interesting (in a Terminator kinda way).
TL;DR: I like it, I want more! Definitely a three star book and it's edging into four territory for me with the main things holding it back being the somewhat jarring language and the occasional stream-breaker that makes me sit back and wonder if I missed something. The tech and social-structure pondering is a lot of fun and the writing style makes it super-enjoyable to read!
TL: Disruption picks up pretty seamlessly from Denial, although time has passed, approximately 5ish years I think. Things have not gone well for Keith since he made clear his differences with Ben, and he's been forced to join the army as a grunt. Stella's initial introduction to Tinkerbell has borne unexpected fruit and she has become CEO of a very small company, setup by the man whose life she ended up saving, consisting of herself, Marcel and Tinkerbell. They're based on the Farm and have tenuous contact with Zaki and Segi, through whom they obtain a fourth employee: Spray the seagull. Zaki, Segi and their mother have made a nice life for themselves in the Caliphate, with the boys very much following in their father's footsteps in terms of curiosity and ability. And Ben is still a jerk :D
This book is, similar to the first (in that it's a whole lot more setup for the next one) although we get more from the other side this time: less of the Baphmet's and the western governments, more of Niato, the Caliphate and the fringe elements of the Kin. I wasn't thrilled with Stella's story here, I don't have a problem with the content, but I felt that the outcome was a bit out of character for her. I understood it in the end (I think) and, in the interest of not spoiling things, it's hard to say more but I think a little more insight into why could have helped with some weird disassociation. I really liked Keith in book one, and he kinda morphs into a kind of comic relief character in this book. Not in a bad way either, I think he underwent some character development, but provided a few laugh-out-loud moments along the way.
This book expands on the whole BugNet idea, and also fleshes out what Atlantis is and how it's planned to work. Things do get a lot more hand-wavy with regard to the technology, which is ramping up fast. There's some high-level talk about exactly how the neural interfacing might work that we see Blue and friends making use of at the beginning of the story, but things get orders of magnitude smaller and more complex now and the science behind the miniaturisation and interfacing, not to mention the power and communications methodology for a distributed mesh network of live nodes, isn't delved into. Which is fine, because this isn't a hard sci-fi tome like Red Mars, this is more sociological pondering à la Walkaway. I really like the idea of the BugNet and the potential for interacting with non-human entities in an actually meaningful way. Obviously there are huge boundaries to this becoming a reality, both technological and ethical, and there's a nod to that here too, which is nice to see!
The language usage from Denial continues, and I learned a bunch of new words (including pantiles - s-shaped roof tiles - and pelagic - relating to the open sea). This also means there are a bunch of not-quite pithy, but still well-phrased and fun chunks of text like Stella's childhood being described as:
...a merry-go-round cast of violently unpredictable cameo parts drawn from the region's generous pool of psychotic talent.
or an excellent and brief summation of the death of idealism in large corporations:
It is only with middle age that an appreciation for the inertia of stupidity arrives, an understanding of the appalling effort involved in changing even the smallest silliness.
Once again, the book finishes up with a teaser-postscript including the mysterious non-gendered AI entity, although this time around it's CLV7, not CLV2 (which makes sense given what happened at the end of Denial). I really hope that these folk get some major screentime soon, they seem super-interesting (in a Terminator kinda way).
July 9, 2018
another awesome book by Toby Weston. really enjoyed reading this book.cant wait to read the next book
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews