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Originally Posted by Agemegos
Fair enough. I ought to read Excession and Singularity Sky, then get back to you. I enjoyed the Barnes a lot, which I read on your recommendation.
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Singularity Sky was, I think, Stross's first novel, and not bad, though I've enjoyed some of his later ones more. The Merchant Princes series was interesting because, though marketed as fantasy, it was actually hard science fiction where the hard science was development economics and the economics of international trade. But there were structural problems with the writing; the third novel essentially had the plot at a standstill all the way through, with the heroine stripped of all agency. I understand that Stross is bringing out both a revised version and a sequel series; they may be better. Neptune's Brood (if I've got the title right) is also about economics, focused on financial institutions, and has a classic film noir plot in an intersteller economy without ftl.
Mind you, Stross is a socialist, and I tend to think that his economics is unsound because of that; but he shows a much better understanding of capitalist institutions than almost any other socialist I've encountered, or for that matter a lot of antisocialists. So there's enough substance to his ideas that it's possible to argue interestingly about them.
Bill Stoddard