My problem with Stross is that while he has some absolutely fantastic ideas and world-building, his stories fall short of keeping me interested or entertained.

My problem with Stross is that while he has some absolutely fantastic ideas and world-building, his stories fall short of keeping me interested or entertained. It's like there's so much stuff crammed in that the story part just falls out of the equation. MINOR SPOILERS for Accelerando I thought Accelerando was great up to the part where it stopped making any sense (about the time they were fighting some alien invaders parasites that teleported from somewhere using communication channels). Maybe I'm just dumb, but I really couldn't keep up with the plot and it got very nonsensical so I stopped reading. Dealing with singularities, the divide between the physical and the abstract is always very fluid. While Stross dealt OK with the abstract reality, I thought his physical reality didn't make any sense to me. Hilarious extrapolations, and such.