If you haven't yet read Charles Stross's Accelerando, don't follow this link (of course, if you haven't read Accelerando yet, what the heck are you waiting for?!), but if you have, check it out. Stross is making with the spoilerage, and revealing some secret bits about what's really going on in the novel. I read the book in the original short story installments in Asimov's (and didn't pick up on the secret Stross reveals here), and have been looking for an excuse to sit down and reread it straight-through in fix-up form; I don't think I'm likely to come across a better reason than this.

If Accelerando doesn't win the 2006 Hugo for Best Novel, there's simply no justice in the world (or in awards, at the very least). It's a staggering, paradigm-shifting book, with a greater information-density than any work this entertaining has any right to be, and everyone involved in science fiction, professional, fan, or just reader, owes it to themselves to check it out.