Addendum: this is draft 2 of the space opera that, well, my elevator pitch was "Iain isn't writing any more, alas, so let's see if I can do something that makes readers feel the same way as his Culture novels without in any way being derivative of the Culture".

It's probably a failure on those terms, but I had to try, right?

@rooftopaxx No knife missiles whatsoever! Not even any AIs. There is some cute bioengineering, though. And a high concept: what is the universe going to look like in a post-science age (by which I mean, all achievable insights have long since been achieved, so there are no new breakthroughs, only stamp-collecting)?

At least the starships have notable names ...

@cstross @kithrup The theory behind AI was always that the Moore's law s-curve wouldn't bend down for silicon until after it did for carbon, with a few centuries of directed engineering surpassing billions of years of evolution, before we hit atomic limits or speed of light signal propagation along finite trace lengths...

It's the "Gray Goo" feedback loop again. Slime molds are yellow goo and they have limits: energy, materials, predators.

(Dunning Krueger is Freddy's sister.)

@landley @cstross That is a lovely explanation.

(Not saying I fully agree with it, but it is *at least* plausible.)