Wireless (2009)

Stross, Charles. Wireless: The Essential Charles Stross. New York: Ace Books, 2009. Short story collection, not to be confused with Rudyard Kippling's Wireless (1904).

From Wikipedia entry:

Contents

“Missile Gap” (One Million A.D., 2005, edited by Gardner Dozois, ISBN 978-0-7394-6273-7)[]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Gap

“Rogue Farm” (Live Without a Net, 2003, edited by Lou Anders, ISBN 978-0-451-45945-9)

“A Colder War” (Spectrum SF 3, 2000) available online

“MAXOS” (Nature, 2005)

“Down on the Farm” (Tor.com, 2008) available online

“Unwirer” with Cory Doctorow (ReVisions, 2004 edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Isaac Szpindel, ISBN 978-0-7564-0240-2)

“Snowball's Chance” (Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction, 2005, edited by Neil Williamson and Andrew J. Wilson, ISBN 978-1-84183-086-5)

“Trunk and Disorderly” (Asimov's Science Fiction, 2007)

“Palimpsest” [first published in Wireless]; winner of the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novella[1]

Reviewed by Sandor Klapcsik, SFRA Review #289 (Summer 2009): pp. 18-19.[2]

"Missile Gap,"novella: quoting the Wikipedia article linked, "On 2 October 1962, the universe underwent a change – instantly, the continents of the Earth were no longer wrapped onto a spherical planet but were on the surface of an Alderson disk."[3] As a result of this "projection of a spherical surface onto a flat surface [...] North America is now much farther from Asia [...] launching an artificial satellite into orbit becomes impossible, and chemical-fuelled ICBMs are no longer capable of reaching other continents. [...] Thus, both the [US] strategic bomber and ICBM 'legs' of the nuclear triad are no longer feasible [...]" — with these intermediate, so to speak, technological/military changes reverberating through an alternative history of the Cold War.[4]

“Rogue Farm”: According to Sandor Klapcsik, the setting is postapocalypse, featuring a fairly near-future Britain that's severely underpopulated (by humans), and where

[...T]he population decline may be the result of cyberpunk visions and nightmares, the increase and partial loss of high-tech inventions, and the conflict between biotech and information technology., the population decline may be the result of cyberpunk visions and nightmares, the increase and partial loss of high-tech inventions, and the conflict between biotech and information technology.

We are a few decades after the Internet age, following the disappearance of self-replicating, robotic network terminals. Cars are rare or extinct, tractors are antique. [...] humans become green literally, start photosynthesizing and turn into rogue farms. The decrease of human fertility, however, remains a crucial problem, and a considerable part of the urban technology is in shambles: the Internet has collapsed, and the ruins of technologized consumer culture swarm the countryside. Nevertheless, EMP devices, jammers and surveillance systems are still widely used, and uploading personalities into computer files for backups comes across as an ordinary procedure even on farms.

The conflict between the rogue farm and Joe, who used to be “a software dude,” evokes Bruce Sterling’s Shaper–Mechanist confrontation. (Klapcsik p. 19)

So see "Rogue Farm" in large part for a commentary on technology by its absence or decline.

RDE, finishing, 19Feb21