The novel takes place in 2150, when humanity is successfully settling the Solar System with a number of outposts and colonies on all the inner planets. However, Earth is overpopulated and undergoing rampant climate change, with rising sea levels claiming more and more land. The world is also in the middle of a new cold war between the United Earth Nations and the Sino-Soviet Empire. Global economy is in a deep recession, so jobs are scarce.
In order to make some money for his family, Ivan Pritchard joins up with a crew of Asteroid Miners aboard the Mad Astra. Unfortunately, a series of fruitless tours have left the captain of the Astra with little choice but to hope that this tour will result in a good find, or he will be forced to sell the ship for pennies, and the crew would lose their stakes (signing up requires that crewmembers buy into the ship's shares). Fortunately, halfway through the tour, the Mad Astra happens upon a ridiculously metal-rich asteroid that guarantees a life of leisure for the entire crew. Next to the asteroid, they also find a small one that seems to give off readings of transuranic elements, something that shouldn't be possible. Examining the asteroid, Ivan finds a strange object that he picks up. Suddenly, his arm is covered by some gray substance. The crew manage to cut off the sleeve of his spacesuit and get him back to the ship. The next day, Ivan wakes up to find that the same arm has turned metal. It's still fully usable and feels like his own arm, but it's no longer flesh. He is isolated and, upon agreement from Ivan, the ship's doctor amputates the limb and preserves it for study. At the same time, the Astra's captain notifies UEN about the find and the situation with Ivan, resulting in a quarantine. Oh, and Ivan's limb reappears the next day, as the nanites making up the metal arm simply cut their way through the ship to get back to Ivan. With each passing day, more and more of Ivan is being replaced by metal.
The Singularity Trap provides examples of:
- Absent Aliens: It turns out that the Fermi Paradox is real. While intelligent life is surprisingly common in the galaxy, most races tend to fail to pass one of the several "Great Filters" and die out. The three common filters are nuclear war, global ecological disaster due to over-industrialization, and AI rebellion. Only one of those has repercussions for the rest of the galaxy, as the AIs decide that all organic life has to go and start wiping it out wherever they find it.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Many civilizations are destroyed by their own AI creations, who them proceed to expand throughout the galaxy and wipe out any organic life they encounter. As a counter, the surviving organic races "upload" their minds into metal bodies and try to both wage war against the "artificials" (or "arts") and to seek out other organics and to either turn them into "uploads" or wipe them out and build defensive outposts in their systems. Humans keep their AIs strictly limited in order to keep humans in the decision chain.
- Artificial Gravity: The only way to generate artificial gravity is by spinning. All ships on long hauls generally come with a spinning section. However, due to the stress that maneuvering puts on spinning sections, they are usually spun down prior to performing maneuvers. Ships also get some "gravity" from acceleration, although constant acceleration is very fuel-intensive, so it's usually not employed.
- The Assimilator: Should the computer choose to "upload" humanity, it will send a swarm of nanites to do to every man, woman, and child what it has done to Ivan. The "uploaded" humans would retain their personalities but would no longer be biological beings.
- Asteroid Miners: There are many privately-owned ships going out into the asteroid belt to try to their fortune. However, they can't just to wherever they please. A centralized authority has a lottery that assigns different sectors of the belt to a particular ship at random. Generally, smaller metal-rich asteroids can be mined by the crew of the ship, sending the ore back to Earth using automated probes, but larger finds are typically auctioned off to the large mining conglomerates, who pay handsomely for the mining rights. Private ships are typically co-owned by the entire crew, although the captain has the majority share. This requires people to "buy in" before they can sign up with a crew.
- Attending Your Own Funeral: The computer allows Ivan to watch his own funeral through nearby nanites and then asks Ivan to explain why he finds this trope so funny.
- Bigger Is Better: The Sino-Soviets certain believe that, building bigger ships with more weapons to counter the qualitative superiority of the UEN.
- Bittersweet Ending: Humanity is saved, at least for now, and has a few centuries to develop the technology for "uploading" the species to metal bodies on their own rather than by force. The computer reverses Earth's ecological damage and terraforms the Moon, while also periodically giving humanity advanced technology, such as an unlimited power source. However, Ivan will never see his family again and will be "archived" by the computer until such time as he is needed. Ivan consoles himself with the thought that he would get to meet his descendants at least, plus the money from the asteroid find will ensure that his family doesn't have to want for anything again. Also, the other inner planets have already been irreversibly transformed into mechanized fortifications (with the atmospheres of Venus and Mars completely drained), so humanity can't ever recolonize them.
- Brain Uploading: This is the essence behind the "upload" races. They replace their organic bodies with metal ones in order to help them in their galactic war against the "artificials".
- China Takes Over the World/Make the Bear Angry Again: China and a resurgent Soviet Union have joined into a single political entity to rival the United Earth Nations. How that came to pass is left unclear. The Sino-Soviet Empire is less technologically sophisticated than the UEN, but they make up for that by building giant ships for raw firepower. For example, an SSE destroyer is about the same size as a UEN cruiser.
- Colonized Solar System: A minor example, but there are settlements of various size on all the inner planets and on the Moon, including two floating settlements in Venus's atmosphere. Most of those end up being destroyed when the alien computer starts to turn the system into a defensive outpost, with hundreds of people being inadvertently killed. Mars and Venus end up losing their atmospheres entirely. However, the ending has nanites create an atmosphere on the Moon, making it habitable, and a magnetic field to keep the solar wind away.
- Comically Missing the Point: Halfway through the book, Ivan starts getting visions, some of which involve many dishwasher robots seemingly attacking humans or metal people. He starts calling the robots the "Dishwasher Liberation Front", annoying the computer. He eventually realizes that the computer uses the dishwasher image because that's the only human robot it's been exposed to.
- Cool Ship: After striking it rich, Captain Jennings purchases a new ship and has it souped-up with better fusion engines and enhances sensors, naming it the Getting Ahead. Even the UEN military is impressed with the ship's acceleration and scanning abilities, unmatched by their own. Unlike most ships, the spinning hab ring of the Getting Ahead doesn't necessarily need to spin down for maneuvers, having been reinforced specifically for that.
- Distant Prologue: The book starts hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years ago, with an automated alien probe entering the Solar System and determining that Earth has the right conditions to eventually produce an intelligent species, so the probe leaves behind something for that species to find if and when it achieves space flight, before moving on to the next system. The book proper moves the events forward to 2150.
- Famous-Named Foreigner: During the climax, the UEN fleet is confronted by an SSE fleet commanded by Admiral Yeltsin.
- A Father to His Men: Captain Andrew Jennings of the Mad Astra cares about his crew. When Ivan is isolated by the ICDC, Jennings lets the government know that he has hired an Army of Lawyers that will raise hell if something happens to him.
- Gaia's Lament: Climate change has taken a turn for the worse, with melting ice caps, rising water levels, acidic oceans, and runaway greenhouse gases all threatening to turn Earth into another Venus in under a century. At the end of the novel, the alien computer uses nanites to reverse the damage and give humanity a reprieve.
- Noodle Incident: Many events are referenced but are barely expanded upon, including something called the "Great Liberation", which seems to put a lot of limitations on the UEN government's ability to infringe on people's rights.
- Nothing Personal: The alien computer doesn't wish humanity ill. It's simply following its programming. It's an incredibly sophisticated machine with the capacity to learn and adapt, but it has no agency of its own, as the "uploads" are afraid of making true AIs. Regardless of what is decided, the computer will either forcibly "upload" humanity or destroy them, all for the good of its makers.
- Nuke 'em: One of the suggested options to deal with the quarantine. The admiral decides to eliminate Ivan as a threat by nuking the quarantine facility and then claiming that the nanites tried to break out. Ivan manages to survive. When trying to convince the alien computer to Take a Third Option, the main characters suggest nuking Earth as a way to make the planet useless to the computer's makers (the "uploads" don't like nuked planets, since the radiation interferes with the nanites).
- Post-Soviet Reunion: The Soviet Union is reformed... and then merges with China to form the Sino-Soviet Empire, standing in opposition to the United Earth Nations.
- Prisoner's Dilemma: Plays a key part to resolve the book's climax. Ivan hints at this to the others in order to keep "Ralph" from picking up on his plan. They recognize it and try to convince the alien computer to spare humanity (i.e. that "cooperation" is better than "defection").
- Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: When the Mad Astra notifies the UEN about something infecting Ivan, the ICDC (the "I" is for "Interplanetary") and the UEN military set up a small space station at a Lagrange point for Ivan, the crew of the Astra, and the ICDC personnel studying the infection. Some more extreme members of the military suggest attaching a nuke to the station, just in case, even though international treaties forbid the use of nuclear weapons in Earth's vicinity.
- Quantity vs. Quality: The Sino-Soviet Empire's Space Navy can't match the UEN fleet in terms of tech, so they make up for it by building much larger ships with more guns.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Admiral Moore becomes this by the end of the novel, being more willing to listen to Ivan and his friends instead of always going with the kneejerk military response of blowing things up.
- Shoot the Bullet: When the Sino-Soviets fire a nuke at Ivan's communication station, Admiral Moore fires a nuclear-tipped missile of his own to intercept it.
- Space Cold War: While the new cold war between the United Earth Nations and the Sino-Soviet Empire is mostly earthbound, both sides have powerful space navies that they use to get their point across. The UEN has better tech, but the SSE counters by building larger and more powerful ships.
- Space Station: Olympus in Earth's orbit is the hub of the entire Solar System. This is where the majority of ships dock.
- Take a Third Option: It seems that humanity has only two choices: to be forcibly "uploaded" or to have the Solar System be turned into a defensive outpost for the computer's makers, which would result in humanity being wiped out. Neither option is preferable, so the main characters try to convince the computer to delay "uploading" them for an indefinite time, while allowing humanity to prepare technologically and culturally. After all, the "artificials" aren't even close to attacking the Solar System, so there's no need to rush. They use the Prisoner's Dilemma as a way to convince the computer of the logic of such an action.
- United Nations Is a Superpower: The UN seems to have reformed into the United Earth Nations, which appears to be a single political entity, composed of many Western powers. Also crosses with United Space of America, since the way the UEN is treated makes it seem like it's run almost identical to the US.
- Voice Changeling: Ivan copies the captain's voice to get the Mad Astra out of dock and underway.
