Posted by Scott Laird
Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:33:15 GMT
Today’s the big release day for Charlie Stross’s new book, Halting State. I had the good fortune to pick up a review copy through work last week, since we’re one of the official stops on his tour schedule (w00t!).
Short review: go buy it. You can thank me later.
Slightly longer review:
Stross is my favorite science fiction (-ish) author right now, and has been for a few years. He’s written a number of amazing short stories, but his novels have been a bit hit-or-miss. The Atrocity Archives is deeply awesome, as is Accelerando (which is basically a collection of 9 of his short stories), but Singularity Sky didn’t really work for me.
Halting State, on the other hand, is the best science fiction novel that I’ve read in years; perhaps since The Atrocity Archives. Like most of his work, Halting State is less scifi then “geekfi”–it’s about people and technology extrapolated slightly into the future.
In this case, it’s set in 2014-ish Scotland, newly independent from England. It all started with a police call. The caller, panicked, reported a theft. Something about a bank robbery, which made the police operator sit up and take notice, until the caller started blathering about orcs and a dragon. They didn’t send anyone out to investigate until the second call, which still had orcs and the dragon, but sounded more insistent. The detective follows the address provided and ends up in the middle of nowhere, at a former nuclear command bunker surrounded by expensive cars, to discover that someone did rob a bank. Not a brick-and-mortar bank, though–this bank’s is inside of a MMORPG. The total take? About 120 million Euros, once you count the ebay-able value of the missing goods and the hit to the newly-IPOed “in-game economic stabilization” company. The dragon blew the doors off of the bank and the orcs grabbed the loot. They escaped into a portal to another MMORPG where the bank’s managers don’t have root access. The cop’s stumped–how do you investigate this? You can’t dust for dragon prints. So she logs back into CopSpace to see what she can find…
By the time Stross is done, he’s wrapped up gaming, gamers, virtual reality, cryptographic security, in-game economics, the nanny state run amok, mobile phones, and something much more sinister then any of the characters expected to find.
Just go read it, and thank me afterwards. Or thank Stross, that’s probably more appropriate.
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Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 08 Aug 2005 17:51:10 GMT
I’m a big fan of Charlie Stross; I think I’ve now read all of his published fiction. I’ve mentioned his books a few times here; he’s probably my favorite author at the moment.
That’s part of why I didn’t read The Family Trade when it came out last fall–it was originally written as the first half of a larger novel and then split into two by the publisher. I didn’t want to get engrossed in The Family Trade and then suddenly have the book stop halfway through the story. The second half, The Hidden Family, came out recently, so I ordered both of them from Amazon and settled in for a bit of reading.
Stross is generally a science fiction author, but this series is more or less fantasy. That is to say that it’s based on the same premises as about half of the fantasies clogging up your local bookstore, but it’s written by a good science fiction author and he spends a lot more time dealing with technology, politics, and economics then I’m used to seeing in fantasy. In the end, I’d say that this series is fantasy in about the same way that Stephenson’s baroque books are historical fiction–deep down, I know that they’re really scifi, with the “traditional” scifi elements hidden by the trappings of a different genre. That makes me feel a lot better about these two books, because normally I wouldn’t be caught dead reading fantasy.
Another difference between Stross’s new series and most of the fantasy I read when I was younger is the protagonist–instead of a stupid (or at least inexperienced) late teen/young adult wandering around lost in some fantasy land, Stoss gives us Miriam Beckstein, a thirtysomething first-string tech journalist with a MD and a history of backing Larry Ellison-types into corners. She’s still stuck with the fantasy land, but she comes to grips with things and is good at landing on her feet.
All in all, I enjoyed the two books. Perhaps not quite as much as I enjoyed The Atrocity Archives, but more then most of the other books that I’ve read recently. Surprisingly enough, the two books actually do fairly well on their own–they were divided at a natural breaking point, where most of the early plot threads were resolved before moving into a new set of issues in the second book. There’s a third book planned for next May or June.
I’ve been able to get a lot of reading done over the last couple weeks–I’ve been taking the bus to work, so I have about 90 minutes of reading time per day (instead of 90 minutes of driving time). Here are the others that I’ve finished lately:
- The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. Basically an alternative history where the Plague killed Europe off in the 1300s, so Islam, India, and China are left sharing the world. It has a few interesting plot devices–the main characters keep getting killed off and then reincarnated back together again–but it was a painfully slow read for me, and when I was done I realized that I’d have to re-read it several times to fully understand what the heck just happened. Call it 3 stars.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling. Yeah, I read it too. Everyone’s read it. The ending worked okay for me.
- Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson. I liked his Cronoliths, but Blind Lake didn’t really do it for me. It doesn’t quite pull a deus ex machina at the end, but it’s pretty close.
- Jumper by Steven Gould. I added this to my list after a glowing recommendation on Boing Boing earlier this year. It’s obviously a juvenile, but it’s well written and manages to cover old ground (the “Wow, I can teleport!” story) without sounding like a retread. I’d probably have enjoyed it more if I’d read it when I was a lot younger–some of the coming-of-age stuff was kind of tedious.
Posted in Books | Tags book, reviews, scifi, stross | 1 comment
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 16 Jun 2005 17:50:41 GMT
Charlie Stross’s latest book, Accelerando is now available as a free (CC-licensed) ebook. Accelerando started life as a collection of short stories following three generations of the same family through the Singularity. I think I read at least 6 of the 9 stories when they originally came out, and I’ve been waiting for the whole collection to become available. Now it is. Enjoy, and go pre-order a printed copy to help support the author.
Posted in Books | Tags accelerando, ebook, scifi, stross | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 19 Jul 2004 05:29:00 GMT
I read Charlie Stross’s Iron Sunrise over the weekend. It’s a sequel to Singularity Sky, which I reviewed briefly when it came out. I enjoyed Singularity Sky, but I didn’t feel that it was that strong of a book; it had some interesting ideas, and a couple of the characters were memorable, but it didn’t completely work for me. I probably would have been happier buying the paperback, frankly.
Iron Sunrise resurrects the two or three most memorable characters from Singularity Sky and sends them, plus a handful of new characters, on a quest to stop someone from killing two planets. The main character is a covert UN “black chamber” weapons inspector in a world where there are too many people with too many fun toys. The big problem isn’t nutcases who build nukes in their kitchen (although cheap heavy elements and home nanofabs are a bad mix); the real problem tends to come from authoritarian institutions who are willing to get in a fight with something that introduces itself as “I am not your god” and novas the stars of people who step too far outside the lines.
I really enjoyed Iron Sunrise much more then Singularity Sky, although I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much if I hadn’t read the previous novel first. There were a number of situations in Iron that echoed similar situations in Singularity, but played off the similarity towards interesting goals. Basically, I found it to be well written with interesting characters, plots, and gizmos. Just the thing for a summer weekend. There were a couple points in the book where it felt a little too 2004, and a few other points where it felt like we were hearing some of Stross’s website rants all over again (like the panopticon bit), but none of it really detracted from my enjoyment of the story. All in all, it’s one of the top books that I’ve read this year (along with his earlier Atrocity Archives).
Still, as good as his novels are becoming, his short stories tend to be even better. Go read ”Lobsters” online some time for an example.
Posted in Books | Tags book, reviews, stross | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 26 Apr 2004 17:29:16 GMT
I finished two books this weekend: Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion and Charlie Stross’s The Atrocity Archives.
First, The Confusion. I’ve been a Neal Stephenson fan since college, when I first read Snow Crash. The Confusion is the third book in his latest set, following Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver, and continues on where Quicksilver left off, following the Waterhouses and Shaftoes from around 1690 to 1702. Like his previous two books, The Confusion is largely the tale of money and finance, and how our current financial system came about. It’s also a fascinating tale of English and French history, and occasionally filled with swashbuckling pirates. It was an enjoyable read, but it was also a long, dense book, and it ended with a totally unexpected twist. Once the fourth volume, The System of the World comes out in September, the entire set will stretch from the 1660s to the present day and cover over 3,500 pages. They’re good books, but you’ll want to block out a month or two to read them all, and then re-read them to figure out what the heck was going on the whole time.
The Atrocity Archives is a bit different–it’s set in the modern era, and the main story is only 178 pages long, although there’s an excellent novella tacked on at the end the carries the characters on a bit further. In Hollywood-speak, it’s probably best described as H.P. Lovecraft meets Simon Travaglia. It’s basically a spy story. Our hero works for The Laundry, a branch of the British government charged with suppressing dangerous knowledge and preventing disasters. In the world of the novel, there are things that go bump in the night, and the right incantation (or the right software) can trigger things that science is still laboring (in secret) to understand. If you’ve seen Hellboy or any of a thousand similar movies, then you understand the setting. The really enjoyable part of The Atrocity Archives is the story itself and the writing. I’d highly recommend picking up a copy. You may also wish to read A Colder War, one of the author’s short stories, although the short story is a lot creepier and less enjoyable then the novel.
Update: Found an excerpt.
Posted in Books | Tags book, reviews, stephenson, stross | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 09 Feb 2004 10:24:19 GMT
I finished reading Cory Doctrow’s A Place So Foreign and Eight More over the weekend. It’s a collection of (surprise) 9 of his short stories. I wasn’t very impressed with Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom when I read it a month or so ago, but A Place So Foreign was much more enjoyable. I’ve really been enjoying science fiction short stories more then novels recently.
I didn’t mention it at the time, but I finished Charlie Stross’s Singularity Sky a few weeks back. I enjoyed it more then Down and Out, but less then A Place So Foreign. He has a collection of short stories out, so I’ll try to grab those next.
My current read is Lamb by Christopher Moore. I loved Island of the Sequined Love Nun (possibly the best title of any book ever), along with most of his other books, so we’ll see how this one goes.
Posted in Books | Tags book, christophermoore, doctrow, reviews, scifi, stross | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Sat, 03 Jan 2004 06:54:40 GMT
Of course, I’d be stuck on the bus without anything to read. At least I can write, right?
Once advantage of staying home for Christmas is that I’ve had time to do a bit of reading. I finished Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom around 30 minutes into the year, after a memorable New Year’s trying to get Sophie to stop crying and back to sleep. I don’t feel like writing a big review at the moment, but I don’t know if I can call it any better then just okay. It had some interesting points (that’s half of wnat I read scifi for), but it didn’t really excite me. I really like the stuff that he’s co-written with Charlie Stross, but I like pretty much everything of Stross’s that I’ve read. His Singularity Sky is next on my list.
Before I got to Down and Out, I re-read Lucifer’s Hammer for the fourth or fifth time. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s from 1975 or so and tells the story of a major civilization-destroying comet strike. It shows its age at times–the social issues that characters worry about are very 1970s, and the approach to sex is very 70’s-scifi-author, but the story just feels right, and I’m continually drawn back into reading it. The sign of a good book, I guess :-). Its semi-sibling, Footfall is nearly as good–instead of a comet, Footfall has aliens, but it’s a fun read. Between the two books, movies like Independence Day and Bruce-Willis-and-the-Physics-Defying-Asteroid are really disappointing.
Oh yeah, one other thing to recommend Footfall: they nuke my home town in the end. Things like that always make me happy.
Posted in Books | Tags book, bus, doctrow, niven, stross | no comments
