Fascinating prediction of the future, but flawed.

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	• Halting State (Ace Science Fiction) Charles Stross Ace, 2008 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 49 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Near Future Perfect

It takes serious guts to try and speculate on what the near future might look like. Not many authors try, but Stross does it with care. It is not easy to depart from the comfortable realm of the space opera and I congratulate Stross for doing so in this interesting story.

Stross makes it look easy--

So, if you ever were in a creative writing class, you could take down the things that you were told weren't recommended--writing in the second person, changes of perspective that might confuse a reader, use of dialect that might be obscure (or too much jargon--there's another one they'll tell you, in classes like that.) If there's such a thing as classes on sf novel-writing, they might say--well, keep your future prognosticating non-specific, and don't set your scene in the too-near future--

But see, they'd be absolutely wrong. The difference is whether you have the chops to pull it off or not, and if you happen to be Charles Stross, well, you can. The chops being, using the second person voice to advantage, by placing the reader momentarily in the place of the characters, while hiding certain of their motivations, using the shift in perspective to color a scene in the "voice" appropriate to it, using dialect to differentiate voices and set atmosphere (oh, and ditto for jargon-I like when an author gives his readers a little credit for not being dim), an ability to make the nouveaux plausible, because it's a offshoot of existing tech, and has the near-future setting make perfect sense because it's so recognizable, making the points about the increasing "on-line" lives of people more immediate.

I really did enjoy it, just as a story, and because it made me think a little about how much we already invest in our "virtual" selves. The three protagonist's voices are well-developed, and the story has some interesting twists.

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Fascinating prediction of the future, but flawed.

Once you cut past the technical jargon and mumbo jumbo, the story itself isn't too bad. Essentially a computer geek (Jack) and an insurance adjuster (Elaine) get stuck in the middle of some high-tech extortion plan run by a few greedy people. They were "chosen" for this case because of their gaming skills (or as the author puts it, "mad skillz"). The book was rather tongue in cheek for most of the part, and I am not sure why the theme of beauty and the geek is almost pervasive among Sci-Fi techno novels. In this story, Jack is described as some fat, unshaven, and unwashed computer geek. In my mind, I am picturing Michael Moore or perhaps Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. Elaine is described as a mousy woman of proportions similar to a librarian, with extensive training in sword play. In my mind, I pictured Kate Beckinsale with a huge sword (ala Underworld). Overall, the story was fun but a lot of the technical jargon and mumbo jumbo just got in the way. I found myself skipping paragraphs every so often.

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Any new Charles Stross is a Good Thing(tm)

I've been telling friends of this "new" SF writer since I stumbled across THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES in a local BORDERS. It was the tentacles coming out of a cubicle and the bemused sysadmin's face that hooked me. Since then, I've really enjoyed several of his SF "threads" ("In her majesty's occult service", "Singularity and the Eschaton", "Posthumans").

This story is totally independent of his other stuff, although I hope we see more of the game developer and his forensic accountant girlfriend. Looking just 10 years into the future and envisioning that mobile phones would be a great platform for a distributed multi-user role playing games is genius. Told from multiple points of view which he deftly juggles, each character is still fully fleshed out giving you just enough of a glimpse of their inner landscape and background. A quick read which grabbed me once I stepped into the universe, I didn't want to put down until it was finished. And he must either be a gamer or have coded because those aspects ring true to me. _I_ want to code with VR goggles and virtual keyboard.

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Unusually Powerful

Stross has a VERY unique style of developing a believable near-future using nothing more than than the words his characters speak. This story is alive, intelligent, real, and very different from anything I ever read before. I could not put it down once I started.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10

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