Halting State

(Disclaimer: I finished this a couple of months ago, so its not so fresh in my mind).

Again I delve into the worlds of Charles Stross. I will get through them all eventually, and then only be reading the one or two per year he writes, but until then, expect more Stross fan-blather from me.

Halting State is set in near-future (2017, according to the chapter that is the CIA World Factbook entry for Scotland in that year) Scotland, where everyone has access to virtual world overlays of the real world, and can be actively involved in MMORPGs all the time. Even the police have an virtual world called CopSpace that gives them all kinds of additional information about everything they look at - maps, suspect databases, current activity, etc. All the kinds of things that we'll get once they get VR headset drivers for iPhones and Android phones.

It's an investigation style novel - detective novel, if you will, about a cybercrime that blows out of proportion. Published in 2007, which means he was writing it in 2005 or 2006. Back then it was sci-fi; but now it's just a straightforward What's Happening Soon. If you're reading the right blogs, the reaction to certain news items is "well, Halting State is no longer fiction".

As always, good story, well written. Characters that any nerd can identify with and enjoy. It's nice to read stories from the nerd viewpoint; stories unafraid to talk about TCP routing and MMORPGs and facial recognition software, but that still deliver an exciting story with believable people in them.

All in all, a very cool book. I don't think it was quite as awesome as some of his other books, but still worth reading. It leaves you with a definite sense of how the near future will look, with what feels like a lot more accuracy than many other visions. And the way the world has developed since the book's release has made it look more prescient than it may have looked three or four years ago.