Halting State
Ace Hardcover - Ace Hardcover
Release date: 2007-10-02
Hardcover
Author: Charles Stross
English Science Fiction And Fantasy, Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - High Tech, Fiction / Science Fiction / High Tech, Fantasy - Contemporary, Mystery & Detective - Police Procedural, Bank robberies, Computer games, Virtual reality
average reviews
0 vote
0 vote
React and review
Halting State
Date undefinedbest book about the coming future and what physical and digital systems will look like and how we will interact with them
Read this book!!
Halting State
Date undefinedThe second person perspective is annoying and distracting at the best of times and completely ruins the narrative at others. It was an attempt to bring back the 1st and 2nd generations of role-playing video games when they game told you what you were doing, and it annoyed me then too. The most interesting chapter is the bit about the digital heist. The rest of the book seemed to go on and on about which character done it. The chapter character switches made it impossible for me to care one way or another about any of the characters. Skip this one. There is far better sci-fi satire/cyber-punk.
Halting State
Date undefinedI encountered to this book in the course of an hour-long hunt through cross-references ("people who bought this book also bought..."), best-seller lists, etc. looking for something new and good in the vein of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, etc. - a work by an author who really gets how the present works and the near future is likely to work, and can be truly, literarily creative with it. I ordered it expecting something decent, and found that I had received a real gem. Not only is the tech background super-solid (it helps if you're a sysadmin, but if not, no worries), but the writing is great - the dialog and internal monologues are as sardonic and humorous as, say, Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaason, or John Sandford. Finally, dear God, it's set in Scotland and reads like Ian Rankin tartan noir. What's not to like?
