35th out of 143 books
—
518 voters
Halting State (Halting State #1)
by
Charles Stross (Goodreads Author)
In the year 2018, Sergeant Sue Smith of the Edinburgh constabulary is called in on a special case. A daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates, a dot-com startup company that's just been floated on the London stock exchange. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality lan...more
Hardcover, 351 pages
Published
October 2nd 2007
by Ace Hardcover
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+1 to the list of notable books written in second person, which is only slightly longer than the list of notable books written solely to criticize them.
Halting State has a cool premise. I mean, aside from the fact that it was dated by the time it came out (goggles, really? That's your immersion technology. I mean, we've gotten to the point where we can read your mind. But hey, if you wanna strap a small TV to your face instead, whatever.)
Let's ignore specifics about Halting State for a minute,...more
Halting State has a cool premise. I mean, aside from the fact that it was dated by the time it came out (goggles, really? That's your immersion technology. I mean, we've gotten to the point where we can read your mind. But hey, if you wanna strap a small TV to your face instead, whatever.)
Let's ignore specifics about Halting State for a minute,...more
May 01, 2012
Whitaker
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fantasy-scifi,
2012-read
My Review in 50 Words or Less
Written in 2007, what you’ll get if you read this is a smart, savvy novel unsettlingly prescient about where we may be going. Plus there’s a decently plotted story to boot. Just get over that second-person narrative hump.
The More than 50-Words Version
The Second Person Narrative—Is There Something to It?
Written in 2007, what you’ll get if you read this is a smart, savvy novel unsettlingly prescient about where we may be going. Plus there’s a decently plotted story to boot. Just get over that second-person narrative hump.
The More than 50-Words Version
The Second Person Narrative—Is There Something to It?
Mary’s been nagging you about your heart ever since that stupid DNA check you both took last year (‘so the wee wun kens his maws ur both gawn tae be aboot for a whiul...more
Charles Stross decided it would be a good idea to write Halting State entirely in second person. I briefly toyed with doing the same for my review, but then I remembered that I already did that, and it wasn't that amusing.
Then I thought maybe I would do the whole thing in code like a l33t haXor, which would have been appropriate since this book finds it the height of amusement to throw around with-it language like "n00b" and "pwned."
Then I realized that it is obnoxious to force readers to suffer...more
Then I thought maybe I would do the whole thing in code like a l33t haXor, which would have been appropriate since this book finds it the height of amusement to throw around with-it language like "n00b" and "pwned."
Then I realized that it is obnoxious to force readers to suffer...more
This was a delight to read. The story is set in independent Scotland in 2018. Everyone has direct and constant access to the web through their glasses and walk around in a constant twitch as they hammer away on virtual keyboards. Hayek Associates, a small start-up gaming company, has discovered their software has been infiltrated and the virtual bank they oversee has been robbed by a band of orcs and a dragon. Sergeant Sue Smith is first on this bewildering crime “scene”. Next to come along is E...more
Just when you think you've read everything worth reading and that there's nothing new under the sun, just when you are feeling really jaded, that's when books like this one (and Michael Flynn's "January Dancer", and Peter Watts' "Blindsight") come along and remind you why you love science fiction and fantasy.
Set in the near future, using technology that either exists already or is on the drawing board now, Stross creates a world that is at the same time almost alien and yet recognizably our tomo...more
Set in the near future, using technology that either exists already or is on the drawing board now, Stross creates a world that is at the same time almost alien and yet recognizably our tomo...more
"Halting State" by Charles Stross was the last book on my 2008 Hugo Nominees List. While I still think "Brasyl" by Ian McDonald should have won instead of "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" by Michael Chabon, I do think this comes in a very, very close second.
I was pleasantly surprised by "Halting State". I read "Accelerando" by the same author last year and absolutely loathed it. "Halting State" really grabbed me and I read huge chunks at a time. I was amazed at how Stoss managed to maintain a sec...more
I was pleasantly surprised by "Halting State". I read "Accelerando" by the same author last year and absolutely loathed it. "Halting State" really grabbed me and I read huge chunks at a time. I was amazed at how Stoss managed to maintain a sec...more
Oct 16, 2007
Seth
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
the cyber/phreak/hacker crowd, action/thriller sf fans
Shelves:
science-fiction,
sf-f-h
This book has several interesting (and unusual) attributes. Overall it's a fun read in the vein of Pat Cadigan's Synners, about hackers and suits working together to handle a threat to technology society has evolved to assume. Like Synners it throws you into the world head-first without explaining names, acronyms, slang, or the numerous in-jokes; unlike Synners it focuses on the espionage story and leaves the sociological theorizing out.
The plot revolves around a multi-million-dollar bank heist....more
The plot revolves around a multi-million-dollar bank heist....more
I'd really like to give this three and a half stars. It was pretty cute, and the idea of the real-life spy game was neat.
As many others have noted, Stross has a fondness for enormous chunks of exposition, but I guess it doesn't bother me as much. I like learning about stuff, as long as it's interesting stuff.
I'm taking off points for:
--intermittent use of annoying Scottish dialect
--constantly referring to an accountant as a "librarian" because she's...nerdy? dunno.
--rather perfunctory characte...more
As many others have noted, Stross has a fondness for enormous chunks of exposition, but I guess it doesn't bother me as much. I like learning about stuff, as long as it's interesting stuff.
I'm taking off points for:
--intermittent use of annoying Scottish dialect
--constantly referring to an accountant as a "librarian" because she's...nerdy? dunno.
--rather perfunctory characte...more
Dec 05, 2012
James
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
crime,
science-fiction,
ebook,
i-own-a-copy,
read-in-2012,
read-in-teenties,
4-stars,
reviewed
The first, and eponymous, novel in the Halting State series – Charles Stross's stories set in a slightly futuristic Edinburgh. Scotland is now an independent European state; the Police wear augmented reality glasses connected up to CopSpace; and a gang of Orcs have robbed a bank. A bank in a computer game. Think World of Warcraft (I assume, although I have seen the adverts), and a bunch of Orcs stealing game items from the safety deposit boxes in the game. Obviously, like now, these in-game item...more
Jan 07, 2009
Brownbetty
marked it as abandoned-unfinished
Every once in a while I get the idea I'm not reading brainy enough SF, and that all the other SF readers will sneer at me for not reading enough Hugo winners. Halting State hasn't won a Hugo, but it says "Hugo Award-winning author of" on the front, so it probably count for half points.
Sue Smith is a tough, no-nonsense cop who takes occasional flack for being the only out lesbian in her department. And that was the last time the book gave me something I liked.
The entire book (well, let me be hone...more
Sue Smith is a tough, no-nonsense cop who takes occasional flack for being the only out lesbian in her department. And that was the last time the book gave me something I liked.
The entire book (well, let me be hone...more
May 26, 2008
Tricia
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people with patience and definitely people in the gaming industry or just into games in general
Shelves:
2008
Another from my list of books in second person. I found it extremely hard to get into this at first. The second person present perspective plus the head jumping into different characters felt very awkward, and I really wasn't at all sure where the story was going, so I was reluctant to dive in. About a third of the way through, I finally grokked where it was trying to go and I leapt in, reading the rest of the book at a faster pace and really enjoying the characters. It's rare in a book with mul...more
Okay plot, although Stross thinks he's being more innovative than he really is. The idea of people thinking they're playing war games, only to find out it's real, has been done many times. (Ender's Game for one, and lots of movies from the 1980's). The main characters appealing, but undeveloped. Also, I know I'm fighting a losing battle here, but the word "librarian" describes a profession. It does not mean nerdy, intellectual, sexually repressed, insecure, spinsters! I hate to smash your daydre...more
I am a late-comer to Stross' "Halting State," and he has moved on to bigger (better?) things. Therefore I feel perfectly comfortable in noting the book's weaknesses as well as its strengths.
This is one of the most annoyingly written good books I've ever read.
The plot is a futurist geek's dream: gamers and hackers and cops and robbers and ninjas all fighting for control of a distributed Augmented Reality RPG which turns out to be the key to, well, pretty much all of civilization. Plus a bucketloa...more
This is one of the most annoyingly written good books I've ever read.
The plot is a futurist geek's dream: gamers and hackers and cops and robbers and ninjas all fighting for control of a distributed Augmented Reality RPG which turns out to be the key to, well, pretty much all of civilization. Plus a bucketloa...more
(My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of science-fiction (or SF), and that one of the writers of the newest generation that I keep up with is master mind-screwer-upper Charles Stross, a multiple Hugo-nominated "writer's writer" who is greatly admired by the precise fellow writers who are his Hugo competition each year. In fa...more
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of science-fiction (or SF), and that one of the writers of the newest generation that I keep up with is master mind-screwer-upper Charles Stross, a multiple Hugo-nominated "writer's writer" who is greatly admired by the precise fellow writers who are his Hugo competition each year. In fa...more
Jul 24, 2008
Daniel
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
nerds, Charles Stross fans, players of MMOGs
The first buzzwords I heard about this book were along the lines of "bank heist", "MMOs", and "marauding band of orcs." Aha, I thought, here's an interesting premise: "Programmers of a World of Warcraft-like MMO soup-up the AI on a bunch of NPC orcs to make them more of a challenge for their players. But they make the orcs too smart: Using unwitting agents in real-life (aka 'meatspace'), the orcs perpetrate a bank heist in our world, planning to use their loot to buy up in-game currency, items a...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Really nice near future novel from Stross. Explores how virtual worlds will develop and in particular blur with the real world to provide augmented reality.
The layered plot is also well formed with convincing characterisation and a fast pace that keeps you reading. A good solid light read, that unfortunately will probably date quite quickly.
The layered plot is also well formed with convincing characterisation and a fast pace that keeps you reading. A good solid light read, that unfortunately will probably date quite quickly.
A terrific science fiction novel, this is a crime story in which virtual reality overflows into reality. This should be especially entertaining for players of role-playing games, as the references are numerous and frequently funny. Not that you need to play much to get a lot of the jokes; I am the non-gamer in my family, but exposure to the basics was enough.
The blurb from the back cover that convinced me to buy this:
"A daring bank robbery has taken place... The prime suspects are a band of mara...more
The blurb from the back cover that convinced me to buy this:
"A daring bank robbery has taken place... The prime suspects are a band of mara...more
I picked up this book in the middle of reading 2666, mostly to have something lighter to read on my holiday cross-country plane rides. It fulfilled those expectations very well.
Halting State is a fun near-future detective novel that focuses on a large robbery. The twist is that the robbery happens online, to a virtual bank. What starts out as a straightforward detective story has some very satisfying second act twists that bring the narrative out a bit to include a lot of interesting ideas. I fo...more
Halting State is a fun near-future detective novel that focuses on a large robbery. The twist is that the robbery happens online, to a virtual bank. What starts out as a straightforward detective story has some very satisfying second act twists that bring the narrative out a bit to include a lot of interesting ideas. I fo...more
Halting State is the second book by Charles Stross that I've read. The first, Accelerando, is (to steal a cliche) a flawed masterpiece -- a word which I don't use lightly -- and on its strength I was eager to dive into this novel.
Stross is a (apparently I'm stuck in reviewer-cliche land tonight) furiously imaginative writer, and half the fun of his novels is just keeping up with the barrage of new ideas about technology, culture, and the intersection thereof. That's certainly the case with Halt...more
Stross is a (apparently I'm stuck in reviewer-cliche land tonight) furiously imaginative writer, and half the fun of his novels is just keeping up with the barrage of new ideas about technology, culture, and the intersection thereof. That's certainly the case with Halt...more
Feb 24, 2013
Laura
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Jason Plein
Shelves:
cthulhu,
fanfiction,
government,
hero-s-journey,
metatexts,
monsters,
science-fiction,
zombies,
scotland
In the world-to-come, scary governments and scary nongovernments have figured out how to use live action role play and massively multiplayer online games to continue diplomacy by other means. Everything is monitored; everything monitoring system is infiltrated; every need in Maslow's hierarchy is a reward pellet to get the rats to run the maze and solve someone else’s problem. Our enemies are pale ghosts in the machine; no need to rewire our soldiers’ moral machinery before they are willing to s...more
The near future, I think, is one of the hardest scifi times to write in. This book does a great job in exploring some of the consequences for people and society of the rapidly expanding area of augmented reality. The usefulness of being permanently connected to the net through a terminal in your pocket and the changes to your lifestyle, actions and even mindset it causes are hard to deny once you've used a smartphone for a year or so. Augmented reality is already occurring through the use of fea...more
I found this book a very enjoyable read. The second-person narrative worked for me; it made it seem like an old text adventure game, which seemed appropriate enough. I liked the three main characters, though they could have been fleshed out in more credible ways. With the rest of the characters, I sometimes got confused about who was who.
It is set in a future where Scotland is independent and the USA is no longer one of the big players, and where the internet and virtual overlays on reality hav...more
It is set in a future where Scotland is independent and the USA is no longer one of the big players, and where the internet and virtual overlays on reality hav...more
One of the reviews I read mentioned wanting an annotated version. I believe that would be rather simple to append, as well as rather necessary. Maybe I should have given up and googled 'scottish slang ned' the first time I came across it, but I am pretty tolerant of coming across a word or phrase I don't quite understand, and just continuing with the hope that all will be revealed later. In that case I wasn't disappointed, because a few chapters later a ned is equated to a chav, which I do recog...more
This is more properly classed "cyberpunk", but I don't have a tag for that.
As everyone has noted, it's written in the second person, which is weird. There's a variety of narrators, and at first I had a little trouble with getting the connections, but I got there. It's also set in Edinburgh, and at least one person speaks in thick dialect. As that's a dialect I can parse, I kinda liked it, but I can see how it would get old.
Particularly after having finished reading a bunch of computer gaming stu...more
As everyone has noted, it's written in the second person, which is weird. There's a variety of narrators, and at first I had a little trouble with getting the connections, but I got there. It's also set in Edinburgh, and at least one person speaks in thick dialect. As that's a dialect I can parse, I kinda liked it, but I can see how it would get old.
Particularly after having finished reading a bunch of computer gaming stu...more
Halting State is a fascinating swerve: it's a Scottish Police Procedural set twenty minutes into the future, it has three character POV's, and it's entirely written in the second person.
But it's a superveniary second person: Stross successfully captures the mindstate of someone playing a first person shooter, combined with an esoteric puzzler, all told with his characteristic pyrotechnically precise voice. The plot is fairly straightforward: Officer Smith is called in on a bank robbery, only she...more
But it's a superveniary second person: Stross successfully captures the mindstate of someone playing a first person shooter, combined with an esoteric puzzler, all told with his characteristic pyrotechnically precise voice. The plot is fairly straightforward: Officer Smith is called in on a bank robbery, only she...more
Halting State purports to be a gamer novel (a la Ready Player One) but it's actually more of a near-future tech thriller with a side of politics.
It opens with the Scottish police being called in to solve a sort-of bank robbery in which a horde of orcs (with dragon support) have looted a virtual bank in a World of Warcraft style VR game. Before long it morphs into spy-vs-spy suspense with the financial security of the world at stake.
I had a tough time plowing through some of the Scottish. I'm gen...more
It opens with the Scottish police being called in to solve a sort-of bank robbery in which a horde of orcs (with dragon support) have looted a virtual bank in a World of Warcraft style VR game. Before long it morphs into spy-vs-spy suspense with the financial security of the world at stake.
I had a tough time plowing through some of the Scottish. I'm gen...more
You wonder why the author chose to write this book in second person PoV, when that writing mode is traditionally reserved for Choose Your own Adventure books and that odd shade of pornography where the camera is strapped to the pilot's head, all grunting into the camera-mounted mic and whatnot.
Then you the wonder why the author chose to write this book in second person PoV and include MULTIPLE CHARACTER POINTS OF VIEW.
You flail around for a few chapters, trying to wrap your brainmeats around th...more
Then you the wonder why the author chose to write this book in second person PoV and include MULTIPLE CHARACTER POINTS OF VIEW.
You flail around for a few chapters, trying to wrap your brainmeats around th...more
Oct 20, 2011
Andrew
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
science-fiction
An entire novel written in the second person might put off a lot of potential readers, and in this case just to make it more difficult to follow there are three main protagonists all of whom are referred to as ‘you’. However by writing in this way the author has very cleverly written in a style that both mimics the subject of his plot (on-line gaming) and might appeal to his target readership (gamers).
Back when most on-line games were text-driven they were nearly all second-person, and their imm...more
Back when most on-line games were text-driven they were nearly all second-person, and their imm...more
What a fascinating book this was!
As a quick summary, this is a near-future electronic crime mystery more than a scifi novel, but it's still a blast to read. There's distributed computing, cryptography, games that are effectively MMORPGs, and Alternate Reality Games thrown in the mix. I'm actually employed in the games industry, so I know a lot of the buzzwords used here, but even so I was looking up stuff on wikipedia to gain a little bit of background on the topics Stross brings up.
The book is...more
As a quick summary, this is a near-future electronic crime mystery more than a scifi novel, but it's still a blast to read. There's distributed computing, cryptography, games that are effectively MMORPGs, and Alternate Reality Games thrown in the mix. I'm actually employed in the games industry, so I know a lot of the buzzwords used here, but even so I was looking up stuff on wikipedia to gain a little bit of background on the topics Stross brings up.
The book is...more
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Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.
Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.
SF...more
More about Charles Stross...
Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.
SF...more
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“They can put the code monkey in a suit but they can't take the code out of the monkey.”
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2 people liked it
“She turns and stalks off in search of other minions to intimidate, leaving you flexing your fingers and trying to decide whether you want to strangle her or go down on your knees and beg for lessons.”
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Nov 03, 2012 06:40pm
Mar 21, 2013 04:40pm