David Wooddell
David Wooddell asked Charles Stross:

I love your novel Rule 34, it has such a cockeye sense of looking sideways; and then I discovered the audio book of Rule 34, and fell in love with the work all over again. Do you plan any sequels to Rule 34?

Charles Stross I began work on "Rule 34" in 2007, but had to defer it for a year due to the global financial crisis — near future SF is closely dependent on current circumstances! So I didn't finish it until 2009 and it was published around 2010, if I remember correctly.

I originally planned a third novel, making it a trilogy (the first being "Halting State"). But by the time I was ready to begin work in 2012, it had run into what I call the Scottish Political Singularity: that is, with an independence referendum coming up, then the Brexit referendum on the horizon, it was utterly impossible to visualize the likely shape of the political future in Scotland. And then we hit 2017, which is the year "Halting State" is set, and the world has simply changed too much to press forward with the original plan.

This doesn't mean I'm not going to write another book along similar lines; it's actually on my to-do list. But because of other items that have locked-in deadlines, it can't be published before 2019 (even if I schedule it as rapidly as possible), and it won't be an explicit sequel — more of a thematic one.

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