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Halting State by Charles Stross
01/11/2007 . Source: Tomas L. Martin 
pub: Orbit. 351 page enlarged paperback. Price: £10.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-84149-694-8. Buy Halting State in the USA - or Buy Halting State in the UK  check out website: www.littlebrown.co.uk and www.orbitbooks.co.uk
I've always thought Charles Stross was incredibly talented and had the potential to write modern classics in SF. Reading some of his books like 'Accelerando' and 'Iron Sunrise', I felt he was getting awfully close to that point, with fantastic world building and quirky sense of humour. I'm happy to report that 'Halting State' is the first of his that jumps straight to the top of the essential reads list.
Set a decade or two into the future in a Scotland that has ceded from the UK, the book asks questions about what will happen when online gaming becomes even more complicated and invasive than it is now?
When police are called to an online game company to attend to a robbery, an in-game theft of magical items wasn't quite what was expected. When the money brought in by the company contributes tens of millions of euros to the Scottish economy, even online events by hordes of orcs take on bigger significance in the real world.
As Sergeant Sue Smith investigates, programmer Jack Reed and accountant Elaine Barnaby are called up to Edinburgh by one of the company's creditors, looking for accountability. The three of them uncover links to Chinese conspiracies and strange special agents discouraging their every move.
Stross paints a wonderfully vivid and believable near-future Scotland where cars are remotely controlled and high-speed trains link major cities. Scores of tiny little asides reveal technological and sociological differences with today and add a layer of extra interest to an already genius storyline.
The analysis of what might happen when virtual worlds get almost as detailed and complicated as the real one is the core idea of the book. The supposition that once there are hundreds of virtual worlds that can be accessed on the inside of your sunglasses, terrorists, intelligence agencies and crooks will start using them to organise their activities surreptitiously is inspired.
The choice of characters and the use of humour are more restrained and seemingly in check than some other Stross books I've read. 'Halting State' uses a thriller-style that complements his intelligent world-building well. Although I've enjoyed all the work by the Scottish author, this is the first where I felt the style didn't detract and distract from the overall experience.
There are easy comparisons to be made in the techno-thriller style and the clever extrapolations of the Internet to writers like William Gibson and the rest of the cyberpunk movement. The great thing about Stross' work here is that although it feels similar to such work, it's also more grounded in current political and technological trends and feels closer to today's reality than a lot of work.
Stross is coming to the end of his contracts for many of his series and this book is already breaking into best-seller territory, encouraging him to write more in this vein. Near-future SF is an underused sub-genre and I hope Stross continues to excel in showing how important it can be to all of Science Fiction.
Tomas L. Martin
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