Product Description

It was called in as a robbery at Hayek Associates, an online game company. So you can imagine Sergeant Sue Smith's mood as she watches the video footage of the heist being carried out by a band of orcs and a dragon, and realises that the robbery from an online game company is actually a robbery from an online game. Just wonderful. Like she has nothing better to do. But online entertainment is big business, and when the bodies of real people start to show up, it's clear that this is anything but a game. For Sue, computer coding expert Jack Reed, and forensic accountant Elaine Barnaby, the walls between the actual and the virtual are about to come crashing down. There is something very dangerous and very real going on at Hayek Associates, and those involved are playing for keeps. No cheats, no back doors, no extra lives - make a wrong call on this one and it's game over.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22031 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
'A great read, and a fascinating look at the future of security in a massively networked world.' Bruce Schneier, CTO, BT Counterpane 'The first couple of pages had me hooked, and I didn't touch another book until I finished it.' John Carmack, Technical Director, iD Software and creator of Doom and Quake 'As keenly observant of our emergent society as it is our emergent technologies, Halting State is one extremely smart species of fun.' William Gibson 'Charles Stross is the most spectacular science-fiction writer of recent years. In Halting State, he has written a near-future story that is at once over-the-top and compellingly believable.' Vernor Vinge '[A] brilliantly conceived technocrime thriller' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (Starred Review) 'The Hugo Award-winning author's latest sci-fi technothriller whipsaws through a futuristic Scotland, where thievery inside a Second Life-esque online game can topple nations. Brimming with suspense and awash in contemporary references - evidently, iPods and Starbucks will still be popular in 2018 - Stross' storytelling is not only edgy and smart but grounded in human concerns, making HALTING STATE perfect fodder or n00bs and old-timers alike.' WIRED

About the Author
Charles Stross was born in Leeds, England, in 1964. He has worked as a pharmacist, software engineer and freelance journalist, but now writes full time.

Customer Reviews

Excellent (A Book Swede Review)
Halting State is a forthcoming title and will be published by Orbit in the UK in January of next year. It should be in the US sometime later this year.

Charles Stross has quickly become one of my favourite authors of science-fiction, so you can imagine my pleasure when this bound proof turned up unannounced on my doorstep a week ago for me to review!

A robbery at Hayek Associates--a robbery within one of their online games. An employee blabs to the police when he should have followed the correct procedural rules... Enter Sue Smith, a sergeant with the police, and a woman with much better things to be doing than chasing nerds round an office.

Until the first body shows up. Followed quickly by an EU elite anti-terrorism unit...

I've felt that too much was taken for granted of readers' knowledge in certain areas in previous Stross books--but this is not so with Halting State. There were occasional moments when I felt like I was about to drown in information, but it soon picked up again. Indeed, that was the only failing of this book, and a minute one at that. This book is the easiest of Stross' to sink into, and the pace is electrifying. Set in the near future, with the break-up of the United Kingdom, the main story takes place in Scotland (hence some of the slang and occasional weird spellings!), with a massive act of electronic terrorism urgently needing averting.

Halting State is, rather unusually told in second person narrative. That is to say, "You went" instead of "I went" or "He went". When I noticed that the multiple POVs were all to be told in this way, I was worried that it would become a bit too confusing. I was wrong. I got rather used to it, and it enmeshed the different story lines together rather well and much better than any other style of narrative would have.

The story and characterisation is typical Stross, that is to say, brilliant. There's no chance of second guessing all the twists and turns, which is what makes Stross such fun. A re-read will be necessary to put everything in order and that is something I look forward to greatly. It'll also be interesting in future years to see how things pan out--the events of this book are wildly unbelievable and yet totally plausible at the same time.

All in all, a cracking read, and the best book by Charles Stross I have ever read. A book definitely not to missed when it comes out to general release. Nothing seems capable of Halting Charles Stross; the State of his writing remains the same: getting better and better. Nine out of Ten.

For more fantasy/SF reviews, regular amazing competitions, and author interviews, visit: www.thebookswede.blogspot.com

Virtually brilliant
Halting State has an interesting and topical subject for a science fiction novel - an interactive web-game has been hacked by an unknown organisation who have stolen all of the virtual weapons and spells from their holding bank. Although the "bank robbery" is virtual, it nevertheless has serious repercussions for the product and the company who have developed it, since it is evidently going to affect sales of the game. It's a brilliant idea and the story flies along with plenty of incident and invention, Stross having a great deal of fun with gaming culture and those wrapped up in its worlds, while realising at the same time that it is a serious business.

The writing is quite dazzling, sparkling with sarcasm and humour (although bafflingly and for no good reason it is rather annoyingly all written in second-person - "you go here, and you do this" etc.), but it does become a bit heavy with tech-speak and eventually start playing out like a virtual game itself. It's clearly the intention of the writer to start blurring the lines between the real world and the virtual, but you'd probably have to be a gamer yourself to fully appreciate all the references and clever playing out of the situation.

"They're tunelling TCP/IP over AD&D!"
Near the end of this book, one of the protagonists blurts, "They're tunelling TCP/IP over AD&D!" And that line is a very good test for potentials readers, because if you understand it (and why it's kind of funny), you might enjoy the book. If you're scratching your head, well, you might still enjoy the book, but you're certainly in for a whole lot more head scratching along the way.

When you strip everything away, this near-future thriller is a cautionary tale about network and database security, and what can happen as our lives become increasingly wired and digitized. The premise is that someone has hacked their way into a MMOG and pulled off an in-game heist, thus triggering the involvement of a police sergeant, an unemployed software engineer, and a forensic accountant. The three characters are called in to investigate this crime and the chapters alternate between their perspectives.

Note that they are not the narrators -- that's because the entire book is written in the second person, a choice which some readers will absolutely hate. I didn't find it as grating as many reviewers did, but it certainly doesn't help the rather weak characterization). Unfortunately, the plot is awfully heavy with techie jargon and those who aren't network engineers or software developers (as the author has been), may find it rocky going. Similarly, the plot revolves around MMOGs and ARGs, and if you're not familiar with this kind of computer and live action gaming, you might get a little lost. In both cases, there are lots of nuances and inside jokes which will fly right over your head (I think I got about half of them). Finally, if the second person voice, techie and gaming jargon don't put you off, there's also a bit of Scots dialect to decipher (I didn't have a problem with it, but other readers seemed to really struggle with it.).

Probably the best thing about the book is the setting (Scotland, circa 2018) and the author's projection of how technology might have evolved over the last decade in ways that affect us all. It's very plausible and convincing -- which makes the story that much more interesting when it all goes pear-shaped. And when it does start to go wrong, the scale shifts from contained crime to all-out infowar, complete with international hacker crews and EU black ops squads. While I could see the point being made by such a shift in scale (a country, even an superpower, totally destabilized via hacking/infowar), it also moved the book into conventional disaster/thriller turf, which I'm not a huge fan of.

I'm a very occasional reader of science fiction, and I prefer my sci-fi to be immersive and contained. The first half of this book does a good job of setting up near-future Scotland and how society might be slightly different, but as it went on and the techspeak got more and more complex, and the stakes went through the roof, I found myself less and less engaged. To be fair, I am neither an online gamer, nor a computer techie, but I have plenty of friends who are, and I think they might find it a little bit more fun of a read than I did.