Book Review – Halting State
Author: Charles Stross
Cover Artist: Sophie Toulouse
Publisher: ACE
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: October, 2007
Halting State is Charles Stross most recent published effort, published by Ace Books (US) in 2007 and by Orbit (UK) in January of this year. The book features, as you would expect from a science fiction work, a number of speculative technologies, including those that can be characterized as ‘speculative computer technology’. Most notably, virtual server networks over mobile phones are part of that equation. Indeed so, with his latest novel Charles Stross seemed to have tapped into a well of technology that’s rapidly expanding and growing. In a time where virtual MMOs (massive multiplayer online games) have greeted their tenth million active player (World of Warcraft anyone?), it was just a matter of time before these virtual realities would become the subject of interest in speculative fiction works.
At first glance, it seems to be the subject of Halting State. When the book opens Sue Smith (a police sergeant) is called in to investigate a robbery of a banking company called Hayek Associates. The company is a diversified economics consultancy and market-maker. Interestingly enough, they run virtual central banks for ORGs [massively multiplayer online role-playing games] and try to stabilize the economies of seventeen imaginary realms.
As you might guessed, Hayek Associates isn’t your average banking company and neither is this your average bank-robbery. Instead it encompasses something more than ‘normal’ street-crime. To avoid things getting things out of hand and to clear up the mystery surrounding the crime, Sue wires in a specialist from London, Elaine (an insurance fraud investigator). Then Sue proceeds to hire Jack, a recently laid-off programmer and expert on MMOs. Bundling forces together, Elaine and Jack must investigate how the virtual bank was robbed and more importantly, why it was robbed. They have swallowed the red pill. Little do they know how deep the rabbit hole goes..
When we move away from the plot for a second, the other thing that struck me in Halting State was the second person narrative. I admit I approached the narrative hesitantly at first, as it is in some way quite unnervingly a voice is addressing you, the reader, without interference of the characters. However, once I had bitten through the sour parts of the apple, I found it this perspective almost as natural as a first or third person would feel in the same kind of situation. It worked out well for me and it created a sort of intimacy between the narrator and the reader as if I was somehow being confided in. The example below illustrates this intimacy a bit (while cracking a typical ‘Halting State’ joke ).
“Ms. Barnaby is looking at you with an expression you last saw in primary third, when Mrs. Ranelagh didn’t deign to notice you wee waving hand in time to give you a toilet ticket.
“Yes?” she asks, compressing so much data into a twenty-four-bit monosyllable that if you could patent the algorithm, you’d be set for life.” (p. 98)
Ultimately though, Halting State is a bit disappointing. The novel starts great, with a mysterious email sent to “Atn. Nigel” (with a spam-weighting of 70% “probable but worth a look”). The intro is thought-provoking and immediately sucks the reader right in. Stross then proceeds to introduce us, or rather ‘you’, to the major players, before kicking the plot into jumpstart. At that point it is safe to say, we’re dealing with a techno thriller with the emphasis on the techno part, not so much on the thriller part. The chapters that follow are the moments where Stross’ visionary ideas fully come to their right. You don’t have to be a computer wizard to appreciate the way Stross’ integrated the concept of virtual realities in a near-future setting. If you are however, I’d reckon the books are probably even more rewarding, as Halting State is one of the few efforts that hits the nail on its head with its accurate portrayal of the speculative computer technology. Jay once said, when working on his top 200 list: “Stross perhaps accomplishes the most believable geek characterization I have ever read.” When I was working on this review, this statement suddenly came back to me. So if you pardon me for shamelessly copping it here, I think it does rings very true in these parts.
Sadly all good things must come to an end, and so it is in Halting State. In fact, coming to an end long before the finale. Around the 200 page mark, the emphasis slowly but steadily began to shift from the ‘techno part’ to the ‘thriller part’. As a result of this shift, there seemed to be less room for speculation and as a result less room for writer Charles Stross to shine. Stross does stubbornly try to push his story to a climax, but in the process gets all tangled up in a blur of confusing morals, conflicting interests and hit-and-run action scenes that doesn’t have nearly enough impact for it to be a convincing thriller novel. Where the novel was structured in the first parts, it dissolves into a chaotic blur in the latter. And this is disappointing, because the novel had much potent ideas to begin with.
So rounding up, Halting State is convincing as work speculating on technology and where it will take us. It offers an unique reading experience in the form of a second person perspective, which is unnerving at first but greatly enjoyable once you’ve gotten out the starting blocks. The novel however pretends to much more than “just” a speculative work but doesn’t really convince as techno thriller. Ultimately this is disappointing, because Charles Stross’ can be a visionary writer when his ideas are not undermined by a lack of care for the other aspects of his novels.
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