/var/log/orava

Charles Stross is a great writer who manages to convey a lot of heavy-duty ideas within (at times) quite action-oriented and fast-to-read plots. I think there are two classes of books that he writes: the “serious” stuff (Singularity Sky, Glasshouse, etc), and the “fun” stuff (the Merchants’ War series, Atrocity Archives, etc). Halting State is firmly in the lightweight & fun category, even though it does contain some musings on the role of pervasive wireless connectivity and such.

The plot revolves around near-future MMORPGs and the culture(s) around them. If the word “MMORPG” doesn’t ring any bells, this is not the book for you. In general, I found this book extremely funny, but lots of the jokes depend on knowledge of computers, networking and various kinds of gaming. At one point, a character yells “they’re tunneling TCP/IP over AD&D!”. Again, if you didn’t understand that, skip this book. If you understood it and found it funny or bizarre… read on. You might just like this crazy romp.

So, the plot. We have a bank robbery, and some investigators sent to… well, investigate. The problem is that the theft was a bunch of virtual property from a virtual bank (by orcs, to boot), and the main investigator actually works for an insurance company and is in way over her head. Enter a befuddled hacker, some local (Edinburgh) police, some Interpol-like MIBs, the Chinese state intelligence agency and various other players. Things escalate from “just” a weird insurance investigation to death threats, assassination attempts and a zombie flash crowd.

So, it’s mostly pure fun, aimed squarely at (online) gamers and others on the semi-bleeding edge of current tech – and it’s probably more than a bit opaque to other readers. Among the more serious bits, it posits an interesting near-future society where everyone is online all the time thanks to pervasive wireless connectivity via (eye)glasses; a society where the very concept of being “lost in a strange town” is alien, since everyone has real-time GIS navigation feeds active (in addition to hundreds of other real-time helpers). Is that where we’re going? And is it a good thing or bad?