Halting State: Charles Stross

In Charles Stross' vision of the future, the gamers inherit the earth. It's ten years in the future, Scotland has declared independence, and wireless technology is being used for everything from police work to taking the bus. Anonymity is a thing of the past, and VR goggles and heads-up displays are as ubiquitous as today's iPods. The games people play are immersive full-body experiences, with so many players they have their own economies and virtual borders (complete with immigration issues).

Narrated by three protagonists, Halting State is a techie's whodunit. Sue, a no-nonsense Edinburgh police sergeant whose phonetically-spelled brogue gave me the giggles, is in over her head investigating a bank robbery within a World of Warcraft-style game. Elaine is a London-based fencer and a forensic accountant for a consulting firm. She's on the team called in on behalf of the venture capitalists, to determine whether the bank robbery is an inside job. Elaine's team hires Jack, the socially-awkward game programmer, to help figure out what happened.

This is a crime caper, so there are twists and turns, and a whole slew of potential bad guys committing robbery, blackmail, murder, espionage and terrorism, to name a few. Each narrator views the case through a unique lens, and it's fun to see their different takes on the same events. Their perceptions of each other change through the course of the book, as well, and there's a cute but predictable love-interest angle that develops.

What's the winter equivalent of beach reading? Airport lit? Fireside fiction? However you label it, this is a refreshingly fun read, and I'm recommending it to my tech-nerd friends. Caveat lector - there's a lot of geek-speak, mostly courtesy of Jack. It establishes the credibility of the plot nicely, but if you're not into technical language, feel free to skim over it. There's usually a plain-English summary for the benefit of the other characters nearby.

Quirky, well-drawn characters, a complex-yet-plausible plot, comfortable pacing and atmospheric locations - Stross does it all with style. My only real beef is his heavy-handed name-dropping of present-day companies. The first few mentions do what they're supposed to - remind the reader that, despite all the new technology, we're only ten years in the future. After a while, though, it just becomes distracting to stop and consider whether Google will still be the search engine of choice in a decade. That's a fairly minor nit to pick, though, and it shouldn't stop anyone from grabbing a copy of Halting State.

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Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Ace Hardcover (October 2, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0441014984
ISBN-13: 978-0441014989
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