I wanted to mention, however, that this description:

There’s a quite serious and interesting underlying point here. What makes the generalized confusion possible are the unexpected consequences of a set of technologies and social practices. Communications built on open, trusting protocols such as TCP/IP. The confluence of real life and online activities. People’s willingness to do pretty well anything as long as they think it’s a ‘game.’

Reminded me of most of Pat Cadigan books in one way or another (Tea From an Empty Cup and Dervish is Digital most explicitly, but her earlier novels as well).

That isn’t particularly relevant, except that she’s my favorite of the cyberpunks, and seems worth mentioning in this conversation.

I’m of the opinion that HS is Charlie showing off. I mean this in a good way, of course. Let me explain.

Because HS isn’t as accessible (or even as readable) as some of his other work, it is likely to only make the favorites list of only those of us who appreciate the art and audacity of what Charlie has done. (Or those few who missed the writing strength, but found some part of it resonated especially well with them.) What do I mean by art and audacity?

Let me start with Audacity: Charlie set HS in what is universally recognized as the most difficult time period to write Science Fiction about; the near future of what is clearly our own world. Few have pulled it off with good results. (Can we say Gibson, Brunner? There are others.) Moreover the near future of HS is ‘right around the corner’. Speaking as someone who works in the mobile device industry I can tell you that all of the technology in HS could be delivered in a couple of years, and might well be! (Note: Required network infrastructure won’t be well deployed.)

Now, Art: The reason Charlie’s use of second person in HS stands out so much is that almost no one does it. It is difficult to read for anyone used to first or third person and probably equally difficult to write. Moreover it isn’t well suited for character driven narrative because you are placing the reader, with her or his own opinions and life choices, into the mindset of the narrative character. This potentially leads to mental-modeling confusion and must be handled carefully.

So, in HS, Charlie simultaneously made two extremely difficult choices. And then he made them work in a story which not only was a ripping good tale, it also revealed something important about us and the future we may soon reside in.

Yeah, Charlie was showing off. Like a master tightrope walker doing two hard tricks at once, he was showing off to the other tightrope walkers (and wannabe tightrope walkers) in the audience. “See! It can be done!”

Accelerando in comparison to “Lobsters” does drag a bit at the end, the relentless pace can’t quite be sustained, but it’s still an impressive book.

Merchant Princes is good entertainment—plane flights, etc., but not his best.

Me! I do too! And Iron Sunrise has been hardly mentioned at all . . .

(Can’t really put together a fair list myself yet as I haven’t read Saturn’s Children or Halting State yet. And I found Merchant Princes unreadable at the end of the third book, but maybe I’ll pick the rest of them up and give them a second try.)

As to Russell’;s (#5) objections I don’t think Charlie himself is making the argument quite as Henry puts here: it’s quite clear in the book that while things do get out of hand and the social networks are unpredictable, governments and the deep state for the most part are able to control them. There is nothing new about intelligence agencies using unpredictable but deniable third parties after all.

My top five of Stross stories would be:

1) Halting State
2) Saturn’s Children, cover and all
3) “Lobsters”
4) Atrocity Archives/Jennifer Morgue
5) “A Colder War”

Media is supposed to have an open structure, but TPTB here has as much an interest in controlling what the masses see as those of Soviet Russia. However, to disguise that control, they use monopsony control instead of monopoly control so they can have market forces explanations for censoring activities. However, this control is not at all firm, but TPTB think that all of the factions (Big TV, Big Radio, Big Publishers, so forth and on…) both are on the same page and have control. In actuality, they are confused from having to juggle technology, rationales, industry needs, misanthropic talent, etc, etc.

One of the reasons why I liked Halting State as much as I did, is that I think it is utterly prophetic about the nature of our economic problems. I cite the Media now, because Fringe’s obvious homages to convention normativity was really bugging me tonight (making me worried about paranoia). The Market, on the other hand, well, guess what? It played out damn near exactly like the book. The reasons why it happened, the activities, etc, etc. Except we don’t know how it ends, only that this time, it’s not some human who decides how calm returns to the global economy.

A couple of links to the research I mentioned:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~wheatley/research_animacy.html
and http://www.searchmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-October%202008/full-Valley.html

The dominating bit is a mighty big presumption. I’m sitting here watching my mailbox fill up with inane Obamoid fanboy nonsense about how little old me can send my ideas directly to The President. As I ruminate on how dumb this is, coming from the very best manipulator of social networks so far, I confess I don’t see a path to HS style social constructions.

I finished HS about noon my time today and an hour later all this stuff plopped into my rss reader. Synchronicity at least, if not singularity.

The issue of trust frameworks and groups is in the zeitgeist: see e.g. Little Brother or Ringo’s The Last Centurion (not in the same class of writing, and both cruder and [much!] more right-wing, but contains nuggets). One of the things that I liked about the treatment in HS was the prompt to consider how we may move from nationalism in self-identification towards groups formed on the basis of online interactions (and that leads to Gibson-like musing on how the role of nations may change and diminish, and so on). I wonder whether identity will go through the stages that photography has, recently: a brief moment where it was possible to have proof of ID followed by a move into everything other than direct personal experience being fungible?

I really enjoyed the confusion – both ours and the characters’ – as to the role of real-world enforcement in the online realm. I’m not actually convinced that the crime with which the book beings is really plausible; but maybe I simply need to go spend a few thousand hours in WoW :). Regardless: glorious and thought-provoking read.

1. Halting State
2. The Merchant Princes
3. The Atrocity Exhibition.
4. Accelerando.
5. The Jennifer Morgue (aka The Fry Who Loved Me)