Halting State, by Charles Stross

While not exactly 1984, Halting State is set in a near future where the public is under constant surveillance. Cameras are ubiquitous in society: every corner of every street, on all forms of public transit, and between cell phones, smart glasses and wearable cameras, on virtually every person as well. Massively multiplayer online games are as much a staple of life as television is today and allows scrutiny of online behavior, and the role of the police has largely been reduced to reviewing video surveillance to enforce the law. People not only accept this level of vigilance as a matter of course, but have become utterly dependent on it. Sounds like an ACLU nightmare, but an entirely believable future nonetheless.

The mystery is around a supposedly impossible crime: a bank in cyberspace has been robbed. During the investigation a larger conspiracy is uncovered that revolves around international espionage and a next-level breakthrough in cryptography. A fairly pedestrian story, but set in this pseudo-dystopian future it becomes fascinating—a can't-put-down novel.

First Sentence:

It's a grade four, dammit.

The Hidden Family, by Charles Stross

This is the second book in a series that has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, this was about as uneven as the first one. The ability to travel to parallel worlds is fascinating, but doesn’t seem to be put to much use here except as a gimmick. There are a lot of storylines in this book, but it isn’t long enough to flesh any of them out. (I think Stross is trying to be Puzo here but can’t quite make it happen.) Follow this up by having several of the minor characters turn out to not only know about world-walking but actually have the ability and you have a disappointing novel. It didn’t suck, more like bubble gum for the mind. I’ll give this series one more try, but if it doesn’t get any better I’ll probably walk away.

First Sentence:

The committee meeting was entering its third hour when the king sneezed, bringing matters to a head.

The Family Trade, by Charles Stross

Alternate history is something I find fascinating. This series posits there are parallel earths and a small group of people can travel between them (think Sliders). Our hero suddenly discovers she has this ability and her life changes overnight. Because she was ignorant of the other worlds, we get to discover and explore this strange new place through her eyes. World walking provides the perfect, untraceable courier service; pick up a package in Columbia in our world, switch to the other, travel to where NYC would be and switch back. No customs, no tariffs, nothing. The author takes this idea and runs with it with some very interesting results. The characterization is a bit unsteady (the hero is nervous and wide-eyed one minute, and showing nerves of steel the next) but nothing is so jarring happens as to pull the reader out of the story.

There is no solid resolution to this book, as it is the first of a series, which I find somewhat irritating. Usually I try and avoid series that aren’t yet complete so I don’t have to wait a year between episodes. I didn’t here, but I will be looking for next chapters as they arrive.

First Sentence:

Ten and a half hours before a mounted knight with a machine gun tried to kill her, tech journalist Miriam Beckstein lost her job.

Iron Sunrise, by Charles Stross

I picked this up because I wanted something light to read on the plane. It had been a while since I’d read any hard science-fiction, and this looked interesting. About a quarter of the way in it became clear this wasn’t the first book in this universe (something not noted on the book jacket) but it was written well enough it didn’t matter.

While set in the far future, it had a noir feeling to me — instead of being set on a spaceship cruising between stars I could easily invoke the image of a train traveling in the dead of night, and the bad guys were thinly-disguised copies of Nazis. Even the names invoke images of the past: Frank the Nose, Martin Springfield and Rachel Mansour, and U. Franz Bergman.

A great speech comes towards the end by the lead rogue: “Everybody thinks they are doing the right thing, kid. All the time. It is about the only rule that explains how fucked-up this universe is. Nobody is a villain in their own head, are they? We all know we’re doing the right thing, which is why we’re in this mess.” I recently was in a discussion on the definition of evil; this sums it up well!

All-in-all, not a bad read.

First Sentence:

Just outside the expanding light cone of the present a star died, iron-bombed.