Early
science fiction speculated only here and there on the possibilities of gaming
and alternate realities in virtual space.
Arthur C. Clarke’s The City & the Stars mentions the idea in passing, and in William Gibson’s Neuromancer the larger possibilities
begin to emerge. Later writers, like
Neal Stephenson, Greg Egan, Ted Chiang, and David Marusek for example, expanded
life in virtual reality into whole stories and novels. But it is Charles Stross who has fully
understood and embraced the ever-expanding realities of gaming and second lives
and included them in fiction. A science
fiction realm if ever there were, his 2007 Halting
State—part gamer’s gush, part conspiracy theory, and all nerd rapture—is a
prime example of contemporary society’s involvement in virtual worlds.
Halting State is the story of three people and the
political, technological, and virtual mess they get themselves into with a
popular computer game. Edinburgh
detective, Sergeant Sue Smith, is called to the scene of a bizarre crime in the
opening chapter. What looks like a
concrete bunker on the outside is actually the headquarters of Avalon 4, a massive multiplayer online
game, and they have just been robbed.
Not the petty cash drawer or the source code of their wildly popular
game, rather the virtual bank that exists inside Avalon 4, and all of its virtual items and money. Elaine Barnaby is an insurance fraud
investigator. Her company called in to
investigate the Avalon 4 case, her
job only becomes more surreal as the investigation moves from the real world
into the virtual, and her own role in the proceedings even murkier as the sides
lose concrete shape. And lastly is Jack Reed.
Waking up hungover and handcuffed to a signpost in Amsterdam, his status
as an unemployed programmer takes a turn for the better when Elaine’s firm
requires his technical expertise to help investigate if or how the virtual
crime was pulled off. Insider
trading? An opportunistic
hacker/player? Insurance fraud? As more and more details of the case are
unveiled, the more and more complex the world—and our world—become.
Halting State is a combination of classic detective
story and early 21st century understanding of online gaming and its associated
legalities, corporate interplay, governmental information interests, and global
network possibilities. In presenting his
story, Stross caters to a tech-savvy audience by using relevant lingo and
gaming and sys-admin slang, but likewise has a broader view to the to the
pervasive reality of video games, their position in the IT sector, and the
influence they have on corporate and market interest amongst ordinary
people. The writing often addressing
modern identity and police state concerns, the side comments and metaphors
typically fit better in the meta-context of story than the story itself.
Halting State written in the second person, Stross
tries to bring the gaming experience to the novel. The quality of the result depending on
perspective, readers more accustomed to video and computer games will probably
find being directly addressed less noticeable than readers more accustomed to
first and third person narratives. For
many, it may be the first story they’ve ever read in the second-person, and for
this will at least be a novel experience (har). While for others still, the
second person view will blend the three main characters together rather than
distinguish them, and thus be something of a detriment. It’s also worth noting that in developing the
idea, Stross tries to parallel virtual life to real life via the experiences
had by the characters in and out of alternate reality. Regardless of narrative perspective, the
parallel adds a small amount of depth to the story, but considering it is not
expanded significantly, leaves the focus on plotting and relevant geekery.
For those
familiar and accepting of Stross’ style of writing, Halting State will be more of the same warm, happy goo. Peanut gallery comments on corporate life and
minor digressions touching upon some super-nuanced detail of the IT sector,
nearly every page contains some direct or indirect reference to modern (i.e.
technologically replete) life. Numerous,
numerous are the similes and metaphors attempting to be both humorous and
clever. Many in fact witty, they are
offset by more which fall flat. The
novel overwritten, Stross can lay it on thick as peanut butter (see what I
mean), as per the following lines:
It’s like that
first alcoholics anonymous meeting: “Hi, my name is Jack. And I have a code
problem.”
You’re a grown-up,
these days. You don’t wear a kamikaze pilot’s rising sun headband and a
tee-shirt that screams DEBUG THIS! and you don’t spend your weekends competing
in extreme programming slams at a windy campsite near Frankfurt, but it’s
generally difficult for you to use any machine that doesn’t have at least one
compiler installed: In fact, you had to stick Python on your phone before you
even opened its address book because not being able to brainwash it left you
feeling handicapped, like you were a passenger instead of a pilot. In another
age you would have been a railway mechanic or a grease monkey crawling over the
spark plugs of a DC-3. This is what you are, and the sad fact is, they can put
the code monkey in a suit but they can’t take the code out of the monkey.
In the
end, Halting State is an original
novel about the illicit possibilities of online gaming attached to the
scaffolding of a standard detective story/nerd’s dream (i.e. programmer saves
the day and gets laid). Owing as much of
itself to Asimov and Niven as Gibson and Stephenson, Stross nevertheless
injects his own style into the proceedings.
Part of the generation which saw the rise of the internet and can
understand the changes it has brought to society, a knowledge of programming
and networks and experiences working cubicle space endow the narrative with
appropriate degrees of tech and cynicism.
This cynicism captured in infinite similes and metaphors, as well as
the plot’s conspiracy theory undercurrent, the novel is likewise a post-modern
text of distrust: with so much information available, just who to believe?
Stross one of a kind nevertheless, he remains one of the unique spots in modern
science fiction, and will be recognized as such in the future—paranoid or not.
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