More books
I was planning to watch Resident Evil: Retribution, but M_ came in and put on The Rachel Maddow Show. This is somewhat unusual, so I'm not about to object. Still, I don't feel a need to watch it since I'm fully informed on world events after watching The Daily Show with Jo[h]n Stewart Oliver.
So... books.
We begin with Halting State by Charles Stross. This is a near-future techno thriller set in the UK. The initial premise seems somewhat silly... a bunch of characters inside a fantasy-based MMO rob a "bank" and make off with a lot of high value items. It's actually a big deal on several levels, though. Most immediately, MMO games are big money so messing with them affects a lot of people. Because they're big money, there are corporate interests. As any WoW or EVE player can tell you, Economy Matters in a long persistence game; let that get destabilized and you won't have any paying players. So, big games tend to hire companies to help manage their internal economies. These companies themselves have financial interests which brings us to the second level... insurance. The company responsible for the bank has underwriters who'd like to avoid making a big payout by proving the company screwed up. And that brings us to the third level... technology. Stealing those items outside the normal mechanics of the game means that certain crypto technologies are apparently compromised. Which matters A Lot since the same tech controls lots and lots of other things from remote-driven cars, to banking, to police and government functions.
The plot bounces around three different characters. Sue is a local police officer who gets called in by a panicky manager right after the robbery. In-game tech crime isn't exactly a local police function, but once the report is filed, they're involved. Elaine is a rising star at the insurance company trying to avoid paying out if the bank company goes under. She's tasked with handling the investigation from the figure-it-out-so-we-don't-have-to-write-a-check level. She needs expert advice on technology and gaming, so she hires Jack, a recently laid off game programmer. The three of them take turns in different chapters as they start peeling apart what happened and realize that things may be much, much worse than one piddling game hack.
The style is a little weird. All the chapters are written in second person (directed at that chapter's protagonist), but the characters think internally in the first person. Something along the lines of "You thought to yourself, I wonder if he's lying?" I got used to it pretty quickly, but some reviewers found it very off-putting. I don't see that it added anything, so I assume Stross was just trying it for its own sake. In a lot of ways, it reads like William Gibson's newer stuff, but maybe a little more rooted. Gibson tends to give you small, personal stories that circle the edge of Bigger Things. Despite similar themes, Halting State is much more immediate and - at least by the end - isn't being coy about what's going on.
Overall, I liked it.
I wrote more than I meant to about Halting State, so let's be brief talking about Calvin Trillin's Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse. As the title implies, this is a book of poetry recounting the 2012 election. It begins with all the rising and falling Republican wannabes and of course ends with the general between Romney and Obama. I thought it sounded like a cute idea, but it mostly left me cold. There wasn't much in the way of humor - at least nothing as funny as The Daily Show's original coverage - and the poetry didn't inspire. Give it a pass.
Which brings me to Dodger by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs. Set in Victorian London, this is story of a young man bearing a certain resemblance to the Artful Dodger of Oliver Twist. Dodger is a tosher - one who hunts the storm drains for valuable detritus - and is well respected in his community. He rooms with an old Jewish man who tries to force a degree of education and decorum down Dodger's throat. Dodger is intelligent (if ignorant), has good people skills (if no manners), and is basically good-hearted. When he encounters a battered young woman trying to escape from some thugs, he intervenes and rescues her. This is witnessed by Charlie (Dickens) and Henry (Mayhew) who take the girl in and engage Dodger to help investigate her circumstances. Ultimately, this will bring Dodger into contact with Sweeney Todd, Benjamin Disraeli, Robert Peel, and a collection of other Victorian notables. Through a combination of luck, wits, and ambition, Dodger winds up with his life suddenly on a very different vector indeed.
This was a fun read. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the personalities or the history, but it made for a perfectly good adventure novel.
Okay, it's late. Off to bed with me!
Total for the year: twenty-eight.
This entry was originally posted at http://squidminion.dreamwidth.org/367112.html.
There are
comments there. You could add one via OpenID.
Or you can comment here if you'd rather; it's okay.
So... books.
We begin with Halting State by Charles Stross. This is a near-future techno thriller set in the UK. The initial premise seems somewhat silly... a bunch of characters inside a fantasy-based MMO rob a "bank" and make off with a lot of high value items. It's actually a big deal on several levels, though. Most immediately, MMO games are big money so messing with them affects a lot of people. Because they're big money, there are corporate interests. As any WoW or EVE player can tell you, Economy Matters in a long persistence game; let that get destabilized and you won't have any paying players. So, big games tend to hire companies to help manage their internal economies. These companies themselves have financial interests which brings us to the second level... insurance. The company responsible for the bank has underwriters who'd like to avoid making a big payout by proving the company screwed up. And that brings us to the third level... technology. Stealing those items outside the normal mechanics of the game means that certain crypto technologies are apparently compromised. Which matters A Lot since the same tech controls lots and lots of other things from remote-driven cars, to banking, to police and government functions.
The plot bounces around three different characters. Sue is a local police officer who gets called in by a panicky manager right after the robbery. In-game tech crime isn't exactly a local police function, but once the report is filed, they're involved. Elaine is a rising star at the insurance company trying to avoid paying out if the bank company goes under. She's tasked with handling the investigation from the figure-it-out-so-we-don't-have-to-write-a-check level. She needs expert advice on technology and gaming, so she hires Jack, a recently laid off game programmer. The three of them take turns in different chapters as they start peeling apart what happened and realize that things may be much, much worse than one piddling game hack.
The style is a little weird. All the chapters are written in second person (directed at that chapter's protagonist), but the characters think internally in the first person. Something along the lines of "You thought to yourself, I wonder if he's lying?" I got used to it pretty quickly, but some reviewers found it very off-putting. I don't see that it added anything, so I assume Stross was just trying it for its own sake. In a lot of ways, it reads like William Gibson's newer stuff, but maybe a little more rooted. Gibson tends to give you small, personal stories that circle the edge of Bigger Things. Despite similar themes, Halting State is much more immediate and - at least by the end - isn't being coy about what's going on.
Overall, I liked it.
I wrote more than I meant to about Halting State, so let's be brief talking about Calvin Trillin's Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse. As the title implies, this is a book of poetry recounting the 2012 election. It begins with all the rising and falling Republican wannabes and of course ends with the general between Romney and Obama. I thought it sounded like a cute idea, but it mostly left me cold. There wasn't much in the way of humor - at least nothing as funny as The Daily Show's original coverage - and the poetry didn't inspire. Give it a pass.
Which brings me to Dodger by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs. Set in Victorian London, this is story of a young man bearing a certain resemblance to the Artful Dodger of Oliver Twist. Dodger is a tosher - one who hunts the storm drains for valuable detritus - and is well respected in his community. He rooms with an old Jewish man who tries to force a degree of education and decorum down Dodger's throat. Dodger is intelligent (if ignorant), has good people skills (if no manners), and is basically good-hearted. When he encounters a battered young woman trying to escape from some thugs, he intervenes and rescues her. This is witnessed by Charlie (Dickens) and Henry (Mayhew) who take the girl in and engage Dodger to help investigate her circumstances. Ultimately, this will bring Dodger into contact with Sweeney Todd, Benjamin Disraeli, Robert Peel, and a collection of other Victorian notables. Through a combination of luck, wits, and ambition, Dodger winds up with his life suddenly on a very different vector indeed.
This was a fun read. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the personalities or the history, but it made for a perfectly good adventure novel.
Okay, it's late. Off to bed with me!
Total for the year: twenty-eight.
This entry was originally posted at http://squidminion.dreamwidth.org/367112.html.
There are
comments there. You could add one via OpenID.
Or you can comment here if you'd rather; it's okay.