7 ms·

Why there won't be a third book in the Halting State trilogy

82 points by danohuiginn 13y ago

kabdib 13y ago
Dammit, Charlie, stop writing predictive near-future fiction! :-)
- walshemj 13y ago
  Actually I could think of some nasty disutopias post Scottish independence if there's a hung election and the hardline nats get their way.
  - teh_klev 13y ago
    Well go ahead and enlighten us rather than trolling this thread with baseless Better Together FUD. Edit: I just saw the full version of your comment on Stross's website: "And post Independence disutopias I could think of a few real world nasty outcomes for that as my Red Clydeside comrade said the NAT's have a (now well disguised) nasty sectarian/racist streak." Disclosure: I've been a SNP voter for all of my voting life (~29 years) and a card carrying member on and off during that time. I've encountered many criticisms about the SNP, some of which I agree with, others not, but that's quite a serious accusation and one I've never encountered, maybe you could cite examples of this? I've met plenty of sectarian voters who vote Scottish Labour (having campaigned for the party in Glasgow many times), but I wouldn't accuse the Scottish Labour party of having a hidden seedy sectarian underbelly.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      The scare stories in the press seem to be going the other way - accusing the SNP of planning to allow mass immigration post Independence: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/444422/Prepare-the-border-posts-fears-over-SNP-immigration-policy http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/444422/Prepare-the-border-p...
    - walshemj 13y ago
      yeh you right its both "traditions" As one of my Scottish colleagues said the thing that saddened him him about Scotland was the "nasty element of anti englishnes" and sectarianism that was common. And he was very knowledgeable about scotish politics and his facility with "engineering" language makes malcom tucker look like a middle class mommys boy. There are parts of Scotland where I would feel uncomfortable coming from a mixed (RC/PROD) background. I could see a post Independence Scotland pandering to right wing anti emigration lobby and or religious or anti gay presure - the same thing happened in Northern Ireland John Major had his feet held to the fire by the hardline unionists - I think thats on the far end but in the context of a future sf dysutopia not that much of a stretch after all coutrys like Holland had far right politicians making ground.
      - arethuza 13y ago
        "I could see a post Independence Scotland pandering to right wing anti emigration lobby and or religious or anti gay presure" There are far right nutters everywhere - but I like to think we actually have relatively few of them in Scotland, certainly UKIP seems to be doing remarkably badly here: http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/11/18/ukip-s-scotland-operation-falls-apart http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/11/18/ukip-s-scotland-op...
        walshemj 13y ago
        Well the EU is seen positively by Scotland as it gets a fair bit of subvention for infrastructure. Though go to one of the fishing ports and ask a Scottish fisherman about fishing quotas and You might get a different answer.
        teh_klev 13y ago
        The EU and Europe is seen as valued by Scots because of things like the European Convention on Human Rights [1] which the current Westminster government are doing their damnedest to undermine. Also Europe is a huge trading partner for Scotland. I'm not saying the EU is without its faults, but at least an Independent Scotland would ensure Scots have a better say in European policies than the efforts being made by Cameroon and Co. I agree that fishing in Scotland has suffered badly over the past 20 years, but the blame is squarely with Westminster and the Scottish parliament hasn't been able to do much to reverse the current situation because it's a reserved matter. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...
jwr 13y ago
The message is very clear: Charlie, you must write faster. Because of your lazy ways, you're not keeping up with reality, and reality has just caught up with you (in the sf writer world that is a bad thing, remember). So crank it up already.
- kbenson 13y ago
  Not necessarily. Gibson has weathered it well, IMHO.
  - auxbuss 13y ago
    I think jwr is attempting to wind-up Charlie, given his notoriety for tweeting his daily word counts and the degree of trauma that this has caused him; often doused by evening libations in a local hostelry. None of which is an excuse for his sluggishness.
alan_cx 13y ago
I reckon that there must be a lot of writers out there thinking: "Hell, it was meant to be a cautionary tale, not a creepy government manual". Although, I do think that in essence we are seeing nothing new from governments, just new ways to perform the old tricks, with greater efficiency. Hmmmm, now I wonder if the actual problem is efficiency. We mere humans are pitted against technology we simply have no sporting chance against.
- salient 13y ago
  Yeah, the last thing we need is another manual for how governments should control the society in the future, as if 1984 wasn't enough. My guess is the people in NSA are already thinking about how to implement a Minority Report-like pre-crime system, that can be shared with all government agencies.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Precrime has been around since at least 2001 when the no-fly list was created.
- walshemj 13y ago
  Been done "niccolo machiavelli" wrote the book a while back now.
- jseliger 13y ago
  I reckon that there must be a lot of writers out there thinking: "Hell, it was meant to be a cautionary tale, not a creepy government manual". People have a habit of doing this with lots of narrative art. My favorite example is the movie Wall Street, which was apparently supposed to be a cautionary tale about what happens what the amoral will do anything to make money. Instead, a lot of people saw it and thought, "Gee, it looks like you can make a lot of money in finance—and greed is good." Never mind that a villain makes the speech and that the quote is mangled! It's a movie telling us that it's a good idea to follow our worst instincts, so let's do it!
- acdha 13y ago
  > Hmmmm, now I wonder if the actual problem is efficiency. We mere humans are pitted against technology we simply have no sporting chance against. Efficiency is exactly the problem: there are many examples of laws which the public would not tolerate with 100% enforcement – the most basic example being things like speeding or jaywalking but it applies to more serious things as well: imagine if the penalties against, say, gay or interracial sex had been enforced against every activist possible because the government was tapping everyone's phones.
gaius 13y ago
That's fine, I'd rather another Laundry book anyway.
- JulianMorrison 13y ago
  Except, those sorta feel a bit worryingly realistic too, these days.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    Yes real question is will Bob ever get that cat5 cabling project finished
jobigoud 13y ago
I love Charles Stross but I've had a really hard time with the second person narrative in Halting State.
- Sharlin 13y ago
  At first it felt weird, after a few pages it started to feel like a fun gimmick, and after a few more pages I didn't really even notice it anymore.
chiph 13y ago
UK leaving the EU. Scotland leaving England (but presumably still a Commonwealth nation...). So take that to the extreme, with the return to city-states, Burning-Man style with citizens moving house in their shipping-container homes as their loyalties/desires change.
- jerf 13y ago
  One of the great stories of the political landscape today is the... impedance mismatch, for lack of a better word... between technology enabling ever more decentralized control (and for "control", read "government"), and the fact that everywhere you look, centralized governments are expanding their power. It's one of those thing we're all too close to see clearly, and I do not exempt myself from that problem, but I suspect in a hundred years it'll be one of the "big stories" told about this time period.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Strange how centralized governments everywhere are expanding their power under what are, universally, "small government" neoliberal regimes.
    - Nutella4 13y ago
      Not strange at all. Neoliberals are for big government everywhere except government regulation of big business. They want government and big business to work together as one organization of plutocrats to control everything.
      - eru 13y ago
        Have you burned all the strawmen, yet?
        jerf 13y ago
        Again, by words, "nobody" wants that. By actions... there's plenty of governing official that clearly do. Many of them have a "liberal" label on them. Many of them have other labels on them, too. Labels aren't as interesting as actions, though; distracting people with labels is one of their prime tools.

82 points by danohuiginn 13y ago

kabdib 13y ago

Dammit, Charlie, stop writing predictive near-future fiction! :-)

walshemj 13y ago
Actually I could think of some nasty disutopias post Scottish independence if there's a hung election and the hardline nats get their way.
- teh_klev 13y ago
  Well go ahead and enlighten us rather than trolling this thread with baseless Better Together FUD. Edit: I just saw the full version of your comment on Stross's website: "And post Independence disutopias I could think of a few real world nasty outcomes for that as my Red Clydeside comrade said the NAT's have a (now well disguised) nasty sectarian/racist streak." Disclosure: I've been a SNP voter for all of my voting life (~29 years) and a card carrying member on and off during that time. I've encountered many criticisms about the SNP, some of which I agree with, others not, but that's quite a serious accusation and one I've never encountered, maybe you could cite examples of this? I've met plenty of sectarian voters who vote Scottish Labour (having campaigned for the party in Glasgow many times), but I wouldn't accuse the Scottish Labour party of having a hidden seedy sectarian underbelly.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    The scare stories in the press seem to be going the other way - accusing the SNP of planning to allow mass immigration post Independence: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/444422/Prepare-the-border-posts-fears-over-SNP-immigration-policy http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/444422/Prepare-the-border-p...
  - walshemj 13y ago
    yeh you right its both "traditions" As one of my Scottish colleagues said the thing that saddened him him about Scotland was the "nasty element of anti englishnes" and sectarianism that was common. And he was very knowledgeable about scotish politics and his facility with "engineering" language makes malcom tucker look like a middle class mommys boy. There are parts of Scotland where I would feel uncomfortable coming from a mixed (RC/PROD) background. I could see a post Independence Scotland pandering to right wing anti emigration lobby and or religious or anti gay presure - the same thing happened in Northern Ireland John Major had his feet held to the fire by the hardline unionists - I think thats on the far end but in the context of a future sf dysutopia not that much of a stretch after all coutrys like Holland had far right politicians making ground.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      "I could see a post Independence Scotland pandering to right wing anti emigration lobby and or religious or anti gay presure" There are far right nutters everywhere - but I like to think we actually have relatively few of them in Scotland, certainly UKIP seems to be doing remarkably badly here: http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/11/18/ukip-s-scotland-operation-falls-apart http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/11/18/ukip-s-scotland-op...
      - walshemj 13y ago
        Well the EU is seen positively by Scotland as it gets a fair bit of subvention for infrastructure. Though go to one of the fishing ports and ask a Scottish fisherman about fishing quotas and You might get a different answer.
        teh_klev 13y ago
        The EU and Europe is seen as valued by Scots because of things like the European Convention on Human Rights [1] which the current Westminster government are doing their damnedest to undermine. Also Europe is a huge trading partner for Scotland. I'm not saying the EU is without its faults, but at least an Independent Scotland would ensure Scots have a better say in European policies than the efforts being made by Cameroon and Co. I agree that fishing in Scotland has suffered badly over the past 20 years, but the blame is squarely with Westminster and the Scottish parliament hasn't been able to do much to reverse the current situation because it's a reserved matter. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...

jwr 13y ago

The message is very clear: Charlie, you must write faster. Because of your lazy ways, you're not keeping up with reality, and reality has just caught up with you (in the sf writer world that is a bad thing, remember). So crank it up already.

kbenson 13y ago
Not necessarily. Gibson has weathered it well, IMHO.
- auxbuss 13y ago
  I think jwr is attempting to wind-up Charlie, given his notoriety for tweeting his daily word counts and the degree of trauma that this has caused him; often doused by evening libations in a local hostelry. None of which is an excuse for his sluggishness.

alan_cx 13y ago

I reckon that there must be a lot of writers out there thinking: "Hell, it was meant to be a cautionary tale, not a creepy government manual". Although, I do think that in essence we are seeing nothing new from governments, just new ways to perform the old tricks, with greater efficiency. Hmmmm, now I wonder if the actual problem is efficiency. We mere humans are pitted against technology we simply have no sporting chance against.

salient 13y ago
Yeah, the last thing we need is another manual for how governments should control the society in the future, as if 1984 wasn't enough. My guess is the people in NSA are already thinking about how to implement a Minority Report-like pre-crime system, that can be shared with all government agencies.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Precrime has been around since at least 2001 when the no-fly list was created.
walshemj 13y ago
Been done "niccolo machiavelli" wrote the book a while back now.
jseliger 13y ago
I reckon that there must be a lot of writers out there thinking: "Hell, it was meant to be a cautionary tale, not a creepy government manual". People have a habit of doing this with lots of narrative art. My favorite example is the movie Wall Street, which was apparently supposed to be a cautionary tale about what happens what the amoral will do anything to make money. Instead, a lot of people saw it and thought, "Gee, it looks like you can make a lot of money in finance—and greed is good." Never mind that a villain makes the speech and that the quote is mangled! It's a movie telling us that it's a good idea to follow our worst instincts, so let's do it!
acdha 13y ago
> Hmmmm, now I wonder if the actual problem is efficiency. We mere humans are pitted against technology we simply have no sporting chance against. Efficiency is exactly the problem: there are many examples of laws which the public would not tolerate with 100% enforcement – the most basic example being things like speeding or jaywalking but it applies to more serious things as well: imagine if the penalties against, say, gay or interracial sex had been enforced against every activist possible because the government was tapping everyone's phones.

gaius 13y ago

That's fine, I'd rather another Laundry book anyway.

JulianMorrison 13y ago
Except, those sorta feel a bit worryingly realistic too, these days.
- walshemj 13y ago
  Yes real question is will Bob ever get that cat5 cabling project finished

jobigoud 13y ago

I love Charles Stross but I've had a really hard time with the second person narrative in Halting State.

Sharlin 13y ago
At first it felt weird, after a few pages it started to feel like a fun gimmick, and after a few more pages I didn't really even notice it anymore.

chiph 13y ago

UK leaving the EU. Scotland leaving England (but presumably still a Commonwealth nation...). So take that to the extreme, with the return to city-states, Burning-Man style with citizens moving house in their shipping-container homes as their loyalties/desires change.

jerf 13y ago
One of the great stories of the political landscape today is the... impedance mismatch, for lack of a better word... between technology enabling ever more decentralized control (and for "control", read "government"), and the fact that everywhere you look, centralized governments are expanding their power. It's one of those thing we're all too close to see clearly, and I do not exempt myself from that problem, but I suspect in a hundred years it'll be one of the "big stories" told about this time period.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Strange how centralized governments everywhere are expanding their power under what are, universally, "small government" neoliberal regimes.
  - Nutella4 13y ago
    Not strange at all. Neoliberals are for big government everywhere except government regulation of big business. They want government and big business to work together as one organization of plutocrats to control everything.
    - eru 13y ago
      Have you burned all the strawmen, yet?
      - jerf 13y ago
        Again, by words, "nobody" wants that. By actions... there's plenty of governing official that clearly do. Many of them have a "liberal" label on them. Many of them have other labels on them, too. Labels aren't as interesting as actions, though; distracting people with labels is one of their prime tools.