15th January, 2008
The Future is Now.
Two books; one set in the very-near future, one set today, both eerily familiar to me.
Halting State by Charles Stross.
Our first book for today is set a few years into the future and essentially is a technological whodunit that is probably going to be filed under sci-fi for its speculative nature (even though aliens, stellar travel, etc. are all glaringly absent). Stross has continued to mature as a writer and I think I enjoyed this book more than any others he has previously written. (In the very least, I rank it alongside with Accelerando).
As I mentioned, this book contains some speculative fiction, something that Stross does very well when he wants to, and there were numerous moments in the book where I had to pause and think to myself “didn’t that happen in real life?” (As an aside, Stross has posted some life-imitating-art moments on his blog). Good stuff.
4/5 gogs.
Spook Country by William Gibson.
Now on to the latest work by William Gibson. It seems like every time he writes a new book, the story is set in a time that is closer and closer to the present day. Either that, or he’s still placing all his stories in the same time and the world is just marching toward the future that he describes. ::creepy::
Regardless, this book is chock-full of of references to the real world and its happenings. Someone has even put up a website documenting these things. All I can say is apparently Gibson frequents the same sites as I do, because reading this book was like reading a description of my browsing habits for the past couple of years. Despite these eerie/creepy/GTFO-of-my-head-Gibson moments, I rather enjoyed how he spun it all together and came up with a believable and fun-to-read story.
4.2/5 gogs.
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