Halting State

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Halting State is a novel by Charles Stross, published in the United States on October 2, 2007 and in the UK in January, 2008.^[1] Stross has said that it is "a thriller set in the software houses that write multiplayer games".^[2] The plot centers around a bank robbery in a virtual world^[3]. It features speculative technologies, including Specs and virtual server networks over mobile phones. The book is already on its second printing in the United States.^[4] It is written in the second person at least in part as an homage to the Adventure games.

Contents 1 Speculative technology in Halting State 2 Social commentary 3 Characters 4 Footnotes

[edit] Speculative technology in Halting State

• Specs are speculative computer display technology, reminiscent of the goggles worn by Manfred Macx in his earlier work, Accelerando and the helmet from Ken MacLeod's The Star Fraction protagonist Moh Kohn, as well as the 'magic glasses' described by Hans Moravec in his 1988 book Mind Children. Specs consist of paired high resolution CCD-like cameras with dual high resolution screens mounted into a form factor comparable to a pair of sunglasses. In addition to serving as a wireless HUD as a part of a wearable computing personal area network, they perform image processing on visual information to correct for near-sightedness and astigmatism.^[5]
• Anonymous Electronic Money
• Onion Routing
• Freenet Cryptography
• GNU Radio

[edit] Social commentary

• The novel refers to the Genarlow Wilson case: being a minor, a teenage boy gets in trouble with the law for sexual activity with a teenage girl.

[edit] Characters

• Nigel, programmer at SprocketSource
• Sue, Edinburgh Detective Sergeant
• Elaine, insurance fraud investigator
• Jack, recently laid-off programmer and expert on MMORPGs

[edit] Footnotes