Cover Artistry / Recommended Reading: 'Halting State' by Charles Stross

Filed by: Darren Turpin on January 4, 2008 at 16:54
Filed under: Books

Via the Orbit Books website, I've just caught my first glance of the cover for the new Charles Stross novel Halting State [Amazon], which Orbit will publish later this month.

And here it is:

'Halting State' by Charles Stross

I read Halting State towards the end of last year and, although I didn't manage to find time to talk about it at the time (much to my annoyance), I'm jumping in late to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and can recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good crime-solving caper that's simultaneously a bit of a laugh.

It's set in a near-ish-future Glasgow Edinburgh (and bits of Glasgow) in which Web 2.0 Wizardry - of the sort that we're all just about getting used to at the moment, and then some - has become commonplace and largely mainstream and more widely applied. So for instance: your glasses-shaped personal heads-up display will show you a) exactly where the next bus is and how far that would be from the stop you're currently standing at, and b) which of the hoodie-clad teenagers on the top-deck are red-tagged with ASBO warning flags. Very useful, if you ask me.

It's also a near-ish-future in which virtual gaming is big, big mega-business. So when a virtual robbery that takes place within one of the leading commercial game worlds it turns out to have ramifications far, far beyond the theft of a smattering of electronic loot, especially once it's linked to an actual, real, meatspace-murder.

Enter one recently-unemployed coder, one career-ladder climbing e-insurance investigator and the hapless local constabulary, un-aided, obstructed and generally made to feel unwelcome by everyone, from the M.D. of the gaming co that's been robbed, to a passing EU cybercrime special forces unit...

All in all, it's a tightly-plotted whodunnit that rattles along, and is thoroughly steeped in geek culture to boot (Paul R, James B, Ed A and definitely Joe G, you guys should definitely be reading this one if you haven't already). And there are lots of delightfully nerdy in-jokes throughout, although I have to stress that it's far from being a humour novel per se, in the sense that, say, a Tom Holt or Robert Rankin book would be. Rather, it's got the same sort of dry, chuckle-provoking wit that you get from Iain Banks at his best, or from Michael Marshall Smith's early sf novels. Think 'sarcastic semi-sentient domestic appliances', rather than 'demonically-possessed video game controllers' and you won't be far off the general tone.

The thing is, though, do you really get that impression from the cover? Don't get me wrong, having read the book I think it fits the story quite well. But then I've read the book, so I have the benefit of hindsight, and the cover isn't having to work to sell the book to me as a potential reader. I also think I know exactly which potential readers Orbit are hoping to hook with this approach to jacketing Halting State; readers of the likes of Douglas Coupland...

'Microserfs' by Douglas Coupland - Click for ordering info from Amazon.co.uk      'JPod' by Douglas Coupland - Click for ordering info from Amazon.co.uk

...which is a pretty shrewd marketing move if you ask me and one that will hopefully help to flip the book over into mainstream consciousness, with the higher sales potential that's thereby implied and that the book definitely deserves.

Although - and here's what worries me - given that Charles Stross is a well-established SF author, and that bookstores do tend to be fairly anal about the whole categorisation / shelving thing... isn't there a danger that Halting State will just be dumped into the sf section as a matter of course? And that once there, the colourful, cartoonish sprites will give it the sort of Holt / Rankin air that could put off even some readers of Stross's hardcore sf novels? What does everyone else think?

Personally, I hope that the strength of Stross's ever-growing reputation will help carry it forward regardless of placement, and that plenty of general sf readers will read good reviews (like the ones flagged by Orbit), see past the cover - if indeed they do have a problem with it at all - and give the book a go. It's certainly recommended by me, for what that's worth...

And (equally, for what it's worth) if I was in the marketing department at Orbit, I'd be sending a pack of 10 copies to the editorial departments of Wired, T3, PC Gamer and every other gadget / computer game / geek magazine in the UK (and the US* Australia as well, assuming an international launch) just to get those guys talking about it on their own message boards and blogs. Because I reckon that's where the pay-off for Halting State is going to be. But then, knowing Orbit, they'll have thought of that one already...

* My bad: the US edition is published by Ace Books, not Orbit...

Filed on: January 4, 2008
Filed under: Books
Tagged With: | |

Comments

10 Responses to 'Cover Artistry / Recommended Reading: 'Halting State' by Charles Stross'

  1. Paul Raven on January 4th, 2008 5:44 pm

    Yeah, read this one early last month, going to try to have it reviewed in the next few weeks. I really liked it, but the hardcore space-opera crew aren't going to dig it, I'm thinking - this ain't no Iron Sunrise. Hence I think the cover is a good plan - differentiating it from other sf is a very wise move, and (as you point out) makes it fit with that Coupland vibe. Be interesting to see what the Slashdot/BoingBoing set make of this one ...

    I only hope Orbit wrote a more accurate PR for it than the Debatable Space job. Sheesh.

  2. Darren on January 4th, 2008 6:05 pm

    Ah, good! I was hoping it would have crossed your radar, mate. Glad you enjoyed it as well. I think you're right about the hardcore space-opera crew, but with any luck that'll be a small enough sub-set of Stross's overall readership that it won't have too drastic an impact. As a flip-side to that, I recommended Halting State to a mate of mine recently, stressing that it wasn't out quite yet. He's a much more general reader than me - albeit with definite genre leanings - and he thought he'd try another Stross book in the meantime. Iron Sunrise, I think, but whichever one it was he wasn't too keen on the future-tech / space opera element. So it goes both ways, I guess.

    And yeah, I reckon you're right that the BoingBoingers could be key. Let's hope they get behind it. And again, I assume Orbit have got that angle covered already...

  3. Joe Sherry on January 4th, 2008 6:53 pm

    The US cover, while striking, does not have nearly the level of retro geek cool that the UK cover does.

    Which then questions what the marketing plan for Halting State in the US is, compared to the UK.

  4. Darren on January 4th, 2008 8:27 pm

    Hi Joe - Good point, although it looks like I didn't double-check my details properly: the US edition of Halting State has been published by Ace rather than Orbit, so obviously the methods will be completely different and out of Orbit's hands as they'll be focusing on the UK, obviously... although possibly Australia as well... so my comment about the geek mags stands with an amendment.

  5. Ed on January 4th, 2008 10:06 pm

    While I may just qualify as belonging to the space opera crew, I'm not hardcore enough and so allow myself to read other stuff. Having said that my only experience of Mr Stross is Singularity Sky, which while it did have some great bits didn't leave enough of a positive impression to want me looking for more. Might check this one out when it appears though. There's bound to be a sample from it floating about somewhere.

    As for the cover you never know where it might end up in the Belfast Waterstones. Richard Morgan's Black Man is under mainstream fiction, and I've seen a couple of others whose names escape me in that section too.

  6. Chris on January 6th, 2008 10:03 pm

    It is a very cute cover, though if you ask me it could be considered too nerdy.

    The US cover doesn't do it for me either.

  7. Joe on January 7th, 2008 11:34 pm

    Yeah, the US edition was a few months back, Charlie's mate Cory Doctorow bigged it up on Boing Boing (which is fair enough because it struck me as a book most Boing Boingers - including me - would love). Really enjoyed it, nice mix of Charlie's sarcastic humour, the mundane and playing with speculating about technology while riffing on both politics and modern media fears like internet fraud and the way virtual games leak into real life.

    Just one thing though - most of it is set in Edinburgh, not Glasgow :-) Yes, it does go to Glasgow for a convention but most of it is set in Edinburgh, including the nuclear bunker setting which is actually real and is located on Corstorphine Hill a few minutes from where I went to college.

    Bang on the money about the potential crossover appeal though

  8. Darren on January 9th, 2008 12:51 pm

    most of it is set in Edinburgh, not Glasgow :-)

    D'oh! Of course it is, my bad. In my meagre defence, it is a couple of months since I read it, and I've got a memory like a... you know... thingy, holes in it...

  9. Joe on January 17th, 2008 9:24 pm

    S'alright, mate, I know we Scots all look the same to you :-) heheh

  10. Ed on February 3rd, 2008 3:40 pm

    Hear Charles talking about the book and reading from it at Authors@Google

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApcNzwy9Zas

Leave a Reply






Technorati


Technorati Authority:

View blog authority

Add to Technorati Favorites

Miscellania


British Blog Directory. Blog Flux Directory