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Rule 34 (Halting State) [Kindle Edition]

Charles Stross
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $7.99 includes free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
Sold by: Penguin Publishing
This price was set by the publisher

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Book Description

Meet Edinburgh Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh, head of the Innovative Crimes Investigation Unit, otherwise known as the Rule 34 Squad. They monitor the Internet for potential criminal activity, analyzing trends in the extreme fringes of explicit content. And occasionally, even more disturbing patterns arise…
Three ex-cons have been murdered in Germany, Italy, and Scotland. The only things they had in common were arrests for spamming—and a taste for unorthodox entertainment. As the first officer on the scene of the most recent death, Liz finds herself sucked into an international investigation that isn’t so much asking who the killer is, but what—and if she doesn't find the answer soon, the homicides could go viral.


Editorial Reviews

Review

“The act of creation seems to come easily to Charles Stross…[He] is peerless at dreaming up devices that could conceivably exist in 6, 60 or 600 years’ time.”
The New York Times

“One of the most intelligently and philosophically detailed near futures ever conceived. Dazzling, chilling, and brilliant.”
Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“A savvy, funny, viciously inventive science fiction novel.” Cory Doctorow, author of For The Win

"Entertaining and propulsive storytelling." Locus
(x )

Review

“The act of creation seems to come easily to Charles Stross…[He] is peerless at dreaming up devices that could conceivably exist in 6, 60 or 600 years’ time.”
The New York Times

“One of the most intelligently and philosophically detailed near futures ever conceived. Dazzling, chilling, and brilliant.”
Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“A savvy, funny, viciously inventive science fiction novel.” Cory Doctorow, author of For The Win

"Entertaining and propulsive storytelling." Locus
(x )

Product Details

  • File Size: 540 KB
  • Print Length: 369 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1841497738
  • Publisher: Ace (July 5, 2011)
  • Sold by: Penguin Publishing
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B004Y3I6XW
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Enabled
  • Lending: Not Enabled
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,041 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
91 of 99 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Follow-on from Halting State July 7, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Charlie Stross is one of the new SF shining stars with an amazingly refreshing approach to his work. This sparkling novel takes place in the near future (15-30 years out)and is a follow-on to Halting State (Ace Books, 2008) but is not a sequel by any means and you don't have to read HS first. Only one character, Detective Inspector Liz Cavanaugh, returns from that story.

The plot is very difficult to summarize without spoiling it completely. So here are the skeletal details:
It is a detective novel, writen entirely from the characters' perspectives as it moves from character to character. It extrapolates everything excessive in our current culture and creates an almost dystopian Scotland of 2035. It is very sexually explicit. There is coincidence after coincidence. There is a secret behind the scenes that you only glimpse at first before it makes itself known. This revelation almost makes you want to reread the book because the story takes on an entirely new interpretation. Though very grisly, there are many humerous moments and you will find yourself laughing out loud through long portions of this book. Highly recommended, one of the year's best so far.
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars pretty good near future non-dystopic SF book July 13, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Ok, I read this pretty much as soon as I got it - and I'm re-reading it now so it's probably to early to really write this review since this is a book that really takes multiple readings to wrap your head around. It's sort of like The Sixth Sense [Blu-ray] - you watch it and you know there's stuff going on that you don't quite see, but it's really cool and it drags you along, and when you're done and you go "Oh!" and it's so much cooler now because you understand and you go back and read it again and go "OH!!" at all those points where you knew there was something else going on but you weren't in the right place to see it. This is that kind of book.

This is a sequel to Halting State, but pretty much there's only one character from that book in this book, and she was just on the edges of Halting State, so really it's a standalone book in the same universe. It also feels like sort of a prequel to Accelerando but maybe that's just me, and that might even be giving too much away.

The basic story is sort of a police procedural (but not really?) combined with a "Life 2.0" or even maybe "Life 3.0" primer about how the world will be after all the bubbles burst and cheap auto-fabbing technology is available on the "village blacksmith" level. With pervasive computing made simple with virtual technology and pervasive observation by the government, and work assignments by smart engines (think amazon's mechanical turk, or crowd sourcing) because everything's so complex a person can't really manage the chaos, mix police, manic killers, auditors (a carry-over theme from Halting State), and a legal system to complex for a person to do the actual charging, into some frothy satisfying deep stoutish beer of wonder. And yes, there is a small subtheme of brewing beer in this.

To me this felt more utopian than distopian - the characters in the book might not have had great lives but there weren't killer androids lurking in the streets or police dragging people away on the flimsiest of excuses, people worked, they had what they needed, they had magic gadgets that could make most anything with the right magic spells you culd download from the internet (but keep your virus checker up to date!), so I'd think it's more better than worse ;).

There is some talk of kinky sex in this (ok, I know, I'm an adult, I should be able to just ride over this, but I wouldn't let my son read this yet, which is sad cuz he'd like alot of it I think) but no kinky sex scenes, as such, it was more like a horror movie - have kinky sex and get what's coming to you.

All in all - while it wasn't a total surprise the ending was pretty satisfying and pretty much promised at least one more sequel (I don't think he's killed this series yet!) which I'm looking forward too, especially if he folds this book's events in with some of the characters from Halting State.
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36 of 40 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Great SF, mediocre Stross August 12, 2011
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'm giving this three stars because I'm grading on a curve -- this is mediocre in comparison to Stross's earlier work, although probably a 4-star when compared to other sci-fi. Since most people, at this point in his career, probably read Stross because he's Stross, that seems fair to me.

I'm a big-to-huge fan of a lot of Stross's other novels, especially the Eschaton (Singularity Sky/Iron Sunrise) and Laundry (Atrocity Archives/Jennifer Morgue/Fuller Memorandum) series. I have not read Halting State, and didn't realize that Rule 34 was a sequel to Halting State until after I'd read Rule 34. So, full disclosure: my tepid response to Rule 34 might be because I wasn't familiar with the Halting State world.

I don't think so, though; Rule 34 seems like a collection of nifty ideas that fail to cohere into a good book. The first problem, for me, was the choice of a second-person narrative voice. I found it to be irritating, and almost literally tiring, and never really got used to it. There's a reason fiction is almost never written in that voice: it's inherently distancing and disorienting for the reader. I found it especially off-putting here, because it was combined with a narrative structure in which the "viewpoint," such as it was, appeared to jump from character to character (so the "you" was a constantly rotating around 10 or so characters). I'm sure this was a quite deliberate choice, and I'm sure that Stross is saying something about the substance of the novel with that choice -- spoilers prevent me from saying more -- but even though I get it, it still didn't work for me.

Second, the plot did not flow terribly well. It felt like the first 3/4 of the book was devoted to introducing the characters and setting the scene, leaving just the last 1/4 to "solve" the mystery that was preoccupying the characters. I thought the resolution was rushed and not terribly coherent. I understand the double twist at the very end of the book (I think), but I don't believe it, nor do I think it flows very naturally from what had come before.

It's still a Stross book, which means it's often very funny, and usually very clever. But I'd recommend starting elsewhere if you're new to Stross.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Minutes - and, perhaps, a bit more - into the future.
This is a police procedural novel set in Edinburgh, capital of the independent nation of Scotland, some time in the very near future - "near future" as in about 10 years from... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Peter S. Bradley
4.0 out of 5 stars Funny and Inventive
Charles Stross's books often take me a long time to read, because there's so much inventiveness and imagination in his ideas that I keep putting the book down and going 'whoa, let... Read more
Published 1 month ago by J.D. Rhoades
4.0 out of 5 stars Haggis, anyone?
"Rule 34" is best characterized as a cyberpunk crime novel with a Scottish accent. The writing is taut, the characters are well fleshed-out (multiple meanings), and the story... Read more
Published 2 months ago by John Selegean
1.0 out of 5 stars Live the author, hated this book
After reading the reviews, I decided to buy this book. It was a huge mistake. It took so long to get anywhere. I was not worth the time I spent to read.
Published 2 months ago by Dianne
4.0 out of 5 stars Stross is just so damn entertaining
Mr. Stross just does not write bad stories. This fits right in with his his other novels about the "near" future.
Published 3 months ago by George S.
3.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre at best
First, let me be clear that Rule 34 is an R-rated book, due to sexual content. You've been warned.

The narrative jumps from character to character, and the timing isn't... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Chad Cloman
4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Good Yarn
This is a detective story set in the near future and written in second person present tense, so the writing style will not be for everyone. Read more
Published 4 months ago by William Young
3.0 out of 5 stars It's still Stross, but maybe not as much as before
It's not the greatest of Stross's novels. I rather hoped for another solid near-future scifi story but the science was a bit lacking and the ending unconvincing. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Allan Edwin
4.0 out of 5 stars Typical Stross
Typical Stross style weaving multiple stories lines together. Ending was a little less than satisfying like this book is the first part of series.
Published 5 months ago by KDH
4.0 out of 5 stars All Right, Really
(In contrast to "Realy all right!") This foray into the "Halting State" world is grittier - physical production, forsooth! Read more
Published 5 months ago by P. Weiser
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More About the Author

Charles Stross, 47, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of six Hugo-nominated novels and winner of the 2005 and 2010 Hugo awards for best novella, Stross's works have been translated into over twelve languages.

Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped-catastrophes in the past, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stake-out) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing he tried to change employer just as the bubble burst).


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More than the hardback!
It shows now as cheaper, not sure what is was before. Amazon notes:
Sold by: Penguin Publishing
This price was set by the publisher
I blame the publishers - they are trying to slow the death of paper publishing, but will drive authors to self publish digitally.
Jun 10, 2011 by Joseph A. Stewart |  See all 6 posts
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