Toast [Paperback]

Charles Stross (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2004

Short story collection containing such gems as "Antibodies," "Bear Trap," "Extracts from the Club Diary," "A Colder War," "TOAST: A con report," "A Boy and His God," "Ship of Fools," "Dechlorinating the Moderator," "Yellow Snow", "Big Brother Iron", "Lobsters".

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The title of Stross's provocative new SF collection—a revised, expanded version of a 2002 title of the same name—is a mordant reference to catastrophes at the climaxes of these 11 stories. In "A Colder War," a stand-alone sequel to Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness," monsters from outside space and time are liberated as weapons of mass destruction by Russia and the Middle East. In "Antibodies," a mathematical theorem undermines the foundations of all computer encryption systems, forcing fugitive behavior from the narrator who has depended on the anonymity they hitherto ensured. "Ship of Fools," written in 1995, evokes the epic scale of Arthur C. Clarke's fiction in its projection of dire technological fiascos that rock the world at the turn of Y2K. In Stross's worlds, virtual reality is the new frontier, AI is a fact of life and everyone is fluent in the sometimes impenetrable technogeek-speak that goes with the territory. For all that, his characters are familiar and sympathetic hackers, slackers and opportunists, whose lives have not been improved by their technological expertise, and whose adventures he interweaves seamlessly with the circuitry. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Cosmos Books (January 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809500256
• ISBN-13: 978-0809500253
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,939,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It Always Lands on the Buttery Side., January 5, 2005

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Toast (Paperback)

I am not a short story fan, which is odd, given my mouldering span of attention. But there is something irritating about a tale that is over just when you start to 'get' it. But I am a Charles Stross fan, one who discovered him late, and while desperately waiting for another novel to appear, I decided to try out his shorter output via this retrospective volume selected out by the author himself.

Stross has an incredibly wide-ranging imagination. He writes hard science fiction about very far out ideas. In fact the very first story here, Antibodies, is about a theoretical idea whose very existence can threaten reality. From there we go one to the economics of information in a very virtual universe, the coffee club that ate the world, what H. P. Lovecraft only suspected, and other, equally peculiar tales.

Stross's tongue is always squarely in his check, even as he displays an impressive intellect and a deep understanding of what the world inside a geek's head really looks like. I'm to old to be considered a geek any longer, but it is fascinating to read Stross's own spin on what was interesting about my own generation of 'techies' (the title story). And there is even a delightfully ironic narrative about a Y2K apocalypse cruise.

While I haven't been converted to a short story lover, my faith in one of the odder minds out there producing quality science fiction has been confirmed. This is a writer who first made his mark as a short fiction writer. If you want to see what the fuss is about, with the added pleasure of occasional comments by the author, start here.

4.0 out of 5 stars Patchy, but worth reading, December 31, 2010

By 

D. R. Cantrell (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Toast (Hardcover)

This collection of short stories has been available for some years now, being originally published in 2002, and containing stories written between the late 80s and 2000. This limited edition is supposedly the last one there will be, but it is still available in a mass-market paperback edition and online, although the online edition doesn't include one of the best stories, "A Boy And His God". The limited edition is worth buying though, simply because it's a far higher quality physical artifact.

As you would expect of a book containing some of the author's very earliest work, the quality is patchy. Some of the stories have dated badly, and others are poorly plotted or poorly written. However, there are four really good stories here that are well worth reading and which between them make the book worth buying.

The best two are "A Colder War" and "A Boy And His God", both of which use H.P.Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, and use it far better than Lovecraft himself ever did. "A Boy And His God" is particularly interesting, as it twists the mythos to be funny and even cute. Both are well-observed and eminently enjoyable. Also worth mentioning are "Big Brother Iron", which brings Orwell's "1984" up to date by exploring what might happen when Big Brother computerises his records, and "Lobsters", which was later turned into the first section of Accelerando.

All of the other stories have fairly serious flaws, but are at least worth reading as most of them do at least contain interesting ideas.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great retrospective, January 20, 2010

By 

R. Victoria (Longmont, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Toast (Paperback)

These are several short stories that were written before 1995, with a current commentary. It is interesting to see how technology has made some of these stories outdated, and some of them have held up. The commentary by the author adds interest. While many of the stories were clearly written in the early part of career, it is worth reading to see how his writing has improved and ideas have been expanded. Buy this if you like Stross' writing.