Customer Reviews

Wireless

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been a fan of Charles Stross writing ever since I encountered his homage to Lovecraft in _A Colder War_. This volume reprints that story together with eight others of varying lengths. If you prefer novel-length stories you should be aware that two of the titles (_Missile Gap_ and _Palimpsest_) are substantial enough to hold their own with much longer works.

The first story, _Missile Gap_, is set on an Earth that has been translated to a giant flat disk and set in an ocean with many other translated worlds. It's a little bleak - don't expect a bunch of plucky humans to triumph because of their native can-do-it-ness. The vast godlike forces that could do something like this would be practically oblivious to the survival of species, let alone individuals.

The second is _Rogue Farm_: A farmer has to deal with a post-human entity that wants to use his farm as a launching site. It's a very short (and light) work and I didn't really care for it.

_A Colder War_ is one of my favorite stories. Charles Stross uses Lovecraft's stories as the basis for an alternate history Cold War thriller. It's *very* bleak - the best possible outcome is the annihilation of humanity. I'd love to see this as a graphic novel.

_Maxos_ is a vignette originally published in _Nature_. It's quite funny and deserves more elaboration.

_Down on the Farm_ is set in Stross's Laundry universe (_The Atrocity Archives_, _The Jennifer Morgue_) which use Lovecraftian horror as their background (they're related but not connected to _A Colder War_ which also appears in this collection). The Laundry stories seem to follow a standard pattern - the narrator is thrust into a crisis where things are not what they appear and he has to save the day through improvisation, facing eldritch horrors which are often less frightening than the nightmare that is government work. I liked this story, but it doesn't really stand alone. I'd recommend reading Stross's _The Atrocity Archives_ first.

_Unwirer_ was written with Cory Doctorow. The hero is part of a team that sets up wireless networks against government and MPAA interference. It's surprising how well the two authors' styles merge but it's not a very deep story.

_Sonwball's Chance_ is a deal-with-the-de'il story (I once read that every author has to do one of these) that taps into Stross's interest in planetary engineering and government bureaucracy. It's short and slight but worth the read.

_Trunk and Disorderly_ is a Wodehouse pastiche. I used to like Wodehouse but I just couldn't get into this story. The author notes its relationship to _Saturn's Children_: if you were a big fan of the latter you might appreciate this more.

The last story, _Palimpsest_ is nearly worth the price of admission by itself. It's more than a little reminiscent of a famous story by Isaac Asimov but so, so much better. The key to time travel is held by an organisation that wants to stop humanity going extinct. To do this it periodically re-seeds Earth with populations taken from earlier iterations of humanity and, between epochs, does things like re-ignite ths sun (which ought to have burned out within a few billion years). This story has it all - deep time, stellar engineering, time travel, paradoxes, the Singulaity and more. The author notes that it's a novella that wanted to be a novel, and I think it feels a little constrained. None the less, it's an amazing read and highly recommended.

I gave this book five stars. There were a few stories I didn't care for, but that's true of any collection. The gems of this collection would be worth buying on their own and justify the ranking.

From the short and funny MAXOS to the long and dark Missile Gap, Wireless is an amazing tour through Stross' futuristic world view.

Central to this view is the observation that if there is anything out there in the stars it will surely defy our comprehension. To some extent, Stross is an atheist theologist. He draws equally from the various Abrahamic traditions as well as literary, pop, and tech culture and speculates on what an incomprehensible godlike intelligence could be like. When he isn't exploring Lovecraftian horrors or post-singularity strong-AI, we get a glimpse into the near future or alternative near-pasts.

From a content to volume perspective, Wireless is the anti-Baroque Cycle. While both Stephenson's and Stross' work cover a broad conceptual space, Stephenson does so in a single story that spans three volumes and thousands of pages. Stross delivers numerous stories that together fit within hundreds of pages.

Readers familiar with Stross' previously published works will enjoy the new explorations of familiar ideas presented in Wireless. Readers encountering Stross for the first time will have an opportunity to drink from the fire hose, one gulp at a time.

For a fan of Lovecraftian fiction there are some good reasons to get this collection. If you don't have a copy of Toast, Wireless will give you a print copy of A Colder War. In my view this is one of the most brilliant Cthulhu mythos stories of the modern era For other top stories I suggest The Doom That Came to Innsmouth by McNaughton and Final Draft by Annadale). It is true to Lovecraft's cosmicism and to his essential bleakness. It also was genre bending when written, in the same sense Delta Green was. The nightmares lurking behind corners are not secret; they are well realized by governments that try to keep them secret or exploit them for gain. Another good reason to get this book is Down on the Farm, the latest Laundry novella. If you have The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue, and are impatiently awaiting The Fuller Memorandum, here is your latest fix. So far Down on the Farm is unavailable in print elsewhere. As is typical for his Laundry series, I was grandly entertained. Finally, some might argue, but I think the cosmic vision of Missile Gap has echoes of Lovecraft for its non-humancentric viewpoint.

There was not one story here I did not thoroughly enjoy, although Trunk and Disordely was amusing rather than hilarious. Fans of Wodehouse may like it better. Palimpsest has many similarities to Accelerando. It seems to me that Stross is just seething with clever ideas and short stories allows him to explore those that might not sustain a novel. If you have not sampled his compact and witty prose before, here's your chance.

There are dozens of authors out there who's opinions I respect who love Stross' writing. I read "Saturn's Children" when it was nominated for a Hugo and didn't really like it; so when the publisher offered a review copy, I thought this would be a GREAT chance to read more of his writing. Obviously he's good. And "Saturn's Children" was just one book.

I tried to read the stories in this book and found I didn't really like them, either. I think the grim lives and hard science mixed with Cold War politics in "Missile Gap" may have put me off the rest. After that everything tasted bitter.

And yet, I can see why others like his stuff. It's unusual and different. The science is there and thoughtfully fictionalized. He's got a good grasp of story and imagination.

It's the worlds he creates. Layered, fascinating worlds. In stories like Missile Gap, A Colder War and Palimpsest, he creates strangely familiar yet utterly cold and different realities from our own, worlds so textured I wanted to spend more time exploring them.

This was my first Stross book and it's a mixed bag. I loved the world-building stories mentioned above, but felt left out of some others due to my utter lack of knowledge of Lovecraft. And one story, Trunk and Disorderly, never pulled me in at all - I finally just skipped over it.

Stross plays with some wonderful recurring themes - cold war angst, "meta" character names, slide presentations and terraforming - throughout the collection that kept me engaged and, sometimes, smiling. Other conventions, such as the Lovecraftian nature undergirding some of the stories, completely put me off. And his favorite words seem to be caul and lour.

Overall, I'd recommend this book. It's, as the cover blurb brags, "a lively collection" and makes me want to seek out more of his work. Though I'll definitely be skipping the "laundry" novels, if the story here is any indication of their general nature. Just not my cup of tea.

I never miss a Charles Stross novel or short story, and if he starts writing plays, essays, poems, and greeting cards I will get each of those, as well. But...

But he needs to insert a bit of quality control. This collection of short stories is a case in point, although his last "Laundry" novel was weak, and Saturn's Children was somewhat dry and long.

The problem is very clear in Wireless. He has great ideas, but when these ideas become somewhat illogical, he plows through the absurdity and publishes the drecky result.

The opening short story, Missile Gap, poses a few really big questions. Who moved all of the people of the Earth, in 1962, to a large disc containing hundreds of worlds in a very zoo-like place? How will Communist Russia and McNamara's United States play this new situation? Enough grist here for a great novel! NOPE. Intelligent hive-species (termites) are systematically destroying these human civilizations within the zoo, and they do so here, again. Sorry for the spoiler. But it hardly spoils anything, because the story is spoilt. Stross loses all discipline, he just sort of inserts idea after idea, higgledy-piggledy, and then ends the story with a nuclear blast.

The next story, about rogue "farms", which are multiple person downloads that wander and harvest resources to blast off into outer space, is sorta creepy, feels like the Festival in an earlier novel, and makes no sense, in a creepy fashion. You can argue that this is what short stories are for... to which I would counter that a great short story is internally coherent, not just creepy.

Instead of Mr. Stross's best work, the stories in this book are his throw-offs. His writer's notebook. I would suggest that he slow down, write less, improve the internal logic of his work, and the quality. Because he has great imagination, is a good story teller, but is starting to waver in his quality, which makes me, a great fan, somewhat sad.

I'm a big fan of the Bob Howard material, adored Halting State and Saturn's Children, loved most of Accelerando, enjoy the Merchant Princes...

This is some of his best stuff. There is a lot here for the modern scifi reader, and a lot of variety, and it is paced well.

I'm not usually a fan of short stories, or short story collections, but this stuff is great.

Once I've made sure there isn't any surprise buttsex, I'm likely to buy a couple copies for co-workers.

(This review was written on the strength of the 3/4ths of the material I've read so far.)

This book is great for trips or just a light read. Not simple but has multiple short stories so you can 'finish' and still have some to look forward to. Very good scifi.

This is the first time that I've read anything by Charles Stross but this was a great introduction to his style and stories and was thoroughly enjoyable. He named the book "Wireles" because they all had the them of communication - a seemingly loosely strung together book of tales.

All of them are set in an alternate-Earth universe, or possible universe, but two have Cold War themes: A Colder War and Missile Gap.

If you enjoy tales in the New Weird genre, you will like Rogue Farm, a story that carries genetic body modification to its most extreme.

There is also the gem, Unwirer, a collaboration with Cory Doctorow, that is just as disturbingly prescient now as it was when published in 2003.

Trunk and Disorderly is a comic story, which I enjoyed, although it was a little rough around the edges.

Down on the Farm is about Stross' main character in his Laundry Files series, and is an enticing and charming taste of his long-form work that you will want to explore it further.

Palimpsest is the final, nearly novelette length, story, about the long view of human history. What happens if humanity survives millions of years, and has access to time travel? This is the best story, and hopefully will be turned into a full length novel.

A great thing about collections of SF short stories is it allows you to explore aspects of the genre that you would ordinarily stay away from. I've never read SF/Horror before, but I quite enjoyed Down on the Farm and A Colder War. These two stories are a great blend of bleak SF combined with Lovecraftian horror.

Unwirer is another bleak alternate-reality story. A collaboration with Cory Doctorow; it is an exploration of a world where net-neutrality has not taken hold, and ISPs wield power mercilessly. It is an apt read for these days of net-neutrality debates.

Every now and then a short story grabs you and really makes you ponder for some time. Palimpsest was that story in this collection. The author's note says that the story really wanted to be a novel, and I wish it had been. It has a lot of interesting aspects: time travel (and associated causality problems), deep time, galactic-reengineering. Even now, days later, I wish I still had more of this story to read. It alone makes the whole book worth-while, and the other great stories are icing on the cake.

Overall this collection was excellent. Sure it had a few stories I could do without (Trunk and Disorderly was a bit over-the-top for me, and MAXOS which was actually a letter published in Nature) but on the whole it expanded my mind and made me realize that I may appreciate more SF sub-genres than I realized. You can't ask for more than that!