- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Orbit (2 July 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841497711
- ISBN-13: 978-1841497716
- Product Dimensions: 20 x 13.4 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 330,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
'A great read, and a fascinating look at the future of security in a massively networked world.' Bruce Schneier, CTO, BT Counterpane 'The first couple of pages had me hooked, and I didn't touch another book until I finished it.' John Carmack, Technical Director, iD Software and creator of Doom and Quake 'As keenly observant of our emergent society as it is our emergent technologies, Halting State is one extremely smart species of fun.' William Gibson
Product Description
It has been said that the natural state of science fiction is the short story. If that is so, you won't find a better exploration of that state than Charles Stross's new collection. Centred around an original and previously unpublished novella, 'Palimpsest', WIRELESS is a showcase of some of the best short SF of the 21st century. With an introduction from the author and containing hitherto uncollected works such as 'Missile Gap', 'Trunk and Disorderly' and 'Rogue Farm', and some gems previously available only in small press publications, such as 'A Colder War' and 'Antibodies', WIRELESS will illustrate perfectly why award-winning editor and anthologist, Gardner Dozois, once declared: 'Where Charles Stross goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow.'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A Colder War is one of my favorite SF short stories, as is Missile Gap. These are the type of stories that you actually want to read again, which I hardly ever do. Stross' ability to mix hard SF, singularity SF and Cthulhu is unparalleled. If you haven't read all of his other work get it all now and enjoy!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Missile gap
Things change on a fateful day in 1962. The surface of Earth is moved to an immense platform in another galaxy in the far future. As increased gravity grounds missiles, and separated by much greater distances, the Cold War becomes irrelevant as the superpowers try to find where they are and why. It seems that other 'Earths' have been brought here as well. A chilling tale of humanity's ultimate failing.
A colder war
The story is a series of vignettes centred on the experiences of Roger Jourgensen, a family man, who is also a US government spook, monitoring the real struggle going on in the Cold War,and who is deeply affected by what he sees. This real struggle centres around the usage of alien lifeforms and relics, on Earth since before the dinosaurs. These lifeforms are so alien as to be things of nightmare fantasy or religious evil. They cannot reliably be controlled and killing them, even with a dedicated bomber wing using special plutonium nukes, is unlikely. On this alternate Earth, where Colonel Oliver North is a key figure in this Colder War, things go badly wrong. A classic, which opens up a new perspective on the boundary between science fiction and fantasy.
MAXOS
The universe around Earth is found to be teeming with alien signals beamed back to us in response to our outgoing broadcasts. However, decoding an alien signal reveals something worrying...
Down on the Farm
The Farm is a sanitorium for ex-operatives of The Laundry, a super secret arm of British Intelligence, set up during World War Two to counter the use of 'demonic-computing' by the Nazis. Another in the Laundry series, Bob Howard, the long suffering sysadmin turned sorcerer/spy, is sent to discover who smuggled out a complaint about conditions at the Farm. A somewhat vacant Dr Renfield, the Farm's head, Dalek-like nurses under the control of a possessed antique IBM mainframe and some lunatic inmates doing something that is not chess on a chess board, make for an entertaining encounter with evil.
Unwirer (with Cory Doctorow)
In an alternate America, 'free' (i.e. unmonitored] Internet connections are illegal. Roscoe has done time for being an 'unwirer' - someone who sets up connections to the free Internet via a border link. His roomate Marcel wants to get involved when a French journalist takes an interest in Roscoe. Worthy but overly paranoid.
A snowball's chance
A Scots barfly outwits Satan in a world where global warning has diverted the Gulf Stream away from Scotland, giving it a near-Arctic climate. A one-trick story distinctive for lots of realistic Edinburgh Scots patter.
Trunk and disorderly
A future robot society runs like the world of P.G.Wodehouse: upper class twits with butlers chasing girls and getting in 'scrapes on Mars'. I found it painful to read.
Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a surface written over, again and again. In this tale, spanning from creation to somewhere near the end of the universe, humans and their civilisations become palimpsests, re-recreated, changed or erased time and time again, under the aegis of the Stasis. Yet within the Stasis there are factions, fighting a time war of 'unhistory'...Absolutely mind-boggling.
Things change on a fateful day in 1962. The surface of Earth is moved to an immense platform in another galaxy in the far future. As increased gravity grounds missiles, and separated by much greater distances, the Cold War becomes irrelevant as the superpowers try to find where they are and why. It seems that other 'Earths' have been brought here as well. A chilling tale of humanity's ultimate failing.
A colder war
The story is a series of vignettes centred on the experiences of Roger Jourgensen, a family man, who is also a US government spook, monitoring the real struggle going on in the Cold War,and who is deeply affected by what he sees. This real struggle centres around the usage of alien lifeforms and relics, on Earth since before the dinosaurs. These lifeforms are so alien as to be things of nightmare fantasy or religious evil. They cannot reliably be controlled and killing them, even with a dedicated bomber wing using special plutonium nukes, is unlikely. On this alternate Earth, where Colonel Oliver North is a key figure in this Colder War, things go badly wrong. A classic, which opens up a new perspective on the boundary between science fiction and fantasy.
MAXOS
The universe around Earth is found to be teeming with alien signals beamed back to us in response to our outgoing broadcasts. However, decoding an alien signal reveals something worrying...
Down on the Farm
The Farm is a sanitorium for ex-operatives of The Laundry, a super secret arm of British Intelligence, set up during World War Two to counter the use of 'demonic-computing' by the Nazis. Another in the Laundry series, Bob Howard, the long suffering sysadmin turned sorcerer/spy, is sent to discover who smuggled out a complaint about conditions at the Farm. A somewhat vacant Dr Renfield, the Farm's head, Dalek-like nurses under the control of a possessed antique IBM mainframe and some lunatic inmates doing something that is not chess on a chess board, make for an entertaining encounter with evil.
Unwirer (with Cory Doctorow)
In an alternate America, 'free' (i.e. unmonitored] Internet connections are illegal. Roscoe has done time for being an 'unwirer' - someone who sets up connections to the free Internet via a border link. His roomate Marcel wants to get involved when a French journalist takes an interest in Roscoe. Worthy but overly paranoid.
A snowball's chance
A Scots barfly outwits Satan in a world where global warning has diverted the Gulf Stream away from Scotland, giving it a near-Arctic climate. A one-trick story distinctive for lots of realistic Edinburgh Scots patter.
Trunk and disorderly
A future robot society runs like the world of P.G.Wodehouse: upper class twits with butlers chasing girls and getting in 'scrapes on Mars'. I found it painful to read.
Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a surface written over, again and again. In this tale, spanning from creation to somewhere near the end of the universe, humans and their civilisations become palimpsests, re-recreated, changed or erased time and time again, under the aegis of the Stasis. Yet within the Stasis there are factions, fighting a time war of 'unhistory'...Absolutely mind-boggling.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A very good collection of short stories by one of Scifi's most prolific authors. The longer stories were a little too close to short novels, but that criticism aside, Stross brings his sparkling imagination and great originality to this modest collection. I particularly liked "MAXOS", a "Letter to Nature" written at some future date unspecified which cleverly updates a popular internet con. And the great thing about short fiction is you can dip in and read a story long enough to suit how much time you have to read it in.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
a time before radio
wireless by charles stross themes from 1950s sci fi and well told the first story missile gap about aliens moving the earth and its 1962 cold war standoffs to a huge disc world... Read more
Published 2 months ago by mark1000
Good for fans and new readers alike
If you've never read a Charles Stross book before this wouldn't be a bad place to start, it covers some of the styles developed in his longer books and contains some really... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Ms. N. Brown
The strange & unusual made ever day
What to say, this collection of tales of the strange & unusual presented as though it was "just a day in the life of" Charles Stross takes a tour of the corners of his mind some... Read more
Published 9 months ago by A. Smith
Don't be put off if you don't like short stories
Stross is one of the few authors who can write short stories really well but the last story, Palimpsest is nearly a novel and a damn good one too.
Published 10 months ago by BigAl
Expert storytelling
This is a collection of short (and not so) stories intended to cover a broad spectrum of styles and moods. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Frixos K.
Ripoff UK Kindle price
I'd love to have this on my Kindle, but it's $6.99 in the US Kindle store (and Google ebooks) and I'm not willing to pay more than twice as much just to get it on a UK device.
Published 17 months ago by C. Swan
Great stuff again
I first got into Stross' work by reading A Colder War for free on the internet. That Cold-War-meets-Lovecraft insanity, prefiguring his Laundry novels, hooked me immediately -... Read more
Published on 5 May 2010 by James C. Foreman
The new master of British SF?
I have to confess to being a fan of Stross' Laundry stories: steampunk in their sensibility and very British. Read more
Published on 13 April 2010 by Mr. R. Lamont Abrams
Book for third party.
This book was purchased for a third party who was very satisfied with both the condition and delivery timescale.
Published on 13 Nov 2009 by R. W. Mason
OK
Unfortunately I cannot really elaborate too much more on this. The short stories were "OK". Interesting writing style, but made it a little hard to really immerse yourself in the... Read more
Published on 23 Aug 2009 by A. G. Williams
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