ConFigures

Halting State

Almost midway through reading Charles Stross’ latest, Halting State, my heart went pit-a-pat as I came across the following sequence:

If you hadn’t had a devkit buffer open before the extradimensional mugging, you wouldn’t even have noticed the missing twelve thousand lines of code. […] 

“Who’s got access to your version control system?” you ask Venkmann.

“Huh?  What’s that got to do with it?”

“Plenty, I think.”

Version control!  In a fun near-future novel (international finance, spies and skullduggery, ubiquitous computing, and MMORPGs)! I was looking forward to seeing how the version control angle played out (and what tool was being used), but it was never directly mentioned again, just the larger security angle.

There are 15 reviews of this book already up at LibraryThing, so I’ll just mention a few more odds and ends:

•  annoyance at rushed ending was compounded by the realization that some of the interesting stuff that had been dangled before the reader in this book was just sequel set-up, like Stross did to The Family Trade
• but at least the romance was more believable in this book
• corporate and tech aspects were convincingly portrayed
• contrary to one reviewer’s confused account, the zombie flash mob was NOT the same as the zombie horde.  They were on/used by different sides, in different places, in different ways.  That was part of the *fun* of this book.

I enjoyed this book, but as a book, Stross’ Glasshouse was better, and one I recommend unreservedly.