Rule 34 Paperback – 7 Jun. 2012

Internet porn, social networks, international crime, espionage, modern (postmodern?) police procedures and emergent AI. It's a heady blend that few other authors could handle even half so well. Very enjoyable, thought provoking and full of action. While not without some stretching of credulity, I have to say I really enjoyed it.

I liked Halting state and I certainly enjoyed Rule 34. Porn is everywhere and definitely on the internet. THe story progresses nicely and draws you in. It helps if you read Halting State, especially to get to grips with the tone. It is not necessary for the story. I giggled and let myself be swept along in the meanders of the story and partly silliness. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes their entertainment with a vaguely serious look at society. It is well written otherwise I wouldn't have whisked through it.

I was so hooked, I found myself reading faster and faster, until I was reading so fast I overshot the end of the book. I had to go back a chapter and force myself to slow down.It's hard for me to say much about Rule 34 without spoiling it, but I will say this: it's a good thing for all of us that Stross himself isn't black-hat. He's fiercely creative, constantly churning out astonishing and unsettling ideas, and if even a few of them turn out to be prescient (as I suspect) rather than merely fantastic, we're in for some interesting times in the Chinese proverb sense.Some fun memes crop up in the book, both in the modern sense ("M girls N cups"), to memes in a more classical sense; viral thought patterns that infect multiple characters (once is coincidence, twice is enemy action...) Once the ending is revealed, there are clues throughout the book as to what's really going on. It's a superb read.I had a moment of confusion starting Rule 34 - Liz appears to have inherited some of Sue's (from Halting State) backstory (or at least they both extend the same abstract class: Scots lesbian copper with a partner or ex-partner called Mary). It soon becomes a trivial similarity though, and the characters are all strong.

With the likes of Gibson and Stephenson on the case, it's hard for writers to break into the realms of good speculative, near future fiction about the information age without sounding like they're just duplicating the work, but Charles Stross has managed to do so with Rule 34, which is both amusing and probably painfully accurate.Some of the technologies they have discussed are already in development, others are merely a matter of time, and the remainder, as with the premise of the book in the first place, are essentially so likely to happen there's unwritten rules about them happening in the first place.I'm not going to discuss the plot overmuch, as others have already done so, and have done so far better than I am likely to be able to. Plus it would be unfair of me, as I've not finished reading the book.The story is good, the plot amusing and it bears the hallmarks of some twisted futuristic Poirot or Lewis, but I just couldn't fight my way through the language to finish it.One of the most well known rules about writing, and one that this novel sadly typifies in every way, is to never use slang or local dialects in a story where its at all possible to do without. Unfortunately, in Rule 34 the author has opted to include far too much local slang in the story. Whilst making the characters far more realistic and believable, it's generated a language barrier that I found off putting and ultimately has stopped me from wanting to read further.I wish I could finish this book, as it seems to be a fantastic piece, but sadly for me the constant jarring of having to translate dialogue between characters from scottish slang to english has been too much for me to continue with what was essentially a book bought to kill time on a train...If you think you can get past that, I'm more than happy to recommend the book, as I'm sure its going to be fantastic. If not, this is probably one to avoid, which is a real shame.

Set in the same world as  Halting State , things have gone downhill since then, it's very much used future, edging toward dystopia.The story is told from multiple viewpoints, the first of the 3 major ones being a cynical Detective Inspector, Liz Kavanaugh, who we met as a rising star in Halting State. Her star is on the wane now as a result of the events in that book. The other two are Anwar, a small time crook who has gotten in way over his head and the mysterious Toymaker, who runs a rather unpleasant criminal syndicate. Their stories start to interconnect when a ex-con known to DI Kavanaugh is found murdered in an unusual manner.Things rapidly go South from there, and the body count goes through the roof and conspiracies start to pile up in a rather nasty trainwreck.I found the twist at the end a bit obvious and disappointing. It's almost as if Stross were ticking the Cyberpunk thriller boxes and found he'd left a cliché out, so he shoved it in there.Overall a good read, if disappointing at the end. Not Stross's best, certainly not as good as Halting State, but better than most

Spookily plausible, and entertaining at the same time!Charles Stross has clearly thought hard about where we are going, technology- and society-wise.And the can tell a really compelling tale. The usage of second-person threw me for a while, but then it really helps you inhabit the minds of the characters.Highly recommend.

Stross surprises with acute described characters with their human headspace within a deeply technologized world in near future. The ingredients of the plotline are just tangible waiting around the corner if tomorrow...

Intenté leer el libro, pero no pude terminarlo. Por alguna razón, comparado con los otros libros Charles Stross, no consiguió engancharme y me resultó muy aburrido.

What happens when you take two steps into the future and combine web culture with spam, 3D printers, and one of the standard rules of the internet provided by the masses of 4chan? You'd find yourself in the middle of Charles Stross's Rule 34, surrounded by augmented reality, sociopathic criminals, and some of the freakiest fetishes you can image.It's a good novel that offers a slant of a dawn of a cyberpunk time period. The mental gyration the book presents has you wondering what oddity is coming next while slipping more and more of the macro culture of this world into view. The novel is complex, folds over itself, and then breaks down its own walls to fab itself a spiraling ending.The book is given to us in a slant of second person. It comes across at times as a first person novel in disguise, as if Stross used you instead of I, but it feels like second person done right. I'll admit this was a hardship for me starting the novel. Second person isn't a format I care for but Charles Stross does a good job with the story and after 3 or 4 chapters of adjustment I was on board with the style. I think what made it harder to grasp is that the book jumps characters chapter by chapter. Not knowing the characters' voices during those early chapters was the issue. Once I became familiar with them, the second person narration worked itself out.Internet culture steeped into reality is one of the key features of this book. Spam, social networks, and how our relationship with each other comes as a central theme. Any character in the story can be Kevin Bacon'ed to another through various channels. This becomes striking apparent at the half way point in the novel, when characters that seemed unrelated start revealing their relationships with various one-degree characters of our core cast.This is now one of my favorite visions of the future to come. For one thing, it isn't homogeneous. Some characters are deeper into the tech because they have to be for their career. Others are there for their interest as a hobby or past private occupation. Others do it for the money. The tech just oozes but it's not outlandish. The 3D printers exist today so it's not surprising for them to have more exotic materials and components. Spam filters and spam bots are becoming smarter. There's a joke about someday the internet will become sentient. Applying that to spam and spam filters doesn't sound so farfetched. There's no crazy cyberware. There's no direct neural interface net. There's just high tech that's rolled out of what we are already developing today.WARNING SPOILER TERRITORYThe AI, as presented as a form of antagonist, is somewhat believable. Stross doesn't present a consciousness as we think of in humanity. It's a far more linear gray scale weighing variables type of intelligence. It's a believable near future AI. The on the ground antagonist is interesting, but his place in the story is a little awkward. Toymaker is a bizarre sociopath with unique quirks and beliefs about staying off the grid, but his psychosis mixed with the constant failings at each turn in his arc left me wanting. He succeeds in a few small goals, cleaning up one loose end, getting his new ident setup, getting laid, but most of those either cause him more issues, or are just stupid for the level of intellect as presented for him. There feels like he should have had more especially earlier in the novel. His final take down and strange departure of the monitoring AI on him act as a sort of climax to the novel, but it doesn't feel earned and it doesn't feel like the actual end of this part of the story.END SPOILER TERRITORYDespite my hang ups I enjoyed the story, the characters, and the setting. The novel kept it focused on the characters while still giving up a world two steps into the future. I could see this reality happening in the coming decades.The book manages to cover pretty much all the promises it makes. In truth we're only seeing a part of the story; it's really a side effect of a bigger picture and we're getting the drippings. It's better that way, though, as we're kept to a certain level of darkness to the real "big world" events that caused the murders in the book. We don't lose sight of character and the events that keep us attached. There was a chance here to do a political techno-thriller, but it doesn't quite go behind fringe access. We don't need to pay attention to the man behind the curtain.I recommend this book on the grounds of a stunning two-steps into the future landscape, interesting character plots, and a chance to see second person done right. The book is a mystery with what might be considered a twist ending, but the clues and resolution can be figured out about half way through. We learn to feel for the various protagonists, their love and hate for their work, their family and relations, and their feelings of the world around them. It doesn't come off as awkward for most of them, and I found myself relating to almost all of them.

C' est la suite d'Halting State, le monde est déjà connu, la menace est plus "conventionnelle". Le livre est agréable a lire, mais il est moins innovant, c' est pourquoi je ne lui donne que 4 étoiles.