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To give
you some background on Stross, he first got published in 1987 with a short
story. His first book, Singularity Sky, was published in 2003 and
was nominated for the Hugo Award. He also wrote articles for and about
roll playing games.
I have just completed reading
The Atrocity Archives. It moves pretty fast. When you think of
this book, think of some sort of Men In Black angle. The book rides
the line between sci fi and a spy thriller, about 50-50, I'd say. If you
like Indiana Jones you should be in good shape to read it.
The book is written in first
person, which is rather odd, like listening to Justin Timberlake after
a day of classical music, but it's easy to get into, once you get past
the spotting of many 'I's in the book - a teacher once drilled into me
the need to keep down the number of 'I's when writing first person, now
they jump out at me everywhere. Not to say that Stross has too many 'I's,
just getting off the point. As it mentions above, Stross is from the UK
, so there are bits here and there of English culture.
Stross is adept at slowly
working in some of the more bizarre concepts so sublimely that you find
yourself accepting some fairly crazy ideas out of hand. He can also fill
out common cube life in a manner we all can understand. He captures the
fringe hacker life rather well, which fits as he's spent time himself
as a chemist and software developer.
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