Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sci-fi Author Charles Stross Cancels Trilogy: the NSA Is Already Doing It

Posted by Soulskill on from the can-we-convince-the-NSA-to-spy-on-a-ringworld dept.

doom writes "Charles Stross has announced that there won't be a third book in the Halting State trilogy because reality (in a manner of speaking) has caught up to him too fast The last straw was apparently the news that the NSA planted spies in networked games like WoW. Stross comments: 'At this point, I'm clutching my head. Halting State wasn't intended to be predictive when I started writing it in 2006. Trouble is, about the only parts that haven't happened yet are Scottish Independence and the use of actual quantum computers for cracking public key encryption (and there's a big fat question mark over the latter-- what else are the NSA up to?).'"

2 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Probably writer's block by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's probably just writer's block. Intelligence agency interest in on-line games was in the news back around 2006-2008, just like the warrantless wiretapping controversy. If he was going to abandon it for the stated reason I would expect he would have done it then. Besides, this sort of thing hasn't really stopped other writers from creating interesting stories.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  2. New direction for his creativity by namgge · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps Mr Stross could use his skills to to describe an imaginary world where the government told the whole truth to the electorate, there was a right to privacy, and only politicians were systematically spied on and investigated...

    It sure would be interesting to know what that would be like.