{"id":376,"date":"2009-03-20T01:34:52","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T16:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/20\/review-of-charlie-stross-atrocity-archives-and-glasshouse\/"},"modified":"2009-03-20T01:34:52","modified_gmt":"2009-03-19T16:34:52","slug":"review-of-charlie-stross-atrocity-archives-and-glasshouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/20\/review-of-charlie-stross-atrocity-archives-and-glasshouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Charlie Stross&#8217; Atrocity Archives and Glasshouse"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"floatleft\">\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=daveva-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0441016685&#038;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=daveva-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0441015085&#038;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ve finished two more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antipope.org\/charlie\/\">Charlie Stross<\/a> novels recently.  The first is Glasshouse.  I highly recommend it. A far-future sci-fi novel, instant transfer wormhole gates, personality downloads, backups, and editing.  The main hook is: in a society where mass memory editing has taken place, how can you track down things that might have been completely erased from collective history?  It was a very interesting read and has some provoking things to say about memory and history. <\/p>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<p>The second book is the Atrocity Archives.  I also really enjoyed this book.  I went in without knowing much about it except for the keywords Lovecraftian, Turing theorem, and some relationship between the two.  This is really good for people who have a computer science background and have read lots of fantasy fiction.  The book uses a system of well-defined magic mixed with technology.  There is another series that I really like that does things the other way: <a href=\"http:\/\/rickcooks.blogspot.com\/\">Rick Cook&#8217;s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rick_Cook#Wizardry_series\">Wizardry Series<\/a>.  In that series a computer programmer is transported to a world of magic.  It has rules and as a programmer he&#8217;s good at doing things in structured environments.  In the &#8220;Bob Howard Laundry&#8221; series in the Atrocity Archives we have the opposite approach: magic leaks into our technological world, and is also accessible to computer programming-type people. <\/p>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<p>The book is actually two short stories smashed together, which makes the book really seem disjointed.  That bothered me until I realized that it was intentional (just smashing some existing writing together &#8211; a lot like my phd thesis&#8230;) and then I didn&#8217;t have any issues with it.  There is  a sequel (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1930846452?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=daveva-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=1930846452\">The Jennifer Morgue (Decorating &#038; Design)<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=daveva-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=1930846452\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/>) that I am interested in reading now also.  The book was lots of fun, and pretty funny also.  Highly recommended.  (Seems like that is how all my book reviews end&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve finished two more Charlie Stross novels recently. The first is Glasshouse. I highly recommend it. A far-future sci-fi novel, instant transfer wormhole gates, personality downloads, backups, and editing. The main hook is: in a society where mass memory editing has taken place, how can you track down things that might have been completely erased [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}