Taxis drive themselves. Climate change is swamping coastlines. The United States is relatively sidelined, struggling to recover from decades of mismanagement, while the major global players are the European Union, Russia, India and China. Super-powerful quantum computing has been perfected. And, most significantly for our plot, millions of game players are solidly invested in virtual-reality experiences such as Avalon Four.

Avalon Four is your basic Dungeons & Dragons scenario amped up to new heights of realism and addictive excitement. The vibrant economy of this particular gamespace is run by a firm called Hayek Associates. So when a band of Orcs bursts into an Avalon Four banking establishment and steals all the treasures within, it's not just play money that's at stake. Hayek stands to lose 26 million euros just for starters—and possibly go bankrupt.

Onto this scene comes Edinburgh detective Sue Smith. More used to dealing with meatspace crimes, she quickly gets up to speed on these new realities. At least she can do something familiar by trying to track down rogue Hayek programmer Nigel MacDonald, who might have set up the theft from within. But that lead goes cold when MacDonald's apartment proves to have been wiped clean of any evidence.

Complicating the detective's job is the arrival of Elaine Barnaby and Jack Reed. Elaine works for an insurance adjustment firm that has a stake in Hayek's loss. Jack is a master hacker hired by the firm to provide computer expertise. Reluctantly tossed together, Elaine and Jack begin to make more headway than Smith.

And what they start to learn is that the seemingly simple robbery hides a subterranean international infowar—as well as some corporate chicanery—that might very well cripple the whole European Union. And kill Elaine and Jack along the way.

Legitimately extrapolated estrangement

As I began reading this gripping, demanding novel, I thought: "This is a book that would be almost unintelligible to even the most dedicated and literate science-fiction fan of 1985." Realizing this, I next had two questions: "Is this Stross's intent?" And "Is this a good thing for SF in general?"

I got the answer to my first question on page 133, where Stross describes Jack's appearance when he's immersed in virtuality. "A time-traveller from the 1980s or later might ... guess at the significance of the glasses, and from the early '90s onward they'd stand a good chance of understanding. ... But to a visitor of Wellsian or earlier vintage, it would be wholly incomprehensible ..."

So, yes, there's the in-your-face intellectual and aesthetic program of this book laid bare. This novel intends to carry SF's core values of legitimately extrapolated cognitive estrangement as far as possible, at least in a near-future setting. And Stross succeeds eminently. By being intensely plugged in to the trends and state of the art of 2008 reality, Stross will create a world 10 years hence that stands as good a chance as any other extrapolation of becoming—or at least seeming for the duration of the ride—absolutely inescapable. And he will plunge the reader into this world with little or no hand-holding, counting on him to be just as smart and hip as the author.

In a way, it's the same program William Gibson seems to be embracing in his latest work, with just a bit more speculative edge.

The result is a fully inhabited and tangible future, where Stross has considered even such minor details as clothing with RFID tags that impart instructions to intelligent washing machines. In a way, Stross is combining both the far-out blue-sky visionary mode of SF with the Tom-Wolfe-social-observation mode of contemporary naturalism.

It's a potent combo—for those who are up to snuff and ready for the mental challenge. But regarding my second question above: Just as this novel would be gibberish to Joe SF Fan of 1985, so too is it currently uninviting to anyone not part of today's Boing-Boing-Slashdot milieu. This is reflected in the fact that nowhere in this book do we encounter unwired characters. There are no off-the-grid bag ladies or janitors, no lettuce pickers or clerks. Stross' concern is with a certain elite, and that's cool. But it's a bias that has to be accounted for.

But once you're past this hurdle, you find that Sue, Elaine and Jack are fully rounded and captivating. That the recomplicated plot possesses a byzantine fascination. And that Stross has important things to say about the fantastic wired world a-borning around us even as we read.

This novel makes no compromises with the complexities of the present, and hence it projects an equally complex future.