Stealing Worlds

by Karl Schroeder

From Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep, comes the near-future, science fiction, hacker’s heist, Stealing Worlds.

Sura Neelin is on the run from her creditors, from her past, and her father’s murderers. She can’t get a job, she can’t get a place to live, she can’t even walk down the the total surveillance society that is mid-21st century America means that every camera and every pair of smart glasses is her enemy.

But Sura might have a chance in the alternate reality of the games. People can disappear in the LARP game worlds, into the alternate economy of Notchcoin and blockchains. The people who build the games also program the surveillance networks—she just needs an introduction, and the skills to play.

Turns out, she has very valuable skills, and some very surprising friends.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Cyberpunk, Audiobook, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 18, 2019

About the author

Karl Schroeder is an award-winning Canadian science fiction author. His novels present far-future speculations on topics such as nanotechnology, terraforming, augmented reality and interstellar travel, and have a deeply philosophical streak. One of his concepts, known as thalience, has gained some currency in the artificial intelligence and computer networking communities.

Reviews

[Adah Udechukwu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stealing Worlds is complicated. It is complicated for no reason at all.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rec. by: Rachel; previous work
Rec. for: Cybertopians, and any remaining cryptobros

Karl Schroeder's Lockstep impressed me a lot back in 2014, so I'm not sure why it took me more than a decade to pick up another of his novels. This one was worth a wait, though I still shouldn't have left it for so long.

Stealing Worlds came out in 2019, so it's already half a decade old. That's a long time for near-future speculation, and it does show. This novel predates the COVID-19 pandemic, for one example. For another, its version of the spread of network-connected devices such as smart glasses and the whole "Internet of Things" seems charmingly naïve now. I can't, for instance, see the libertarians who built a shadow network caring much about the privacy of women's shelters. Schroeder's speculation is best viewed, I think, as a road not taken—an alternative past, rather than any possible future, much more "wouldn't it be cool if" rather than "yeah, that would totally happen."

It is pretty cool, though...

She doesn't even know where cars go to get serviced these days; they just send you a text to tell you that they're doing it and disappear for a few hours.
—p.97

A much shorter (and more widely-read, I believe) touchstone for me was another utopian vision, another road not taken: Bruce Sterling's classic short story "Maneki Neko," which appears in—among many other places—The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy (which is where I read it most recently).

*

However, Karl Schroeder often shows that he gets just how our world works. This passage, for example, hits even harder now in 2025 than it must have when Schroeder was writing it...

Ever since Trump promised his wall, it's been obvious that what the white supremacists really want is their own reality. Now they can finally have it. K.C. describes their America game, in which the South won the war and everything now has the misty, color-saturated quality of Gone with the Wind. The men are all gentlemen—and white—and the women wear skirts with flounces when they wear anything at all.
There are no other countries, there is no "rest of the world." There are no other religions than the one where a blond, blue-eyed Christ gazes benevolently down upon his people. But there are always traitors, and the congenitally inferior to ferret out and destroy.
—p.138

I did also especially like Schroeder's portrayal of Compass, a character whose neurodivergence is simply shown without being remarked upon, until we're deeply invested in her and in how she relates to her roommate Sura Neelin—who is our protagonist, though Sura's really just one among a large and diverse supporting cast. The untimely death of Sura's father's is the driver for much of Stealing Worlds' intricate and action-filled plot.

There were times when I wanted this book to have its own hyperlinks—it took me a moment to translate the phrase "Roger Dean plateaus" (p.172) into a mental image, for example, even though I have several Yes albums in my LP collection.

"Remember Wikipedia, a free online repository of human knowledge created entirely by volunteer effort? It was built by men and women who, in all other ways, had become entirely economically self-interested. They were right in the heart of the fallen world, and yet they gave freely. They built it for free because it was a form of play—and because they couldn't imagine any way they could get paid to do it. Think about it: they thought they couldn't make money doing it, so they did it.
—p.179, emphases in original

*

I have to admit that I really liked Schroeder's brand of techno-optimism—don't get me wrong—even though I couldn't see how it was remotely possible.

Looked at as science fiction, though, which is after all what this novel is, Stealing Worlds was a lot of fun!

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Welcome to the world of deadly serious cyberpunk, a world that's too virtual and blockchain obsessed. I kept on reading, feeling that it might get better, the idea of a worldwide gaming conspiracy was an interesting one, but it never made it to any exciting action. This was a problem with the whole book. Further developments were even more problematic, culminating in a literal god machine ending. I also found the one crypto key to rule them all totally implausible.

Read his space opera, it's much better.

[Peter Tillman]

Cory Doctorow gives it an enthusiastic review here, https://boingboing.net/2019/06/18/com...
"Stealing Worlds is a near-future novel of ecological and economic catastrophe, in which an ever-larger pool of people have been replaced by automation and an ever-expanding proportion of our planet is becoming uninhabitable due to climate change. ...

It's simultaneously the weirdest and most plausible futuristic vision I've encountered in years..."

Same setting as his story "The Suicide of our Troubles" which I liked.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karl Schroeder is one of the authors I loved from Project Hieroglyph. I'd been meaning to pick up one of his novels, but I hadn't until now.

I really love the things he's dreamed up in this novel, Stealing Worlds. I went from "Hey, there's a lot here that's really interesting to think about" to "I WANT THIS."

Seriously. I do. I want this.

[Note: the audiobook narrator isn't terrible, but she's not one of the best, either. Might be better to read with your eyes.]

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Near-future Heist Episode that segues into a Run or Die corporate conspiracy involving Toxic, Inc..

My ebook version was a moderate 350-pages. It had a 2019 US copyright.

Karl Schroeder is a Canadian author of science fiction and futurist non-fiction. He’s written more than ten (10) novels and many short stories. This was the first book-length work of his I’ve read.

I’m a fan of both geekily detailed cyber-thrillers and Cly-fy. This story covers both those bases. It reminds me a lot of stories by both Cory Doctorow and Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR). In a surveillance saturated, post-post-industrial/information age America (date unknown) a young woman steals a crypto-key for her environmentalist father. He is murdered over it and she has to escape into an AR/VR/MR darknet-supported reality with its meatspace demimonde. A new society is created at the end. Parts of the story are really good. However, like with Doctorow the KSR I found the techno/environmental ideology narratives to be too heavy handed. In addition, I thought the female protagonist's gender and sexual fluidity to be unconvincing.

The writing was good. It was very precise. In particular the descriptions of the tech and environment making-up the future dystopia were very clear, although they still may be too advanced for some. There was a single POV. Dialog was written in the vernacular of present day Millennials with a few synthesized nouns. Frankly, I’m not sure the protagonist could be a Millennial even given the vague future date? Action scenes were well choreographed. I took serious objection to a pages long polemic on ‘the new future’ delivered by a minor character mid-way through the story. (Very Doctorow/KSR—that.)

The protagonist was Sura Neelin. She was a 20-something, cat burglar fetishist, slacker and victim of the 'new' economy. Like most books of this ilk she had skillz. Most interesting of them was her infiltration kink which was satiated with only petty larceny. Otherwise like most protagonists’ in cyber thrillers she was capable of facile technical solutions to very complex problems. I was frankly never more than half-convinced of Sura as a bisexual, female character—I had to keep reminding myself she wasn’t a ‘guy’. Most of the supporting characters were hipster, techno-anarchists. The most important of which was Compass. Compass was Sura’s autistic mentor, muse and unrequited love interest. I thought the friendly, Billionaire business man was modeled on Elon Musk. I would have liked to have seen the hard boiled bounty hunter with a heart of gold (Jay), play a bigger part. Sura also had a posse of cyber-anarchists which were somewhat developed. I eventually developed character fatigue over the plethora [a word I hate using] of neo-cyber-counter culture characters both real and virtual the author introduced. The antagonists are your typical, faceless, “shadowy government conspiracy” torpedoing the new virtuality-inspired economy Sura has found a refuge in, and a greedy, eco-rapist corporation. Note that all corporations in the book were not Evil. (Mostly only large ones run by 'old, white guys' were.)

Schroeder is a futurist. There was an enormous amount of techno- edutainment for modern readers in the story. The world building for the story was worth the read by itself. The Tech was very realistic. (I found no issues with it.) The dystopian, American future was very credible, if you didn’t look too close. In places it was slightly OTT, although only in the way of other near-future novelists like Doctorow, KSM and Neal Stephenson portray America after the partial collapse of the central government due to its inability to adapt to rapidly changing: economic, political and social systems. Utopia beckons, if you follow Schroeder. Although, I doubted Schroeder's confidence in the common man’s ability to MacGyver its technical solutions, especially in the absence of public education.

I enjoyed reading this book. The writing could be dry, but the descriptions were rich. I was skeptical about the utopia at the end of the story. In addition, I found the leftist polemics a chore, but I just paged through them. In general, Sura’s story was secondary to the social, political, and economic system described in the story's world building. However, the future, dystopian, surveillance society described was scarily good.

Readers interested in books like this should also investigate Walkaway (my review) a similarly written piece of techno-utopian fiction.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The backtext here is vague enough that you have no idea what this story is going to be about. Okay, there's a dystopian future where it's hard to get a job, hard to have a life if you're not one of the official "haves", and hard to escape the law due to the natural emergence of a surveillance society. Also, there is LARPing and alternate reality and blockchain and... apparently lots of buzzwords.

Let's make this short and to the point: the story is a relatively straightforward "my father was murdered, I'm trying to figure out who did it and why, and there's a corporation that is doing something BAD and will stop at NOTHING to cover it up". The story starts okay, gets pretty good, then *really* good, jumps the shark when the author tries to make the mystery a layer too deep and the story ends the way you think it would.

The alternate reality part of this story is actually really good! The setting is very believable and near-future dystopian, the surveillance society arises naturally in the near future where almost everyone has smart glasses and the government simply gives people a small monetary incentive to run facial identification apps on them. The LARPing part is kind of a red-herring; what Schroeder means is that people have figured out how to turn doing things in reality into a game and have people interact In Real Life (IRL) through games, so it's kind of this blend of augmented reality, LARPing, and VR.

What's really cool here is that Schroeder has developed a concept, that games can make efficient use of resources in the real world that existing power structures (governments, companies) can't, and games can be structured to distribute resources in a more egalitarian way to take care of have-nots in society. This is a fantastic concept, especially since it's so believable! There's inherent drama in governments and corporations dealing with a shift in power because games and their developers are able to gather a significant share of the planet's resources.

However, Schroeder inexplicably decides this isn't enough and drills one layer deeper, with some of the game developers going off the rails in attempting to trigger some kind of global catasprophe. The concept isn't developed, doesn't make sense, and harms the story. Fortunately it happens and the story moves on.

Was it worth reading? Yes, for the cool concepts and the better-than-average writing. But it could have been better.

[Brian Gaston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schroeder spends a lot of time explain how bit coins, block chains and gaming works so if you don't like sloughing through data dumps to understand a complex plot, then this book is not for you. If you like Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson, then you will likely like this book too. The plot was strong and the characters good which makes this book better than recently written others about virtual reality. It has a strong environmental statement as well.

[Ric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contemporary SF.

If the law and semi-legal entities are after you, where would you go? Used to be you'd go to ground in some faraway land and disappear from public view. But in our burgeoning surveillance society, no place is too remote, beyond reach of digital eyes. In this book, the author takes us deep into that alternate world of live action role-playing (LARP) games, where avatars offer anonymity and a fugitive life can be eeked out through in-game economies. The main character, Sura, takes this means of "going to ground", by LARP-ing, spoofing public cameras, suborning monitoring software, ever just a bit ahead of her trackers. In the LARP worlds,she meets new friends and kindred spirits with whom she forms a troupe of for-hire digital thieves. In parallel, she starts to investigate the murder of her father which she suspects is the reason why forces in the real world are hunting her. From these two narrative threads, the author builds the tension that engages the reader. Where Mr. Schroeder takes this is what makes this a truly memorable book.

I've read the author's YA SF book, Lockstep, and was eagerly awaiting his next work. And Stealing Worlds does not disappoint. The cyberpunk-ish opening chapters of the novel are only the platform on which the author puts forth SFnal ideas that extract the present into a near-future dystopia. And the way he saves a world burdened by overpopulation, economic depression and ecological collapse is truly ingenious.

I have not LARP-ed ever but did get a flavor of what takes place in that world from this book. At least I was able to link the book's plot elements with snippets of conversations I've had about gaming with my sons. Some comparisons may be made with the quite popular Ready Player One, but only in that both are set in virtual games. Stealing Worlds has a unique story to tell. Easily a 5 out of 5.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, I was amazed, though the factors that allow me to be amazed by this book are entirely idiosyncratic, very particular, and in no way impartial.

I happened to know Karl a little. He's a great guy and was very helpful to me as a student. I can say he's been churning on the ideas behind this for at least about ten years and probably more.

Upon reflection, what he's produced is a first-class magic trick, as it manages to say so much of what is on his mind while still producing engaging fiction, with interesting characters, plot, and settings. It's a story where multiple systems of identity, place, exchange, and who knows what all are all layered and juxtaposed, and yet it never lost legibility or coherence. I always knew who was who and what was happening. The narrative develops different viewpoints, developing and differentiating ideas and characterizations at the same time.

And Karl's done all of this overlaying in the context of a near-term future entirely contiguous with the economic, political, sociological, environmental, and technological concerns of today. Near-term foresight is real close-up magic: our natural uncanny valley sensors are going at full sensitivity, and I feel there's very little in here to set them off. It also shows a real personal engagement: he has the insight to have a lot to say about the current time and the honesty not to mask it.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that I've always found the appeal of what Karl's going for in expressing the concerns and constraints of care for nature and people. Whether there's actually something more fundamentally caring on the other side of all that layering is hard to say, but it's a decent thing to want.

Overall, a nice guy has accomplished something difficult, and I can't help but smile at it.

[Vigasia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stealin Worlds would be easier to read if it wasn't written in so over-complicated way. It looks clever, at first, but after a while you realize it's nothing special wrapped in too many words.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

An all-too-plausible future imagining that serves to completely reframe how we view our current world - how we structure human society, how the search for meaning motivates us, how the relationships we have to each other and the natural world interlock, what technology's role is in all of this. I'm one to get lost in fictional worlds, too often favoring those over the real one, so it really spoke to me the way this book takes that to the extreme (full-time mixed reality LARPing omg), reverses and flips it (ie to what extent are currency/ government / economy real or a collective imagining), then lands you back on the solid ground of our very real earth, touching grass and ecstatic about it.

However, as in good scifi tradition, clearly the world-building (and core message) came first, and then the author reverse engineered characters and plot to show it off, with all the uneven gaps and confusion patching that together creates. There were a number of times that the characters (especially the protagonist) acted in ways that didn't align with my impression of their motivations or perspective, and many of the side characters I couldn't remember who they were because they weren't fleshed out enough to care. Plenty of times I felt left a bit in the dust when the plot swerves where I was left thinking "but...why??"

There's also the fact that my brain turns off anytime I read words like "blockchain", so I'm not sure how much the cyperpunk premises themselves actually hold up (despite the occasional explanations I never really understood any of it), but by the end I was willing to handwave that away. Even though I didn't know if or why it could make sense. Overall definitely a book where its ambition, scope, and creativity let me forgive what I thought were some clear shortcomings.

[Suhail Rafidi]

A spunky burglar is on the run for her life after helping her now-murdered father rob a corrupt ecological securities firm. Schroeder’s virtual worlds detective caper, set in the near future, is a young adult primer on the implications of blockchain and AI in our corporate futures.

This didactic novel is strong on ideas, and makes up for that strength in character development and VR setting descriptions. One of our favorite ideas in Stealing Worlds is the advent of philosophies about AI design. Face it, our current economic systems are exploitive and increasingly destructive. As we automate our economic systems they become more aggressive, faster, and less humane.

Please visit my website for the complete review and discussion...
https://suhailrafidi.wordpress.com/20...

[Meg Pontecorvo · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book brimming with ideas, but the characters and plot were mere props for those ideas (and thus the main character, Sura, was unengaging, especially on an emotional level, and the plot was full of silly coincidences and lacked suspense). I would certainly read an essay by Schroeder, or a non-fiction book, but never another novel.

[John Folk-Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hard book for me to rate because, while its ideas are fascinating and important, the dramatic structure and characters ultimately are intended to illustrate those ideas rather than create a satisfying imaginative reality of their own. Schroeder is a brilliant thinker and excellent writer, and he has forced me into thinking hard about the possible links between virtual and physical realities, about the potential economic impacts of assigning real world value to things our present society views as less tangible or valuable, like the environment or the damage caused to the earth by present economic activity. He sees blockchain technology as one means of giving economic value to virtual or social realities, and Stealing Worlds draws on this as well as deep gaming worlds to represent a possible near-future route to a world revolution of sorts.

The central character, Sura Neelin, is an interesting off-beat misfit trying to understand what happened to her father and get back at the people she thinks were responsible for his death. The story works in a convoluted way through multiple complications, expounding as it unfolds on a whole theory of economic change, toward a truly idealistic and not very convincing climax. Nevertheless, the ideas are compelling enough to hold my interest throughout and have left me with lots to explore than I never before considered. That's quite an accomplishment, even if it makes for a bit of stumbling narrative. Not for everyone, but it left me wanting to read some of Schroeder's other nine novels, all of which seem to explore similar themes.

[Bentgaidin · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Stealing Worlds' is a story about economics, virtual reality, politics, power, and the future of our civilization. That said, I kept feeling like I was reading a book about someone having an adventure, while the 'real' story happened elsewhere; granted, the design and architecture of systems isn't necessarily gripping, but it ended up being so much more pivotal to the events of the book than anything else we saw on-screen, even though we only found out about it after the fact. It's still a great adventure, and I liked watching the character's journey, there was just the occasional feeling that I'd missed a step. I'd suggest reading this, and then spending some time thinking about how game design guides and constrains play as much as it enables it.

[Julie Capell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got partway through and just did not care enough about the protagonist or the plot to continue. Also, this was simply a case of bad timing. I had just finished reading a book where most of the action took place in virtual reality and I could not bear the thought of reading something so similar again right away. I generally love anything written by Schroeder so maybe I will give this another try at a later date but right now it did not catch my interest.

[I listened to this as an audio book performed by Nancy Wu, somewhat uninspiring]

[Paul Winston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great view of the future and speculation on implications of emerging tech. Favorite line comes near the end: "We spent nearly a century using computers to just do the old stuff faster, while all the new possibilities were there to be taken."

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author paints a crypto-currency future which, while bleak for the purpose of plot, reads overall as a desirable and hopeful end state for future technology and society. I really enjoyed the story, and the world as written.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much predicts the near future of Augmented Reality. Shares some themes ‘n’ dreams with Lady of Mazes.

[Chuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good look at a near-future culture change with some cyberpunk thriller/family drama thrown in, well written and mostly from one viewpoint character.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sura Neelin's father died... and her stepmother warns Sura that not only was it murder, the people who did it may also be after her. So, she has to go on the run, which is difficult in a world where facial recognition cameras are all over the place. But she finds help and also both friends and employment within augmented reality games that are beginning to slowly, quietly reshape the world. As she slowly tries to investigate what happened to her father, though, she'll run into the sort of people who profit from the world the way it was going already.

The author's first novel, Ventus, was eventually followed by another novel in the same universe although largely using completely different characters and a few hundred years in the past. This book is set in that universe again, and again doesn't really share main characters but is set in a few hundred years in the past. If trends continue, the next book in this universe should be sent in the actual past. But of course, trends probably won't continue, and that's part of what this book is about, how existing patterns don't work anymore (if they ever did) and using technology to find new ones.

I'm a big fan of Schroeder's work, and as such this is one of a very small number of books I've pre-ordered long before it came out. And on some levels, the book gave me exactly the sort of thing I love the author for... incredibly interesting speculation on technology and how it shapes and is shaped by human behavior, interesting ways AI can work, and so on.

Sadly, the book is a bit of a disappointment compared to other works by the author, just on a storytelling level. While the characters were mostly good (in a few cases I had trouble remembering who certain people were supposed to be, but only a few) it lacked in a couple other areas. A lot of the time the plot seemed to just wander, just exploring various ways the ideas he's playing with change things and interact, which is fun, but left me feeling the book didn't really get started until most of it was gone. Also, in particular, a few of the more esoteric ideas didn't really give me a good sense of how they actually worked. Maybe subsequent reads would fix this (as I got a lot more from his other books on rereading). In particular, some of the stuff revolving around the games, I got generally what they were doing but I didn't really get enough of a sense of what a person who was actually doing that would experience, if that makes sense. How immersive they were, and how that works when they're potentially in a public space where something that's outside the 'theme' of the game could intrude at any time.

Additionally, from a 'future history' standpoint, how the book turns out didn't seem to me to fit very well with the backstory outlined in the other books, aside from a few key moments, almost to the point where I wondered if it was intended as an alternate timeline where things went a different way. This sort of thing is mildly irritating to me (the type of brain who still occasionally tries to do the mental gymnastics necessary to keep comic book continuity across multiple titles straight). After thinking it through a while (and recognizing that it's quite possible it's merely my memory of specific contradictions that's faulty, since I haven't read the other books in too long) I believe the differences are minor enough and timescales large enough that I can still buy into the idea that they're all the same universe, just with some unexpected stuff happening after this story ends and some of the connections working in different ways than I'd envisioned.

All in all though, there's still more than enough in this that I could enjoy it. It was just a bit disappointing by comparison to works of the author's that include ones that I count among my favorite SF novels of all time. It's still fun to explore these ideas, and I'm still there to check out any future novels.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this. It's updated cyberpunk combined with a Cory Doctorow-like movement to use AI and games to promote political change and get rid of the billionaire overlords. Plus a nice dash of super-efficient cat burglar; the main character has perfected breaking and entering as a hobby: she breaks in, gets the specs of the item she wants, and 3D prints it out later. Nobody ever knows she's done it because nothing's stolen and she leaves no traces. It's set in a somewhat dystopian future, where the government might try to work, but there's too much damage to the infrastructure, corporations are running things as usual, and right-wing MAGA-types are rampant in their own areas, creating danger for anyone else who infringes. There are drones and other technology everywhere, for surveillance, gaming, corporate, environmental, etc., purposes. Also plenty of AI; a car can speak for itself; a package can tell you where it needs to be delivered, and it can be snarky about it.

Sula is reeling from her father's recent murder in Peru, just a few years after her mother's protracted illness and death. She's living hand-to-mouth, but then is served with a big debt and has to go underground. She finds a place in virtual world games, where she's paid in bitcoin to be an intelligent non-player character, and plays her own characters also. (The words bitcoin and blockchain are used quite often.) The way the games are set up is interesting; the game worlds are overlays on the real world; put on your virtual glasses and everything looks different all over town. Sula collects a crew, and they take assignments together for somewhat mysterious paying jobs in the game as well as just being NPCs.

Meanwhile, Sula doesn't just want to find her father's killers (likely evil-corporation-related), she needs to, because she's become a target too. Her father was a narcissist, but he was dedicated to improving the environment, and she assumes that he discovered a corporate cover-up of environmental destruction.

I loved Sula and her motley crew. I loved the Peru component of the book. I loved the games. The main one she works/plays in is somewhat steampunk and is set in Cahokia, which was a real historical Native American city on the Mississippi (and is trendy now; it's been in several books I've read lately). I was hoping there would be more about Lethe, a dangerous game where people lost memories, but there wasn't. The action develops nicely, both virtual and real life. The writing is dense and complicated but well worthwhile, as are some of the concepts. Some of the info dumps are done awkwardly in dialogue, but that's par for the course. I didn't understand everything, but just went with it, and didn't feel like I was missing out. At the end, a group Sula has found creates a virtual earth spirits, like human-made Gaias, in several locations, using AI to combine millions of tiny sensors in the earth, trees, animals, etc., and they kind of, nicely, take over the world negotiate with people for a mutually beneficial culture.

[Todd Moody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Times being what they are, with the coronavirus attacking the world, and so many of us being affected in so many ways, it was a bit surreal listening to this book on Audible. I wouldn't call this dystopian, although it is set in a world where global warming has devastated the Earth, and the promise of capitalism is shown to be an empty vessel. Aside from using the an eff bomb repeatedly as a character contrivance, Stealing Worlds is an absolutely spectacular novel. Virtual and Mixed Reality, Live Action Role Playing (LARP), block-chain technology, politics, and revolution all have a place in this thriller by Karl Schroeder.
Sura Neelin is on the run after her father is murdered and she doesn’t even know who she is running from. The society has evolved into one of complete and constant surveillance, but she might have a chance in the virtual game world, using smart glasses and block-chain tech. His characters are distinctive and well-drawn, and as the plot moves along, I liked Sura more and more. Her first mentor, Compass, turns out to be a broken but gifted young woman, and Nancy Wu, who is the reader for this audiobook, brings Compass to life. The evolution of the game world economy and the smart tech of the world, with its " Internet of Things," is brilliantly conceived and makes for a mind-stretching read.
With all of the political gyrations I wondered how he would pull off the grandiose plot, but he stuck the landing, very satisfying. Highly recommended!

[Hieronymus Hawkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Times being what they are, with the coronavirus attacking the world, and so many of us being affected in so many ways, it was a bit surreal listening to this book on Audible. I wouldn't call this dystopian, although it is set in a world where global warming has devastated the Earth, and the promise of capitalism is shown to be an empty vessel. Aside from using the an eff bomb repeatedly as a character contrivance, Stealing Worlds is an absolutely spectacular novel. Virtual and Mixed Reality, Live Action Role Playing (LARP), block-chain technology, politics, and revolution all have a place in this thriller by Karl Schroeder.
Sura Neelin is on the run after her father is murdered and she doesn’t even know who she is running from. The society has evolved into one of complete and constant surveillance, but she might have a chance in the virtual game world, using smart glasses and block-chain tech. His characters are distinctive and well-drawn, and as the plot moves along, I liked Sura more and more. Her first mentor, Compass, turns out to be a broken but gifted young woman, and Nancy Wu, who is the reader for this audiobook, brings Compass to life. The evolution of the game world economy and the smart tech of the world, with its " Internet of Things," is brilliantly conceived and makes for a mind-stretching read.
With all of the political gyrations I wondered how he would pull off the grandiose plot, but he stuck the landing, very satisfying. Highly recommended!

[Highweirdness · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two scenarios come to mind while reading this book. The first would be familiar to any job seeker who carefully tailors a resume. My thought is Schroeder designed the characters in this book to fit an editorial template of the late 20-teens... He made the cast predominantly female, all male characters have a villainous bent, and the emotional story overwhelms what could have been a hard edged near-future dystopia thriller.
My second thought is that Karl Schroeder actually did write a well-thought out, world built,near future SF economic dystopian thriller and a heavy handed editor slashed the SF out of it, brought out the girl bosses, making Schroeder more like a work-for-hire author.
Which is not to say I didn’t like this book. I only liked parts of this book, and did not resonate with the characters. In my mind, Schroeder’s Ventus is still his best book, and parts of the Candesce series are next best, but this book is too cookie-cutter Politically correct to be cutting edge, in my opinion. I hope his next book brings back more dangerous world building and more visionary SF concepts. The genre is suffering these days, falling victim more and more to Sturgeon’s Law.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the fact that this is by no means a perfectly written book, the ideas put forth and showcased to the best of the authors abilities made this an admirable and worthwhile read.
The main purpose was obviously explaining the possibilities of game world and the frame worlds.
The idea of ubiquitous sensors...smart dust...and what might be done with that was fascinating.
Honestly, this book is jam-packed with extrapolated technology that seems quite inevitable. It seemed, however, that the author was not all that great at showcasing these technological possibilities seamlessly into a coherent story and effectively using the characters to explain these things. There were a lot of rough patches wherein I was unsure of what was actually happening. None of the characters, including Sura, behaved and spoke in any kind of consistent way. Even Compass didn’t make that much sense.
I think if you read a lot of speculative future fiction, you’ll have enough background in place that this books choppy narrative won’t bother you too much.
I’d recommend Danial Suarez’ “Daemon” and especially it’s sequel “Freedom (tm)”.
Also, Bruce Sterlings “Caryatids” and “Distraction”.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1967, kids, led by old lefties and poets, surrounded the Pentagon, put daisies in menacing rifle barrels, and engaged in a theatrical chant meant to levitate the building. A similar playful spirit of protest against our own surveillance state in Karl Schroeder’s near-future novel, Stealing Worlds. Sura, a young woman whose father has been killed while investigating wrongdoing in the oil industry, needs to get off the grid. But there are grid-connected cameras everywhere. What to do? Use the grid to defeat itself. She meets a woman named Compass who shows her how to spoof the system. As Paul Di Filippo puts it in his Locus review: “Compass is a representative of the gameworld/frameworld/larping counter-economy, where Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality converge to form a kind of quasi-potlatch, quasi-barter, quasi-communal, cryptocurrency ecosystem.” If you liked the messaging in Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, you will like Schroeder’s larping lark. Four stars.

[Jeffing · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book (apparently) 5 years ago in Kindle when it was first released. I found the extrapolation and implementation of technology really interesting, and even though I only got 1/3 of the way through before getting bored, I still thought of the story occasionally thanks to the tech. so, when I saw it for free on audible I decided to try again and... yeah. the tech is cool, but it feels like the author forced the plot, characters, and everything else to fit his vision of the tech. it was interesting but not entertaining or immersive. a shorter version would be perfect for a science book on mixed reality, Blockchain, etc, as a thought experiment story.

[Gabby · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.8 stars. Skimmed last half. This book was too bogged down in the world building — a heavy tech world. The author seemed to care more about his clever techy world and contraptions to really think about the story. Begins with a death, a mystery ... which barely gets any attention while the main character goes off to play — literally. And we meet so many characters! It was just too mich! And then the main character decides to finally pursue the mystery. But really, so bored at this point. It’s actually surprising I finished.