Words are used in a manner that indicates he clearly knows what they are (which is not surprising given his background), but, generally, I'd say no. There's never been a point in the series where I feel like I super-extra understand something because I have a computer science background. But it's also at least plausible enough that I don't have to turn that part of my brain off.

Another of Stross's short stories, Antibodies [0], examines the consequences if P = NP, a key problem in theoretical computer science.

[0] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/toast/to...

Reminds me of Traveling Salesman (2012) [1], also set in P = NP and discussing the ethics of selling the algorithm to the government. (Literally discussing, it's a low-budget 4-men-in-a-room movie).

I can't say the whole film is worth the time, but I really loved how in the first minutes it establishes it's alternative history by a single sentence: introducing a scientists who "in 2008 was awarded ... the fields medal for his proof of the nonexistence of one-way functions"

[1] http://www.travellingsalesmanmovie.com/

Whoa, that was a good read! Thanks, going to buy some books by Stross :-)

[when I said "reminds me of Traveling Salesman (2012)" I just meant examining the consequences if P=NP; that was before I followed your link and was reminded how good sci-fi _should_ be — it absolutely pales in comparison to Antibodies.]

He implies that such things exist. I think he cites something Turing was supposed to have written (in-universe, I mean) that crossed over between CS and demonology. It doesn't go beyond plausible-sounding titles and breezy one-sentence synopses though.

You can read a bit early on in the first book of the series where he talks a bit about this stuff, on Google books, page 17: https://books.google.ca/books?id=GfSGzhDcU2UC&lpg=PP1&dq=atr...

Stross mentions a suppressed volume of Knuth, can't remember in which book

I'd forgotten about that. Stross's book shows its age here, it's volume 4. The bit is on page 134: https://books.google.ca/books?id=GfSGzhDcU2UC&lpg=PP1&dq=atr...

> He implies that such things exist.

This looks pretty damning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersen_graph

(Don't email it to cstross, I already did ;-)