IIRC, Because he realized he made a crucial mistake in the second one and it's too late to unpublish and rewrite it.
Which I might understand from most authors, but it seems oddly faint-hearted from Stross. Fuckin' retcon it, dude. Push updates for the ebooks, start the third book with a forward saying "the book you thought you read was a lie, here's what really happened." If any writer on Earth could get away with that, it's Stross.
> Fuckin' retcon it, dude. Push updates for the ebooks
Not going to happen. Stross has a significant workload to deliver other anticipated books (e.g. to complete the Laundry and New Management series) and has blogged about the difficulties and undesirability of revisiting older stories. He has also abandoned other promising sequences (e.g. Halting State) when real-world events overtake his own near-future universes.
Which I might understand from most authors, but it seems oddly faint-hearted from Stross. Fuckin' retcon it, dude. Push updates for the ebooks, start the third book with a forward saying "the book you thought you read was a lie, here's what really happened." If any writer on Earth could get away with that, it's Stross.