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Glasshouse

by Charles Stross (Goodreads Author)

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 4,443 ratings · 332 reviews

When Robin wakes up in a clinic with most of his memories missing, it doesn’t take him long to discover that someone is trying to kill him. It’s the twenty-seventh century, when interstellar travel is by teleport gate and conflicts are fought by network worms that censor refugees’ personalities and target historians. The civil war is over and Robin has been demobilized, bu...more

Hardcover, 335 pages

Published June 27th 2006 by Ace Hardcover (first published June 2006)

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Nov 25, 2007 Jason Pettus rated it 5 of 5 stars

(My full review of this book is larger than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find it at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

As I've mentioned here before, although as an adult I try to maintain as varied a reading list as possible, I do naturally gravitate regularly towards the science-fiction (or SF) genre on which I was raised, as well as the "weird-lit" novels of our contemporary times that have been influenced by the genre. And indeed, if you take a close l...more (My full review of this book is larger than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find it at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

As I've mentioned here before, although as an adult I try to maintain as varied a reading list as possible, I do naturally gravitate regularly towards the science-fiction (or SF) genre on which I was raised, as well as the "weird-lit" novels of our contemporary times that have been influenced by the genre. And indeed, if you take a close look at the projects that are getting so much attention these days among the so-called "creative class" (the same people who mostly make up CCLaP's readership too, by the way), you'll see that now more than ever, mainstream and even academic literature is being influenced in subtle ways more and more by such fantastical genres as SF and weird-lit. When you look at the entertainment choices made by people who are comfortable with technology and spend a decent amount of time online, the world can indeed become a strange place; a place where even among mainstream novels and network television shows, some awfully odd things can happen within the middle of a supposedly straight-ahead character drama.

So it's natural, then, that we straight-ahead SF fans would of course especially appreciate so-called "hard" SF writers in this day and age, or those who write such head-scratchingly brilliant stuff that only SF fans in particular are going to appreciate and love it; and boy, you don't get much more fanboy-crazy than with author Charles Stross, a multiple award winner and favorite among fellow SF writers, who nonetheless is barely known beyond the SF community that worships him so much. I just had a chance to read his latest* novel, in fact, 2006's Glasshouse, which happens to be my first novel of his in my own life; and believe me, I now understand why people go so freaking nuts over him, and am already plotting a way to get ahold of one of his earlier novels as quickly as possible. It is a flabbergasting book, one so smart and complex you can scarcely believe it actually exists; one that has a 95-percent chance of officially blowing your mind by the time you're finished, even if you do have a guess at which way the story is headed.

So before anything else, I guess let's start with a truism about hard SF...(less)

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Jul 31, 2007 Alex rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2007hugonominees

Shockingly, I like the first chapter. I expect things will devolve from here. That's the standard Stross formula.

Well, with the exception of having a good first chapter.

***

And as it turns out, I loved this book. I've read several of his novels before, all the Hugo-nominated ones, anyway, and this is by far the best. It's also the best of the nominees this year and should win the award.

Stross does an excellent job of keeping the focus of the novel not only on the main character, but also in his...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook

With this book, Charles Stross has established himself as one of my favourite authors.

Previously, I have read quite a few of his novels, including several of the Merchant Princes series, one of the Bob Howard – Laundry books, Halting State and Saturn’s Children. With the exception of Saturn’s Children and perhaps the first of the Merchant Princes novels, I’ve had a hard time immersing myself in his stories and actually liking his characters. I keep picking up his books, however, as I like his c...more With this book, Charles Stross has established himself as one of my favourite authors.

Previously, I have read quite a few of his novels, including several of the Merchant Princes series, one of the Bob Howard – Laundry books, Halting State and Saturn’s Children. With the exception of Saturn’s Children and perhaps the first of the Merchant Princes novels, I’ve had a hard time immersing myself in his stories and actually liking his characters. I keep picking up his books, however, as I like his concepts.

Then I read Saturn’s Children. What a fabulous book. The mixture of hard science and futuristic culture with a treatise on what it is to be human fascinated me. I loved the concept. And, the author’s sense of humour made the characters leap off the page. The main character, Freya, wasn’t entirely loveable, she had her faults. But that’s the point of a good book, isn’t it? To take a character and have them evolve.

Which is exactly what happens in The Glasshouse.

Robin has just emerged from radical memory surgery. It’s the far future and people live for a long time, a century or two (it’s hard to figure out exactly how long as time is measured in groups of seconds with names like teraquad and I’m just not good at math), and people with a lifetime’s worth of memories sometimes need a fresh start to go with their consistently youthful bodies. Unlike most people who emerge from such a procedure, however, Robin literally has no idea who he is. He hasn’t just had the memory of a love affair gone wrong excised, he’s lost entire lifetimes and people. Concepts, even.

While he’s in recovery, he meets Kay, a woman who has had a much less radical procedure to help her forget the impact of having lived among (and studied) a less advanced culture for several generations.

Together, they decide to check into an experimental polity (city-state in space) designed to emulate twentieth century Earth. The time period is considered a dark age of human history and most records of the how and why (we even survived such a travesty of existence) have long since disappeared. Robin and Kay, unencumbered by memory, are perfect candidates for the experiment.

Following Robin and Kay’s progress through the experiment would be an interesting enough story. There are complications, however. The experiment is not what it seems, Robin is not who he thought he was (I know, this is funny because no one knows who he is) and Kay has her own trials.

The novel is an adventure story, an exploration of a possible future with all sorts of scientific concepts that are nothing short of awesome, a comment on our own history and fallibility as a species and culture, a summation of the history of a universe created by Charles Stross and, finally, it’s a love story. I liked Robin at the beginning of the book, I loved him at the end. He discovered himself (his memories) and himself, who he was as a person. And then, he evolved. It was fascinating to see who he became.

As the mystery unfolded, it became harder and harder to put this book down. The plot kept thickening and I wanted to keep reading. The author’s humour, as always, continued to delight me, coming at unexpected turns and entirely welcome after tense moments. The writing is just superb. Charles Stross communicates his concepts, his ideas and his characters so well. A lot of science fiction (fiction) is social commentary. Stross manages to convey his point of view without arrogance. He has a quietly confident opinion and it makes sense. Well, to me it does. I like his point of view.

I’ve also decided I really like his books. I’ve just started reading Singularity Sky and I’m enjoying it and I’m optimistic enough to go back and try to read Halting State all over again, particularly as he’s just released a sequel.
(less)

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Jun 11, 2007 Trin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, queerlit, english-lit, genderfuck

In the future, a group of people volunteer for a scientific experiment in which they agree to immerse themselves in a community mimicking long-gone 20th Century life. The protagonist, Robin, signs up to escape people who are trying to kill her. I mean, him. Technically Robin is a dude. But he spends most of the book trapped in a female body, and he mostly just reads as a woman—as an awesome, interesting heroine. It's kind of sad that one of the few ways we get male SF/F writers writing interesti...more

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Nov 04, 2007 Saadiq Wolford rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Every time I begin a new Charles Stross novel, I feel the same excitement as when I first read William Gibson's Neuromancer in 1985: I'm reading a work of science fiction that is so unique, so bleeding-edge, that I can barely get my head around it.

And then the excitement fades as I continue reading.

This is Stross's best work to-date because it is his most human; his observations on groupthink, peer pressure, and the irrationality of modern life are insightful and funny. But it is also inconsiste...more

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Dec 05, 2008 Imperfectlyrua Castle-Hackett rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, science-fiction, cyber-punk

This was the most intriguing new science fiction book I've read in a long time. The plot was kinda standard mystery but everything else was really new. He took some modern technical paradigms, projected them into the future and created an amazingly well developed "world." In addition, the book takes place mostly in an anachronistic simulation of the 1990's. And since the main character is a participant in the experiment there's an interesting ethnographical aspect to the narrative. (eg. he keeps...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Oh Charlie Stross. I forgive you for Accellerando.

Seriously though, this is a fantastically well-done sci-fi novel. Stross is not the first writer to try and tackle a story where characters aren't sure who they really are. But he handles it with aplomb.

Glasshouse takes place in a very distant future where human beings can change bodies, memories, even personalities in the blink of a few pages. Who am I? Am I really who I think I am? Are my memories real or implanted? Do I have free will at all?

T...more Oh Charlie Stross. I forgive you for Accellerando.

Seriously though, this is a fantastically well-done sci-fi novel. Stross is not the first writer to try and tackle a story where characters aren't sure who they really are. But he handles it with aplomb.

Glasshouse takes place in a very distant future where human beings can change bodies, memories, even personalities in the blink of a few pages. Who am I? Am I really who I think I am? Are my memories real or implanted? Do I have free will at all?

These are the kinds of questions that make for great philosophy debates and (usually) terrible novels. The reader too quickly gets lost in a murky soup where the characters and the plot have no real meaning, because everything could just be a fever dream.

Somehow Stross sidesteps all these problems and manages to stay grounded even as his characters swap genders, die and are resurrected, and question their own identities.

The plot, briefly, concerns a character named Robin, a 'ortho-normal' man who has recently undergone radical memory excision surgery. He remembers very little of his past life and even less about why his former self subjected him to the procedure.

He soon comes to suspect that it may have something to do with an old neurological virus called Curious Yellow, which wipes out memories of certain past events and lead to the collapse of civilization and the outbreak of the Censorship Wars.

Robin meets a fellow amnesiac patient named Kay and they fall in love. Believing that enemies he can't even remember are pursuing him, Robin and Kay decide to enroll in an experimental project that will place them in new bodies in a recreation of the late twentieth century. There they will be safe from the outside world. The catch is that the won't initially be able to recognize each other.

However when Robin wakes up in the body of a woman named Reeve and finds himself trapped in a Stepford Wives-version of suburbia, the experiment quickly takes a sinister turn. What appeared to be an escape is rapidly turning into a prison. And Robin/Reeve can't be sure who Kay is, or if she's even in the experiment. And s/he definitely doesn't know who to trust.

But Robin/Reeve was a soldier in another life and she has no interest in playing house-wife. She is definitely not going to take this lying down.

Recommended for all sci-fi fans.(less)

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Aug 23, 2008 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of Neal Stephenson and Iain Banks

Stross has always been adjacent to the books I'm already reading, forever showing up on recommended lists. So, I figured I'd give him a try.

I enjoyed the book, though it is clearly not for everyone. Stross writes push-the-envelope science fiction. The best way to describe it is as a cross between Neal Stephenson and Iain Banks.

In Stross's future, the galaxy is really just a big routed network with people as very complex data packets. Want to go 300 light years in that direction? Just step into t...more

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Oct 29, 2007 Schnaucl rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, owned, read_2007, science-fiction, october

It was really hard to get into at first. For some reason Stross insists on using a different timescale even though their bear a slight linguistic resemblance to terms we use today. It was frustrating and unnecessary. Although it got off to a slow start, it did pick up after the first few chapters (basically when the main character joins the experiment).

I had some of the same problems with this book that I have with similar books where a person's consciousness is treated as though it were basical...more It was really hard to get into at first. For some reason Stross insists on using a different timescale even though their bear a slight linguistic resemblance to terms we use today. It was frustrating and unnecessary. Although it got off to a slow start, it did pick up after the first few chapters (basically when the main character joins the experiment).

I had some of the same problems with this book that I have with similar books where a person's consciousness is treated as though it were basically software with the attendant backups. If people are basically immortal, then death is no longer meaningful. You don't care if characters die because they can simply be reconstructed with only a relatively short time of memory missing. Even when characters suffer a true death, the other characters don't really seem all that affected by it.

Gender is a similar problem. I get the impression that Stross may have been trying to play with gender. Some male characters are put into female bodies and vice versa. The problem is that gender roles no longer exist when anyone can have any body they choose so everyone may as well be androgynous or hermaphroditic.

The experiment tries to recreate the gender roles, but because they aren't internalized it doesn't work very well. I was very aware of gender roles as a social construct in this book. On the other hand, it did allow for what I thought was one of the better lines and points of the book which was that the designers of the experiment took prescriptive literature and treated it as though it were descriptive. I know that's something we do in real life all the time. Just study any ancient society, particularly how they treat women. Ancient Greek women ideally stayed at home and weren't seen by unrelated men but few women could match that ideal.

And because people could slip out of bodies so easily and become whoever they wanted I didn't buy one character having large body issues.

Even when the characters first start the experiment it's a little slow at first because the author is clearly trying to describe things we take for granted from an outside perspective but it gets dull and annoying. Yes, our clothes have to be washed, no, they don't change color or automatically fit right, etc. Without the social context it just isn't all that interesting. Similarly, characters use certain words like new ideas ("whore") for example, and have trouble figuring out what that is, and yet later the same character blithely refers to someone as a scorewhore.

And if murder wasn't that big a deal, why feel guilty for temporarily murdering someone in war? And why does the same person not feel guilty for engaging in duels to the temporary death? And how does one character not know what rape is? The present they come from is hardly Utopian.

I still want to know how it all functions. Yes, they have A gates or T gates to assemble everything, but physics tells us that you can't make something from nothing so they must have to have some kind of raw materials and presumably the gates have some kind of power source.

Overall it was uneven and the very end was predictable.(less)

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May 13, 2009 Tim added it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

Although his writing covers everything from cyberpunk to space opera to alternate history and fantasy, Charlie Stross is, for good or bad, viewed as one of the leading SF authors exploring the Singularity. Fans of that aspect of his writing will be pleased to know that his latest novel, Glasshouse , continues delving into the Singularity. Fans who appreciate Stross' other works will be equally happy to know that Glasshouse explores much more Â�â�� and that may make it a perfect introduction for...more

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Jan 07, 2009 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: future-earth, speculative-fiction

Glasshouse is a loose sequel to Accelerando, but you mostly need to know that for what the world is like. You might be able to read Glasshouse as a stand alone.

Anyway, it's late in the third millennium. Humanity has been kicked out of the Solar System by intelligent computer programs who'd rather turn all solid matter into more memory and RAM and photovoltaics, and has taken up residence living around wormholes linking brown dwarfs throughout the galaxy. The presence of massive amounts of data s...more Glasshouse is a loose sequel to Accelerando, but you mostly need to know that for what the world is like. You might be able to read Glasshouse as a stand alone.

Anyway, it's late in the third millennium. Humanity has been kicked out of the Solar System by intelligent computer programs who'd rather turn all solid matter into more memory and RAM and photovoltaics, and has taken up residence living around wormholes linking brown dwarfs throughout the galaxy. The presence of massive amounts of data storage and matter manipulation has changed humanity remarkably -- at this point, you can look like whatever the heck you want (seriously, you can change sex like changing clothing, and things like being a centaur or growing two more arms are no problem), death is unusual (pretty much you have to have a bad accident or be killed), and you can keep a backup copy around anyway. However, a lot of times people accumulate too much emotional baggage in their long lives, so they end up having to wipe out most of their memories to get a fresh start.

Robin is one such person. He's not quite sure why he had it done -- sure, his past self left him a letter, but it wasn't that helpful. And someone wasn't satisfied with the job and is trying to kill him. Between that, a sense of purposelessness, and a woman he met who was also interested, Robin decides to sign up for an experiment that would keep him off of the net for a couple of years.

See, a lot of the late 20th and early 21st century was lost thanks to data forms going obsolete too quickly to be converted. So some social scientists were going to try to reconstruct it using volunteers. They created a clever social system to encourage participants to play their roles (and mimic the social constraints they believed existed at the time) and beamed everyone into new bodies in a simulation of 1950s America (or Western Europe). Robin became Reeve, a woman, and was partnered up with Sam, another volunteer, as her husband.

At first this is a funny (and a bit unnerving) take on the 1950s. Reeve struggles with norms that make no sense to her (like why the salesclerks won't sell her pants), her female teammates who are 'score whores' and obsessed with racking up points for good behavior and making sure Reeve does the same, finding Kay, the woman Robin knew on the outside, and worrying about Cass, who's husband/partner was turning quickly abusive.

Then Reeve gets a dream message from her previous self, who tells her that something is fishy about the experiment. Previous infiltrators were compromised, so her previous self had volunteered to have a memory wipe to better hide himself to get in.

Overall, I enjoyed this -- it had a mix of Stepford Wives and high tech, and probably would have been better than the recent remake. it does get a bit confusing at one point, since you have to accept that being able to treat human consciousness as data means a lot of things that aren't true right now. Can't say much because of spoilers. But, it was a good read, and the fact Robin/Reeve didn't remember a lot of things made it interesting since it allowed for us to discover Robin/Reeve's past as we read without artifice. (less)

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Mar 17, 2013 Michael Lawrence rated it 2 of 5 stars

A few chapters into this book I started becoming familiar with the techno-speak that is laced throughout the novel. I don't believe it detracted from the overall story in any way. My main disgust, abhorrence? was that of what I felt was a meandering story that lost its way soon after it started. There were so many way it could have gone and explored, but ended up in my opinion being a lack-luster piece of science fiction that left me cold.

Wanting to get invested in the characters I read through...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Smcleish rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally published on my blog here in November 2007.

Glasshouse (named from British army slang for a military prison) is basically a spy novel set in the future. The central character, Robin, starts the book recovering from memory surgery, a standard voluntary brainwashing technique which is part of psychiatric treatment: but he doesn't remember why he had memories removed, nor why the process was quite so drastic as it turned out to be. Then he is recruited for an experiment, in which he will...more Originally published on my blog here in November 2007.

Glasshouse (named from British army slang for a military prison) is basically a spy novel set in the future. The central character, Robin, starts the book recovering from memory surgery, a standard voluntary brainwashing technique which is part of psychiatric treatment: but he doesn't remember why he had memories removed, nor why the process was quite so drastic as it turned out to be. Then he is recruited for an experiment, in which he will live in a recreated environment from "the Dark Ages" (roughly, today) ostensibly to derive information and understanding lacking from the historical record (essentially because the knowledge required to understand our proprietary computer file formats has been lost). This sort of experiment has been done already: a famous attempt to get several families to live in a reconstructed Iron Age village in the late seventies was the earliest reality TV series I remember watching. When Robin wakes up in the experimental domain, he is no longer a man, but has been turned into a housewife in an environment distinctly reminiscent of the film Pleasantville. The undertones are even more sinister, as this isn't just a sitcom reflecting the attitudes of the fifties, but an experiment with a hidden purpose. This is made clear to Robin (or Reeve, as she is now known) when she realises that all the participants have been made fertile - this is normally a deliberate choice in their culture - and the aim appears to be to create a generation who know no other life than the experiment.

Using science fiction to satirise the attitudes of the present is hardly cutting edge science fiction. Even the use of time travel, re-enactment or simulation is common: it forms a major part of the film Star Trek IV, as well featuring in Pleasantville already mentioned. Other science fiction joins Stross in describing our age as psychotic or crazy (notably Robert A. Heinlein's Future History stories). Stross is at the edge end of this tendency in the genre, certainly more so than anything mentioned, but his writing here also contains much humour. (This is generally his writing style: dark but knowing.) The principal way in which Stross differs from many of the others who have satirised the present day in this way is that his future setting is very different from our own, even though the way in which it could have come about (apart from the unexplained cornucopia technology) is fairly believable as are continuing parallels with our own time (such as the detail that the cornucopia machines are subject to hacking and the equivalents of computer viruses) and people who are still recognisably human. To compare with Heinlein again, in his earlier works his future society is hardly distinguishable from that which he describes as crazy. Glasshouse also has a really good ending, after Reeve starts receiving messages that Robin had implanted deep into his subconscious before the memory surgery.

Glasshouse is publicised as a sequel to Accelerando, but this doesn't seem quite right to me. While dreaming of similar themes, much of the envisaged future here is different from that at the end of the earlier novel. It doesn't manage to be quite as interesting as Accelerando, which I feel is Stross' strongest work so far; nor is it as entertaining as the Merchant Princes series. However, it is still both interesting and enjoyable, and well worth reading.(less)

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Aug 21, 2012 Gene rated it 4 of 5 stars

So different from the Laundry Files, and so goddamn imaginative and fresh. Stross takes a mindfucking plot and setting and makes the reader feel at home in it. You may have heard that the book is a sci-fi retelling of the Stanford prison experiment, and while the plot borrow some elements from there, and I loved Stross' take on it, for me the originality of the rest of setting stole the show. Dark ages, neo-techno-barbarism, memory surgery, instantaneous travel (this is obviously not new, but St...more

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Feb 06, 2012 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed the book start to finish although it can be hard to follow at times. The reader is thrown into the book and not given many details on how or why things are until a bit later. The ending is a bit anti-climactic considering the build up, however it does not disappoint.

The setting is sometime far into the future, after humans have reached a critical point in the next step in evolution called the acceleration, which implies we have created or become emotional machines.
Basically huma...more

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Dec 17, 2011 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sci-fi novel, involving a world where people can be reformed in any image, transported using linked gates, and even backed up and duplicated. The world is recovering from a war that was fought with the use of a virus that would destroy people's memories. The virus was spread from people to transportation gate -- and spread the other way, so that when a person with the infection used a gate, later people that used that same gate became infected.

In the story, the protagonist is recovering from ser...more

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Mar 01, 2011 Karl Steel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: postmedieval_fiction

Complaints (with some SPOILERS):
Stross's conception of the self strikes me as insufficiently psychosomatic. In Glasshouse, the "I" is software along for the ride in whatever hardware or wetware it finds itself. It might be copied poorly, disrupted by a virus, tweaked in certain ways, but there's still a fundamental self there, and that self is separable from bodies.

It's not clear to me why the spreaders of the Curious Yellow virus should have selected a group of war criminals as the virus's new...more

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Sep 27, 2010 Christopher McKitterick rated it 5 of 5 stars

A fantastic furtherance of Stross' ACCELERANDO universe. The ideas are mind-bending yet feel like natural extensions of the future of digitized humans: One of my favorite notions is that a war was fought via editing people's memories as they transmitted their data across the galaxy, and this tampering with true personal data - everything you are - is the greatest crime one can commit.

I must recommend this book. It is:
* Wildly inventive.
* Character-driven (a previous weakness on the author's part...more A fantastic furtherance of Stross' ACCELERANDO universe. The ideas are mind-bending yet feel like natural extensions of the future of digitized humans: One of my favorite notions is that a war was fought via editing people's memories as they transmitted their data across the galaxy, and this tampering with true personal data - everything you are - is the greatest crime one can commit.

I must recommend this book. It is:
* Wildly inventive.
* Character-driven (a previous weakness on the author's part).
* Moving.
* A great read.

I also love the social criticism Stross is able to convey via his SFnal inventions that could he not have otherwise discussed. It's a brilliant book, and the characters themselves serve as the primary means of showing the ideas and themes and messages Stross is writing about. To me, it feels like he has finally pulled together all the elements of solid SF novel-writing and what resulted transcends the genre.

It is a brilliant book and you should read it.

PS: A response to a reviewer's "sexist" allegation:

I would argue that it is _anti-sexist_... one of this book's themes is the absurdity of gender roles and how society's pressure to fit into gender roles is a tool of oppression. Most of the illness in the closed polity arises from the main characters being assigned a single gender (often the opposite of the characters' prior genders) and being forced to live under 1950's Western gender notions.

This alone makes GLASSHOUSE a stand-out book, because very little in the way of new commentary (as opposed to rehashing old arguments) is being said about gender and sexism in SF these days. This book does what SF can do best: Set up an experiment and watch it run... and it does this in a very literal way (the characters are trapped in a sociological experiment that turns out to be much more).

But what most appeals to me about GLASSHOUSE is its wildly creative science, deep world-building, and unique perspective on self in a galaxy where one can live forever but where no one remains in one's suit of flesh for long.(less)

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Jun 04, 2010 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’m not sure if the characters in Glasshouse should be considered spirits, software or just a bunch of electrons. For purposes here, let’s just call them “people.”

The novel contains a lot of the typical sci-fi trappings of barely thinkable technology, shape shifting and regeneration and resurrection. When you strip this all away, there’s actually an interesting story with a lot of social commentary.

As part of a “historical” experiment, a group of people are placed in a microcosm where they have...more

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Sep 09, 2009 Kevin rated it 2 of 5 stars

I started this particular book because it was sold to me as "far future thriller wherein the protagonist enters a reenactment of 1900s Earth in order to elude his attackers, only to discover and more sinister plot within the reenactment." Taking 1900s to mean Victorian/Edwardian period, I thought this book might be right up my alley. I have a fondness for far future science fiction, and a fondness for Victoriana, and a fondness for thrillers in general. How could this book possibly go wrong?

It t...more I started this particular book because it was sold to me as "far future thriller wherein the protagonist enters a reenactment of 1900s Earth in order to elude his attackers, only to discover and more sinister plot within the reenactment." Taking 1900s to mean Victorian/Edwardian period, I thought this book might be right up my alley. I have a fondness for far future science fiction, and a fondness for Victoriana, and a fondness for thrillers in general. How could this book possibly go wrong?

It turns out that 1900s actually translates to a rough approximation of the 1950s, so that was a bit disappointing. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Stross's take on the far future, a weird, wonderful place with loving nods to the master of far future science fiction, Cordwainer Smith.

The story is well-paced, and the premise is intriguing. Ultimately, however, the plot doesn't make a lot of sense. This can be a problem in far future fictional settings where the scope of your technology outpaces the scope of your 21st-century human brain, and Stross blunders into this a number of times. The biggest problem with this book, as far as I'm concerned, is its treatment of gender identity. I felt it was badly handled all around, and that "women" (such as the term applies in this setting) in particular were often poorly characterized stereotypes. I don't know Charles Stross, but I couldn't help but get the impression that he was rubbing his hands together gleefully while writing this book, imagining the Tiptree award he was bound to win. He seemed to be intentionally pushing gender buttons for that effect. His ideas about gender and identity are interesting but ultimately unconvincing, and at times even troubling. This was the largest turn off for me. Not only did I feel the gender roles were poorly written from the perspective of a far future, gender optional society, I felt that they were poorly written in a 20th-century context. Stross doesn't seem to understand his female characters (his characters that WANT to be female, I should say), and I can't help but think this book would have been better if someone had pointed this out to him.

Where does that leave Glasshouse? It's an enjoyable yarn if you don't think about it too hard. There are lots of cool ideas to be had. If you're easily turned off by poorly written female characters, however, you might find Glasshouse isn't your cup of tea.(less)

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May 16, 2009 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sciencefictionfantasy

Several hundred years from now, humanity has just finished the Censorship Wars. Using an electronic virus called Curious Yellow, it targeted the brains of historians as they used teleportation gates (the major method of transportation). Robin has just emerged from a medical clinic with most of his memory wiped. Perhaps he was one of those targeted historians; he does have memories of being in a tank regiment during the war, not as a soldier, but as a tank. He joins a research program to recreate...more Several hundred years from now, humanity has just finished the Censorship Wars. Using an electronic virus called Curious Yellow, it targeted the brains of historians as they used teleportation gates (the major method of transportation). Robin has just emerged from a medical clinic with most of his memory wiped. Perhaps he was one of those targeted historians; he does have memories of being in a tank regiment during the war, not as a soldier, but as a tank. He joins a research program to recreate the "dark ages," the late 20th and early 21st centuries, by having volunteers live in an actual, recreated "town." It sounds like a good way to get away from whoever is trying to kill him; whatever he did, or was, before his wipe, it must have been important.

The participants are given random, anonymous identities (Robin is turned into a woman named Reeve). Along with Sam, her "husband," they are placed into what looks like Smalltown, USA. They are given little, or no, idea as to just what they are supposed to do. All the couples are electronically monitored; during mandatory church services on Sunday, any faults or misdeeds are pointed out to everyone. Reeve is one of the few who begins to realize that something is really wrong. Their contract specifies a minimum amount of time to be in the study, approximately 3 years, but does not specify a maximum amount of time. The town has become a very high-tech panopticon. The women have suddenly become fertile, and several female participants have become pregnant. Perhaps the idea is to create a new race of people who don't know that there is an outside world. Perhaps it has to do with this new race re-infecting the rest of humanity with a new and improved version of Curious Yellow.

Here is a wonderful piece of writing. The best part is the author's look at present-day life. He does not just needle it or poke fun at it, he rips it to pieces and stomps on what is left. The rest of the book is also very much worth reading. This gets two strong thumbs-up.

(less)

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May 20, 2013 William Galaini rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

Wow ... where to start?

I thought Sci-Fi had dropped low in recent years, but Glasshouse has given me courage. Let me explain:

First off, I don't want to give much away. What will offer is that not only is this book extremely well written and detailed, but Stross thinks through his setting it an almost infinite degree, having explored the final destinations of all of his technological advances. The world here is detailed and unbound, bringing humanity to a transcendent level.

So when volunteers sig...more

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Jun 01, 2010 William Clemens rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's been a while since I read the kind of Sci-fi where the world is so different that I am disoriented for the first few pages, and I started this book with little hope that it would improve. I was wrong. Once I got into the story Stross drew me into his world and I couldn't put the book down. Robin awakes from a devastating memory wipe that he did to himself, and before he can adjust to his loss of past he signs up for an experiment designed to recreate life before 'the acceleration.' Trapped...more

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Jul 11, 2011 Kalyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

I haven't read Accelerando so I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into with this author and I wasn't familiar with the future world of this novel. This lack of familiarity made it a little difficult to understand the world presented until I could comprehend the post-Singularity future that the author was showing. It's complex and a little hard-to-follow at first because the reader is getting it from a very mixed-up character's head but it eventually makes sense.

I liked the character developme...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Perry Whitford rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Glasshouse is set in a future society where post-humans live in a vastly different collection of individual states that are protected from each other by faire-walls, yet loosely connected by a network of worm-holes, or "T-gates".
As you can guess from that, it's a society that will be recognisable in construction to computer programmers; the inhabitants are all "backed-up" on servers so can be effectively immortal, but there is the constant threat of virus attacks to worry about.

The effects of o...more Glasshouse is set in a future society where post-humans live in a vastly different collection of individual states that are protected from each other by faire-walls, yet loosely connected by a network of worm-holes, or "T-gates".
As you can guess from that, it's a society that will be recognisable in construction to computer programmers; the inhabitants are all "backed-up" on servers so can be effectively immortal, but there is the constant threat of virus attacks to worry about.

The effects of one such attack, by a virus called Curious Yellow, forms the background for the larger story being told, but the main story is about a de-mobbed soldier who volunteers for a social experiment in order to avoid the sense of being hunted for acts that he can't even remember, because parts of his memory have been erased.
The experiment is to be part of a society that plans to replicate the "Dark Age" society of the 20th century (nice joke that), so Stross takes us from the far future back to the present as his characters grapple with concepts such as monogamy and money.
The lead character, Robin, who is a male, also has to deal with being transformed in a female, Reeve.

There are lots of ideas at work all at once in this novel! Stross is clearly at the cutting edge in terms of extrapolating how both our environments and ourselves will evolve through the advance of computer programming, I admit that I struggled with some of the concepts.
The human side of it sagged a bit for me though. I became frustrated with the increasingly Pavlovian behaviour of the subjects in the Glasshouse the longer it went on, also increasingly nostalgic (sic) for the "future" society of the first few chapters, which was really exciting.
Its always about the quality of the writing for me too. Of Stross's contempories that I have read I would say that he writes slightly better than Ken MacCleod (who I enjoy despite his average prose) but significantly worse than Iain M Banks.

Its two and a half years since I read this one and I have not read another Stross since, but I will do at some point, he has a great imagination if this book is anything to go by. (less)

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May 15, 2012 Charles Spitzig rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-and-gone

AWESOME! I have a very short list of "A" authors. Every book I've read by Stross has been great. This might have been my favorite.

Revolution in a society where everything is watched.

(view spoiler)...more

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May 08, 2011 Daniel Hembree rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great story, good science, and interesting characters. What's not to like? I've read other books by this author and continue to be impressed by his understanding of technical issues and the way he can weave these things into a story that explore the complexities of gender, security,id theft, government regulation, post traumatic stress, and other topical issues.

In other stories by this author there was a reliance on supernatural phenomena to provide mystery and suspense. Not this one. Everyone a...more

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Aug 22, 2011 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: conspiracy, dystopias, horror, sci-fi-ish, thriller

Robin is a newly arrived memory wipe patient. He's not sure who he used to be, but he can remember enough to know that the old him wasn't a particularly nice person. Neither is the new him. But he meets a girl and he gets a chance for a new start. They're holding a study that will replicate pre-singularity earth society and he can participate. It also appears to be a safe haven from the mystery men who are trying to kill him. Besides, how dangerous can historical re-enactment be? It turns out, v...more

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Mar 12, 2009 Bruce rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-fantasy

I am beginning to develop this theory that Charles Stross and Walter Jon Williams are working together behind the scenes.

The description of this book looks like a different take on the same or eerily familiar universe as Stross's Halting State.

Likewise, Implied Spaces grappled with the same ideas behind Stross's Glasshouse. Both of the Williams books appeared well after the Stross books, so maybe it's just that Williams is using heavily Stross's ideas.

But Implied Spaces had a glowing review by...more

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May 24, 2011 Wolverina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: old-reviews, books

Read Glasshouse by Charles Stross over the past few days, so by the time unisfa bookclub comes around, I'm not going to be able to remember much about it at all.

It's pretty awesome though. My partner started labelling it for me telling me it sounded nu cyberpunk and all post modern. Fortunately I didn't let that put me off. Wikipedia called it post cyberpunk. So there you go. I suspect saying anymore will probably be spoilerage and defeat the purpose of going to a bookclub to ramble about books....more

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About Charles Stross

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy.

Stross is sometimes regarded as being part of a new generation of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, Liz Williams and Richard Morgan.

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“Never bring a knife to a gun fight," I tell Mr. Crispy as I turn away from him. His right arm thinks about it for a moment, then falls off.” — 1 person liked it

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