Glasshouse (2006)

Tiptree shortlist 2007 ( )

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 breeding stock. Anyone who, having the choice of billions to form a compliant polity, chooses several hundred professional killers deserves whatever they suffer.

I'm already tired of the 'I'm the one [whatever] that can save the universe, if only I can figure out what's really happening' plot. Got this in Dune; in Kiln People; and now in Glass House. Hoping for something different, something more humble from the next sci-fi.

That said, I had a lot of fun with this. Things blew up real nice. Its politics are liberal live-and-let live (which is to say, unradical and Fukuyaman, locating ideology 'out there' among the fanatics); its conception of suburbia a mixture of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' and Madeline l'Engle; and its choice to have several amnesiac, sexy war criminals as its heroes...weird. ( )

The cover of this book actually put me off the contents the first few times I saw it. It isn't as if the cover is bad, and it actually reflects the book fairly well—but I like books about people, and when there's not a person anywhere on the cover, I have to be prettty bored to read the book.I'm glad I did read it, although there were some rough bits. I need happy endings in my fiction. I just do, okay? This is pleasure reading, after all. And at one point the main character was so very far down that I felt hopeless for the him! Having experienced major depression, I fully recognized that he was very close to suicide. That wasn't very easy for me to read.If gender bending is an issue for you, stay away from this one. It goes well beyond John Varley's Steel Beach. I was tickled to see several casual references to polyamory. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2011/09/review-of-glasshouse-by-charles-stross.... ( )

Robin lives in the 27th century where what makes you a person is your consciousness that you can move into new bodies. Everyone is almost immortal as long as you can back yourself up frequently in an A-gate. Thus, some people choose to have some memories wiped. Robin wakes up in one of these facilities with more of a memory wipe than usual and finds himself signing up for a social experiment in which the members will live like the dark ages--the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

I really enjoyed the world Stross created in this book. His version of the future is clearly fully visioned and fleshed out in his own mind. This always makes for the best scifi books. I also really enjoyed that GLBTQ issues exist in this book without being the focus of the book. The focus is on war crimes, memory, and what makes you you, but there are definitely subplots involving GLBTQ issues in a world where people can choose their own external male/femaleness and sexuality then are suddenly plopped into an experiment where they can't do that. The plot is complex and engaging, although the ending was a bit of a let-down. I wish Stross had ensured his ending lived up to the world he created in the meat of the book.

I recommend this book to scifi fans and GLBTQ readers and advocates.

Check out my full review: http://wp.me/pp7vL-tT ( )