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Loading... Glasshouse (edition 2007)by Charles Stross
Work InformationGlasshouse by Charles Stross
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I found this while looking for science fiction stories about mind uploading and life extension. It's set in a world where people can rebuild their bodies basically at will; the main character is a (seemingly male) military operative forcibly remade into a 1950s American housewife as part of a bizarre social experiment. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's a very weird, very solid thriller, about escaping from prison—only the prison is society itself in a sense. Cool ideas, played with in interesting ways. This was my first Charles Stross novel, but I suspect it will not be my last. hmm, on one hand, there are MUCH better send-ups of how 50s housewifery would look through alien eyes (I feel like the sufficiently advanced humans in this count as alien, if not truly extraterrestrial). On the other, I like the 'something else' I think the book is trying to do with the unreliable narrator - though. I haven't gone back and carefully re-read or looked up popular analysis to confirm. In any case, there's a lot of interesting interesting psychology/philosophy of a high tech-future going on, but I still feel like poorly-done feminism has too much screen time, and distracts notably from the book as a whole no reviews | add a review
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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 27th 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, but someone wants him out of the picture because of something his earlier self knew. On the run from a ruthless pursuer, he volunteers to participate in a unique experimental polity, the Glasshouse, constructed to simulate a pre-accelerated culture. Participants are assigned anonymized identities: it looks like the ideal hiding place for a posthuman on the run. But in this escape-proof environment, Robin will undergo an even more radical change, placing him at the mercy of the experimenters--and the mercy of his own unbalanced psyche.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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The book is about a 27th century war veteran named Robin, wearing a male body (it is common to back yourself up and change bodies as desired). To deal with his past in the war, he underwent memory surgery and is now not entirely sure who exactly he is. But he soon finds out that his former self volunteered to take part in a "glasshouse", a closed experimental research society set in the "Dark Ages" (late 20th century). This is were he wakes up - confused, disoriented, and stuck in the body of a frail woman, assigned the name Reeve.
This book is one of the rare ones which kept me reading non-stop. Reeve's descriptions of the dark ages are very amusing, and as the conspiracy around the glasshouse unfolds, the book gets ever more captivating. ( )