The best of the Stross novels that I've read or tried to read. In this case, what makes it interesting is the changes the characters go through, as their minds are stored and retrieved into different bodies, often of different sexes. Their attitudes get reprogrammed, but Stross is able to make the essential 'character' of the characters apparent. It's a challenging writing job, and the kind of thing that can get an author into trouble, but here, at any rate, he pulls it off. ( )

This is one of the most imaginative sci-fi stories I have encountered. Similar to Cory Doctorow, Stross knows no boundaries when it comes to imagining the future.

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. ( )

I made it to p. 33 and that's all I could take. This seemed like it was going to be more of that worst of sci fi genres--guys having sex with female aliens. ( )

Extremely twisty ( )

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 ( )

Set in the same universe as Accelerando. Interesting universe with a trite soap opera. ( )

I have mixed feeling about this book. I think it was trying to make some commentary on inequality in the 20th century but it wasn't executed very well. It also had several places where I was sure I had skipped a page because suddenly I had gotten very lost. I was mostly able to follow the plot up until the last 50 pages or so and then it kind of lost me, and I don't think it was because this book was too advanced or anything. I got a little tried of the unreliable narrator theme as well. Even though the characters were amnesiacs, which made the characters a little flat, I still thought they were interesting although I think the character development was a little wonky. I thought this book had an intriguing premise and setting but there were some things about the world that bugged me. Everyone adapts to the 1950s world incredibly quickly for people who don't know what a washing machine or a car is. Also everyone does some really crazy things for money in this book even though it was never made clear what the money was for in a world where you can create what you need in an A-gate. That being said, I never felt like I wanted to abandon this book or anything like that even thought it isn't one of my favorites. I may try to read other books by this author and see if they might be more up my alley. ( )

A historian-turned-tank-turned some kind of memory-wiped criminal and/or victim, in a posthuman world where body modification and memory modification are standard responses to trauma and extended lifespans, signs up for an experimental emulation of the Dark Ages (1950s-1990s) and gets way more than he/she bargained for. There’s a lot of ideas going on here, and I appreciate the way Stross has the protagonist encounter today’s ordinary things, think they’re weird, and then use the period-appropriate names for them for ease of narrative understanding, but it’s so busy that it’s a bit chilly, even when it’s about horrific trauma or nonconsensual personality modification. Warning for rape, including rape committed by a sympathetic character back when he/she was brain-colonized by a fascist meme. ( )

Where Accelerando was a study in Singularity futurist theory, Glasshouse, while taking place in the same society, concentrates more on getting you into the head of the protagonist, Robin, a veteran of the Censorship Wars. The reader gets to know Robin far more intimately than we did Manfred Maxc, even though Robin's memory has been severely redacted for much of for much of Glasshouse.

The themes of the universe as information and intellectual property are as strong as in the rest of Mr. Stross's work, but he works them into this novel with more subtlety. Although this isn't as gripping a story as The Atrocity Archives or Iron Sunrise, it's a worthwhile, enjoyable read and lives up to the author's deserved reputation. ( )

It's been pointed out by many people that all SF is a reflection of current society. It uses exceptional circumstances to show us ourselves from perspectives that are unique and unusual. It comments on the world we live in by showing us how different things could be.

Very few hard SF novels are as overt in their reflection as Glasshouse. Which is particularly interesting to me, as I didn't expect it from an author like Stross.

It's not that his books aren't political or socio-culturally oriented. They are. But this book is the most character-driven of his (that I've read, anyway) and that makes the story much more personal. It's also set in a world that's (more or less, without giving anything away) basically the present day. (But not really. It makes sense when you read it.) This gives Stross a platform to write some extremely incisive commentary on our social mores and institutions. Glasshouse is directly tied to the real world in which we live in ways that his other works are not. This is his most overtly political book.

He's not kind in his assessment of us. Insightful, hopeful, interested the the things that truly make us who we are - absolutely. But it's obvious that he's not at all happy with the way our society is currently going.

Glasshouse has all the techno-wonder and Big Ideas I've come to expect from Stross. But I found the personal tone of this book to be a refreshing change from some of his other work. ( )

This could have been really dull because there's really nothing new in it by way of SF ideas; it relies on wormholes/teleporting, nanobots, uploading your mind then downloading it to any body you fancy, editing your memories in the process, and not much else. You can find all these elements in many other places. The odd thing is that this doesn't necessarily matter. Individual authors' speculations about where these scientific or engineering advances might take humanity physically and culturally can be radically different and the wider themes they may wish to treat can be equally diverse. Usually the problems lie with a single author trying to mine out the same vein in a zillion sequels. Ultimately certain ideas get tired no matter who is writing them and it's time for the genre as a whole to move on. We are perhaps approaching that point with some of these technological ideas, at least as ends in themselves, but this particular novel feels pretty fresh. If [a:Alastair Reynolds|51204|Alastair Reynolds|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1369753656p2/51204.jpg] wrote another book in which forgetting one's own past drove the plot as much as it does in this book I'd probably go nuts, but here it works fine.

And that's the situation; self-inflicted amnesia bloke is the victim of an attempted assassination and he runs off to a bizarre psychological/archaeological experiment to hide while he gathers his wits...but much is not as it seems and an exciting 'friller ensues. At least, it ensues after the slightly over-long scene-setting part where we get a future citizen suffering past-shock as he stumbles around a fake 21st Century trying to figure out how those quaint barbarians (i.e. us) coped with such an irrational, inefficient and technologically and socially backward society. Once that bit is past...well, I read it at break-neck pace and whilst I guessed some of the plot points ahead of time, greatly enjoyed it. I was slightly disappointed with the denouement which I felt was handled too hastily but over-all I think this is as good as anything I've read by Stross and better than several. ( )

Stross is my everything ( )

Best of Stross's work I've read so far. ( )

A bit too graphically violent for my tastes, but very interesting. ( )

The premise of post humans who can move from body to body, make copies of themselves and erase memories as needed seems like it might be flighty fun until Robin joins an experiment to live like a 20th century woman for an indeterminate amount of time cut off from the rest of the universe. The past of the inhabitants and the past of the human race turn out to be darker and uglier than expected - and the anthropological "experiment" also is not what it seems. I'm never really sure that I like Robin/Reeve all that much - but then neither is s/he. ( )

Charles Stross ist immer anders und das mag ich so an ihm.

Tolles Buch - super viele Ideen - ein bißchen wie [a:Uwe Post|3124638|Uwe Post|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-e89fc14c32a41c0eb4298dfafe929b65.png] auf Englisch.


Im gleichen Urlaub habe ich auch [b:The Left Hand of Darkness|18423|The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388229638s/18423.jpg|817527] von LeGuin gelesen und dieses beschäftigt sich ebenfalls mit Geschlechterrollen und der Möglichkeit diese zu wechseln. Dies wirkt allerdings bei Stross viel dynamischer und zum Nachdenken anregend. The Left Hand of Darkness ist zwar auch sehr empfehlenswert, aber nicht wegen der Beschäftigung mit diesem Thema. ( )

Only read half of this ~ Stross's blog is way more interesting than his books ~ ( )

My introduction to Stross. Since then. It seems they are all pretty much the same. Too uniform a (admittedly excellent) in style. ( )

Wow, what an intense book! I kind of felt like my head would explode while reading it.

I found myself frustrated at times by my total lack of contextual information - the book takes place so far into the future that society looks nothing at all like it does in its current state - and that's discombobulating. ;) I felt frustrated that I couldn't really "see" what was happening, because I had no clue what was going on, particularly in the beginning. It does become more clear over the course of the book, and by the end its *almost* imaginable in my tiny little imagination.

But this is a complicated book, not a light read. Layers upon layers of plot and mystery...good stuff, but it took some serious brain power for me to read, particularly in the beginning. The middle-end are so exciting and there is a lot of momentum built by then. So if you're having trouble in the beginning, stick it out because it's worth the ride. ( )

[a: John Scalzi|4763|John Scalzi|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1407277112p2/4763.jpg] claims to be a gateway drug into science fiction literature, I suppose he may well be but I believe Charles Stross is almost the opposite of that. Stross is deservedly one of the most popular active sci- fi authors today but readers not familiar with the genre may find him a little bewildering. His _target readership seems to be those who are quite au fait with the common tropes of the genre and also some computer programming terms. Those “in the know” love the science he puts in books like [b: Accelerando|17863|Accelerando|Charles Stross|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388240687s/17863.jpg|930555] and [b: The Atrocity Archives|101869|The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files, #1)|Charles Stross|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1439096114s/101869.jpg|322252] while the likes of me struggle. I certainly had problems understanding much of these two books but less so with [b: Singularity Sky|81992|Singularity Sky (Eschaton, #1)|Charles Stross|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386924988s/81992.jpg|1192005]. It did occur to me that his fiction is probably not for me but I keep coming back to try again because I like his wit and imagination, plus he is a great guy and very approachable to readers in online forums and such. Today I am happy to say I have finally found a Stross novel that I absolutely love and works completely for me. It is Glasshouse.

This Hugo nominated novel is set in the 27th century when our 21st century is viewed as part of “The Dark Ages”, presumably pre-singularity (called “the acceleration” here). Most of the book takes place in a sealed experimental environment where participants sign up to reenact life in the 21st century for research purposes. The protagonist starts off as a man named Robin who has part of his memory deleted for reasons unknown, presumably to forget some traumatic experience that he wants to do without. After he signed up for the isolated social experiment he backs himself up and his backed up personality wakes up inside the experiment as a woman called Reeve who has no idea why she has chosen to change her gender. She soon settles down to a married life of a nuclear family as part of the experiment, but begins to feel that the “experiment” is not really an experiment and some very disturbing things are going on.

Io9 calls Glasshouse “One of Stross' most challenging books”, I have not read enough of his books to confirm or deny this but I do find it to be his most accessible book so far. Certainly some tech expositions still go over my head but they never impede the storytelling. Whenever I don’t feel inclined to Google the programming terms I was able to gloss over them and enjoy the story. I do hope many more Stross books are like this, and I intend to find out.

I don’t remember any of Stross’ characters from his other books that I have read but I doubt I will forget the main characters in this book. This is particularly true for Robin/Reeve whose experience and character growth is unlike anything I have read before. The book is surprisingly feministic in tone after Robin becomes Reeve. Stross seems to have a lot of empathy for the trials and tribulations of womanhood. The emotions, the interactions with other women, the social pressure etc. are all convincingly portrayed (I hesitate to say accurately portrayed as I am not of the gender). Interestingly once Robin’s backup is activated as Reeve we have no idea what becomes of the original Robin, but with all these backups and restores we don’t even know whether the original Robin ever appears in this book. As for Reeve, she has to be one of the most unreliable narrators ever (I won't tell you why though).

Of course regularly readers of Charles Stross are probably not exactly looking for books that deal with feminist issues, I imagine the cool tech to be his main attraction. Glasshouse is stuffed to the gills with cool sci-fi tech. The posthumanism reminds me of both [b: Altered Carbon|40445|Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)|Richard K. Morgan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387128955s/40445.jpg|2095852] and [b: Permutation City|156784|Permutation City|Greg Egan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1287341300s/156784.jpg|1270567]*, the memory editing is similar to PKD’s short story [b: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale|6561374|We Can Remember It for You Wholesale|Philip K. Dick|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1245689437s/6561374.jpg|857342] (filmed a couple of times as “Total Recall”). However, this is not a derivative novel, the sum of the different influences make for a very original book which is mind blowing, thought provoking and even poignant at times. The wilds ideas and amazing tech are underpinned by a surprisingly touching story of a loving relationship.

Glasshouse is definitely the best Charles Stross book I have read so far and I hope that even better ones are in store for me.
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* Unlike the virtual world featured in Permutation City, the social experiment of Glasshouse takes place in an actual physical environment where the activated digitized personalities are stored in human bodies. ( )

Awesome start... and then I stopped reading as ~100 pages, when it got more and more ..yawn. ( )

Another mind-bendy one. ( )

"Memory is liberty" (226). Charles Stross has a way with abstract nouns. In this book, he'll remember it for you at medicare rates.

Glasshouse is a sequel of sorts to Accelerando, set in the same narrative future, but without any shared characters or locations. Unlike Accelerando, it is really a novel, and plotted like one, rather than a necklace of linked novellas. The plot is vividly phildickian, and emphasizes the ambivalence of prison/sanctuary, therapy/coercion, and similar concepts, along with conundrums of self-identification and possible paranoia. Stross uses the present-tense narration of Accelerando here, but the pacing and mood of Glasshouse are closer to Stross' Laundry series.

Stross might have called the story Decelerando, since it mostly takes place in an attempted simulation of the "dark ages," i.e. the terrestrial 20th/21st-century. Having his male narrating character enter that simulation as a housewife allows Stross to make a variety of observations about contemporary gender roles, reminding me somewhat of Sturgeon's Venus Plus X.

Ultimately, though, this book is an espionage thriller with the sort of psychological touches that only the post-Singularity science fictional setting could afford. It reads very quickly, with a fair share of drollery.

Only read half of this ~ Stross's blog is way more interesting than his books ~ ( )