Glasshouse (novel)
First edition cover
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| Author | Charles Stross |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Rita Frangie |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Orbit (UK), Ace (US) |
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Publication date
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June 2006 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback |
| Pages | 352 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 63692719 |
| 813/.6 22 | |
| LC Class | PR6119.T79 G57 2006 |
Glasshouse is a science fiction novel by British author Charles Stross, first published in 2006. The novel is set in the twenty seventh century aboard a spacecraft adrift in interstellar space. Robin, the protagonist, has recently had his memory erased. He agrees to take part in an experiment, during which he is placed inside a model of a late twentieth/early twenty-first century Euroamerican society. Robin is given a new identity and body, specifically that of a woman named "Reeve". Major themes of this novel are identity, gender determinism, self-image- and conformity. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a sequel to his 2005 novel Accelerando, although Stross has stated that the two novels are not obviously incompatible.Glasshouse won the Prometheus Award for 2007, and was nominated for the Hugo, Campbell, and Locus Awards in 2007.
Stross wrote of the book's production:
Glasshouse appeared, almost fully formed, in my head between 2:30 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. in the afternoon of 23 March 2003, while I was at the pub nattering with a friend. I held it off for all of two weeks or so, until 8 April, when the compulsion to start writing became too strong to resist, and the first draft emerged in just three weeks of obsessive 12-hour days.
It is the 27th century. The culture featured in the novel is based on the culture portrayed in the last chapter of Accelerando, "Survivor" (full chapter here). Humanity has spread throughout the galaxy using the wormhole technology copied from the alien routers, forming a plethora of societies and 'polities'.
Robin, a human male, is recovering from a memory excision process in a rehabilitation centre. Though he remembers nothing of his past life(s), he suspects that he lived through traumatic times as a participant in the series of wars that raged many years before. Suspecting that he has been targeted for assassination by persons unknown, he agrees to sign-up with a radical, isolated social experiment that will attempt to recreate the forgotten "Dark Ages", the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
On being transferred to the polity in which the program is being held, he discovers that he has been given the body of a woman, Reeve. As the experiment unfolds, she begins to suspect that all is not what it seems, and that the founders of the experiment are engaged in a very sinister conspiracy. Slowly, she realizes that her role is not as clear-cut as she originally thought, which leads her to question, and then struggle against the program.
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