As I mentioned in some previous posts, I’m reading the Hugo nominees. I just got back into regular reading in the past year or two, thanks to our going to the library on a weekly basis for the kids, and I got to a point where I didn’t know what to read. So I figured I’d go with the award winners. It’s not like I’ve read a ton in the past decade, as far as fiction goes, so I had plenty to work with. Why not read the stuff that was voted by readers as the best of the best.
After reading Halting State, and I wasn’t done, I saw Glasshouse sitting on the shelf. I remembered it as being one of the Hugo nominees, so I grabbed it. This is the third Charles Stross novel I’ve read now, and I seem to be working backwards. I started with his more recent Saturn’s Children, then read Halting State, and now Glasshouse. Eventually I’ll read Accelerando which Glasshouse was a loose sequel to supposedly.
Glasshouse is set in the same ‘universe’ as Accelerando, but I didn’t feel like I missed anything. Maybe reading Accelerando will make me see stuff I would have otherwise missed, but for the most part from my understanding the stories are simply set in the same reality, but centuries apart, with all different characters, etc. Basically, I had no problems reading this, even though some claim it as a sequel.
The basic universe is pretty interesting. It’s a future where three primary pieces of technology have accelerated humanity into a post-human state. T-gates, A-gates, and Emotional computers. The computers are all throughout the book, and even in every character’s head in the form of their netlink, but they don’t seem obtrusive, and they’re not speaking characters. They remain machines, and tools, but ones that are extremely complex and able to hold immense amounts of data. The T-gates are wormhole technology so seamless, you can walk down a corridor, and see no change, but be in a habitat orbiting one brown dwarf for one minute, and then suddenly in another habitat somewhere else, in another moment, and not notice the change. They also provide power for nearly everything but having small t-gates in devices linked to others inside stars, to use their plasma energy. A-gates are assembler gates, which can create anything you want from basic generic stock mass. Food, guns…even people. A regular habit is for people to sit in their A-gate and back themselves up daily. The nanomachines rip them apart store them in data, and then rebuild them. That way if they die, they can be reborn and only miss a day, or however long it’s been since their last backup.
I don’t want to write up too many book spoilers. The story revolves around the character Robin, who has just had his memory wiped by an A-gate. He’s not sure exactly why he wiped so much of his memory, but now is in rehabilitation. However, it seems like there are people out to get him, and when he’s offered a chance at a new temporary identity in a psychological experiment that will last 3 years, he takes it, as a great way to hide from whomever is trying to kill him based on a life he doesn’t remember.
Upon entering the experiment he finds he’s now Reeve, and has been changed into a fairly waifish and weak girl, living in a near 1950′s replica of America. Main streets. Kitchen appliances. The players in the game are given points for behaving correctly according to the way things were, and taken away for breaking the simulation. Many get into the game and actively integrate themselves with this new reality, but Reeve is uncomfortable with it.
Eventually it’s discovered that the experiment is taking place inside a Glasshouse, a former prison with one way in, one way out by longjump t-gate, and that it’s not going to go for 3 years…but for possibly 300. The people controlling the polity having nefarious goals, i won’t get into here.
I thought it was a great book, the best of his that I’ve read so far. It was a very different world from our own, but it was much more easy to understand how people lived in it. how the world worked. It followed a fairly standard narrative style, which I enjoyed after the 2nd person method in Halting State, so there was no jarringness to the book or the writing.
My only real complaint, again comes down to what seems to be Stross’s boredom with climaxes. Glasshouse began to climax, and then while there was more action than in the later books, he literally has the main character knocked unconsious, and then in the following chapter, the epilogue states basically “To make things quick, we won.” and then explains how, and what happened. I was prepared for it at this point, or I would have probably been more disaspointed. Stross seems to be more interested in building up a world, and characters, as well as discovering the plot and mystery, and figuring it out….and then kind of loses interest in the resolution. While Glasshouse had more of it than in his later books Halting State, or Saturn’s Children, it still felt like the ‘big action scene at the end’ was abbreviated.
I still recommend it though. Even without a riveting actiony climax, it’s a great read, and I recommend it to all.
My list for 2007 now has Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge and Glasshouse by Charles Stross on the read column. I can see why Rainbow’s End won, but I don’t think Glasshouse was necessarily that far behind it in quality or ideas. In fact I’d say that Glasshouse was probably better written than Rainbow’s End, but that it didn’t feel as topical.
My 2007 list now has –
His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
Elfelheim by Michael F. Flynn
Blindsight by Peter Watts
My 2008 list now has –
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
2009 I’ve cleared
My 2010 list now has –
The City & The City by China Mieville
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
And from the 2010 list the next book i’m reading… Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest. I was looking at the books last week and not seeing anything to read after Glasshouse, and I knew I’d need to request something. I decided to see if anything had been misfiled in the fiction section rather than in the sci-fi section, and lo and behold I found Boneshaker. It had a hold on it, probably multiple holds, but if it’s on the shelves you get to check it out, even if someone else has a hold on it. I feel a little bad about that, but honestly it probably would have sat there until someone else grabbed it and checked it out, which who knows how long that could have been.
So now I have basically 2 weeks to read it. I’ve had it for a week already and i’m just starting in on it, but in 2 more weeks I’ll have to have it read, or stop somewhere in the middle. NOthing like a little pressure to get some reading done….