Glasshouse by Charles Stross Search Amazon for other books by or about Charles Stross. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

When scientists approach individuals vulnerable from recent memory/identity-reassignment surgery who remain unsure whether anyone is still out to get them and provide an offer of safe haven for a period of several years, it appears to be an offer perhaps not too good to refuse but welcome for all that. The safe haven turns out to be an iterative prisoner's dilemma with open record scoresheets--that is, individuals assume the roles of people from the somewhat distant past of 1950s earth, probably somewhere in the USA, and are rewarded for actions that are in character and punished for actions out of character. Since those rewards and punishments are applied to a whole cohort of individuals, peer pressure rapidly increases--most points are awarded for forming relationships, including intimate relationships and, above all, becoming pregnant and, in due course, giving rise to a new generation of role-players, ones who would have no concept of living outside of the simulation. Surely that sounds more like a permanent prison rather than the short-term haven that was advertised?

As ever, Charles Stross handles a range of characters in a variety of different scenes and circumstances with a mixture of deft plotting, acute awareness of the possible political-economy of future worlds and a wit based in part on amusing and perceptive allusions. At one stage, one of our principal protagonists takes a leaf out of the Zaphod Beeblebrox handbook of brain surgery and that must always be a good thing. Ideas buzz about like a cloud of mosquitoes and some are developed to their logical conclusions. The characters are vivid and distinctive and act according to motivations which are credible and easily visualized. If most of the secondary characters are defined by their role and their motivations rather than any sense of personal individuality or intellectual hinterland, then this too is appropriate for a background that deliberately aims to reduce individuals to roles within a historical simulacrum in which real-life behaviour can best be modelled through the use of largely tangible incentives and disincentives. If there is one reason to criticise, then it is in Stross's often established methodology of establishing a premise and then analysing its various implications before inverting the situation and reintroducing concepts that appeared to have vanished along with the introductory pages only then to return to the premise for the conclusion, suitably modified by the external examination of that premise. It is possible to view this methodology as a form of Hegelian process of investigation but it does not always appear to be the most natural structure for a novel. However, it does betray the presence of a superior author working at a very high level.

Charles Stross has established a relationship for himself as one of the most interesting as well as prolific science fiction writers at work today. This may not be one of his very best works but it is a splendidly entertaining and thought-provoking novel in its own right and can be recommended to readers not just regular science-fiction readers but those in the mainstream who would normally avoid such genre work; if anyone is worthy of earning the right to cross into the mainstream and out of the undesirable airs of the ghetto of sci-fi, then surely Stross mustbe a leading candidate.