Charles Stross: Glasshouse

Life in the transhuman post-singularity 27th century is flexible: movement is by teleporter, computers can scan your consciousness and transfer it from one body to other, you can clone and back up yourself, and assemblers produce whatever you need from basically nothing. Very nice. However, ugly censorship wars have ripped the society apart and while it's over now, things aren't quite as they used to be.

Robin, our protagonist, is an ex-warrior, now demobilized. To get rid of nasty baggage he has gone through heavy memory-excision operations. While he recovers, he's invited to an experiment, where a group of people is closed to a society that tries to recreate the Dark Ages, that is approximately the time period from 1950 to 2050.

Stross offers some pretty nice satire, but cooks up quite a thriller as well. To begin with, someone is pursuing Robin outside the Glasshouse - why, well, Robin doesn't quite remember. As it turns out, there's something badly wrong in the experiment and Robin keeps having these memory problems and issues with his identity.

This is an excellent book, well worth any praise. Stross has come up with clever ideas and manages to spin the reader around - having an amnesiac protagonist helps, of course - many times before the story is at its end and you finally get a glimpse of what's actually going on. Delicious book! Highly recommended for science fiction fans (the whole post-singularity thing is probably too much for readers unaccustomed to science fiction). [ Glasshouse at Amazon.co.uk ] [ Glasshouse at LibraryThing ]