Glasshouse, by Charles Stross

You know what they say, "If you live in a glasshouse, don't throw stones....because the glasshouse might actually be a large experimental society floating in space and the people running the experiment will deduct from your score."

Er...that is what they say...isn't it?

"You've just spent an entire prehistoric human lifetime as an ice ghoul and people are needling you for having too many arms?" I shake my head. "I just assume you have a good reason."

The first chapter of Glasshouse gave me an extreme case of time-shock. At its basic level, the beginning of the book is boy meets girl with a duel to the death thrown in for a little action. Except that this is the 27th century, so things are a bit more complicated if you are not familiar with the rampant body-swapping, the robotic killer wasp-viruses, the persona back-ups, and the memory-erasing that is fairly commonplace in the future.

"...yes, maybe I was a tank. If so, at one time I guarded a critical network gate."

Robin and Kay decide to take part in an experimental society where they will be given new physical bodies and live for three years as if they are in the Dark Ages. Oh, and by "Dark Ages," they mean (you guessed it) OUR TIME. Robin vows to find Kay inside the experiment. Of course this is somewhat complicated by the fact that Robin (who is usually male, but has been a female a few times in the past, as well as a TANK) is given a female body and has to deal with the rigid conventions and rules placed on him/her by the experimenters.

"MINUS TEN POINTS FOR PUBLIC NUDITY."

The subjects are compelled to follow the norms of the Dark Ages society by a devious point system that awards or deducts points to individuals, couples, and small groups. At 'Church" the small groups meet and they can award or deduct points to other groups based on their behavior. As one character puts it: "It's an iterated prisoner's dilemma scenario, with collective liability."
This leads to 'score whores,' mobs, violence, and murder.


While reading, I enjoyed the portions of Glasshouse that took place...well..in the Glasshouse. The paranoia and the mystery of the experiment were much more engaging than the flashbacks to the censorship wars, the Linebarger Cats, and the tanks... Those sections lost me in a few places (maybe if I had known more about networks and computer viruses, things would have been different).