April Books 9) Glasshouse

Apr 09, 2007 12:50

9) Glasshouse, by Charles Stross

And so, continuing with this year's Hugo nominees... I think this is my favourite of Charlie's books so far. In his previous sf books I've tended to find myself overwhelmed by the ideas about far-future post-Singularity existence; those are all still here, but very nicely balanced by the experience of the narrator who has signed up for a social experiment attempting to simulate the "dark ages", ie human society from 1950 to 2040, a period from which most information has been lost because paper was being used less and the digital media used for storage all became obsolete. This gives us an excuse for many sideswipes at the nature of American/European society as it is today; but in the meantime the far-future background is being unfolded in more and more detail, and the narrator becomes conscious of his/her own unreliability - often I find the "unreliable narrator" a really annoying excuse for incomplete world-building or sloppy characterisation, but Glasshouse very much avoids that trap.

So far my favourite of the Hugo shortlisted novels; but I do have three more to go!

Top UnSuggestion for this book: East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I think 
autopope will be amused (or bemused?) by some of the other books which figure on that list, such as C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia at #9.

writer: charles stross, bookblog 2007, hugos 2007

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