The basic premise of Glasshouse reminds me of the old joke about the fellow who joined the French Foreign Legion to forget. "Forget what?" he was asked. "I don't know," comes the reply, "I forgot." In Charles Stross’s novel, human civilization is living with a similar memory lapse in the aftermath of lengthy censorship wars—during which a mysterious power tampered with people’s recollection the way a computer virus might delete files on your hard disk. This malevolent adversary was eventually defeated, but did so much damage first, that no one is quite sure what caused the initial outbreak, or how much knowledge has been erased from history.
In Glasshouse , a large-scale scientific experiment is set up to recreate the circumstances that led to the censorship wars —perhaps thereby uncovering the now forgotten reasons for the conflict. Participants will live in an isolated, enclosed community and adopt the customs, technologies and laws of the late 20th and early 21st century—i.e., the everyday world familiar to the readers of Stross’s novel. But once volunteers sign on, they won’t be able to quit the project until it terminates in 1-3 years time…or perhaps longer.
The set-up is rife with opportunities for ironic commentary, and Stross takes full advantage of the potential for confusion and dismay when members of a future society confront the world we all know and love. "There’s something deeply disturbing about wearing clothes made from dead animals," narrator Reeve relates. "There’s stuff called 'silk' that’s basically bug vomit, and the idea of it makes my skin crawl." Stross also pokes fun at food, television, shopping, organized religion, and almost every other aspect of society that falls under his purview.
The subjects in this experiment adapt quickly to the demands of their new settings, some with perhaps excessive enthusiasm. A point system scores each individual's compliance with the social rules of the mini-polity, and points are tied to a financial incentive —to be paid to participants at the termination of the study. Readers familiar with the Milgram debacle at Yale and the Zimbardo prison experiment at Stanford— the latter slyly referenced within the novel, and apparently an inspiration for author Stross—will recognize a similarly malign dynamic at work in Glasshouse . Even when the rules of a society are based on dubious, if not dangerous, values, most individuals ask few questions and do as they are told—and apparently that aspect of human nature has not changed in the future envisioned by our author.
But, unlike say 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 , Glasshouse is not primarily a vehicle for social commentary nor, despite the many humorous touches, an exercise in comedic speculative fiction in the manner of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. The protagonist in Stross's novel is challenged to a duel-to-the-death in the opening pages, setting the tone for a futuristic adventure story in which the occasional philosophical or sociological trappings do not slow down the pacing or detract from the action-oriented plot. The narrator Reeve not only tries to stir rebellion among the "glasshouse" participants, but is also plagued by a series of flashbacks from the censorship wars, repressed memories of bloody encounters rising to the surface—and ensuring that every few pages some example of deadly combat appears in these pages.
The experimental glasshouse turns out to be less a way of exploring the past than a means for controlling the future. The key scientists running the experiment have a long history of working with tyrannical regimes, and their model community can potentially serve as a blueprint for a new wave of oppression and social control. A small number of participants in the experiment can sense this sinister plan and are determined to resist, but how can they hope to succeed when they are constantly observed, badgered and bullied, and left totally unarmed?
The plot occasionally drags and runs into dead-ends— long passages describe incidents (the laborious construction of a crossbow in the garage, an escape attempt via a ladder several kilometers long, etc.) that aren't well integrated into the rest of the novel. But for the most part, Glasshouse works both as an adventure story as well as a musing on social norms and their misuse. Knowledgeable readers will also enjoy deciphering the frequent allusions that Stross sprinkles into his text—including a whole host of hints relating to sci-fi writer Cordwainer Smith . These are so varied and frequent as to amount to a behind-the-scenes textual game played by the author of this novel.
The overall theme here, namely that reality isn't as real as we think, may be the most over-worked sci-fi device of recent years—with everything from The Matrix to The Truman Show , as well as a host of Philip K. Dick - inspired stories working endless variants on this meme. But Stross offers up a fresh, provocative angle on the subject, one that inspires comparisons not to sci-fi so much as to the old sociological debate on the "social construction of reality"—promoted most aggressively by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in their 1966 book of that name. Perhaps we all live in a Glasshouse of our own making, Stross constantly hints, while offering up an account of those who, contrary to the old adage, respond by throwing as many stones as possible.