Charles Stross’ 2006 novel explores themes of ubiquitous State surveillance and the struggle of individuals to survive in the face of severe pressure to conform.<\/p>\n
At the center of the story, set in the 27th\u00a0<\/sup>century when interstellar travel is by teleport gate, is Robin, an ex-spy who wakes up in a clinic with most memories missing. Soon, he realizes that he\u2019s a demobilized soldier from a civil war that\u2019s ended, and that someone is trying to kill him because of something that his earlier self knew.<\/p>\n Pursued by a dangerous enemy and desperate to find somewhere to hide, the post-human Robin volunteers to participate in the Glasshouse, an experimental simulation of a pre-accelerated culture in which participants are assigned anonymized identities.<\/p>\n Yet, drastic changes to his identity within the Glasshouse \u2013 his backed-up personality wakes up as female Reeve, facing the challenges of womanhood and married life in a nuclear family amid social pressures and disturbing patterns – threaten Robin\/Reeve\u2019s freedom from meddling by the experimenters and make him\/her vulnerable to his\/her own unbalanced mind.<\/p>\n Especially thought-provoking, to libertarian futurists concerned about sustaining a peaceful and just civilization with universal respect for individual rights is Stross\u2019 exploration of the theme of personal identity, which suggests the need for an unambiguous definition of who has a given personal identity as a basis for a functioning legal system.<\/p>\n Note: Charles Stross also was a Best Novel finalist for Saturn\u2019s Children<\/em>(in 2009) and was nominated for the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Iron Sunrise\u00a0<\/em>(2005), Accelerando <\/em>(2006),\u00a0The Revolution Business <\/em>(2010) and\u00a0Annihilation Score\u00a0<\/em>(2016).<\/p>\n Stross\u2019 first novel Singularity Sky\u00a0<\/em>(2003), a 2011 Prometheus Hall of Fame nominee, achieved a rare distinction within the Prometheus Awards\u2019 four-decade history: Although not discovered and read by LFS members until after the nominating deadline, a members\u2019 write-in campaign after the five finalists were selected proved so popular that Stross\u2019 novel came in a close second for the 2004 award.<\/p>\n For historical interest, read Michael Grossberg\u2019s 2004 article<\/strong><\/a> in the printed Prometheus quarterly (Spring-Summer 2004, Volume 22, Number 2) describing Stross\u2019 Singularity Sky<\/em> as a write-in possibility under the existing award rules,\u00a0, and suggesting ways the Prometheus Award nominations procedure might be improved \u2013 including several suggestions that were later adopted.<\/p>\n * Coming up soon on the Prometheus Blog:<\/strong>\u00a0A 40th<\/sup>Anniversary Celebration and appreciation of Harry Turtledove\u2019s\u00a0The Gladiator\u00a0<\/em>and Jo Walton\u2019s\u00a0Ha\u2019Penny<\/em>, co-winners of the 2008 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.<\/p>\n * See related introductory essay<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0about the LFS\u2019 40th<\/sup>anniversary retrospective series of Appreciations of past Prometheus Awards winners, with an overview of the awards\u2019 four-decade history.<\/p>\n * Other Prometheus winners:<\/strong>\u00a0For a full list of winners \u2013 for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the recently updated and enhanced Prometheus Awards page<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on the LFS website.<\/p>\n * Join us<\/strong>! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards, join <\/strong><\/a>the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit volunteer association of libertarian sf\/fantasy fans and freedom-lovers. Introduction: To highlight the four-decade history of the Prometheus Awards, which the Libertarian Futurist Society began celebrating in 2019, and to make clear what libertarian futurists saw in each of our past winners that made them deserve recognition as pro-freedom sf\/fantasy, we\u2019re continuing in 2020 to present a series of weekly Appreciations of Prometheus Award-winners, … Continue reading Personal identity, liberty, gender and power: An Appreciation of Charles Stross\u2019 Glasshouse, the 2007 Prometheus Award winner for Best Novel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43,159],"tags":[375,150,379,374,383,225,382,377,381,378,380,376],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-best-novels","tag-accelerando","tag-charles-stross","tag-gender-roles","tag-glasshouse","tag-government-controls","tag-identity","tag-individual-rights","tag-post-human","tag-sexuality","tag-simulations","tag-social-conformity","tag-teleport-gates"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-nu","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1615,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lfs.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/0-Glasshouse-Stross-0_.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>Set in a distant future and taking place in the same universe as Stross\u2019 novel Accelerando,\u00a0<\/em>though at a much later point in its history, Glasshouse\u00a0<\/em>revolves around un-rehabilitated war criminals using every tool at their disposal to build a society that they can control absolutely.<\/p>\n
\nIn this future, people look back at our own pre-singularity century as a primitive time and part of the Dark Ages. Even so, the simulation requires participants to re-enact life in the 21st<\/sup>century.<\/p>\n<\/a>Full of imaginative technology and social extrapolation, this Hugo-nominated novel raises questions about gender roles, social conformity, sexuality, how governments use power to control, and threats to personal freedom in a complex future without scarcity where identity itself is mutable and unreliable.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nLibertarian futurists believe cultural change is as vital as political change (and often more fun!) in achieving universal individual rights and a better world (perhaps eventually, worlds) for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"