Glasshouse is a fast-paced, zippy thriller of a science fiction novel. It is no accident that it has been shortlisted for the Hugo Award in the best novel category this year. Stross is a rising star in the science fiction writing world: his previous novel Accelerando won the 2006 Locus Award for best science fiction novel, and he won the Hugo award for a novella in 2005 with The Concrete Jungle.

In Glasshouse, Stross’s 27th-century narrator, Robin, is recovering from drastic memory surgery. A letter from his pre-surgery self has informed him that he was “an academic, a military historian specialising in religious manias, sleeper cults and emergent dark ages”, but that’s about all he knows of who he used to be, though it seems old enemies are out to kill him. He meets a four-armed woman in a club – in this high-tech future society, an individual’s body shape is a matter of personal preference – and falls in love. Together, Robin and Kay join an experiment in ‘Dark Ages’ living: the ‘Glasshouse’ referred to in the title.

Researchers are trying to fill in the gaps in the historical records of the so-called Dark Ages, the period from 1950 to 2040. They say, “we’re watching humans who lived like technologically assisted monkeys – very smart primates with complex mechanical tools, but basically unchanged since the species first emerged.”

After consenting to the experiment, the male Robin lands in the Glasshouse as a distressingly weak 1950s-style woman, Reeve, and can’t recognise Kay among his companions. Robin, as Reeve, is appalled at the restrictions put on her, from wearing high-heeled shoes to being expected to cook meals, clean the house and socialise with terrifyingly Stepford Wives-like women. Then the fun, and the danger, begin. The researchers, it turns out, are not quite as benign as they seemed at first. On the other hand, Reeve/Robin is far more dangerous than she knows.

Glasshouse is page-turning and very stylish. It has the old-fashioned virtues of a good plot and solid, believable characters, along with carefully realised far-future technology.

There are sly references to classic science fiction throughout the novel, designed to tease the reader. For example, one of the 1950s-style women is called Mrs Alice Sheldon, the real name of the feminist author James Tiptree, Jr; and our Earth is called ‘Urth’, as it is in Gene Wolfe’s far-future science fiction.

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