purplecthulhu

Sailing Bright Eternity Greg Benford
Vacuum Diagrams Stephen Baxter
Gateway Fred Pohl
The Clan Corporate Charles Stross
Immortality Inc. Robert Sheckly
Darkland Liz Williams
Starfish Peter Watts
Maelstrom Peter Watts
The Oregon Experiment Alexander et al.
Missle Gap Charles Stross
Blindsight Peter Watts
Air Geoff Ryman
Freakonomics Levitt & Dubner
The Execution Channel Ken MacLeod
The Snake Agent Liz Williams
The Steep Approach to Garbadale Iain Banks
Sun of Suns Karl Schroeder
9Tail Fox Jon Courtenay Grimwood
The Moon of Gomrath Alan Garner
Players Paul McAuley
Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy Dennis Detwiller (not)


Glasshouse Charles Stross

I read an early version of this in draft form, so it was especially interesting to see how it turned out. I enjoyed it lots, as I did in draft, and I think the end is improved on the earlier one (IIRC about the last 1/3 of the book got substantially rewritten, but I'm not sure). The ending still wasn't entirely satisfactory though. I think this is partly because a lot of the final battle was told after the fact, rather than shown, and because this was confused by the unexpected proliferation of instances of central characters (it's a post-singularity book so this kind of thing is normal, but a bit tough on the narrative structure).

I know this book has received a certain amount of stick from some reviewers including Strange Horizons. Having read this review I was on the lookout for the problems mentioned. I find that the review is actually factually incorrect: 'The narrator never once offers us a sign that food, drink... cost money. ' Not true - Robin pays for drinks at least once, and there is mention of paying for Oxygen Tax at one point. I think the problem the reviewer has it that they have a particular view of how post-singularity economics works and has just assumed that this is how things work in Glasshouse when that just isn't so. You may have A-gates to build anything you want, but you still need the basic atomic feedstock. Hydrogen mighty be cheap and plentiful, but the further down the periodic table you get the scarcer things are, and with scarcity you get price.

Anyway, I enjoyed Glasshouse rather better in this form than in the original, and would recommend it to anyone into hard-ish SF. However, I have to say that if I was voting on the Hugos this year, Blindsight would still be getting my vote.