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nanocorp with designing a header for her Russell fanfic journal? Sing out if you want to give it a shot.
nanocorp with designing a header for her Russell fanfic journal? Sing out if you want to give it a shot.Jul. 10th, 2007
I've now read two of the Hugo contenders on the ballot this year. How the hell did that happen? I'm still voting for His Majesty's Dragon, mind you (I love Captain Laurence and Temeraire far too much), but I will be very hard pressed to not vote for Charles Stross' Glasshouse. Because damn. That was a very hard contender with Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon for best novel I've read so far this year.
Where to begin? Given the social circle I'm in, it will probably surprise no one that I found his society's treatment of bisexualism, gender freedom, monogamy and polyamory and every shade in between--and, just as importantly, solid acceptance of people's comfort levels for such things--refreshing. I was also quite amused by the inhabitants of this society being able to change their forms at whim, and that "elven" was apparently a common enough body type to show up as a reference. So was "centaur". There are pop culture references to both Star Trek and The Prisoner, done deftly enough to not be hugely obvious, but nicely apparent to fans of either. As a computer professional, I appreciated his frequent use of tech phrases like "fork an instance" and "firewall" in new and creative ways--in the sense of people's conscious existences and entire civilizations, rather than simple computers.
But all of that was really flavor and spice on top of a quite substantial and satisfying read. In a day when I'm half-braced to find grating copy errors in at least half the books I read, Stross' prose has a polished, dazzling clarity. And the plot was wonderfully convoluted, making me genuinely uncertain as to what was going on at least twice. Most of all, I appreciate that he made me think quite a bit about what he was writing. Highly recommended read. Four stars.
Where to begin? Given the social circle I'm in, it will probably surprise no one that I found his society's treatment of bisexualism, gender freedom, monogamy and polyamory and every shade in between--and, just as importantly, solid acceptance of people's comfort levels for such things--refreshing. I was also quite amused by the inhabitants of this society being able to change their forms at whim, and that "elven" was apparently a common enough body type to show up as a reference. So was "centaur". There are pop culture references to both Star Trek and The Prisoner, done deftly enough to not be hugely obvious, but nicely apparent to fans of either. As a computer professional, I appreciated his frequent use of tech phrases like "fork an instance" and "firewall" in new and creative ways--in the sense of people's conscious existences and entire civilizations, rather than simple computers.
But all of that was really flavor and spice on top of a quite substantial and satisfying read. In a day when I'm half-braced to find grating copy errors in at least half the books I read, Stross' prose has a polished, dazzling clarity. And the plot was wonderfully convoluted, making me genuinely uncertain as to what was going on at least twice. Most of all, I appreciate that he made me think quite a bit about what he was writing. Highly recommended read. Four stars.
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