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When Robin wakes up in a clinic with most of his memories missing, it doesn't take him long to discover that someone is trying to kill him. It's the twenty-seventh century, when interstellar travel is by teleport gate and conflicts are fought by network worms that censor refugees' personalities and target historians. The civil war is over and Robin has been demobilized, but someone wants him out of the picture because of something his earlier self knew.

On the run from a ruthless pursuer and searching for a place to hide, he volunteers to participate in a unique experimental polity, the Glasshouse. Constructed to simulate a pre-accelerated culture, participants are assigned anonymized identities: it looks like the ideal hiding place for a posthuman on the run. But in this escape-proof environment Robin will undergo an even more radical change, placing him at the mercy of the experimenters, and of his own unbalanced psyche…

I’ve known Charlie and been reading his books for years and he just keeps improving on his already high standard of imagination. It’s no surprise to see this Hugo-winning author getting good reviews here and in the US, where he has not one but two books (including this one) on the shortlist for the 2007 Prometheus Awards.

Orbit, paperback, 400 pages, published March 2007

Author: Charles Stross