Quotes from book
Glasshouse

Glasshouse
Charles Stross

Glasshouse is a science fiction novel by British author Charles Stross, first published in 2006. The novel is set in the twenty seventh century aboard a spacecraft adrift in interstellar space. Robin, the protagonist, has recently had his memory erased. He agrees to take part in an experiment, during which he is placed inside a model of a late twentieth/early twenty-first century Euroamerican society. Robin is given a new identity and body, specifically that of a woman named "Reeve". Major themes of this novel are identity, gender determinism, self-image and conformity. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a sequel to his 2005 novel Accelerando, although Stross has stated that the two novels are not obviously incompatible. Glasshouse won the Prometheus Award for 2007, and was nominated for the Hugo, Campbell, and Locus Awards in 2007.

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“If I forget, then it might as well never have happened. Memory is liberty.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 13, “Climb” (p. 224)

Charles Stross photo

“I killed you! And you didn’t even notice!”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 14, “Hospital” (p. 235)

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“Can I remember— “I remember lots,” I say. How much of what I remember is true is another matter.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 15, “Recovery” (p. 250)

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“I’m wearing black leggings and a loose top festooned with a Menger sponge of empty pockets stitched out of smaller pockets and smaller still, almost down to the limits of visibility—woven in freefall by hordes of tiny otaku spiders, I’m told, their genes programmed by an obsessive-compulsive sartorial topologist.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 2, “Experiment” (p. 22)

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“The idea of Curious Yellow, of surrender to a higher cause, seems to appeal to a certain small subset of humanity. These people manipulate the worm, customizing its payload to establish quisling dictatorships in its shadow, and the horrors these gauleiters invent in its service are far worse than the crude but direct tactics the original worm used.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 12, “Bag” (p. 210)

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“A dark-skinned human with four arms walks toward me across the floor of the club, clad only in a belt strung with human skulls.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 1, “Duel” (p. 1; opening line)

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““Bad day at the office?”
“It’s always a bad day at the office, insofar as the office exists in the first place.””

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 18, “Connections” (p. 302)

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“Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life. But forgetting is a fraught process, one that is prone to transcription errors and personality flaws. Delete the wrong pattern, and you can end up becoming someone else. Memories exhibit dependencies, and their management is one of the highest medical art forms.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 2, “Experiment” (p. 22)

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“In my experience, the best way to deal with such people is to politely agree with everything they say, then ignore them.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 2, “Experiment” (p. 30)

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“You know, if I tried to change the minds of everyone who I thought needed changing, I’d never have time to do anything else.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 15, “Recovery” (p. 255)

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“Where would dictators be without our compliant amnesia? Make the collective lose its memory, you can conceal anything.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 17, “Mission” (p. 288)

Charles Stross photo

“I’m trapped in a fun-house mirror reflection of a historical society where everyone was crazy by default, driven mad by irrational laws and meaningless customs.”

Charles Stross book Glasshouse

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 7, “Bottom” (p. 107)

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