She swears she wants to be a boy when she grows up; she isn't going to hit puberty for another six years, and she may change her mind when her body starts changing.
This is from Charles Stross' Glasshouse which many regard as his best work. (High praise considering he won the Hugo Award for Accelerando.) In the future Stross imagines we are no longer constrained by the bodies that we're born with. We are our minds and we can create and transfer to any kind of body we want. Of course, we also live forever since we back ourselves up just in case of an accident. This scenario raises lots of the questions I remember discussing when I took Philosophy of the Mind as an undergrad but Stross changes their focus to make a reasoned case for acceptance of same-sex relationships. In a world in which individuals can and often do change genders, it just doesn't make sense to think about same-sex relationships as anything but acceptable. How would you define a same-sex couple anyways?
While that was the most interesting aspect of the book for me, it says nothing of the plot which involves a person waking up from memory surgery, trying to figure out who he is, why he had some of his memories removed, and who's trying to kill him. Pretty interesting, right? I thought so, but at the same time, I didn't get as wrapped up in the story as I might have wished. I feel like there is a trade-off between authenticity and accessibility in sci-fi. To make the future "more authentic" the author has to include a lot of things the reader may not understand.
Overall, if you're looking for a fast-paced and accessible book to pass the time, this probably isn't your best choice. But if you're interested in exploring a new world (that just might be in our future), then you shouldn't hesitate to pick this one up.
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