Glasshouse

Robin wakes up in a future clinic with most of his memories erased and someone immediately trying to kill him — a problem in the twenty-seventh century, where consciousness can be backed up and identities suppressed, and where civil wars are fought by targeting historians rather than soldiers. Seeking cover, he volunteers for the Glasshouse, an experimental enclosure designed to simulate the culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Once inside, he discovers the simulation is not as controlled as it appeared. Charles Stross's Hugo and Locus Award-winning novel uses the premise to interrogate gender, identity, and surveillance.

Kevin R. Free's narration handles the novel's sharp satirical intelligence with a clean, engaged delivery that keeps the complex conceptual scaffolding from overwhelming the story's personal stakes. At just over thirteen and a half hours, the production moves fluidly between action sequences and the domestic horror of the Glasshouse simulation. A standout work of ideas-driven science fiction, expertly performed.