This is the first work of mine where I haven't actually done every piece with my own hands: many thanks to the Blender Market team and all the vendors (as far as I remember, the products I used here were all under the Standard Royalty-free license: please let me know whether I should credit every vendor personally - and my apologies in advance)
It took 88 hours (!!!) to render: 15,000 samples, and guess what? There are still fireflies! I'm sorry, my fellow developers, but despite the best efforts at optimization, the glass BSDF is still the biggest perpetrator, followed closely by the glossy BSDF.
As to what it is, I've been thinking of it as a cover art for a fan novel I'm writing, but will probably never publish because it's a fan one, based on a certain game's story, and with all the Draconian copyrights and copy-wrongs involved (see here: http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/31/star-trek-axanar-lawsuit/ ) I might as well just consider it a healthy alternative to posting Facebook or Twitter rants -- or a 21st century equivalent of a private diary. :-)
Thank you: it's just that my notebook is pathetic, and my leave time is too short for fancy techniques, such as rendering multiple layers as different images and then compositing them together.
The art of rendering in cycles. Like they say work smarter not harder. There are a lot of tricks that can reduce the number of passes required. Clamping may be the simplest. I am with you. I tend to sample the heck out of a render. Your results are quite nice.