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Looking Glass
Looking Glass is set in the not too distant future, in a gritty, unrefined, shattered North America, torn apart by civil war and terrorism. Hackers and IT security technicians fight a different kind of war in cyberspace, the global network we know today as the Internet. A serial killer appears in this deadly game of mouse, and the killer has found a way to use the network to reach inside his victim's brains, and use these brains as his weapon. Death is painful and swift, and there is no defense. "Shroud" is the online name of Dr. Catherine Farro. She is a security network team leader for a large retail company. Shroud is a paraplegic, but in the realm of cyberspace, inside a sensory deprivation tank and "jacked in" to the network, she is fast, nimble, and ruthless. She is self-described as "frosty" when she is busy bringing the fight to the hackers. Shroud is just beginning her shift when the killer strikes for the first time. She survives, but her entire team is dead or missing. She is exiled from her corporate resources while the company to which she has given so much has turned against her in a tempest of crisis management. Despite the obstacles in her path, she is bent on vengeance, and her search for the mysterious, anonymous killer is fraught with peril and overwhelming odds.
308 pages, Paperback
First published May 29, 2007
4 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
James R. Strickland
4 books27 followersJames R. Strickland has been telling stories since before he could read or write. By a long and circuitous route, through mandatory journal-keeping in high school, this led to an English Writing degree in 1990, and the pursuit of a master's degree in Communications from 1990 through 1993. Taking a break from graduate school, Strickland moved to the San Francisco Bay Area - nerdvana - to pursue a career in high tech, as well as his then-girlfriend-now-wife. Six years later, after a layoff in high tech, and before the credits all expired, Strickland completed his master's degree.
Despite working in high tech, and especially during the periods of unemployment common to high tech workers, Strickland wrote, mostly for the consumption of fellow role playing gamers. He sold nothing, never had any intention of selling anything. After completing a CCNA certification in 2002 in a vain attempt to gain employment in a down economy, Strickland wrote his first novel for National Novel Writing Month, and the whole dream of being a writer began to reawaken. Strickland has two published novels, Looking Glass, and Irreconcilable Differences. More are coming.
Despite working in high tech, and especially during the periods of unemployment common to high tech workers, Strickland wrote, mostly for the consumption of fellow role playing gamers. He sold nothing, never had any intention of selling anything. After completing a CCNA certification in 2002 in a vain attempt to gain employment in a down economy, Strickland wrote his first novel for National Novel Writing Month, and the whole dream of being a writer began to reawaken. Strickland has two published novels, Looking Glass, and Irreconcilable Differences. More are coming.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 3, 2007
I wrote this one. You should know that up front. Because, like, my name's on the cover and everything. :)
Seriously, though.
When I set out to write Looking Glass, in November of 2004, I was angry. Angry about how the net had evolved, angry about the results of the most recent election, angry about how big corporations were exploiting everything, but especially exploiting DRM to own vast swatches of our culture, and so on. And cyberpunk has always been an angry genre. It's also a genre I'd tried once before, back in 1991, but never gotten very far with.
Since Looking Glass was my National Novel Writing Month project for that year, I cannibalized the world from that 1991 book - a world where petroleum is too valuable to burn, and the resulting energy crisis has forced technology in some very different directions - rolled in the years of net culture I'd absorbed since 1991, as well as the potential long term fallout of what I perceived as a growing lack of social bonds between groups who disagree.
This is the world of Cath Farro. She, in her turn, came out of that same anger, the same frustration with working in high tech, the same sense that once AOL connected itself to the Internet (known as the Endless September), everything got worse. She went through the same paradigm shift I can remember, except that she did it younger, when it was more keenly felt. She's also older - forty - because the kind of skills you need and kind of impacted fury you need in a cyberpunk world are the products of years of experience and study. Making her older meant that I didn't have to make all her opponents intrinsically dumb. It meant that I didn't have to come up with some improbable background to explain why she can do the things she can do and others can't. It also meant that, despite living in a near-future world, she's a product of our time, and the times we live in. Cath would be in her twenties today.
What happens? Well, the nutshell version I give people when they ask goes like this: Catherine Farro is a 40 year old paraplegic. She works in a virtual environment doing network security for a large corporation. On Friday, payday, someone attacks her and her team. The rest of the story is her figuring out what was real and what was virtual (and which parts of those matter), who did it, why they did it, who sent them, and going after them.
Enjoy.
Seriously, though.
When I set out to write Looking Glass, in November of 2004, I was angry. Angry about how the net had evolved, angry about the results of the most recent election, angry about how big corporations were exploiting everything, but especially exploiting DRM to own vast swatches of our culture, and so on. And cyberpunk has always been an angry genre. It's also a genre I'd tried once before, back in 1991, but never gotten very far with.
Since Looking Glass was my National Novel Writing Month project for that year, I cannibalized the world from that 1991 book - a world where petroleum is too valuable to burn, and the resulting energy crisis has forced technology in some very different directions - rolled in the years of net culture I'd absorbed since 1991, as well as the potential long term fallout of what I perceived as a growing lack of social bonds between groups who disagree.
This is the world of Cath Farro. She, in her turn, came out of that same anger, the same frustration with working in high tech, the same sense that once AOL connected itself to the Internet (known as the Endless September), everything got worse. She went through the same paradigm shift I can remember, except that she did it younger, when it was more keenly felt. She's also older - forty - because the kind of skills you need and kind of impacted fury you need in a cyberpunk world are the products of years of experience and study. Making her older meant that I didn't have to make all her opponents intrinsically dumb. It meant that I didn't have to come up with some improbable background to explain why she can do the things she can do and others can't. It also meant that, despite living in a near-future world, she's a product of our time, and the times we live in. Cath would be in her twenties today.
What happens? Well, the nutshell version I give people when they ask goes like this: Catherine Farro is a 40 year old paraplegic. She works in a virtual environment doing network security for a large corporation. On Friday, payday, someone attacks her and her team. The rest of the story is her figuring out what was real and what was virtual (and which parts of those matter), who did it, why they did it, who sent them, and going after them.
Enjoy.
February 23, 2015
The book is set in the near future; 2025, to be exact. The United States has fractured into several pieces after a war which we apparently lost. Technology, however, has marched on, and this novel is very firmly in the Cyberpunk genre, with which I'm not at all familiar, having only read one genre piece before now. One that I didn't really enjoy.
The book takes place over a four-day period (approximately; I'd check, but the book is at home and I'm not) in a combination of the cybernetic "Gestalt" and the real world, which often feels more alien--to me, at least--than the online world.
Dr. Catherine Farro--"Shroud," online--is a security expert who works for a large retail store chain based in Colorado, which is now a province of Canada. She spends most of her days floating in the hyper-saline solution in what amounts to a sensory deprivation tank, jacked directly into the network through an implanted connection in her skull. In her off-time, she is a soft, pale, 40-year old paraplegic. But online, she is respected...and perhaps feared. The world of security in this future is cutthroat and unapologetic. Script Kiddies trying to breach OmniMart's firewall security are as likely to be killed--brain-fried by Shroud and her team--as arrested. They knew the risks going in. Them's the breaks.
But one Friday, a concerted attack by an unbelievably fast, powerful intruder fries all but one of Shroud's team, literally scrambling their brains in a way she has never heard of before. And the brains of the security team of an upstream company, as well. That night, the same intruder takes out the night shifts, as well. She vows revenge and, having to immerse herself in the real world for the first time in a long while, she sets off on her quest to find and punish—permanently—the hacker who murdered her teams.
I'm not going to give any of the plot away. Suffice it to say that it is a good story, told well, and I'll not spoil anything else. What I've already said you could get from the blurb on the back cover or on the author's web site.
I enjoyed the book. It was really a page-turner. The plot pacing is well done and somewhat unrelenting, but interspersed with a necessarily sizable amount of exposition, which he does quite well. Only once or twice did I catch myself thinking about it; the exposition that was done meshed well with the storytelling and served to flesh out the world in which Shroud lives and works rather than being an infodump. That's hard to get just right, but I think Strickland does just that.
Another thing I really liked was the first-person POV. Again, this is often very difficult to get right, but he gets it just right. Shroud is an unreliable narrator, and we catch on pretty quickly that her perceptions of other people are a little off...but you're never quite sure. Maybe she's right and everyone is out to get her...or maybe she's a bit paranoid and she's imagining the whole thing. It is a true first-person narrative; the reader only knows what Shroud knows, and her perceptions color everything. You also find yourself wondering just how she got the way she is. And you're not disappointed--the author makes good on the promise of filling in the gaps as the story progresses.
The language took some getting used to. I don't mean that in a bad way; it's nothing like as hard as A Clockwork Orange, and there is a glossary of terms at the back if you get bogged down, but most of it is intuitive once you get into the story. I only had to reference the glossary three times before I got "into" the lingo and the pace and the style of narration and it didn't slow me down after that. But there is that initial few pages where you find yourself thinking, "What? Ice? Penguin? OSDeck? Gestalt? What the hell is he talking about?" But that's on purpose, I believe. The literary equivalent of jumping into the deep end of a cool swimming pool on a hot, summer day. Might as well get it over with; the sooner you immerse yourself in it, the faster you'll acclimatize. In a strange way, it also helps you sympathize with the feelings the character is experiencing at the same time.
The style of the language is another thing that I rather enjoyed. I thought it was a good approximation of what it's like to be in someone's head, listening to them interact with the world around them. Short, choppy sentences. Half-finished thoughts. Arguments with her inner self. Shut up! Why should I? Random passages from literary works interspersed with her subconscious repeating things others have said to her that resonated. I'm not doing a very good job of describing it; I'm making it sound messy, and it's not. It's very easy to follow because it's sort of how my own mind works. YMMV, of course.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I highly recommend the book. I enjoyed it, and it makes me want to re-try the cyberpunk genre. It can be done well.
And the cover art is magnificent.
The book takes place over a four-day period (approximately; I'd check, but the book is at home and I'm not) in a combination of the cybernetic "Gestalt" and the real world, which often feels more alien--to me, at least--than the online world.
Dr. Catherine Farro--"Shroud," online--is a security expert who works for a large retail store chain based in Colorado, which is now a province of Canada. She spends most of her days floating in the hyper-saline solution in what amounts to a sensory deprivation tank, jacked directly into the network through an implanted connection in her skull. In her off-time, she is a soft, pale, 40-year old paraplegic. But online, she is respected...and perhaps feared. The world of security in this future is cutthroat and unapologetic. Script Kiddies trying to breach OmniMart's firewall security are as likely to be killed--brain-fried by Shroud and her team--as arrested. They knew the risks going in. Them's the breaks.
But one Friday, a concerted attack by an unbelievably fast, powerful intruder fries all but one of Shroud's team, literally scrambling their brains in a way she has never heard of before. And the brains of the security team of an upstream company, as well. That night, the same intruder takes out the night shifts, as well. She vows revenge and, having to immerse herself in the real world for the first time in a long while, she sets off on her quest to find and punish—permanently—the hacker who murdered her teams.
I'm not going to give any of the plot away. Suffice it to say that it is a good story, told well, and I'll not spoil anything else. What I've already said you could get from the blurb on the back cover or on the author's web site.
I enjoyed the book. It was really a page-turner. The plot pacing is well done and somewhat unrelenting, but interspersed with a necessarily sizable amount of exposition, which he does quite well. Only once or twice did I catch myself thinking about it; the exposition that was done meshed well with the storytelling and served to flesh out the world in which Shroud lives and works rather than being an infodump. That's hard to get just right, but I think Strickland does just that.
Another thing I really liked was the first-person POV. Again, this is often very difficult to get right, but he gets it just right. Shroud is an unreliable narrator, and we catch on pretty quickly that her perceptions of other people are a little off...but you're never quite sure. Maybe she's right and everyone is out to get her...or maybe she's a bit paranoid and she's imagining the whole thing. It is a true first-person narrative; the reader only knows what Shroud knows, and her perceptions color everything. You also find yourself wondering just how she got the way she is. And you're not disappointed--the author makes good on the promise of filling in the gaps as the story progresses.
The language took some getting used to. I don't mean that in a bad way; it's nothing like as hard as A Clockwork Orange, and there is a glossary of terms at the back if you get bogged down, but most of it is intuitive once you get into the story. I only had to reference the glossary three times before I got "into" the lingo and the pace and the style of narration and it didn't slow me down after that. But there is that initial few pages where you find yourself thinking, "What? Ice? Penguin? OSDeck? Gestalt? What the hell is he talking about?" But that's on purpose, I believe. The literary equivalent of jumping into the deep end of a cool swimming pool on a hot, summer day. Might as well get it over with; the sooner you immerse yourself in it, the faster you'll acclimatize. In a strange way, it also helps you sympathize with the feelings the character is experiencing at the same time.
The style of the language is another thing that I rather enjoyed. I thought it was a good approximation of what it's like to be in someone's head, listening to them interact with the world around them. Short, choppy sentences. Half-finished thoughts. Arguments with her inner self. Shut up! Why should I? Random passages from literary works interspersed with her subconscious repeating things others have said to her that resonated. I'm not doing a very good job of describing it; I'm making it sound messy, and it's not. It's very easy to follow because it's sort of how my own mind works. YMMV, of course.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I highly recommend the book. I enjoyed it, and it makes me want to re-try the cyberpunk genre. It can be done well.
And the cover art is magnificent.
March 24, 2008
________________________________________
This book is full steam ahead cyber punk goodness. I think there is a misstep at 3/4 of the way in. At that point some of the reveals felt more like tricks to me and I started to get disappointed. Before I could flip the off switch, "Looking Glass" revved back up. I really enjoyed the ending. A tough-as-nails female protagonist, secret conspiracies that make sense, and a future world that I can almost touch. Wonderful debut by James Strickland.
The story is basically about a female network administrator who fights hacking of the worst kind. If you fail, you die. And if you succeed then you wipe someone's mind away. It's a terrible case of job burn-out. Everything is going normally, burning the baddies until one day someone appears that can read their minds. At least it seems that way. Jump left, get burnt. Jump right, already waiting there for you. What do you do? And the worst part is that it's hard to tell what/who is real anymore.
It might seem like a retread of older cyberpunk novels if you're looking just on the surface, but "Looking Glass" is not. This reflection goes much deeper.
Overall one of the most satisfying reads in a long time. I really do recommend this book, even to non-techies.
August 29, 2008
An updated version of Neuromancer, with the protagonist part of the security team against hackers. She's an interesting character, a handicapped bisexual with big trust issues. The alternate future is good too, with Canada having annexed Colorado (although I still don't buy Boston being part of the Christian United States). Real world and virtual travel as she investigates what happened to her team in a cyberattack.
Note: there is a glossary in the back. I wish I'd found it before the end...I usually do check the last pages at some point for just this reason.
Note: there is a glossary in the back. I wish I'd found it before the end...I usually do check the last pages at some point for just this reason.
December 4, 2013
Looking Glass brought back great memories of reading cyberpunk books like Count Zero and Neuromancer right after they were published. At times, Strickland wanders too deeply into detailed, semi-correct technical explanations about networking. While that takes away from flow of the book, it is still a thrilling read. The disabled, female protagonist was a very nice change of pace.
March 31, 2009
Like most cyber-punk 'Looking Glass' has more technobabble than strictly needed for storytelling purposes but on the other hand it's generously laced with really good literary allusions. Oh, and it's also got my favorite 'Dune' reference ever.
October 2, 2010
A whole new level of cyberpunk murder mystery, shifting from the physical world to the virtual one and back again at the speed of light. You'll find high technology and high action in this book, as well as another look at the age-old question, "What does it mean to be human?" Gripping stuff!
February 20, 2011
Sharp and taut like a slap in the face, "Looking Glass" is a fresh look at the cyberpunk genre and an eerily plausible vision of the future America.
I credit it as a vital source of inspiration for my own writing. Thank you, Mr. Strickland.
I credit it as a vital source of inspiration for my own writing. Thank you, Mr. Strickland.
August 25, 2008
3 1/2 stars. Love future tech/computer stories like Neuromancer and Fool's War, and it's obvious Strickland does too. This was a quick paced revenge story with a terrific female lead.
September 26, 2010
Discovered that I am not a fan of sci-fi books, too much tech jargon to muddle through
March 24, 2013
Loved this book from start to finish!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews