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Phil D'Amato #5
The Pixel Eye
The future is always shaped by the present.
New York City, the next terrorism is more threatening than ever; skyscrapers are a cherished, defiant statement; underground concourses have multiplied because of the sense of security they provide; law enforcement and civil liberties groups clash over the proper boundary between public safety and personal freedom. That's the tenor of the times when NYPD forensic detective Dr. Phil D'Amato is called in to investigate an urgent case--squirrels missing from Central Park!
It sounded like a joke, but Phil soon discovers it's anything but. A new telecom technology can put implants into the brains of living squirrels to translate what they are seeing into computer-viewable images. But who's behind this surveillance breakthrough? Federal agencies or terrorists?
Phil's latest adventure pits personal loyalties against public responsibilities, privacy against freedom, security against animal rights, all against a backdrop of a near-future, post-9/11 New York City that is completely recognizable, even with its new generation of advanced cellular phones, free-standing holograms, tunneling technologies, transport systems, and forensic computers. The Pixel Eye offers a vision of a future we may all soon be living in.
New York City, the next terrorism is more threatening than ever; skyscrapers are a cherished, defiant statement; underground concourses have multiplied because of the sense of security they provide; law enforcement and civil liberties groups clash over the proper boundary between public safety and personal freedom. That's the tenor of the times when NYPD forensic detective Dr. Phil D'Amato is called in to investigate an urgent case--squirrels missing from Central Park!
It sounded like a joke, but Phil soon discovers it's anything but. A new telecom technology can put implants into the brains of living squirrels to translate what they are seeing into computer-viewable images. But who's behind this surveillance breakthrough? Federal agencies or terrorists?
Phil's latest adventure pits personal loyalties against public responsibilities, privacy against freedom, security against animal rights, all against a backdrop of a near-future, post-9/11 New York City that is completely recognizable, even with its new generation of advanced cellular phones, free-standing holograms, tunneling technologies, transport systems, and forensic computers. The Pixel Eye offers a vision of a future we may all soon be living in.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
2 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Paul Levinson
95 books345 followersPaul Levinson, PhD, is an author, professor, singer-songwriter, media commentator, podcaster, and publisher. His first novel, The Silk Code, won the Locus Award for best first science fiction novel of 1999. Entertainment Weekly called his 2006 novel, The Plot to Save Socrates, “challenging fun”. Unburning Alexandria, sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates, was published in 2013. Chronica - the third novel in the Sierra Waters time travel trilogy - followed in 2014. His 1995 award-nominated novelette, "The Chronology Protection Case," was made into a short film, now on Amazon Prime Video. His 2022 alternate history short story about The Beatles, "It's Real Life," was made into a radioplay, streaming free, and an audiobook, in 2023, and it won the Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fiction. "It's Real Life" was expanded into a novel, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles, and published in 2024. Paul Levinson was President of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), 1998-2001. His nine nonfiction books on the history and future of media have been translated into 15 languages around the world, and have been reviewed in The New York Times, Wired, and major newspapers and magazines. Two shorter books, McLuhan in an Age of Social Media and Fake News in Real Context, were published in 2015-2016, and are frequently updated. Levinson appears on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and numerous other television and radio shows and podcasts. His 1972 album, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was reissued on CD and remastered vinyl and is available on Bandcamp and iTunes. His first new album since Twice Upon A Rhyme -- Welcome Up: Songs of Space Time -- was released by Old Bear Records on CD and digital, and Light in the Attic Records on vinyl, in 2020. Levinson is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in NYC.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 18, 2019
I always had a feeling the squirrels were watching me....
February 21, 2011
This is the latest adventure of Phil D'Amato, NYPD forensic psychiatrist in a very near future New York. Although The Consciousness Plague was somewhat influenced by 9/11, this is the first truly post-9/11 D'Amato tale. His immediate boss, Jack Dugan, is now Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, New York's own Homeland Security czar, and Phil is still reporting to him.
Any mystery series whose protagonist is not a detective gradually experiences an increasingly hazy connection between that person's theoretical job and what they actually do, and as The Pixel Eye opens, Phil, at Dugan's request, is investigating city park workers' reports of missing squirrels. The fear is of course that the missing squirrels may signal the start of a new epidemic, whether natural or the result of a biological attack. The squirrels aren't dying, though; they're just temporarily missing, and as Phil investigates missing squirrels, stolen hamsters, and other omnipresent rodents, he finds something even more alarming. A visit to a rodent research facility, where scientist Jill Cormier is studying the auditory abilities of hamsters, leads to an accidental encounter with former NY policeman Frank Catania, now a special agent in the new Homeland Security Department, and that leads Phil down increasingly strange and potentially paranoid paths. where neither he nor the reader know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, or even which players are working together and which are rivals or opponents. Hamsters as listening devices, conflicting stories on whether or not squirrels are being used for video recording, research labs that burn down immediately after Phil visits them, creepily sophisticated hologram-enhanced A.I.s, and some terrifying speculation about what might be down with miniaturized bombs and the rats and mice we shall have always with us, make for a tense and exciting story, with Phil never knowing who he can trust and who he can't. And in the end, he doesn't know whether he's stepped up another level in the forces of good, or embraced the forces of darkness.
A very satisfying addition to the series.
Any mystery series whose protagonist is not a detective gradually experiences an increasingly hazy connection between that person's theoretical job and what they actually do, and as The Pixel Eye opens, Phil, at Dugan's request, is investigating city park workers' reports of missing squirrels. The fear is of course that the missing squirrels may signal the start of a new epidemic, whether natural or the result of a biological attack. The squirrels aren't dying, though; they're just temporarily missing, and as Phil investigates missing squirrels, stolen hamsters, and other omnipresent rodents, he finds something even more alarming. A visit to a rodent research facility, where scientist Jill Cormier is studying the auditory abilities of hamsters, leads to an accidental encounter with former NY policeman Frank Catania, now a special agent in the new Homeland Security Department, and that leads Phil down increasingly strange and potentially paranoid paths. where neither he nor the reader know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, or even which players are working together and which are rivals or opponents. Hamsters as listening devices, conflicting stories on whether or not squirrels are being used for video recording, research labs that burn down immediately after Phil visits them, creepily sophisticated hologram-enhanced A.I.s, and some terrifying speculation about what might be down with miniaturized bombs and the rats and mice we shall have always with us, make for a tense and exciting story, with Phil never knowing who he can trust and who he can't. And in the end, he doesn't know whether he's stepped up another level in the forces of good, or embraced the forces of darkness.
A very satisfying addition to the series.
December 25, 2014
On the whole disappointing.
I picked it up because I felt like a bit of sci-fi and it failed to deliver. The main character is involved in investigating squirrels and hamsters that may have monitoring devices or bombs inserted in them. Sounds promising, but fails to deliver. Our main character dashes here dashes there, things explode, then he dashes around meaninglessly some more....
The novel overall has a very good concept and structure but somehow it ends up being quite bland: No real scene setting (it seems to rely on the fact that the reader knows New York). No character development of anyone (apparently it is not the first in the series, so it may rely on previous novels). Remarkably little explanation of anything at all and certainly not much actual information on the rodents or the devices, which could have made this into a bit more science in the fiction.
Not actively a bad novel, just bland and underwhelming, I was often frustrated by the fact that it was not as engaging as I felt it could be. It might be a bit more suited to people who like detective fiction rather than science fiction maybe?
The last fifty or so pages, when we reach the plot climax (loosely speaking) are a bit interesting, but not really enough to compensate for slogging through the previous hundred or so pages to reach it. I am a fast reader by the way, yet I had to skim read a bit to make it to the end because so much of the material seemed mystifying and repetitious. The ending is barely an ending; it is mostly an invitation to read the next in the series, I won’t bother.
There was one thing particularly that annoyed the hell out of me. Similarly to a lot of American TV shows this novel recapitulates badly. I find it a personal insult to my intelligence when a show recapitulates every five minutes. That is, when they tell you again what they have already told you a few minutes ago because they assume you are too stupid to retain the knowledge. The Pixel Eye does this several times in a way that makes me think it must have been written as a serial and not edited properly when it went to novel format
I picked it up because I felt like a bit of sci-fi and it failed to deliver. The main character is involved in investigating squirrels and hamsters that may have monitoring devices or bombs inserted in them. Sounds promising, but fails to deliver. Our main character dashes here dashes there, things explode, then he dashes around meaninglessly some more....
The novel overall has a very good concept and structure but somehow it ends up being quite bland: No real scene setting (it seems to rely on the fact that the reader knows New York). No character development of anyone (apparently it is not the first in the series, so it may rely on previous novels). Remarkably little explanation of anything at all and certainly not much actual information on the rodents or the devices, which could have made this into a bit more science in the fiction.
Not actively a bad novel, just bland and underwhelming, I was often frustrated by the fact that it was not as engaging as I felt it could be. It might be a bit more suited to people who like detective fiction rather than science fiction maybe?
The last fifty or so pages, when we reach the plot climax (loosely speaking) are a bit interesting, but not really enough to compensate for slogging through the previous hundred or so pages to reach it. I am a fast reader by the way, yet I had to skim read a bit to make it to the end because so much of the material seemed mystifying and repetitious. The ending is barely an ending; it is mostly an invitation to read the next in the series, I won’t bother.
There was one thing particularly that annoyed the hell out of me. Similarly to a lot of American TV shows this novel recapitulates badly. I find it a personal insult to my intelligence when a show recapitulates every five minutes. That is, when they tell you again what they have already told you a few minutes ago because they assume you are too stupid to retain the knowledge. The Pixel Eye does this several times in a way that makes me think it must have been written as a serial and not edited properly when it went to novel format
July 31, 2011
While this was a cross of sic fi and police mystery, it kept my attention throughout. It was more detective work than police power. And the attention to detail of NYC was really good.
September 7, 2017
I found the biotech premise of camera carrying rodents to be a bit far fetched. I have enjoyed Mr. Levinson's numerous quality science fiction novels.
February 17, 2011
I was in the post office a few days ago. I got to the front of the line, set my package on the counter next to my waiting-in-line reading, and the lady behind the counter asked me if this was about cameras. I didn't particularly want to say that it was about cyborged squirrels and hamsters as a counter-terrorist surveillance mechanism (which it is), so I just said that it was fiction. (It's set in a fairly near future version of NYC.)
Forensic psychologists have become something of a cliché in police fiction, but that aspect of the protagonist is downplayed, for the most part. The characterization is well-handled, though there's one scene where a bad guy is pretending to be a cop and gives the game away a little too obviously. The writing there is a bit heavy-handed, and some of the plot threads seem that they're resolved a little too easily. But otherwise, this is an enjoyable read that won't insult your intelligence. Apparently this one's a sequel; perhaps I'll look into picking up the prequel.
Re-read in May 2010. When I read it initially, I had no idea that it was the third in a loosely structured series. (The first two are The Silk Code and The Consciousness Plague, and there are novellas and short stories also, IIRC.)
In general it's a decent read, but more prone to somewhat awkward info-dumping than I'd remembered.
Re-found with help.
Forensic psychologists have become something of a cliché in police fiction, but that aspect of the protagonist is downplayed, for the most part. The characterization is well-handled, though there's one scene where a bad guy is pretending to be a cop and gives the game away a little too obviously. The writing there is a bit heavy-handed, and some of the plot threads seem that they're resolved a little too easily. But otherwise, this is an enjoyable read that won't insult your intelligence. Apparently this one's a sequel; perhaps I'll look into picking up the prequel.
Re-read in May 2010. When I read it initially, I had no idea that it was the third in a loosely structured series. (The first two are The Silk Code and The Consciousness Plague, and there are novellas and short stories also, IIRC.)
In general it's a decent read, but more prone to somewhat awkward info-dumping than I'd remembered.
Re-found with help.
August 4, 2014
I was hoping for a more sciency-fictionish, cyber, urban fantasy than this. Its more like "Andromeda Strain" or Robin Cook's med-thrillers only without the pulse-pounding.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews