Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Glass Box by J. Michael Straczynski

The Glass Box, J. Michael Straczynski (Blackstone 979-8212007795, hardcover, 350pp, $25.99) January 2024

We are lucky that Mr. Straczynski—hereafter, the familiar JMS—has taken some time off from his comics and television work to gift us with a fine new novel. Considering also his heavy duties administering the estate of Harlan Ellison—I for one eagerly await the reprinting of Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, and the birth of the star-crossed The Last Dangerous Visions—he has more than enough on his plate to reasonably forestall the composition of new fiction. But here he is anyhow, with a book that in its way seems inspired by the forthright, engagé, propulsive, take-no-prisoners writings of Ellison himself—and with a nod in the direction of such old school firebrands as Norman Spinrad (think The People’s Police) and new school turks like Cory Doctorow (Little Brother and Homeland).

The time is a few years in the future, close enough to our own era that there are almost zero technological or cultural changes to be seen. What makes this world different is the new sociopolitical vibe. A fresh President of the USA, William Jacobs, has swept into office with a totalitarian plan (National Police Force sound scary enough?) that will limit dissent and enforce other strictures, such as holding down public gatherings to ten people or fewer. Naturally, these radical programs have brought thousands of protestors out into the streets. But we readers need focus only on one, our heroine, Riley Diaz.

A young kickass gal of mixed Cuban-Irish ancestry, Riley has been politically aware since adolescence (thanks to exemplar parents of that bent, both now dead, alas). So the newest protest is not her first rodeo—but she nonetheless manages to get snaffled up by the authorities and enrolled in a new “remedial” re-education camp. Here, the tenor of the book switches, for a time, to echo and replay one of the classic works of twentieth-century fiction: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This can be nothing but a quite deliberate homage on JMS’s part, for the parallels are many. In place of the Chief, we have an equally mute and menacing giant figure known as Frankenstein. Nurse Ratched finds an analogue in Nurse Biedermann. And Riley serves, of course, as McMurphy.

But I do not recall, from my long-ago reading of the Kesey book, much depiction of the actual doctors. And it’s here that JMS innovates brilliantly. He gives us a variegated cast of medicos, ranging from the truly sympathetic (Dr. Julian Munroe) to the truly vile (Dr. Edward Kaminski). But as he carefully does with all his cast, JMS does not paint these men and women with a single color, but shows us a full range of humanity in each professional. As evil as Kaminski is—and he is truly scary and Orwellian—some of the logic and goals he espouses and expounds (to function, society does indeed require cooperation and sacrifice as much as it needs rebels and individualism) are perfectly reasonable. And Nurse Biedermann’s surprising arc is from Good Soldier to Whistleblower.

In any case, with his cleanly detailed and tangible venue and cast established (Riley’s fellow malefactors emerge vividly too), as well as the ground rules of the mindgames, JMS proceeds to put Riley through a nasty sequence of belittlement and subjugation. Her unbowed spirit is all that keeps her afloat. And while she does score some small victories, her ultimate outcome looks bad.

But then comes another shift in the book’s focus, a resumption of the political thread. Riley learns that the seemingly limited and legal statutes under which she and the others have been imprisoned really conceal a draconian secret program of mass incarceration without end. If she could find proof within the asylum walls of the scheme, then smuggle it out to her friends on the outside, she could strike a blow for justice and perhaps even achieve her own freedom. So a kind of Mission: Impossible gambit ensues, which is derailed, but then recovered in a kind of thrilling and unforeseen Götterdämmerung finale.

As I said earlier, JMS gives all the devils their due, and also imbues his rebels with their own human flaws (one woman named Callie proves weak enough to give away vital information about the Resistance’s leader), so the book is not just a cardboard Good vs. Evil melodrama. But JMS’s allegiance is plain from the start. Riley and her crew are fighting for justice, and the government and its lackeys constitute a boot stomping on a human face forever. This clearcut dynamic hits the reader smack between the eyes and ensures that we will root unabashedly for the home team in an old-fashioned literary manner lacking any nebulous postmodern cynicism or ethical grey areas.

JMS delves deepest into Riley’s psyche and backstory, and her portrayal is authentically that of a youthful partisan who is full of piss and vinegar but maybe lacking a little in sophistication and wisdom. The novel’s end finds her inner flame relit, and blazing forth as a beacon of hope—although surely her odyssey through the belly of the beast has left plenty of scars.

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