THE GLASS BOX, by J. Michael Straczynski

I received this novel from Blackstone Publishing through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review: my thanks to both of them for this opportunity.

I am delighted to start my reviews for 2024 with the work of someone whose creative skills I have long admired: I have often mentioned Babylon 5 as my favorite SF series, one I have watched and re-watched many times, always finding something new and deep in its multi-faceted story and wonderfully drawn characters. So it comes as a given that I’m also a huge fan of the works of B5’s creator, J. Michael Stracksynski (a.k.a. JMS). His name can be found on many TV and movie scripts and his books also showcase his brilliant writing – I already reviewed both his autobiography Becoming Superman and the mainstream novel Together We Will Go, so when I learned of his new book, The Glass Box, I just knew that I would read and enjoy it. The discovery that the story was a dystopian SF one only added to my curiosity about it.

The background for The Glass Box is a near-future America, one where many of the most basic civil liberties have been abolished: Riley Diaz is only one of the many activists protesting against this constant curtailing of freedoms, the latest being the prohibition of gatherings of more than ten people. Caught and detained in the course of one such protest rally, she is given a choice: a prison sentence or six months of mandatory counseling in one of the newfangled American Renewal Centers – or ARCs – where she is expected to correct her rebellious tendencies.   Convinced that she has better chances of escaping the Center than she would a prison, Riley accepts and is sent to ARC nr. 14, a psychiatric hospital where one of the wings is being converted to the uses of the Homeland Security-sponsored ARC program.

Once there Riley is soon faced with the harsh reality of actual brainwashing effected through psychological tampering and forced drug therapy, enhanced by effective torture measures like sleep- and food deprivation. Her constant defiance is met by the supervising physician’s blend of zeal and innate cruelty on one side and by the other ARC inmates’ initial distrust, since Riley’s behavior threatens their attempts at the conformity that will get them out of there – that is, until something happens that opens their eyes and their minds…

The Glass Box is a fairly short book, and I literally inhaled it in a couple of days because of my pressing need to see how the story would pan out, since there was no certainty about any of the possible outcomes.  It presented both a frightening possibility and the compelling exploration of a legitimate and concrete concern, running with it through the lens of the question “what if…?”, which is exactly the role of Science Fiction in modern literature.  At some point in the story there is a mention of the 1950 Emergency Detention Act as the inspiring decree from which the whole concept of the ARCs is developed: of course I went online to learn more and discovered that it’s a very real legislation that authorized the federal government to summarily detain any person suspected of espionage or sabotage or “whom there is reasonable ground to believe [will]… probably engage in… acts of espionage or sabotage” (I took the quote from HERE).  Anyone familiar with Orwell’s 1984 or Dick’s Minority Report would be able to see the horrifying possibilities of abuse of such latitude of interpretation in the absence of a controlling mechanism, and that’s exactly what happens in this novel.

Riley is a wonderful character indeed: brash and reckless at times, she is gifted with an unwavering determination not to be molded into the acceptable shape required by the program and she pays a heavy personal price for her constant refusal to bend, or to break – at some point she claims that saying “no” is the only weapon at her disposal, the only way she has to maintain whatever control the situation allows her.  And she needs all that stubbornness to resist, because the process is a subtle and insidious one: at first, the inmates are required to admit to something apparently trivial, which is in reality the way to lead them to wider and deeper revelations whose avalanche effect can then proceed inexorably.  I was often reminded of a particular episode of Babylon5 (Intersections in Real Time) in which the character is being psychologically manipulated into admitting that he acted under alien influence: in the same way, the ARC inmates are encouraged to acknowledge that their rebellious acts are the result of outside manipulation and that only in disavowing it will they be “cured” of their “disease”.

The Glass Box was at the same time a thrilling read and a frightening one, given that the borders between fiction and reality are quite thin when one stops to think about it. As I expected, given my familiarity with the author, the story is carried by a set of believable, diverse and complex characters that make it easy for the reader to connect with them – or to passionately hate them, as was the case for a very particular one.  Highly recommended.

My Rating: