James R. Strickland
posted in James R. Strickland |Among the more inspiring pleasures of traveling to sci-fi/fantasy conventions is that of discovering other authors who produce high quality speculative literature through small publishers. Meeting great writers of all stripes is wonderful, but the best of those working outside big commercial houses feels like my special affinity group.
Topping my list of favorite authors met in a convention dealer room is James R. Strickland, whose two novels published by Flying Pen Press are both excellent. Set in the near future of a parallel reality, in a North America reorganized after the break-up of the United States, Strickland’s books are situated in the Uncanny Valley in which a world almost but not actually familiar provides narrative drive with an economy more exotic settings could not accomplish. He convincingly evokes a broken society with the descriptive thrift of a Japanese brush.
Couched within this broken society, Strickland accomplishes an impressive re-imagination of cyberspace. Here again, he reconceives a virtuality first expounded by William Gibson, making it almost but not quite familiar. The benefit of this technique is that his descriptions convey more than they say, illuminating this narrative sphere in part by glossing its overlap while noting its differences from the earlier model.
Looking Glass, the first of the novels, follows Dr. Catherine Farro, leader of a network security team for a giant retailer in the year 2025. When the majority of her team is killed in a cyber-attack, Farro finds herself up against all kinds of bad when she sets out to track the killers and avenge her co-workers.
Irreconcilable Differences is set in the same reality two years later. A dangerous predator threatens the hacker world. Interpol implants a digital copy of the mind and personality of a covert agent, Rachel Santana, into a teenage farmgirl-hacker, Micki Blake. Their combined mission is to coexist well enough to find the threat, eliminate it, and survive.
Both books are excellent. While unquestionably an heir of Gibson, in voice, narrative structure and pacing, Strickland is reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett at his best. Smart, fast paced and beautifully written, these are fictions sure to satisfy any craving for near-future cybermystery. Strickland offers the books as free downloads on his website (www.jamesrstrickland.com), but if you like what you read—and you will—be a responsible reader and shell out a few piastres for the paperback editions.
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