- Ringo, John.
Into the Looking Glass.
Riverdale, NY: Baen Publishing, 2005.
ISBN 978-1-4165-2105-1.
-
Without warning, on a fine spring day in central Florida,
an enormous explosion destroys the campus of the
University of Central Florida and the surrounding region.
The flash, heat pulse, and mushroom cloud are observed
far from the site of the detonation. It is clear that
casualties will be massive. First responders, fearing the
worst, break out their equipment to respond to what seems
likely to be nuclear terrorism. The yield of the explosion
is estimated at 60 kilotons of TNT.
But upon closer examination, things seem distinctly odd. There
is none of the residual radiation one would expect from a
nuclear detonation, nor evidence of the prompt radiation nor
electromagnetic pulse expected from a nuclear blast. A
university campus seems an odd target for nuclear terrorism,
in any case. What else could cause such a blast of such
magnitude? Well, an asteroid strike could do it, but the
odds against such an event are very long, and there was no
evidence of ejecta falling back as you'd expect from an
impact.
Faced with a catastrophic yet seemingly inexplicable event,
senior government officials turn to a person with the background
and security clearances to investigate further: Dr. Bill Weaver,
a “redneck physicist” from Huntsville who works as a
consultant to one of the “Beltway bandit”
contractors who orbit the Pentagon. Weaver recalls that a
physicist at the university, Ray Chen, was working on shortcut
to produce a Higgs boson, bypassing the need for an enormous
particle collider. Weaver's guess is that Chen's idea worked
better than he imagined, releasing a pulse of energy which
caused the detonation.
If things so far seemed curious, now they began to get weird.
Approaching the site of the detonation, teams observed a black
globe, seemingly absorbing all light, where Dr. Chen's laboratory
used to be. Then one, and another, giant bug emerge
from the globe. Floridians become accustomed to large, ugly-looking
bugs, but nothing like this—these are creatures from another
world, or maybe universe. A little girl, unharmed, wanders into the
camp, giving her home address as in an area completely obliterated
by the explosion. She is clutching a furry alien with ten legs:
“Tuffy”, who she says speaks to her. Scientists try to
examine the creature and quickly learn the wisdom of the girl's
counsel to not mess with Tuffy.
Police respond to a home invasion call some distance from the
site of the detonation: a report that demons are attacking
their house. Investigating, another portal is discovered in
the woods behind the house, from which monsters begin to issue,
quickly overpowering the light military force summoned to
oppose them. It takes a redneck militia to reinforce a
perimeter around the gateway, while waiting for the Army to
respond.
Apparently, whatever happened on the campus not only opened a
gateway there, but is spawning gateways further removed. Some
connect to worlds seemingly filled with biologically-engineered
monsters bent upon conquest, while others connect to barren
planets, a race of sentient felines, and other aliens who may
be allies or enemies. Weaver has to puzzle all of this out, while
participating in the desperate effort to prevent the invaders,
“T!Ch!R!” or “Titcher”, from establishing
a beachhead on Earth. And the stakes may be much greater than
the fate of the Earth.
This is an action-filled romp, combining the initiation of
humans into a much larger universe worthy of Golden Age science
fiction with military action fiction. I doubt that in the real
world Weaver, the leading expert on the phenomenon and chief
investigator into it, would be allowed to participate in what
amounts to commando missions in which his special skills are not
required but, hey, it makes the story more exciting, and if a
thriller doesn't thrill, it has failed in its mission.
I loved one aspect of the conclusion: never let an alien invasion
go to waste. You'll understand what I'm alluding to when you get
there. And, in the Golden Age tradition, the story sets up for
further adventures. While John Ringo wrote this book by himself,
the remaining three novels in the Looking Glass series are
co-authored with Travis S. Taylor, upon whom the character of
Bill Weaver was modeled.
June 2017 