BOOK REVIEWS 1996

Part B: July-December

1996, Christian Sauvé

 

Starplex
Robert J. Sawyer

Ace, 1996, 7,99$

My first meeting with Robert J. Sawyer was at Can-Con '95, when I was hanging around the handout table. Enter RJS, asking "Hey is this the handout table?" Upon being answered in the affirmative, he proceeded to put a few of his own handouts there, then went to the dealer's room to sign a few books.

At the time, RJS was to me the author of "these dinosaur books". Still, the guy impressed me. Since his panel was one of the few actually taking place at this point, I decide to see what was that all about.

A month afterward, I had read all Sawyer books. Addicted. Unfortunately, nothing from Sawyer appeared since then... until now.

(In the meantime, a few things happened to Sawyer: The Terminal Experiment won the HOMer, the Aurora and the Nebula. To name a few.)

Starplex was bought full-price the day it appeared in bookstores. Damn the ten-percent discount, I couldn't wait!

And my, my, my... It was worth the wait. I'll let the 12-years-old part of my personality review the book for a while:

Gosh, wow! Zonkers! Sawyer RULES, man! I mean, totally incredible! Alien, time-travel, big explosions, space-fights, immortality, gods, end and beginning of the universe, dark-matter creatures, fun physics stuff, holy geezz! I thought my brain would explode and run down my nose! Like this is like very EXCELLENT, D00D! I'd buy copies for all my friends if my parents would give me the money!

Ahem. The reason I like Sawyer's books is straight from the golden age (12) of SF: THIS is what it must have felt to buy a copy of a magazine with a new Heinlein story. THIS is the good stuff. THIS is the new Golden Age and it's MY Golden age. My critical faculties go out of the window under the assault of Sawyer's imagination.

If you don't know about Sawyer's books, well IT'S NOT TOO LATE! Starplex is his best yet, combining the original super-concepts with fair plotting and interesting characters. This book is easier to swallow than End of an Era, is more focused than Golden Fleece and doesn't contain the potentially displeasing theological "edge" that The Terminal Experiment had.

The usual Sawyer "tics" remain: The hero is the same, down to problems with his relationships. The conclusion is also anticlimactic, especially after the wild ride that preceded. The prose is journalistic: Nothing wrong (I don't mind,) but then again, nothing like -for instance- Dan Simmons.

Oh, and the blurb is as usual hopelessly wrong. (The blurb for The Terminal Experiment didn't even mention the main plot of the story!) But don't worry: You'll get a better book than described.

The designer of Starplex's cover should be shot, or at the very least very hurt. I don't think it's possible to intentionally do a worse cover than this one. (Well, okay, I could, but that's not my point.)

In short: A treat for Hard-SF fans. Sawyer's best book yet, and again a strong contender for next year's awards. Might not necessarily win, but will probably be nominated for just about everything.

 

ALIENS VERSUS "ALIENS"

Science-Fiction has a love/hate affair with the visual. The lurid covers of SF pulp magazines in the thirties traditionally represented bodacious babes threatened by evil bug-eyed monsters. While these covers probably attracted the most appropriate public for these magazines, it also had the effect of driving away anyone not in this age group. Fortunately, or so it seems, the illustrations have gotten better since these garish times. (Fortunately, bodacious babes still make appearances from time to time, but this time around, they're the one threatening the bug-eyed monsters.)

Then there is the long and sorry case of SF on television. From "Buck Rogers" to "Babylon-5" there HAS been a certain evolution. But SF-TV would be nothing without the overwhelming influence of its big brother, SF-Cinema.

And therein lies the problem. For, to be quite blunt, most of SF-Cinema is unmitigated crap, produced by illiterate idiots for idiotic illiterates. In the past few months, I have heard two SF authors give up on SF-Cinema. (Robert J. Sawyer, in an interview with Sci-Fi Weekly (http://www.scifiweekly.com/) and Walter Jon Williams, in a Worldcon chat transcript, around the same http) And they're right! Rare is the good, competent, intelligent SF film that pleases both the eye and the brain. (The most famous example, Star Wars is pleasant for the eyes, comforting in its simplistic story, very competent in sheer movie-making savvy but frustrating for lack of depth.)

Exceptions exist, but by far the most successful SF movies of recent years have been action/SF hybrids, building upon the SF concepts to provide great visuals: "Terminator II", "Jurassic Park"...

...and "Aliens", which brings us tortuously to the subject of this review. You see, "Aliens" is one of my favorite movies. Fabulously produced for a pitiful budget of something like 16 million US$, it has set a standard for SF/action flicks that has rarely been excelled since. Its suspense is extreme, the dialogue delightful (Quote heaven!), Sigourney Weaver's performance exceptional... pile up the adjectives, man, I'm running out of them!

The theme of "Aliens" is known: Bunch'o'marines pitted against ultimate enemy of man. They duke it out.

Surprise, the theme of The Legacy of Heorot is known: Bunch'o'colonists pitted against ultimate enemy of man. They duke it out.

"Aliens": 1986. The Legacy of Heorot: 1987.

TLoH might or might not be directly inspired by "Aliens", but it doesn't really matter. For the book is utterly enjoyable, even for fans of the movie. The action takes place on a planet orbiting Tau Ceti: Avalon is a planet ideal for colonization. No terraforming required. "Samlons" in the rivers, wildlife abound, the planet seems to contain no big surprises, even a few months after the foundation of the colony.

"Seems" is the key word here. For there is something on Avalon that's ready to attack... That "something" is a "Grendel"... a bear-sized frog able to out-race medal-winning sprinters and eat them up when they catch their tasty human prize. Nasty, nasty critters. As the uncredited "Washington Times" blurb states, 'makes "Aliens" look like a Disney nature film.'

As it might be expected, the colonists (led by the usual military expert so beloved of Pournelle and Niven) find a way to beat up the Grendel, then his half-dozen compadres in the immediate area. But-

at this point, we're at mid-book. What is happening, here? In two words, ecological collapse. You see, the Grendels were part of a natural ecosystem designed to keep a certain segment of the wildlife in check...

And there lies the difference between "Aliens" and TLoH. One deals with the consequences of genocide. (Well, call it as you like. And no, I haven't forgotten than the creatures in "Aliens" weren't part of the natural ecosystem... Unless you're one sadistic eco-designer.)

There are the other differences too. The characters in TLoH are sympathetic and more fully realized than their counterparts in "Aliens". While still not great stuff, (we get the misunderstood and under-appreciated military man Who Cried Wolf, the nerdy guy Who Gets His, the incompetent politician Who Dismissed Military Guy and the usual assortment of competent females) they still felt closer to reality than the marine squad in the movie.

And the style... Niven fans know what to expect. Completely readable from page One to page 383.  I was easily caught up in the action and the minutiae of a brand-new colony. Even though I suspect that Barnes did most of the writing, with the N&P duo providing substantial creative input, it's a very good read. Even if the finale is somewhat confusing, this is the kind of book they talk about when they're saying "page-turner".

As SF, it's fairly light in concepts. The real strength of the book, like "Aliens", is in suspense, entertainment and action. That will probably make it unsuitable for the literary crowd, but fine for most of us.

I liked it, can I say anything more? It doesn't aspire to greatness, but it's a fine, fine, fine read for summer afternoons...

I'm sorry if the preceding review praises TLoH at the detriment of "Aliens". Fact is, I would probably choose the movie over the book... if you absolutely have to choose: These two works represent quite well, I feel, the potential strength of SF in both medium, given similar subjects.

And now for the harder question: Why don't they make more SF movies as satisfying as "Aliens"? Answer next week, kiddos... Don't forget, marks will be deducted for excessive spelling mistakes, general stupidity and gratuitous use of the three-letter string "ID4"...

 

NEAR-FUTURE DECEPTIONS

Short working definition of "Near-Future SF": SF set in ten-fifty years. (Generally accepted as SF that takes place in a future in which most of us alive could be alive, immortality excluded.)

A lot of critics -including, perhaps most notably, author Frederik Pohl- have criticized SF for not dealing with near-future issues. Expounds the excellent "Near-Future" entry in the SF Encyclopedia, near-future stories are threatening, for they deal with changes which are not comfortably placed in the future. The changes in near-future stories are changes that would affect us. Can you deal with this? implicitly asks Alvin Toffler in his landmark nonfiction book Future Shock.

I'm not particularly enamored of near-future SF either, but for opposite reasons: Most predictions are wrong, if not in content then in time-span predicted. See The Book of Predictions by David Wallechinsky for a whole bunch of depressing/hilarious predictions. Those who predicted a plethora of manned space stations in orbit for 1992 are wrong, and unfortunately so.

As a consequence... When I read the same prediction for 2007, I tend to get slightly annoyed, especially when this prediction bases itself on events set in motion in 1997, or 1998... Yes, I do realize that SF is not a predictive literature, but still...

Recently, there has been a certain interest in SF concerning near-future space-program possibilities. A lot of wordage has been printed on the subject of making the US space program great once again. Spurred by "Apollo 13", and recent space discoveries, the space program is hot again, and SF writers are busy showing the way to a new era in space conquest. Hurrah!

Firestar and Encounter with Tiber are two of these recent works: Five-hundred-plus pages novels containing the plans for a new and exhilarating age in human history... providing a few protagonist with a lot of money.

Firestar hinges on a rich space enthusiast, who uses her vast fortune to shape up public schools (shades of Higher Education), research Delta-Clipper-type technology and build a private space program, against all odds and opinions.

Encounter with Tiber hinges in part on a rich space enthusiast who eventually builds a private space program by selling space tours to richer people...

But Encounter with Tiber is a far, far richer tale than this brief synopsis might suggest. It involves First-Contact, bi-racial aliens, prehistoric space exploration, near-future plans, exciting disasters, Martian colonization, trips across stars...

Earth receives a message in the early twentieth century: A video showing that an alien expedition came this way and left possibly a colony, certainly two encyclopedias. The race to get the encyclopedias is on. Eventually, we'll get the tale of the alien expedition, and the events leading to the first human expedition across the stars, to see the Tiberians.

This novel isn't as satisfying as it could have been, for several reasons. Perhaps the most fundamental one is that... it's boring. The premise itself is mildly exciting, the events often unnecessary, the prose competent but not pulse-pounding. The alien passages are nice, but would the authors please get on with it! Pacing is uneven and we just don't care about some characters.

Technical flaws also abound. I wasn't aware of them on first impression, but they quickly became apparent when pointed out: Too much characters, not enough depth. A lot of exposition. (Most of it is fine, but keep in mind that this is a "mass-market" science-fiction book. The authors have to explain quite a few things to the more-or-less-novice SF reader that are evident to more jaded fans.)

I was especially disappointed by the fact that this book has John Barnes as the co-author. This book is... completely different. Containing neither the hard edges of Mother of Storms and Kaleidoscope Century, nor the likable characters of A Million Open Doors, Encounter with Tiber is a marked departure from his usual solid social extrapolations.

The conclusion is unsatisfying, opening up the story for at least one possible sequel. There are some moments, and the story isn't all bad (if not particularly original) but the book as a whole is a deception. Wait for the paperback; I'm glad I read a library copy instead of buying my own.

Firestar is more satisfying, but ends on a semi-downer. If you enjoy multiple subplots with unlikable characters that do not all Live Happily Ever After, this book might be for you.

And what's more, this book is even longer than Encounter with Tiber, both subjectively and objectively (573 pages vs 560, and Firestar has a smaller font!) The first part takes place in 1999 and mostly deals with a group of students struggling in a high school recently bought by the heroine. Oh, there's also a teacher, a few space pilots and financial hijinks, but that's mostly in the other sections.

I'll say up front that Firestar is the better book of the two. Michael Flynn is a better author than Aldrin and it shows. But be prepared to be bored...

The conclusion is a downer. I won't spoil anything, but... It's a win/lose situation for most characters, with only the space program getting a win/win rating. While such a conclusion is probably more mature than a Happy-all-over feeling, I really wanted some characters to succeed where they failed...

(Then again, the author might point at me and say "Ah-ha! So I succeeded in making my characters sympathetic to you!" Urrghh...)

Firestar might be a Hugo contender, but my advice is to grab a copy of Starplex instead.

It's not easy to write satisfying near-future SF. These books show why.

 

Arc Light
Eric L. Harry

Simon & Schuster, 1994, 551 p., ISBN 0-671-88048-9, $30,00 Can.

Though Science Fiction remains my favourite literary genre, there's a special shelf in my personal library for techno-thrillers, a genre more closely associated with SF that most people assume. If Fantasy is the new-age-ish sister of SF, Techno-thriller is the weird cousin always playing around with guns and borrowing stuff with no intention of ever bringing it back.

Naturally, there's a whole range of techno-thrillers. At the lowest end, there's the standard nice-but-unrewarding "Big Weapons, Terrorists, Explosions" plots, but it takes more than a few acronyms, nuclear weapons and middle-eastern villains to make a techno-thrillers. Moving out of Sturgeon's 90%, we get authors like Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, Harold Coyle and Larry Bond, who write impeccable, believable 500-pages novels that read more like romanced histories of future wars than simple potboilers.

Or, should I say, used to write such novels. Clancy has moved on to other things: His three latest novels have been disappointing for a number of reasons, spin-off products are diluting the "Tom Clancy" trademark and his latest fiction has been steadily skewing toward the political rather than the military end of the techno-thriller spectrum. Harold Coyle's two latest novels have been about the Civil War. Bond and Brown's latest offerings are markedly duller than their predecessors.

Now here's Eric L. Harry, with an invigorating novel of nuclear war between post-Cold War USA and Russia.

Arc Light begins with nuclear war. Barely a hundred pages in the novel, the deed is done: a limited nuclear strike has devastated both countries. While no major civilian centers are hit, the military capacity of each country is vitally wounded: one of the book's subplots follows the ordeal of two servicemen stuck in a nuclear launch silo underneath a blast area. The two governments react differently: Russia toughs it out while the USA impeach their president. (Well... He did contribute somewhat to the war by telling the Chinese that Russia was about to attack them...)

The book goes on from there, topping even a big premise with ever-quirkier plot twists. President Livingstone is judged by the senate, servicemen are called back into service, the USA invades Russia... It all leads to a good techno/military/political thriller. The blurb states that this is the most electrifying debut since Clancy's The Hunt for Red October and while this hyperbole should be taken with a bucketful of salt, there is at least ground for comparison.

I was especially impressed by the human side of Harry's novel, which oscillates between maudlin tearjerkers and scenes that just feel right. While the some scenes in the Melissa Chandler subplot are a bit too emotionally cheap, there's terrific material in the scenes following the soldiers going to war. The variety of the viewpoints is also impressive: Harry doesn't shy away from covering the action from different perspectives, from strictly military action to top-level political intrigue and espionage hijinks. The characterisation is good enough for the genre: it may not be particularly impressive, but at least it's there. It helps that even the Russians antagonists are represented with some degree of nuance.

On the flip side, not all subplots are equally interesting and the conclusion is a bit disappointing, in no small part due to the way the author painted himself in a particular corner. A similar situation was handled somewhat better in Joe Weber's Defcon One.

But overall, I was impressed and I think that most thriller fans will react in the same way. With his debut novel, Harry has already become an author to watch. His second book (Society of the Mind) is in stores now, and it seems to be pushing the techno-thriller genre in another direction, tackling issues about Artificial Intelligence. This type of material coming for a non-Science Fiction writer is always interesting to contemplate: you can be sure that I'll take a look.

 

Heavy Weather
Bruce Sterling

Bantam Spectra, 1994, 29.95$ Can., ISBN: 0-553-09393-2.

To make a weak joke right at the start of the review: Audiences worldwide stormed theaters in June 1996 to see the thunderous tornado flick "Twister." I was there. It was fun. This movie showed me things I hadn't seen before and was enjoyable despite the bland plot. In that respect, "Twister" stands among the most fun of 1996's releases.

However, an oft-repeated comment on the net was "read Heavy Weather instead." Curious, I resolved to check, even if the decision wasn't that hard to make: Sterling is one of SF's best authors. His fiction has acquired impressive weight in recent years: Schismatrix is one of the best, disturbing, most impressive and complex novel to come out of the Eighties. Only the presence of Ender's Game on the 1985 Hugo ballot prevented--

--but this isn't a review of Schismatrix (other that to say "Rush to your stores, the omnibus Schismatrix Plus is there!") He's not immensely prolific (about one book every two years) but what he writes is good, imaginative, fairly readable and original.

Sterling isn't an easy writer to categorize. He has been one of the main drives behind cyberpunk fiction, but unlike a few writers of this genre he hasn't really stayed in the genre. Is Heavy Weather cyberpunk? There are no easy answers.

For one thing, cyberpunk doesn't automatically associate with tornadoes in my mind. Yet, tornadoes make up a rather large part of Heavy Weather's plot: In an ecologically unstable future America, a bunch of young people, including genius mathematician Dr. Jerry Mulcahey, chase twisters for fun and profit. Mostly fun. Among this bunch of tornado hackers lives Jane Unger, rich heiress. As the book starts, Jane uses fancy technology to make her brother Alex escape from a Mexican clinic, bringing him into the "Storm Troupe" (Please do not groan when you realize that means the members of the group call themselves "Storm Troupers..." Okay.) Alex is not very good company: He's physically sick, rebellious, unstable. Resentment abounds in the Troupe. Will he be able to contribute to the group? And what's that about a permanent F-6 supertwister?

Sterling mixes a lot of high-tech goodies into his novel: Truly cross-country vehicles, VR delta-planes, Library-of-Congress-on-a-disk, "Shadow Government" outlaws, the destruction of a major town, DNA remedies... Fascinating stuff from start to finish.

The feel of Heavy Weather might be considered as straight cyberpunk: The intensely gritty atmosphere is far removed from squeaky-clean typical SF labs: The techno-toys are not treated with reverence, but as ordinary tools, prone to failure or uselessness. We suffer with the characters as they don't bathe, wear decent clothes or have a decent sex life. The evolution of Sterling's cyberpunk themes is interesting, and should provide ample material to future Eng. Lit. majors

Yet, this is more than straight cyberpuke. We even get to like a few characters: The evolution of Alex is especially heartening, as is his consequent acceptance in the Troupe and his relationship with his sister. Most of all, there's one very good upbeat finale, something that caught me a bit unprepared given the tone of the rest of the book. Characters are okay, readability excellent, ideas original. Recommended.

As far as windy-disaster-type SF novels go, this is almost up to par to John Barnes' superlative Mother of Storms. And it does beat "Twister" hands down for intelligence. There's even a cow-bit!

[Page 258 of the hardcover edition]

Jane felt a chill existential horror as [their car] remained airborne, remained flying, and things began to drift gently and visibly past them. Things? Yes, all kinds of things. Road signs. Bushes. Big crooked pieces of tree. Half-naked chickens. A cow. The cow was alive, that was the strangest thing. The cow was alive and unharmed, and it was a flying cow. She was watching a flying cow. A Holstein. A big, plump, well-looked-after barnyard Holstein, with a smart collar around its neck. The cow looked like it was trying to swim. The cow would thrash its great clumsy legs in the chilly air and then it would stop for a second, and look puzzled.

I've said elsewhere that the difference between visual and written SF is that the latter does deal with consequences. Here's the proof, from the book's two subsequent paragraphs:

And then the cow hit a tree and the cow was smashed and dead, and was instantly far behind them.

And then [their car] hit another, different tree. And the air bag deployed, and it punched her really hard, right in the face.

Enough said. Now, go read the book!

 

A Million Open Doors
John Barnes

Tor, 1992, 315 pages, 25,95$ Can. ISBN 0-312-85210-X

Much like the Music Industry's been feverishly looking for bands "like the Beatles", SF has been looking for "Heinlein's Successor" ever since the Grandmaster declined/became boring/died in 1988. Various successor have been appointed (including most notably Spider Robinson; not a bad choice) but none has risen to take the crown.

The latest heir to the throne is John Barnes, a science-fiction writer whose books have been steadily growing in maturity and intensity. From an inauspicious beginning (The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky, 1988) Barnes has produced a few fine novels (most notably Orbital Resonance and A Million Open Doors) before hitting the big-time in 1994 with his excellent disaster epic Mother of Storms, followed in 1995 by the ultraviolent Kaleidoscope Century (His latest projects are the fantasy One for the Morning Glory and a series of men's adventure books self-admittedly written for a quick buck.)

Why the comparisons with Heinlein? Ask the four authors whose blurb on the back cover of A Million Open Doors compare Barnes to the Big Guy. Ask David Pringle, whose Ultimate Encyclopedia of SF says "If Robert Heinlein had been raised amid suburbs and malls and the socio-political chaos of the past three decades, he might have grown up to be John Barnes."

Yet, the comparison is unfair: Barnes' forte is sociological extrapolation and -lately,- fiction that isn't afraid to pull its punches, may it be in violent or sexual content. Quite a few Usenet readers have expressed a few doubts about the author himself after reading the ultra-violent-porn subplot in Mother of Storms. Others are reputedly abandonning Barnes after the sometimes graphic Kaleidoscope Century.

Well, never mind that. With A Million Open Doors, we take a trip back to a kinder, gentler John Barnes. This is a tale of two planets: harsh Caledony, where a religious government casts a humorless, rigid shadow over their inhabitants and Nou Occitan, a planet "where duels are fought with equal passion over insults and artistic views alike." The narrator of the tale is Girault, a "young" man living the extravagant life of the traditional Nou Occitans. He spends his days drinking with his friends, fighting duels, insulting strangers and writing poetry for his "girlfriend." When said girlfriend "betrays him in the worst way possible", Girault finds himself running away from her, off on Caledony.

Yep, this is a novel of Culture Shock: Imagine a 16th-century French aristocrat trying to convert modern-day Iran to his way of life and you'll have a good idea of this novel's thrust. But as Girault changes Caledonia, Caledonia changes him too... Like so many good Heinlein novels, this is also a very good coming-of-age story.

I was surprised and delighted by A Million Open Doors. It's fun, it's interesting, it's very amusing. This novel has that extra... oh... "joie-de-vivre" that leaves you smiling even days after reading this book. Better yet, this is an intelligent bright novel. Barnes' insight in what make societies tick is impressive. At the same time, the story stays very personal: A strong cast of characters complement narrator Girault's passage in adulthood, ten years belated. This isn't as much a "Growing Up" novel as a "Will you grow up, already!" story.

This is a much more even novel than the latter Mother of Storms. It's more focused and less dark. Less brilliant, perhaps (Mother of Storms is an incredibly smart novel, even for SF) but with a larger potential audience. (This isn't to say A Million Open Doors is fluffy from start to finish: There's a few darker passages, especially their solution to death...)

The cover art, as usual from artist John Harris (of Ender's Game cover fame) is hopelessly out of touch from what's in the novel.

Had I mentioned that the prose style is compulsively readable? Thought so.

It's difficult to say which kind of novel I prefer from Barnes: The light, uplifting work like A Million Open Doors, the massive volume like Mother of Storms or the dark distopia of Kaleidoscope Century... In the end, the versatility of John Barnes might be his greatest talent yet.

I'll keep reading.

[January 1997 addenda: Just to prove that I have a talent for being wrong, I claimed in a Usenet message that A Million Open Doors should please everyone. (Referring to the recent ultraviolent content in Mother of Storms and Kaleidoscope Century). A day or two passed, with a reply to my message saying that there was quite a bit of disgusting S&M sex, not-quite-jolly swordplay and rape in the book... which is absolutely correct.

To defend myself, I'll point out that the S&M and swordplay bits are in the first hundred pages, the rape is in background and the whole impression of the book is far less violent than the others. Growing up, for Girault and his friends, implies leaving behind the S&M and the swordplay. A curious thing, selective memory is...

Still, I can be an idiot to most people, most of the time, see? :) ]

 

Ammonite
Nicola Griffith

Del Rey, 1992, 4.99$Can., ISBN 0-345-37891, 349 pages.

Re-reading the above reviews, I am filled with dread: Not only aren't they very good, but they're also insufferably nice. I hate nice. Sooner or later, someone is going to send me a nasty e-mail asking whether or not Kim Stanley Robinson paid me for the heaps of praise lavished on his Mars trilogy.

So, in an effort to scale back the balance a bit, I have selected the worst SF book I have read this year. And this book is gonna get it. Be sure of one thing; I am not going to get any check from Nicola Griffith in the foreseeable future.

Because, you see, Ammonite is a bad novel. There are many degrees of badness, as well as several factors that sour my opinions of a particular book and Ammonite is a particularly remarkable intersection of a bunch of these anti-qualities.

I'll be honest: I'm less than partial to explicitly feminist novels. I've explained several of the reasons elsewhere, but my main point is that fighting excesses with excesses are not a good way to win. Castrating all males is as much a power fantasy as tying up all females. (Personally, --I have a sister—there's no doubt in my mind that women are as much out equal in terms of aggressiveness and inherent potential for violence... watch out when social conditioning will crumble.)

And Ammonite is an explicitly feminist novel. In spades.

On a certain planet, all men die and most women get temporarily sick from a native virus. Centuries pass, and anthropologist Marghe Taishan (that's our heroine) arrives on the abandoned planet to test a new vaccine. What she discovers is a pastoral, all-female society (or rather, societies: War's still going on between the clans.) Ah, but if all males dies upon exposure at the virus, how are the women reproducing? Will Marghe be able to stop the conflict between the opposing forces? Will she find love, meaning and happiness on this planet?

Now here comes my biggest objection to the book. Any careful SF fan could be able to guess where the story's going based on the previous paragraph: The women are able to reproduce themselves with the transformations brought by the virus. Marghe will go native, meet girl and fall in love, but not before going through some terrible experiences of her own. Odds are that she will go through the single most defining experience for a woman on the planet, which is becoming pregnant "all by herself" (with a little help from her friend.) Of course, we can expect her to solve the Big Political Conflict by the end of the book and Live Happily Ever After.

The fun of SF, in most cases, is to see the author destroy our preconceived assumptions while going through the novel. And it would be even better for said author to do it entertainingly: I want action, or intelligence. If you're about to write a 350-pages book, be sure to sustain it with enough plot, storyline twists and surprises to make me feel I've paid an adequate sum for the g'darn book!

Sadly, this doesn't happen here. The expected twists never come: Marghe goes native, is rejected by natives, goes through some terrible experiences, falls in love, never gets sympathetic but does get pregnant, solve the conflict and Lives Happily Ever after. Points are deducted for goofy science, interminable length and glorification of new-agish crap.

To put it simply: There are no surprises in this book. By the time the Big Political Conflict is solved, we just don't care anymore. I would have liked the book better if Marghe would have either just hung herself or loosened the man-killing virus upon the galaxy. But this doesn't happen.

It might be a wise time to include a personal interlude here: In the first three months of 1996, I took an English course at my very own UofO, entitled "Utopian and Science-Fiction." The course, taught by a teacher by the unlikely name of P h y l l i s P. P e r r a k i s, stank, bored and confused. But that's another essay: "How academia doesn't get SF, or at least not around here."

At one point in the course, a female student from nearby Carleton University came into our class to ask if anyone was interested in participating in a survey for some kind of thesis on feminist SF. One of the two books: Ammonite. One fellow classmate (female) wanted to participate: "Anything for a free book" she said.

I warned her. I told her it wasn't worth it. I pleaded for abstinence and restraint. I used a great many deal of **asterisks** to convince her not to waste her time on the book. But she didn't listen...

Guess what? A week later, same place, same time: Fellow (female) classmate comes to me and says: "You're right. It's an incredibly boring book." Ha! Vindication! Seems that her problem with the book was the same than mine: No surprises, incredible ennui...

Ammonite, to restate, is a failure as a novel. Even then, it almost succeeds as a science-fiction story. The first chapters are interesting, but as soon as we get an idea of where the novel's going, it loses all interest. Marghe's trek across the planet is nothing compared to the odyssey the reader has to endure through the novel's 349 pages. By the time everything settles down, we just don't care anymore.

More on new-ageish crap: The society described by Griffith in Ammonite is barely feudal. Isolated clans, fighting for dominance until Marghe makes them all cooperate. Rejection of technology (which only serves males or male-indoctrinated females) is much more than strongly implied. The goofy pseudo-explanation for the virus' effect smacks more of undigested psychic healing exploita than actual biology. Techies, or just rational people, will have to go elsewhere to get decent entertainment.

As a feminist tract, it's not very good either. It did win the Lambda award for best gay/lesbian/bisexual novel of the year, but this award means exactly what it does... Not that all "feminist" novels are bad, or anti-technology: Elisabeth Vonarburg's In the Mother's Land/The Maerlande Chronicles is a good example of female-dominated, interesting, non-anti-tech novel.

In summary: Burn, baby, burn!

 

SF in 1996:
The Year in Review

[Warning: I have not read a huge amount of 1996 SF books, and those I have read were most probably reviewed elsewhere near here. Be forewarned that this can't be a complete evaluation of the year.]

1996 was an okay year, I guess.

Movies:

No, but really. You know you can't say too much good about a year when the most enjoyable SF flick of 1996 is "Star Trek: First Contact". Not when the most successful movie is "Independence Day". Not when stuff like that ends up making millions instead of costing millions, like the poetic justice metered out to "Waterworld" last year.

Still talking movies, it seemed that the best we could get this year was "okay, but stupid". "The Arrival" gets this rating, as does "Mars Attacks!" (Before anyone points out that "Mars Attacks!" was supposed to be stupid, I'll point out that I'm taking exception to the barely "okay" part of the statement.) Of course, the better stupidest SF movie of 1996 was "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie," which I liked very, very much.

Two adaptations from SF works sank without a trace in 1996 (which may explain why I didn't see them:) H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and P.K.Dick's "Screamers." Hollywood continue to prove it Still Doesn't Get It, even when there's competent guides to help them.

More-or-less SF motion pictures that came out in 1996 included the controversial "Crash" from the novel by British master-of-obfuscation J.G.Ballard, the mediocre action flicks "Solo" and "Escape from LA," the Eddy Murphy "Nutty Professor" remake and the Warner Brothers money-maker "Space Jam."

Hopes for 1997 spring eternal: While "Starship Troopers" looks like an Aliens clone and "Alien 4" looks like a decent project, I'm much more hopeful for "Men in Black" and "The Fifth Element". Spielberg's "Lost World: Jurassic Park II" is sure crowd-pleaser. Also interesting could be John Woo's "Face Off." The less said about the marketing extravaganza surrounding "Star Wars" the better... but at least you know exactly what you're paying for this time around. Unfortunately, 1997 is also the year where cruddy adaptations like "Contact," "Sphere" and "Lost in Space" will make it to the big screen. Oh joy.

Television:

At the exception of "Babylon-5" and "X-Files", TV-SF continues its tradition of mediocrity. A few shows were put out of their misery ("Space: Above and Beyond", "Hypernauts", etc.) some go on like usual, other continue against all odds...

Star Trek, both incarnations of it, is sinking both in quality and in the ratings. (Doomsday numbers like "20% less audience than last year for DS9" sent a worried Paramount back to market researchers. It is to be predicted that they surely won't give The Franchise the correct answer, which is "It's mostly boring and it often sucks".) There was some well-justified talk that the Star Trek trademark was being simultaneously overexposed and diluted. Oh, and the series did celebrate its 30th anniversary... On the other hand, have I mentioned that the movie was somewhat enjoyable and had good special effects?

The only new TV show of note was "Millennium", by a team closely associated with the X-Files. Unfortunately, it's not very much SF, concentrating rather much on the American public's continued fascination with occult and alien contemporary mythology. The other shows, from "Dark Skies" to "PSI Factor" also cash in on the X-Files-generated craze. (My feelings on this fascination are a bit too harsh to be posted in such a forum, but include such choice expressions as "sliding IQ scale", "where's the nearest spaceship to a decent planet", "moronic housewives, idiotic workmen and their inevitable, hopeless progeny", "selective sterilization is becoming a rather attractive option" and "Let's take evolution in our own hands.")

"Babylon-5" is the only series that I watch regularly and does include its number of duds ("Gray 17 is Missing", anyone?) but still maintains a level of characterization, intelligence, special effects and pure ambition that's unequaled anywhere in the history of TV. I really like this show, despite occasional trips into what I call "The Science-Fantasy Soul-and-Clichés Zone" Long life to Straczynski, who's been carrying the show on his shoulders from Day One.

(I really like X-Files too, because it's a good show, but I haven't really been able to acquire a habit of listening week after week. I would spring for a full collection of 8-hour tapes, though... Same thing with "The New Outer Limits.")

I've listened to one episode of "Third Rock from the Sun". It's a mildly amusing sitcom with an attractive female lead, but as SF... skip.

Among longer, made-for-TV movies, noticeable are the Sci-Fi channel's version of "The Cold Equations.", The new Doctor Who, two new "Alien Nation" movies... I was more-or-less entertained by "Star Command", which (again...) was stupid but okay: There were some suprisingly strong moments in this pilot.

Prospects for 1997 look dismal. Again.

Books:

In what I've read, I was blown away by Robert J. Sawyer's Starplex and Stephen R. Donaldson's conclusion to the Gap series in The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die. I also liked Emily Devenport's Eggheads and -of course- Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars, which concludes the Mars trilogy with brio. Other SF books of 1996 were mostly disappointing: Firestar and Encounter with Tiber were more massive than entertaining and an irresponsible amount of paper was wasted on the novelization of Independence Day.

My Hugo ballot would probably include Starplex, This Day All Gods Die, Blue Mars, Firestar and Encounter with Tiber with my choice going to either Donaldson or Sawyer. Of course, I don't expect that to happen: Lois McMaster Bujold will probably rake off another nomination with Memory, along with, possibly, Brin for Infinity's Shore and Willis for Bellwether.

1997 books look promising: The final volume to Brin's second "Uplift" trilogy. The sequel to Dan Simmons' Endymion. Two new books by Robert J. Sawyer. Possibly two new books by Walter Jon Williams... The new year looks as it's going to be expensive!

Awards:

Robert J. Sawyer, of all authors, won the Nebula for The Terminal Experiment, something I didn't think would happen given what I've heard and seen about Sawyer's style. Oh, SFWA politics...

I also got the feeling that Neal Stephenson's Hugo award for The Diamond Age was as much due to the quality of the novel (It is good, if somewhat uneven) than to a sentiment of guilt from the fans about the absence of Stephenson's landmark Snow Crash on the ballot three years ago... Oh, and the Non-fiction Hugo to the The Illustrated Encyclopedia of SF was well-deserved.

In general...

Things are going well. The market is not dead, even for the "shrinking" Hard-SF segment. Fantasy hasn't won. We're still here. Never before in the history of SF has the field been so diverse, fun and interesting. You can go in a bookstore and find new books every time, a better-than-good thing. Good authors are everywhere! While the general public continues to "miss" the point of SF, it's not a particularly new phenomenon, as the revival of Star Wars-mania proves.

I'm hopeful. After all, isn't hope a cornerstone of SF?