BOOK REVIEWS

1998, Part K: November

1998, Christian Sauvé

Reviewed this month:

Plus! A few Short Reviews: Outpost (Scott Mackay), Project Maldon (Chris Atack), Before Lift-Off (Henry S.R. Cooper, Jr.)

 

 

The Hot Zone
Richard Preston

Anchor Books, 1995, 422 pages, 08.99$ Can., ISBN 0-385-47956-5

It's invisible. Undetectable. Incurable. It can affect over ninety percent of the world's population. It eats your insides, liquefying your internal organs. In the final stages, you're essentially a bag of blood held together by flesh. Near the end, it will make you go in convulsions, sending body fluids everywhere. It rides on the blood, ready to prey on other humans.

It's Ebola.

It's not every day that you can read a book sporting a blurb in which Stephen King says "One of the most horrifying things I've ever read."

After reading The Hot Zone, you might want to question the value of horror novels. Because The Hot Zone is nonfiction. Ebola is real. It kills and cannot be cured. The human race is singularly helpless before this microscopic predator. Far scarier than a couple of bomb-toting terrorists, vampires or doomsday devices.

Richard Preston wasn't exactly a novice when he published The Hot Zone (besides being a regular New Yorker contributor, he had published two other scientific / technical non-fiction books) but this is the book that made him famous. A chilling Ebola outbreak happened shortly after the book's release and for a few weeks, The Hot Zone went up the charts and into public consciousness. At least one heavily derivative movie (OUTBREAK, 1995) was made. The French translation of The Hot Zone is simply called Ebola. My own paperback copy of The Hot Zone is a fourth printing.

But beyond its great reputation, The Hot Zone is more than a book that happened to be at the good spot at the good time. Richard Preston has fashioned a good, solid, even gripping account of the virus threat.

The Hot Zone is divided in four parts.

The first one describes Ebola, and its initial outbreaks in Africa (Zaire, mainly) and Europe. Preston doesn't miss the chance to describe extensively the effects of the virus and so we get lovely descriptions like:

When a virus multiplies in a host, it can saturate the body with virus particles, from the brain to the skin. The military experts then say that the virus has undergone "extreme amplification." During this process, the body is partly transformed into virus particles. In other words, the body is possessed by a life form that is attempting to convert the host into itself. The end result is a great deal of liquefying flesh mixed with virus, a kind of biological accident.

After that, The Hot Zone moves to Reston, a suburb of Washington where an Ebola outbreak decimates a monkey house. Parts three and four of the book deal with the growing alarm, and decontamination of the Reston site.

Part four is fairly unique: Preston packs his travel kit and goes to investigate Kitum Cave, the most likely source of the Ebola virus. He obviously survives to tell the tale, but the effect is delightfully unsettling, boosting both the book's tension and the author's credibility.

The Hot Zone is that rarest of scientific books; A true-life thriller, a compulsively readable account and a lucidly described exposition of a complex subject. It does push the Big Buttons a lot, but with adequate reason to do so.

The Hot Zone is not only a non-fiction account that will teach you things (with it, you might spot mistakes in OUTBREAK), but a largely-read book that reserves its reputation while at the same time making a substantial point: The world is a lot more dangerous that we complacent, civilized, contemporary humans seem to be ready to believe.

 

 

Rainbow Six
Tom Clancy

Putnam, 1998, 740 pages, 38.99$ Can., ISBN 0-399-14390-4

Tom Clancy has long been one of my first favourite authors, as far back as I can remember being able to form the concept of "a favourite author". I recall plunking down a fair amount of change for a (then) complete paperback collection of his novels. (Since then, of course, I've discovered other authors even "better" than Clancy, but that's neither here or now.)

As might be expected, however, It always seems like the best books are from before you discover the author. Having read Clancy's first five books in rapid succession, they still form kind of a superior unified work in my mind. As such, each new Clancy book is an anxiously anticipated half-disappointment compared to the classics.

To that problem, we can add the very worrying trend of seeing the "Tom Clancy" trademark on a variety of inferior products. Since early 1996, Clancy's name has been associated with inferior ghostwritten adventure novels, a very bad submarine game "novelisation", many worthy nonfiction books and an array of computer games. We might ask; where are the novels?

Clancy's latest "true" book, Rainbow Six, almost straddles the line between novel and marketing product. It certainly didn't sound good when I heard that a computer game called Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six was being coded at the same time by Clancy's gaming company, aimed for simultaneous release.

But Clancy fans can now buy in peace: Rainbow Six is Clancy's first "real" novel since 1996. The difference is apparent: It's a fat hardcover book, with the wealth of details, action and overwritten subplots that we've come to expect from the techno-thriller master.

It's almost a shame that Rainbow Six's biggest weakness is its premise: An international team of highly trained covert operatives is formed to battle terrorists. (Sounds like a G.I.Joe cartoon, yet?) At the same time, a band of fanatic environmentalist scientists is developing a virus designed to kill off the entire human race! Egawd! Will the Rainbow team defuse the threat? Duuuuh!

Well, the good news are that once you're in the novel, it doesn't really matter any more. We're back in the world-famous Clancy prose, which is part clunky, part limpid. As ever, the lack of stylistic touches possesses an undeniable rough elegance. Rainbow Six is also a return to Clancy's earlier novels in that there are several well-executed action scenes throughout the novel, in opposition to several other recent works (The Sum of All Fears, Executive Orders) where most of the bang was held back until the end. Indeed, Rainbow Six does have something like an anticlimax, or at least a lacklustre finale.

Be warned, however, that since readers demand big fat Clancy novels, Clancy has obliged and the result, as usual, could have been edited down by as much as twenty-five percent.

This is not, by the way, a good novel to enter the Clancyverse. Numerous explicit references are made to the events of earlier novels, and newer readers will be frustrated. It can still be read by itself, but shouldn't. (Clancy's flagship character, Jack Ryan, is present, but in the background and then only referenced by title rather than name.)

Rainbow Six does for Special-Forces teams (SWAT, SAS, Delta, SEAL, etc...) what The Hunt for Red October did for submarine crew: It offers a privileged (and, we presume, reasonably exact) glimpse in the lives of some very very special soldiers. After reading Rainbow Six, it's hard not to trust their real-world expertise at intervening in tense situations.

Given this, it's a bit of a shame that Clancy had to resort to such dubious video-game premise to fuel his novel. (Not to mention that the virus thing has been done before... in Clancy's previous novel!) It seems to me like smaller stakes (like the good action set-pieces in the first half of the novel) would have been amply sufficient... especially given the rather disappointing way the whole plot is defused.

Clancy fans will love it. Not many non-fans will be converted. The computer game is said to be adequately good. Clancy delivered the goods: Even with every fault it has, Rainbow Six is a good read.

 

 

Déjà Dead
Kathy Reichs

Pocket, 1998, 8.99$ Can., 532 pages, ISBN 0-671-01136-7

Despite all the good qualities a novel can possess, they're for nothing unless someone actually picks up the book and starts reading it. Given that automated mini-harpoons are outlawed, books have to find better ways to hook you so you actually consider reading the story.

There are, needless to say, many ways of doing so. Some are completely divorced from the content of the book (like the book design, quality of production, lettering... even cover illustration in some case...) while other directly come from the book's content.

Déjà Dead has an undeniable hook for most French-Canadian readers of crime fiction. It's a major novel from a renowned American publisher (Scribner/Pocket), by an American author, that takes place... in Montréal.

The differences between Kathy Reichs (author) and Temperance Brennan (protagonist) are slight from a professional point of view. Both work as forensic anthropologists for "the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Québec." Write what you know, say most writing books.

And Reich obviously knows her stuff. Déjà Dead has, as an additional hook, the merits of allowing the reader to peer over the shoulder of a forensic anthropologist at work. Some of the digressions, like the discussion of dismemberment methods, are oddly fascinating.

The setup is average as far as crime novel go: Bodies are discovered, brought to the attention of the protagonist, who then eventually deduce that they've got a serial killer in action. What follows is, obviously, the efforts of the protagonist to catch the villain, even though the protagonist in this case might have zero business trying to catch the bad guy.

Déjà Dead plays the rules of the genre with a qualified awareness of them, suggesting an author who's spent a lot of time reading what's available out there. It doesn't prevent the usage of traditional dramatic devices like the Missing Friend (who, we all know, is going to be involved in the sordid murder business.) As for the pet... well...

The novel is also a bit overwritten, combining the slight impression that we know where it's going with the feeling that we're going there slowly. While Reichs creates an interesting atmosphere, Déjà Dead still could have profited from a thorough editing.

French-Canadian readers, of course, will appreciate the setting. It's worth noting that Reichs doesn't make too many mistakes, which is a welcome improvement over many of the other US writers who have attempted a Québec novel (see, for one regrettable example, Clive Cussler's Vixen 03).

The female narrator-protagonist is also a change of pace from the hard-boiled narrator or third-person point-of-view that we see so often in this genre. Given that numerous references are made to Patricia Cornwell in the opening blurbs, chances are that this is intentional.

Still, for a first novel, Déjà Dead possesses the remarkable qualities of readability, painless exposition, good characterization and good writing. I'd be picky to ask for more. I'm already hooked enough as it is.

 

 

Final Impact
Yvonne Navarro

Bantam, 1997, 469 pages, 7.99$ Can., ISBN 0-553-56360-2

In fiction, there are several ways to end the world, and several things to do once you've done it. Perhaps the most famous apocalyptic book of all is Stephen King's exceptional The Stand, which combined gritty realism with supernatural elements to produce a book strong enough to forgive its rather significant shortcomings. With Final Impact, Yvonne Navarro sets herself up to be compared to King, and the results are almost as disastrous as the catastrophe itself.

1999. Inspired by the Shumacher-Levy comet, another celestial object finds itself hurtling at Jupiter. Problem is; it misses, fragments in a myriad of smaller rocks and heads straight for Earth. Meanwhile, efforts to destroy some of the fragments are sabotaged, and the rocks hit.

But that's not the real story.

From the above, we might infer a relatively competent novel firmly grounded in hard sciences and rigorously extrapolating the effects of a massive asteroid strike on Earth.

Not so.

You see, even during the prologue, we're introduced to (more than) four people possessing extra-sensorial powers. (I will avoid talking about the inconsistent nature of the superpowers, as it seems to be the norm with such pseudo-SF.) Since Navarro describes herself as "a dark fantasy writer", you can bet your fallout shelter that life isn't an easy road for them. Indeed, in the first ten pages, a girl is abandoned by her parents and a boy looks on as his father kills his mother. And that's only the first two protagonists.

Scientific plausibility goes downhill as soon as the rocks hit, since the Earth stop rotating (all together now; riiiight) and some humans transform themselves in the usual gallery of fantastic creatures: vampires, werewolves, etc... This isn't gratuitous, of course, given that Earth now has a "light side" and a "dark side". Ooooh, deeeeep, maaaan.

And then the novel ends.

That's right. Final Impact is the first volume of an unknown series of books. Nowhere is it mentioned. Some threads are still up in the air, nothing interesting has been done with the setup, character dynamics are still unresolved... and you have the gall to ask why I disliked the book?

Even then, though, it must be said that Final Impact isn't totally worthless. For all her dubious plotting, incompetent scientific sense and lack of marketing acumen, Yvonne Navarro has created some vivid characters in Final Impact. While they're either too good or too evil to be classified as realistic (not to mention these pesky ESP powers), they're well-defined. The most interesting character, Lily, is a welcome exception given that she's morally ambiguous and as "normal" (few superpowers) as Navarro's characters come.

Final Impact is also surprisingly readable—warts and all. Navarro keeps the flourishes down to a minimum, and prefers to follow her characters as closely as possible. The execution mitigates the weak story.

There's a certain audience, I suppose, for the tired clichés sprouted off by Final Impact (Yet Another Rock-Smashing Earth, Yet Another Group of Superpowered Mutants, Yet Another Good-Versus-Evil setup, Yet Another Fantasy series...) but serious -read "jaded"- readers will want to read fresher material. Because at the end, what Final Impact offers is only a good setup for a Role-Playing Game scenario.

 

 

Horizontal Hold:
The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot
Daniel Paisner

Birch Lane Press, 1992, 206 pages, 23.95$ Can., ISBN 1-55972-148-0

Something quite sad and remarkable happened in November 1998.

The television series "Babylon 5" ended, after a five-year run.

For those of you who have thus far managed to get away with a complete ignorance of "Babylon 5", know these facts: Conceived in 1987-1988 by J. Michael Straczynski as a five-year "Science-Fiction Novel for Television" and shopped around multiple studios -who all balked at this grandiose premise-, "Babylon-5" made it on the air in 1993 (Pilot) and 1994 (series). Despite constant rumours of impending cancellation and some rather heavy sniping from the concurrent Star Trek fans and producers, "Babylon-5" finally managed to end after its planned run, producing something unique: a truly original multi-layered five-year story on television.

But the 1993-1998 era is also littered with one-year series, half-season wonders and six-episode failures. For each "Babylon-5", how many "The Visitor"? And for each show yanked after six episodes, how many pilots?

Horizontal Hold tries to answer this question by showing the making of a (failed) television pilot, with all the high and low points of the process. Meanwhile, we learn how vile an institution is TV broadcasting. The story begins in 1989, when a writer at an independent production company gets the idea for a new sitcom: Why not follow, week after week, the misadventures in the life of presidential scriptwriters?

The concept is promising and the book shows how we go from idea to pilot. It's not a pretty process, especially seen from a writer's point of view. Characters are modified, tailored, changed, dumbed-down... and that's when they're not simply eliminated from the script, which gets re-written daily. Production factors often modify the story.

Obviously, good writing isn't the main concern of television.

Horizontal Hold shows exceptionally well the committee-driven nature of TV, with its endless compromises and its dependence on stupid dumb luck. Unpredictable events prove to be the ultimate demise of the pilot described in Horizontal Hold: A surprise strike undoes a first try, and the changing whims of a TV executive nail down the second attempt.

But throughout all of this, a potentially depressing story remains quite lively, all thanks to Paisner's writing skills. He brings a witty style that's not only humorous in its own way (Discussing a character's elimination right after an actor's narrow brush with dismissal: "Bonnie Doone isn't so lucky. Of course, she's just a character and therefore unable to manage much of anything on her own behalf." [P.78]) but also includes many delicious behind-the-scene anecdotes.

Paisner rarely preaches directly about the nature of television, letting the story speaks for itself. It's an eloquent message. Certainly, I would have been intrigued by the presidential-screenwriter concept: that it wasn't given a fair chance is as disheartening as it is frustrating. Given the process described in Horizontal Hold, it's a minor miracle that anything of value ever appears on our television screens.

Horizontal Hold is a very worthwhile non-fiction account of the reality behind the cathode tube. It's reasonably impartial, lucidly examining the possibility (among others) that the product just wasn't good enough to make it to the small screen. But most of all, it's a compulsively readable account of a fascinating event. Don't be surprised if you find yourself shutting off the television to finish the book.

But really; now that "Babylon-5" is off the air, what else are you going to watch?

 

 

Neanderthal
John Darnton

St Martin's, 1996, 395 pages, 9.99$ Can., ISBN 0-312-96300-9

Once upon a time, in a land much like our own...

...there was a sub-genre of novels called "Lost Worlds". Written around the turn of this century, these novels usually starred valiant explorers, battling exotic creatures to discover stunning secrets: A mini-ecological environment complete with dinosaurs! A Mysterious Island! A fortress guarded by the last Greek warriors! The Tenth lost tribe of Israel! A wonderful treasure!

Needless to say, as Earth was progressively settled and explained, lost worlds began to disappear. Who can believe, now, an amazonian plateau populated with prehistoric animals?

And yet, these novels keep their charms. Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island is still one of my favourite books, as is Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. There is a quaint yet hardy spirit of adventure and exploration in these stories that is terrific for younger readers and loads of fun -in small dosage- for adults.

Neanderthal is a pure Lost World novel. As the story begins, two scientists are contacted with news of an important discovery. Their mentor is calling them back, deep in Asia. There, they find a lost race of Neanderthals. Will they be able to escape?

Now, given that Lost World novels are fun and that Neanderthal is a Lost World novel, we might logically expect Neanderthal to be a fun book.

If only things were that simple...

Neanderthal falters on several fronts, perhaps the most egregious being a completely humourless approach to the material. Lost Worlds novel should be awe-inspiring and thrilling, while remaining faintly silly. Here, Pulitzer-winning New York Times correspondent Darnton plays it with a tedious seriousness, even as he brings up such whoppers as a limited form of telepathy. (For various reasons, we eventually suspect that Darnton doesn't only play around with the concepts of lost races, telepathy and ESP, but actually believes in them, which raises a whole new lot of problems.)

To this, we can add the usually suspects devices of the noble savages and the bloodthirsty barbarians. But whereas Doyle and Burroughs handled those with a kind of charming earnestness, Darnton's Lost Races are more cyphers than objects of fascination.

But all of this would have been irrelevant if Darnton had delivered a thrilling novel. And he does not. Neanderthal is a stuffy bore of a "thriller". No suspense. Very few set-pieces. Minimal implications for worldwide peace. Lesser novels would have brought back an evil Neanderthal in civilized land where it would have gone in a murderous rampage. Well, that's what missing from this novel; a sense of fun and of pulpish excitement. Instead, we get a three-act play with three humans and a bunch of guys in monkey suits.

Which is rather sad, since Darnton has obviously put a lot of time in doing his research for Neanderthal. Well-integrated (and some no-so-well-integrated) expository passages at least give the impression of taking away something worthwhile from the novel (though with Darnton's tendency to throw around "remote viewing", we can legitimately doubt his credibility.)

THE EXPEDITION OF THE CENTURY UNCOVERS THE FIND OF THE MILLENNIUM! promises the back-cover blurb. CREATURES THAT POSSESS POWERS MAN CAN ONLY IMAGINE, AND THAT ARE ABOUT TO CHANGE THE FACE OF CIVILISATION FOREVER! it adds. THE MUST-READ THRILLER OF THE YEAR! is exhorts. With this kind of publicity, we'd be justified in expecting a rather more exciting thriller.

What we have, instead, is a Neanderthal that should remain extinct.

 

 

Cheap SF... Really?

On the reviewing slate today; two SF paperback originals that look and feel like cheap SF paperback, but end up being surprisingly competent.

 

Virtual Death (Shale Aaron) is a novel that should have sunk under the weight of its own imperfections. For instance, do we really need another dystopian cyberpunkish low-down dirty future? Not really. Can you believe a depressing society where people actually pay to see someone whose stage act is to depress them? Not really. Do you really think that you can create a zone of clear air over a city just with a Really Big Fan? Not really. Are you interested in reading Yet Another Novel where the protagonist dies for money? Well... maybe.

Lydia is a master of her craft, and that craft is dying. In an age where it's ridiculously easy to revive a recently deceased person, Lydia possesses the uncanny ability to be able to die easily and to be revived without permanent neurological damage. At the start of the novel, she's manoeuvred into doing it once more...

Truth is, Virtual Death ends up far more interesting than it could have seemed at first, mostly because of the wealth of small details that Aaron integrates in her story. From Chevrolet Reagans to Nowists (who always speak at the present tense) to gunsmith-killing anti-gun activists, Aaron's vision is far more textured and alive than other middle-list SF novel writers. It's not for nothing that Virtual Death was nominated for the Philip K. Dick award.

Which isn't saying that the novel is constantly rewarding: there are some rather long stretches of tepid movement. Plus, Aaron uses the infuriating literary gimmick of replacing every instance of one, first and other alphanumeric low-numbers by 1, 1st, 2, 2nd, etc... It's both incredibly annoying and unintentionally hilarious when you end up reading lines like "I still remember my 1st 1." (It's also inconsistent.)

Plus, the novel's main text ends in mid-story and settles down very quickly at the beginning of the epilogue, only to start up again on the last few pages. The impression is displeasingly one of an after-thought setup for a second volume. It doesn't work. It's frustrating.

But Virtual Death is still worth a quick look.

 

ROC books has never been as the forefront of Science-Fiction innovation. For one thing, they seem to be publishing mostly fantasy. For another, they have this annoying tendency of publishing what is most charitably described as sci-fi adventures. Take a thriller, replace Russians by aliens, car by hovers and guns by blasters, and you almost have a ROC book.

Against these odds, I didn't expect much of Impostor (Valerie J. Freireich), and maybe that's why I'm so pleasantly surprised. It doesn't really start promisingly, as a young "enhanced" (read: geningeneered mutant) teacher is deported to another planet. It's doesn't improve a lot as the protagonist has to rebuild a life from the lowest rungs of his new society. It does, however, pick up interest in the last third, as biological enigmas emerge and are resolved, as conflicts between the character erupts and as Freireich raises some sensitive issues.

Eventually, the novel does touch upon feminism, religious (in)tolerance, racial differences, social classes and an exotic extraterrestrial biology that is improbable while still being interesting. There are a few original ideas. If the style often errs on the ponderous, the novel is adequately readable. The end result won't blow you away and won't be remembered for long, but offers worthwhile SF.

 

 

SHORT VIEWS

It pains my patriotic spirit to give bad reviews to a Canadian SF book, but it must be said that I was hugely disappointed by Scott Mackay's Outpost. Even though the cover illustration has an oddly attractive design (The cold colours and overall composition compensate the rather amateurish illustration of an outpost lost in the middle of a snowy plain), the actual content of the book left me... cold. As Yet Another Novel starring an initially-amnesiac protagonist, Outpost doesn't really shine by its originality and never really improves upon this rather tired premise. I'm usually a sucker for prison stories, but this one didn't work. I think that the ponderous and deliberate style has a lot to contribute to this impression. The overall result is a simple tale told in a needlessly complicated way, and the effect on the reader is tiresome. (The constant italian references were also completely lost on me.) By the end, where revelations are finally made, it's far too late for anyone to care. Outpost has uncanny resemblances with a confusing dream where you keep wishing you'd wake up.

On the other hand, Project Maldon (Chris Atack) is decent Canadian SF that takes a while to revv up, but does conclude on what some may perceive as a high note. Don't be fooled by the Stupid Baen Cover; not only isn't there one single SR-71 in the novel, but there isn't even any space combat! Project Maldon borrows from several sources with its story about the administrator of a project to preserve civilisation on the eve of a great Die-Off. The novel does meander for a few hundred pages, but gets back on track as more clues lead the protagonist to believe that his AI boss might be slowly going crazy. Though some will be disgusted by the tricky ending, most won't mind. The title is needlessly pretentious. Provincial Canadian readers will appreciate the setting, a Toronto torn apart by anarchy and violence. The result is solid, if unmemorable, Science Fiction that fully understands the genre it's in.

Before Lift-Off (Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr.) is an unexpectedly captivating non-fiction account of a space shuttle crew's training. I picked it up and later discovered that the mission described in the book, 41-G, was the mission that carried the first Canadian astronaut into space! (Of course, this also means that some of the book is outdated, Marc Garneau having gone into space in 1984.) The book follows the training month by month, offering an all-too-rare glimpse in the incredibly complex space shuttle systems. It's surprising to note that the training parts of the book are more interesting that the description of the actual mission. (But, as Cooper points out, training is supposed to make the actual mission an anticlimax.) The author's style is involving, and we feel an attachment both to the astronauts, but also to the formidable support/training crew upon which the astronauts depend. It's a wonderful account which clears up many of the notions inherited from too many SF shows where missions are planned on the go-go, and personal heroics take precedence over good, reliable procedures. Grab it if you see it.