BOOK REVIEWS

1999, Part G: July

1999, Christian Sauvé

Featured this month:

 

 

Icefire
Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Pocket, 1998, 703 pages, $9.99 Can., ISBN 0-671-01403-X

If Icefire is to be believed, the government should be monitoring private home pages to detect, identify and act upon threats to the state based on intricate psychological profiles. In this case, I fully expect unmarked black vans in front of my home any moment now: In the past year, these book reviews have demonstrated an unhealthy interest in global catastrophes of various flavors: Insect extinction (Dust, Charles Pellegrino), Alien Invasion (The Killing Star, Pellegrino and George Zebrowski), EMP event (Aftermath, Charles Sheffield), Exploding Moon (Moonfall, Jack McDevitt), Crazy Terrorists (Storming Heaven, Dale Brown), Cometary Impact (Final Impact, Yvonne Navarro), Bio-Warfare (The Cobra Event, Richard Preston)... Now here comes Icefire, a global catastrophe thriller that begins in one of the world's most unexpected places... Antarctica.

The Reeves-Stevens premise is simple: A large part of Antarctica (The Ross Shelf) is actually hanging over open sea. Should this area be abruptly hurled into the sea, it would create a massive wave that would travel across the entire Pacific Ocean in a matter of hours, devastating everything in its path.

Guess what? This is exactly what happens in the opening pages of the novel, as nuclear warheads are detonated by terrorists. Before long, our Navy SEAL protagonist Mitch Weber is forced to team up with environmentalist Cory Rey to warn the world of the impending danger. Complicating the matter further is that the two were once lovers, but now stare at each other from totally opposite ideological viewpoints.

To be charitable, Icefire is not a novel of characters. A techno-thriller in the best tradition, it is a breathtaking narrative of rapidly introduced ideas and good-old American can-do military intervention. Everyone who despaired at the current techno-thriller slump should rejoice at the arrival of the Reeves-Stevens on the scene.

One crucial element that has been well-understood by the writers is the techno-thriller genre's reliance on secrets. Whether anyone believes that the US military knows about UFOs and such, most of us suspect that they've been hiding some pretty fascinating technology. Icefire has far too much fun in imagining what these secrets might be. Though overdone in some areas (come on, they're still rehashing Roswell?), this is one of the nice surprises of the book. Are these high-tech secrets convincing? Well, I did look on the Internet for some references to the mysterious objects described on pages 243-244. Even at 10$ for the paperback, there is a lot of material for your money in Icefire's 703 pages.

The other surprise is how darn exciting it all is. Icefire begins with nuclear explosions and builds on to bigger things. The means used by our protagonists to travel beyond the wave are increasingly high-tech, and the action doesn't let stop. Several "Cool Scenes" [TM] pepper the narrative, pushing Icefire well above the average techno-thriller novel.

Best of all, the writing flows very well. The characters are well defined in their functions, even if not much deeper. (I never really believed in the protagonists' past romance, for instance, seeing how radically different their personality types are.) The plot mechanics are ingenious, wisely dropping cards when needed and withholding some bigger stakes for later. The conclusion is kind of flat, but after all that happened, who can blame readers for being a bit numb?

One could go on endlessly about Icefire, but it all boils down to how much fun it all is. What's most surprising is that Reeves-Stevens are relative newcomers at techno-thrillers. They either studied their market cynically well, or they instinctively know what to do. In any case, I'm anxiously waiting for their next techno-thriller. Good stuff.

 

Flashforward
Robert J. Sawyer

Tor, 1999, 319 pages, $34.95 Can, ISBN 0-312-86712-3

One might wonder at the reason behind Robert J. Sawyer's current success. Certainly, the author's tireless auto-promotion has something to do with it. The regularity with which he publishes is another, at roughly a novel per year since 1990. His direct, journalistic prose is easy to read. His professionalism is obvious; he always deliver the goods with each successive book.

In other words, Robert J. Sawyer truly understands and produces what the average reader demands of SF: Easy, captivating yarns built around the solid core of an idea and wrapped in professional characters and plotting. His latest, Flashforward, is almost a textbook example of how to write a fair contemporary SF novel.

The premise is a good one: Following a high-energy physics experiment at CERN, everyone on the planet experiences two subjective minutes of a future twenty years away while their "objective" bodies lose consciousness. The immediate repercussions are horrendous: Thousands of people are injured or killed as they blank out in dangerous situations. But the long-term effects are even more significant as everyone correlate their individual visions and find out that they all refer to the same future...

Fantasy concept, sure, but Sawyer manages to make us willingly suspend our disbelief. In the process, he raises concepts of free-will, of fate, of guilt, of the non-eternal duration of love. Sawyer aficionados won't be surprised to see Sawyer's usual matrimony/theology themes weaved in all of this. Heady stuff, but adequately presented in digestible bites.

The concept leads itself to some delicious situations: A man investigating his own upcoming murder, a marrying couple knowing they won't be together twenty years later, a writer with a glimpse in his non-upcoming-greatness, a president-to-be harassed with congratulation calls, a future-couple uncomfortably meeting for the first time... Flashforward really benefits from these touches of irony, which compensate for the thin -but well-handled- characters.

There are a few flaws, like the dubious "everyone-asleep-was-dreaming" assumption (hasn't Sawyer heard of deep sleep?). The ending is a bit rushed, with the typical Sawyer last-chapter paradigm leap. As usual, Sawyer's ideas exceed his executive capacity -intentionally?-, and hard-core SF readers can't be faulted for take the author to task for being a bit pedestrian. But most readers will love it.

Otherwise, there really isn't much to say about Flashforward. Fans will like it, with most agreeing that it's one of his best books yet. It does wraps up a bit easily and could benefit from less conventional writing, but it's hard to fault such an easily-readable novel (don't bother with bookmarks) for being too accessible. As usual, a sure choice for the major awards.

 

A Deepness in the Sky
Vernor Vinge

Tor, 1999, 606 pages, $38.95 Can., ISBN 0-312-85683-0

For some reason, I was one of the few people not overly impressed by Vernor Vinge's previous novel, the 1992 Hugo-award-winning A Fire Upon the Deep. Epic space opera, yes, but constantly focused on the wrong narrative threads: The poor humans stuck on the backward planet rather than the all-out galactic war taking place around them. But that was then, and now is A Deepness in the Sky. Deepness is widely hailed as "the prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep", but is really so thinly linked that it's best read as a stand-alone volume. (Though the symmetry of the pair is intriguing.)

Two human expeditions arrive around a star with the interesting property of cyclically "shutting off" at precise intervals. They discover a planet whose indigenous inhabitants ("Spiders") are on the verge of attaining space-flight technology. Problem is, the two human expeditions come from radically different societies. One is composed of traders, the other is based on intellectual slavery. Before long, the expeditions are fighting it out in orbit. After the brief skirmish, both camp find out that they can't travel back to their home systems and that they won't survive unless they combine their resources. And so the survivors from both camps settle down warily, waiting until the Spiders can provide them with the way to go back home... a prospect at least thirty years away.

There can be no mistaking that A Deepness in the Sky is pure science-fiction, at least not if you accept the proposition that "SF is about the effects of technological change". Vinge lovingly details the Spider's technological progress, using this subplot as a convenient excuse to make some sociological comments on the place of technology on human progress. Though the book is only moderately high on ideas, Vinge's extrapolation hold some interest. (His digression on multi-generational legacy code held special interest for this IT professional.)

Vinge also uses a neat trick (which I won't spoil) to anthropomorphize a basically alien species. Though the use of "cars", "telephones" and other typically human terms may annoy some readers, it's a great device to humanize an entire segment of the cast.

Which, unfortunately, doesn't really solve the question as to if these alien subplots should have been kept in the novel. If A Deepness in the Sky is a pure-SF novel with fascinating bits and intriguing aliens, it's a shame that it's so long and bloated. Wordiness kills a large part of the novel's momentum, so that even if the first few hundred pages contain massive space battles, the book doesn't get moving until the mid-point mark. Make no mistake: A Deepness in the Sky is well written, but it's well over-written too. The characters are worthwhile, but they're not easily approachable.

Fortunately, when the book starts moving, it really starts to be interesting. Vinge manages his threads effectively, and his extended conclusion effectively completes the story.

While assuredly one of the front-runners in this year's SF crop and definitively worth your money in paperback, A Deepness in the Sky nevertheless fails at provoking enthusiasm. Slowed down by a deliberate prose and longish subplots, this novel joins the ranks of recent books that could have been improved by some serious editing. This caveat aside, don't miss what is easily one of the best recent examples of a simple yet epic SF story well-told through the personal struggles of full characters.

 

Signal to Noise
Eric S. Nylund

Avon/EOS, 1999, 371 pages, $8.99 Can., 0-380-79292-3

Despite what naysayers might say, the science-fiction bookshelves of your nearby bookstore have never been so attractively filled with dozens of potentially interesting books. This diversity, unfortunately, has made it more difficult than ever to find the really good stuff. Today's savvy SF reader must learn to negotiate the thin line between hype and actual value, between signal to noise. In this game of equilibrium, it doesn't take much to drown out any potential interest.

That happened in early 1998 as I was at the local SF bookstore considering my next few purchases. An unusually-colored hardcover attracted my eye: Eric S. Nylund's Signal to Noise. Unfortunately, the jacket copy began by claiming that the novel was the first instance of a new emerging genre—hyperpunk.

That was far too much marketing jargon crammed in a single word. I placed the book back on the shelf.

A year -and several good reviews- later, I finally bought the paperback copy, noticing that the "hyperpunk" blurb has disappeared from the cover. Strangely, after reading the novel I find myself in agreement that, yes, Signal to Noise is truly "hyperpunk"... or cyberpunk pushed to hyperspace.

Jack Potter is a typical cyber-protagonist: A young single male computer expert trying to survive in a world dominated by gigantic corporations barely restrained by governments. So far so cyberpunk. But the fun starts when Jack discovers a way to instantly communicate with aliens light-years away. The aliens are traders, and for their first swap, Jack gives them the human DNA code. They send back "an enhanced version."

Shades of A for Andromeda, yet? Before long, Jack's the Favorite Person of at least two intelligence services, two alien races, several venture capitalists and assorted other bad guys. They implant stuff in him, give him enough money to go in business, double-cross him a few times and wring him dry of any further alien trading results...

Intricately plotted and not without some occasional confusion, Signal to Noise signals the arrival of a potentially major new talent on the SF scene. This isn't Nylund's first novel (despite holding two science degrees, he previously wrote three previous fantasy books), but his first full-length SF effort displays a mastery of plotting and hard sciences that's simply too intriguing to be ignored.

His writing style combines simplicity and density for a satisfying reading experience. His characters are believable, with some special attention given to the flawed protagonist. His plotting is filled with surprises, passing through a few paradigms before the large-scale finale. A few late-book choices left me puzzled (the selection of sidekicks, for instance) until I realized that Signal to Noise sets up a sequel. This usually irks me, but Signal to Noise can stand alone by itself. It's my duty as a reviewer, however, to suggest that shrewd readers should wait until they have both books before reading Signal to Noise.

Fast-paced, imaginative and exciting, Signal to Noise is exactly what readers should expect from a good SF novel. Ignore the "hyperpunk" hype; this book is pure signal to the background noise of your bookstore. I really look forward to the sequel, and anything else from Eric S. Nylund.

 

The Dragon's Eye
Joël Champetier
(Translated by Jean-Louis Trudel)

Tor, 1999, hardcover, 296 pages, 34.95 Can., ISBN 0-312-86882-0

Allow me to preface this review with an important disclaimer: I am not a disinterested reader when it comes to The Dragon's Eye. I've known both author Joël Champetier and translator Jean-Louis Trudel since 1995's "Can-Con'95" SF convention and if it would be presumptuous of me to claim them as friends, I can at least honestly call them good acquaintances.

Similarly, I've been reading French-Canadian Science-Fiction for a long time, and my favorite novel remains La Taupe et le Dragon (The Dragon's Eye), one of the few adult action/adventure idea-heavy hard-SF novel to come out of the French-Canadian scene. I've followed closely the process leading to the English translation of the novel and now I'm pleased to see that the American public can now read one of the best-kept secrets of French-Canadian Science-Fiction.

The Dragon's Eye takes place nearly two hundred and fifty years in the future. Earth has expanded into space, and the colonization of extra-solar planets has begun. Not all nations have equal means, however, and China finds itself relegated to a barely-hospitable planet in a nearby double-star system. One of the stars is the Dragon's Eye, a small but dangerous star whose intense radiations cause widespread blindness among the colonizing population. As is conditions weren't harsh enough, New China is saddled by enormous debts. Rebellion rumors flow freely...

In the midst of all this arrives Réjean Tanner, an operative for an Earth intelligence agency. He quickly finds himself in enemy territory, tasked with retrieving a rogue agent... regardless if the agent is cooperative or not.

The stage is set for an adventure solidly placed in the James Bond tradition. But Champetier has other ambitions, and the action/adventure tale that is The Dragon's Eye never goes quite as well as planned, never quite as easily as we might like it to be. For veterans of the spy genre, this novel is a blast given the number of conventions it cheerfully overturns. In a way, this is almost the anti-James Bond novel, yet not a satiric one...

An aspect that shines in The Dragon's Eye is the meticulous world-building done by Champetier. The Eye's harmful radiations force everyone to take radical steps to protect themselves against blindness and skin cancer; this obsession permeates the book's society as deeply as one could expect from the best SF extrapolations.

Best of all, The Dragon's Eye is a wonderful read. Champetier is one of the few French-Canadian authors to deliberately choose an uncluttered style, and the result is a novel that's easy to get into, very well-plotted for maximum interest, and never too lengthy. I read it in a flash, pulled by the lean narrative.

I had initial fears that all the qualities that I remembered from La Taupe et le Dragon were due to unfair comparison with other French-Canadian works. It's a relief to be finally able to judge the book in a fair context. Fortunately, the book holds up amazingly well: As an action/adventure SF with a unusually good sense of world-building, one could be hard-pressed to find better. Kudos to Champetier and kudos to Trudel for a pretty good translation. With a bit of luck, Tor will now publish Champetier's other horror novels... and with even more luck, more SF from him. Though we French-Canadian will get to read it first!

 

Standard Candles
Jack McDevitt

Tachyon, 1996, 248 pages, ISBN 0-9648320-4-6

As a marginal Jack McDevitt fan, imagine my surprise as I browsed through the Science-Fiction Book Club's latest catalogue and discovered a mention of the previously-unknown title Standard Candles. A trip to amazon.com later, I had found out that this was McDevitt's first short story anthology, and that it had been published in 1996 (!) by a small publisher.

Given that I've read all of McDevitt's other books, my surprise was compounded by the complete absence of Standard Candles from his bibliography. Granted, McDevitt's latest publisher (Harper Prism) doesn't list other publishers' books, but still... So I ordered Standard Candles, curious to see what McDevitt had produced in short-form SF.

The SFBC edition of Standard Candles is a slim (248 pages) volume containing 16 stories. Given that one of them is more than fifty pages long, the remainder of the stories in this book are fairly short and can be easily read in one time.

I have a special fondness for single-author collections because they tend to succinctly summarize everything you want to know about an author's interests, style, strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, in this case, it brought back memories of how, if McDevitt can be great, he can also be insufferably annoying.

For each Moonfall, Engines of God and Hercules Text, suspenseful novels against backgrounds of hard physics, archaeology and SETI alien contact, there's A Talent for War, Ancient Shores or Eternity Road, disappointing stories that barely explain their own premises and suffer from pointless detours, unresolved events and depressing finales. And so the pattern repeats itself in Standard Candles, in 248 short pages.

McDevitt is not a conventionally optimistic SF writer. His stories are filled with fallen civilizations, sentient stupidity, matrimonial failures and malfunctioning technology. His roots in classical studies inevitably bring us back to boom-and-bust cycles, to uncertain futures and the possibility of total systemic collapse. Even his most optimistic scenarios always include signs that, gee, idiots will always be with us.

Ironically, historian McDevitt often writes Science-Fiction stories in the vein of physicist Gregory Benford, about scientists stuck with very ordinary problems and extraordinary discoveries ("Standard Candles", "Cryptic", etc...)

It's no mistake if this book is classified as being "Science Fiction/Literature" on its dust jacket, especially after reading "Translated from the Collossian" (aliens go around stealing classical literature) and "The Fort Moxie Branch" (about a mysterious library of lost literary gems). Is it a coincidence, however, if these are two of the book's best stories?

Similarly enjoyable are the two great stories related to chess. "Black to Move" is a chilling (if overlong) story of alien cunning explained in chess terms. "The Jersey Rifle", on the other hand, is a charming, quasi-comic tale about The Best Chess Player in the World.

There's nothing charming about most of the book, however. A typical McDevitt conclusion resides heavily on the threat of future Very Bad Things. A welcome exception is "To Hell With the Star", which certainly ranks up there with the best of the SF wish-fulfillment fantasies. But McDevitt is, by and large, a melancholic, pessimistic writer. Nothing wrong with that, but taken in long sustained doses, it does put a dampener on your day.

Standard Candles is still a worthwhile anthology: McDevitt delivers more often than not, and provided one doesn't read all the stories one after the other, the dark and depressing tone is a change of pace. More significantly, Standard Candles is a pretty spiffy summary of everything that interests the author, from classical history to hard physics. Fans will love it; non-fans are advised to wait until they're fans.

 

Manhattan Transfer
John E. Stith

Tor, 1993, 381 pages, $5.99 Can., ISBN 0-812-51952-3

New York, New York.

Has a city ever exerted a greater fascination from the popular media? Whether in song, literature or film, New York has invaded the popular consciousness, coming to stand for the archetype of the Big City. One can easily mention multiple movies taking place there (1997: MIMIC, MEN IN BLACK and THE PEACEMAKER. 1998: ARMAGEDDON, DEEP IMPACT and GODZILLA. 1999: EYES WIDE SHUT and THE CORRUPTOR...)

People across the world can enumerate New York's biggest attractions without ever having set foot on American soil: Lady Liberty, the United Nations, the Empire State Tower, the World Trade Center... Even the districts have acquired reputations of their own: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, the Bronx... (For bonus points, name movies whose title is inspired by these districts)

For a variety of reasons, New York has become a locus of multiple interpretations. Some of it is simple rural jealousy, though to be honest, in comparison to New York we're pretty much all rurals. New York stands as the incarnation of all of our feelings toward big cities. Who hasn't ever dreamt that New York's problems could be solved by making it disappear?

That's what happens one morning in John E. Stith's Manhattan Transfer. UFOs appear and start severing Manhattan's links with its surrounding: laser beams cut bridges, subway tunnels, roadways, solid earth... Then a bubble is installed over the city, and the whole package is lifted up in the sky, brought inside a spaceship and installed on a vast plain where dozen of other bubble cities are also lying there...

A team is quickly formed inside the human city to try to find out what the heck is happening. As they try to enter in communication with the other cities, they find out that the aliens are installing power, water, and waste conducts. Clearly, the aliens want to keep them around for a while... but why? Is this a zoo, an experiment or a grocery cart? (The alien's true reason for taking Manhattan becomes far too obvious even at mid-book.)

All of this happens in the first fifty pages of Manhattan Transfer. If only the remainder of the novel could have been that good... Like many premise-driven SF novels, this one falters after the initial setup, and goes on for maybe a hundred pages too long. The middle section is sorely in need of some tightening up. (Maybe by cutting the unnecessary "preacher" subplot?) Fortunately, the novel picks up interest again as it advances forward. If the ending undergoes too many false climaxes, it wraps up in a satisfying, if abrupt, manner.

Adding to the fun, Manhattan Transfer is written with the can-do attitude exemplified by golden-age SF. The characters of the novel are almost invariably competent men and women, and they won't stay kidnapped for too long! It's one of the intellectual pleasures of the novel to see how Manhattanites end up coping with this radical lifestyle change. Though Stith is far more optimistic than it could reasonably be expected, his characters are so sympathetic that readers will forgive some easy rationalizations.

Devotees of the hard-SF school of thought will find a lot to like in Manhattan Transfer. Even though the writing isn't as concise and as clear as it could be, the characters are above-average for this type of story, and there's a clear narrative drive from cover to cover. An unusual, yet well-handled premise and some cool scenes make this a worthwhile read. Better yet; consider it as an alternate version of INDEPENDENCE DAY.