BOOK REVIEWS

2001, Part C: March 2001

2001, Christian Sauvé

Featured this month:

 

Nobel Dreams
Gary Taubes

Random House, 1986, 261 pages

Popular clichés are prompt to paint scientists as emotionless creatures purely concerned by the pursuit of knowledge, so intellectually driven that they can make abstraction of the petty human emotions shared by The Rest Of Us.

That, of course, is wrong. Scientists are human beings like everyone else, and the intellectual drone only existed in movies (if he wasn't mad, like most other movie scientists). They laugh, scream and shout just as much as you and I, and matters get less and less purely intellectual when you try to stuff hundreds of scientists at the same place.

Even though now somewhat dated, there are few books that do a better job at representing conflicts between scientists than Nobel Dreams, a nonfiction book about a quest for subatomic particles, a huge subterranean ring in Geneva and a scientist named Carlos Rubbia.

The root of Nobel Dreams's interest lies in the intrinsic nature of a type of scientific experiments grouped under the term "Big Science". Contrarily to scientific endeavours that can be accomplished by a single researcher or a small group of experimenters, Big Science requires massive equipments, large teams and carefully orchestrated logistics. It's not only hugely expensive, but it requires a massive administrative and logistical effort. Particle research, because of the enormous energies it requires to operate, has been a Big Science poster child since World War II (which featured the most emblematic Big Science effort ever in project Manhattan) and Nobel Dreams is partly an examination of such an experiment and the groundwork required for a Nobel-prize-winning success.

To this end, science journalist Gary Taubes spent time in CERN, the European high-energy physics center, getting to know the personalities and issues involved in the discovery of the W and Z particle. All of it would have been a drier, less interesting exposé if it hadn't been for the lighting-rod personality of Carlos Rubbia, a formidable scientist with a massive ego and an abrasive personality. Reading Nobel Dreams, we get a taste of the implacable politics inherent in running Big Science experiments, where scientific concerns take a back seat to power imperatives. Running those experiment takes money -the root of all that's interesting- and considerable charisma, especially when dealing with a multi-national workforces composed of highly skilled, highly obstinate theorists and experimenters.

It's a story of beating-the-other-team, of personal friction and petty vindictiveness. It's a story of brilliance and arrogance, of self-sacrifice and personal vanity. It's a story of victory (the W and the Z) and defeat (the latter, less successful, experiments to prove super-symmetry). But over all, it's a great bunch of stories about a set of jobs that aren't very well understood by a great many people.

There are, inevitably, flaws: While Taubes makes a great effort at vulgarizing his subject, there are still a few thick patches of jargon. Worse; even though the structure of the book is rather clear, it doesn't include an index, making it nearly useless for references purposes. And, predictably enough for a book already fifteen years old, it's difficult for laymen to know whether the suppositions advanced in Nobel Dreams are still valid, and if the people involved went on to other better things.

(Well, was difficult to know earlier. Today, with the magic of the Internet search engines, it's relatively easy to find out that Gary Taubes is still writing acclaimed scientific vulgarization, that the Higgs hasn't yet been conclusively identified and that Carlos Rubbia hasn't disappeared from the planet even though he most definitely hasn't won a second Nobel. It's also really easy to find out that Nobel Dreams itself has earned a good reputation in the field of science nonfiction.)

In any case, the true value of Nobel Dreams is to uncover some of the less idealistic side of science; how humans, with all their faults, are still very much at the heart of science. And that, even while reading about despicable behaviour, is still a very comforting thought.

 

 

The Genesis Code
"John Case"

Ballantine Books, 1997, 467 pages, $8.99 Can., ISBN 0-345-42231-7

I love thrillers. I read dozens of 'em per year. Naturally, I now demand more that the simple obvious plots to get me interested. The days when I could get excited about a simple governmental conspiracy are long past, unfortunately; now, if it doesn't involve at least the mafia, the Girl Scouts and the flat-earth society, I don't even bother reading past page 100.

I jest, and yet I find some plots, character and situation too clichéd to be tolerable. I demand to be surprised by the author, even at the expense of realism if appropriate. If I can predict the course of a novel when I'm not even halfway through, it means someone's not doing his job, and even though I could be wrong, I don't think it's me.

So, whenever The Genesis Code opens up with an Italian priest going gonzo after hearing a confession from a highly-rated doctor, it doesn't even take the DNA helix on the cover to figure out where this is going. Whenever the said doctor exhibits an interest in genetics and religious artifacts, it only confirms suspicions. By the time a link is uncovered between deceased women and a cute kid comes in, it's a lot like being hit in the head repeatedly by clue-by-fours.

Unfortunately, exhibiting all the gosh-wowedness of a first-time novelist, "John Case" (it's a pseudonym) keeps hammering it up until the last sentence, which laboriously demonstrate what we'd been expecting for a while. In terms of surprises and originality, The Genesis Code rates as a solid, tedious dud. I've seen the idea explained more interestingly in several science-fiction short stories. Often.

The flaws don't stop there; the plot is constructed in such a way that one major character really only comes into the novel in the last third, feeling somewhat like an intruder. Many scenes drag on for far too long. The bad guys are unkillable. There's a cute kid.

But despite everything, The Genesis Code remains a modest success, mostly because it does what it does in a reasonably efficient fashion. The pacing moves quickly past its lulls and the writing style is all very readable. The characters are adequately defined. I was quite taken with the description of an order of elite, unstoppable Catholic assassins even though that particular concept, again, isn't totally new.

And in the end, it's the old things well-described that make up most of The Genesis Code's definitive interest. We're told that "John Case" is a pseudonym for an investigative journalist (though, from the laudatory passage on tabloid newspapers -see P.348 and P.362-, we can safely guess that he's not exactly working at the Washington Post.) and his professionnalism shows in the amount of well-presented details that bolster the credibility of the novel's mechanics. The protagonist is a security consultant, and his action do reflect this mindset, as does his investigative methodology. The more scientific/technical details also seem credible.

Even though you might guess the end fifty pages in and see many passages as being needlessly long, there's seldom a reason to stop reading. Granted, this doesn't make The Genesis Code a remarkable thriller, but at the very least it won't you make curse the (short) time you'll spend reading it. And, who knows, maybe you won't be jaded enough to guess the ending after a few pages.

 

 

Wasn't the future wonderful?
Tim Onosko

Dutton Paperback, 1979, 188 pages, ISBN 0-525-47551-6

Save for the occasional odd SF paperback, most of the books reviewed in these chronicles are easily available from libraries or used bookstores. Anything that makes it up to frosty Ottawa, Ontario can probably be acquired anywhere else in North America, so I feel safe in not boring my readers with arcane material or, worse, whipping them up in a frenzy about some obscure book they'll never find.

So it pains me to have to rave about a full-page coffee-table paperback published in the late seventies. Most certainly long out of print, presumably unfindable by casual readers, Wasn't the Future Wonderful? is nevertheless a must-read, a definite curio for anyone interested in social change, science-fiction, history, futurism or what I'd call innovation management.

Subtitled A View of Trends and Technology from the 1930s, Wasn't the Future Wonderful? is simply a collection of the most outrageous articles published by "Popular Mechanics"-type magazines during the 1930s, wrapped in an introduction and a few follow-up notes.

It doesn't sound like much, a reprint of musty old mags, but when you encounter such grandiose headlines as "Explaining technocracy: A revolution without bloodshed", "Airport in the Heart of a City Provided by Logical Design", "Big Cities to Have COOLED Sidewalks", "The Great Wall of China to be Motor Highway" or "Science Shows NOISE Causes Indigestion", there's bound to be more than nostalgic interest.

Each article is accompanied by superb illustrations that are often more interesting than the articles themselves. As only full plates are reprinted, some pages -such as an article by the great Nikola Tesla himself- are adorned by flavor-of-the-time advertisements. Tires for $2!

In any case, it's certainly fascinating to peer at what the forward-thinkers of the 1930s were planning for the future. Granted, many things came to pass (like television), but in almost all cases, the end result was realized using much different means, and with far different consequences, than the idealized version.

But it's for the futures that never happened that Wasn't the Future Wonderful? becomes fascinating. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the fields of large-scale engineering, where dozens of gargantuan schemes (an air-protection installation inside London, a fighter-jet skyscraper dwarfing the Eiffel tower, six-level highways, plans to radically modify intersections, etc...) are proposed without any regard as to who would want such a thing. Wasn't the Future Wonderful? then becomes an exercise in how -or why- some things just aren't practical.

Granted, Popular Mechanics probably wasn't the orthodox view of the nineteen thirties, but was it so different from today's "Major new breakthrough!" articles published on a daily basis in our newspapers? Predictions might be more restrained, more subtle today, but it doesn't mean they're better, or more accurate.

The book concludes with a wonderful article entitled "Most Scientific Fiction CAN'T COME TRUE", in which such wacko schemes as teleportation, travels to the moon or radio signals to Mars are relentlessly debunked. I hope they're as right about teleportation as everything else.

In any case, Wasn't the future wonderful? is a wonderful book, filled with surprises and unusually good at giving a sense of technical perspective. Teachers could use it to develop scientific literacy. SF Writers could use it as a guide to non-silly prediction. Artists could use it to acquire a sense of realistic craziness. Everyone else can use it to spark discussion, jog those little gray cells or simply have a good time. It's a fun book. Bring it back in print!

 

 

The Dragon Never Sleeps
Glen Cook

Popular library, 1988, 500p.

It's the sacred duty of every conscientious book reviewer to steer other readers toward books they might otherwise have missed. This duty becomes even worse, attaining messianic proportions, whenever the reviewer has also missed the book when it first come around.

And, boy oh boy, has everyone missed The Dragon Never Sleeps. Prior to recently reading a great review of it in a magazine (a review of the French translation of the book, no less!), I had never even heard of the novel, and in fact still associated Glen Cook only with that "Black Company" fantasy series.

Fortunately, the local Ottawa Public Library had a copy of Cook's The Dragon Never Sleeps on its shelves (along with a few other books, which finally made me realize this was the same Glen Cook of the "Wizard" fantasy/comp.sci. series) so I could comfortably check for myself whether that rave was deserved or not.

In short; Bring back the book in print right now, it'll sell thousands.

Any attempt at a plot resume would be cause for headaches for both reviewer and reader, involving such classic space-operatic props as family clans, galaxy-spanning empires, aliens, space battles, clones and political intrigue. Add a dastardly plan to destroy the galactic social order, gigantic space stations, decantable military personnel, some weird sex and age-old secrets and you're in intensely familiar territory.

But it's all handled so well that you'd swear you're reading new-millenial SF with its methodical re-use of all possible established conventions, with an extra helping of rational weirdness. The novel hasn't aged a bit, an iota, a single little particle since 1988. Read it today, and you'll think of Banks, Alastair Reynolds or Stephen Baxter. It's quite a remarkable feat.

Granted, this isn't an easy novel to digest. The cloned versions of four characters alone almost add up to half the Dramatis Personae, and they're seldom differentiated. It's a fun novel to read, but it's also devastatingly easy to miss a few crucial lines. The narrative is so dense that the information most probably won't ever be repeated. And yet, unlike some other hard-to-read novels you might have tried, the style is not difficult or complex; it's the sheer density of plotting that will trip you up.

The first hundred pages won't help, as you're boldly thrown in a brand-new universe that doesn't have a previous trilogy as a world-building crutch; you'll have to assimilate all information on the fly, even as complex events are already set into motion. At least you won't be able to predict what's going to happen: The body count starts early and rarely eases up. It would be a sacrilege -and an undeserved marketing blurb- to compare The Dragon Never Sleeps to Dune, but... there are similarities.

It all adds up to a darn good space opera. Vivid space battles are sprinkled throughout the book. Breathtaking betrayals abound. Grand concepts are revealed. Big fun for all, as long as you're still following what's happening. Plus, hey, it's got a trilogy's worth of material between two covers; you have to like that!

In short, I liked it a lot, and if you can find the book, I don't doubt that you'll enjoy it too. It should be reprinted soon, if Cook's current popularity -and vocal fan-base- is any indication. A little gem overlooked by most critics upon its release, The Dragon Never Sleeps deserves a good look. Certainly, I plan on re-reading it in a few years, just because I've got the feeling I've missed out on so much!

 

 

Matter's End
Gregory Benford

Bantam Spectra, 1994, 294 pages, $7.99 Can., ISBN 0-553-56898-1

Gregory Benford's novel-length fiction can be distinguished by two characteristics: For one thing, it's usually packed with scientific details, lengthy explanations, a deep understanding and love of the scientific method. Through books like Cosm and Timescape, Benford has produced some quintessential science-fiction whose realism was only exceeded by masterful writing.

Which, alas brings us to a second distinguishing characteristic: About half of Benford's novels are overlong borefests, whose few good ideas are drowned in pretentious writing, overlong plotting and a complete lack of interest. Exhibit A for the prosecution's case is the "Galactic Center" series, which ably spreads a novel or two's worth of interest over seven lifeless volumes. Exhibit B is The Stars in Shroud, an admittedly early novel which distinctly has no interest whatsoever.

Fortunately, Matter's End is a short story collection, which effectively diminishes any length concern. The first surprise is to be found in the table of content, where 21 stories jostle to be included in 290-odd pages. Discounting the two longest stories, we're left with 19 stories over less than two hundred pages, an average of less than a dozen pages per story.

The variety of the style exhibited by Benford is impressive. Beyond the usual past-tense-straight-narrative, there's a sale pitch ("Freezeframe"), first-person narration ("Mozart on Morphine"), exam questions ("Calibrations and Exercises"), a mission report ("Side Effect"), tips and hints ("Time Guide"), a radio news transcript ("The bigger one") and one stream-of-consciousness (?) thrown in for good measure ("Slices").

The genre of the stories is usually science-fiction, though maybe not as hard as you may think. There's a smattering of fantasy, some humoristical SF but mostly, some bread-and-butter SF not especially distinguished by hard scientific content. As a collection, it's easy to get into and easy to continue reading.

There are a few duds, mind you. Both novelettes are overlong: if "Matter's End" eventually comes into its own a few pages before the end, "Sleepstory" made me go "Is that it?" Given that this is a collection that spans nearly thirty years of Benford's career, it's almost natural that his earliest stories tend to be weaker. "Stand-in" seems particularly pointless, a fate shared with "Nobody lives on Burton Street" and "We could do worse", though the last two are also stuck in the bad pessimistic late-sixties mindframe. Finally, "Shakers of the Earth" demonstrates an occupational hazard of being an SF writer; Once you've seen JURASSIC PARK, it's hard to be wowed by a 1980 story featuring -gosh!- resurrected dinosaurs. But even Benford acknowledges this last one in his afterword.

Fortunately, the rest of the collection holds up very well. I can't understand why "Calibrations and Exercises" hasn't become an SF short story classic. "Freezeframe" and "Proselytes" exemplify Benford's best witty and succinct style, by making a strong point and immediately ending the story. "Centigrade 233" is a good exploration of the social role of SF, though don't think too hard about the title or you'll end up guessing the end. Those who read science-fiction to find truth about science and scientists should be pleased by the title story and "Mozart on Morphine". It's always a pleasure to read material by a professional who knows what he's doing.

In this afterword, Benford makes the point that for writers, short stories are fun. And if "fun" has not exactly been one of Benford's dominant characteristic in his novels, he's obviously on a looser leash here. The result is a decent anthology of short SF fiction, well worth the read for genre fans, even for those who find the author to be very uneven. So's this collection, but at least it's unevenness on a faster scale.

 

 

The Ice Limit
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Warner, 2000, 449 pages, $36.95 Can., ISBN 0-446-52587-1

This is a novel about a rock. Not just any ordinary rock, mind you: For one thing, this one weighs a few thousand tons. For another, it's most probably not from around here, being exceptionally dense, of blood-red color and unbreakable by conventional means. It's also located on Isla Desolacion, a forsaken island in Argentinean territory. For most of these reason, this is an exceptionally valuable rock, and our billionaire-protagonist wants it for his museum. One last detail: That rock has the unfortunate tendency to zap lighting bolts into people.

Even if you don't really like Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's thrillers, you've got to hand it to them; they know how to come up with an irresistible premise. From the monster-loose-in-the-museum premise of The Relic to the monsters-loose-under-New-York story in Reliquary, they've upped the ante with each successive novel. If the expression "hack writers" didn't have such unpleasant connotation, that's what we could call them; they write to mass-market specifications, turning out perfectly competent thrillers with adequate characters, fluid writing, good technical details and a structure calculated to deliver steadily more shocking jolts. Hey, it's a bestselling living.

As it is, the plot of The Ice Limit is immediately gripping. A meteorite-hunter is hired by a billionaire in order to head an expedition to bring back The Rock to the United States. Given the unusual nature of the object, the novel then introduces one very unusual team, a wonderfully reclusive engineering business (ESS) specialized in huge-scale projects, from volcano manipulation to the re-creation of JFK's real death. ESS is The Ice Limit's real delight, such an intriguing creation that I could easily a series of stories built around that company. But then again, I've always been a sucker for engineering fiction.

In any case, the plan to bring back The Rock quickly sets into motion. A boat is built, then heavily modified and disguised by ILM. a sexy female scientist is introduced. Argentinean officials have to be bribed, except one who vows a terrible revenge. The teams arrives at Isla Desolation.

More people die. Secrets are uncovered. More people die.

It's been said before, but a fundamental difference between techno-thrillers and science-fiction is how the author reacts to change. Science-Fiction usually adopts the attitude that "the genie is out of the bottle" and that we'd better adapt to change because change isn't going away. Techno-thrillers, on the other hand, often shoo away the upsetting change, burying, destroying, ignoring it in the hope that the day after, everything comes back to normal.

And, unfortunately, -without going in details-, that's pretty much what happens in The Ice Limit, which nearly ends up being one of the most depressing thrillers I've read in a while. The massive body count and ultimate futility of the exercise brings to mind authors handshaking over an agreement that "some things are not meant to be known by humankind"—and that hardheaded engineers are doomed. This attitude is partially redeemed (saving the book from an awful ending) by a last-minute twist that will be familiar with the weirder speculations of British scientist Fred Hoyle. (How's that for a literate spoiler? Don't think too much about it.)

Fortunately, the rest of the book is pretty good, and compulsively readable. The characters do the job for which they were created, and The Rock ensures a massive presence over the whole story. The engineering firm, as mentioned previously, is a wonderful creation I'd like to see elsewhere. It's unfortunate that the end sucks off a lot of the novel's energy, but feel free to skip the last fifty pages and imagine a better ending for yourself. At least that'll entertain you until Preston and Child deliver their next thriller.

 

 

Halfway Human
Carolyn Ives Gilman

Avon EOS, 1998, 472 pages, $7.99 Can, ISBN 0-380-79799-2

I usually try to stay away from novels nominated for the Lamba prize. This award, given each year to "the science-fiction or fantasy work that has most successfully investigated gender issues" usually seeks to reward works dealing with themes and issues about which I couldn't care less. As they say, message fiction tends to be interesting only when it's vehiculing your message; as a white heterosexual male, I don't have a lot to say about gender or gay issues.

But I nevertheless ended up with Halfway Human in my reading pile, halfway dreading the prospect of yet another boring The Left Hand of Darkness knock-off. Certainly the back cover doesn't inspire confidence, talking about "Tedla is neither he nor she... an asexual class of 'blands'... shocking truths hidden inside this sexless, tormented creature."

If I hadn't already paid good money for the book, I most probably would have put it back on the shelf.

And while that wouldn't have been a tragedy, it would have been missing out on a decent SF novel. While Halfway Human obviously carries a message, it's not out to stamp it on everyone's foreheads. It's all too easy to be carried away by the storyline and stop trying to decode what's the real underlying theme.

Most of the novel takes the form of a first-person narrative in which Tedla, our friendly bland protagonist, tells of his short and so far unhappy life. Colonized by humans and then cut off from galactic civilization for decades, Tedla's homeworld has -we progressively learn- canalized its explosive population growth in the eugenic selection of males and females, assigning the remainder of the teen population to blandness—a servant class. While overly sentimental and predictably dark, it's a good story verging on the fascinating.

The other half of the plotline is concerned with a xenosociologist named Val, who comes into contact with a suicidal Tedla, interviews it -hence the first-person segments- and eventually tries to save it from the authorities who would like nothing so much as to ship Tedla homeside to keep their eugenic practices secret.

The human society described in Halfway Human is separately fascinating because of its rigid control over information, where copyrights can be a prized heirdom, architectural style can be licensed, information is the only commodity that is worth its transport costs and a researcher has to be rich or employed by a gigantic corporation in order to be able to access the required literature. To myself, obsessed of late by the increasingly dangerous legal precedents in the field of intellectual property, this facet of the novel proved to be a chilling warning and an unexpected delight.

But the core of the book, make no mistake, is with Tedla and its story. Unlike most Lambda-running fiction, Halfway Human is told in a crisp, direct, accessible style that did much to raise my opinion of the book. Gilman also remains faithful to her characters; no sudden change of heart, unexpected romances or sudden gender-switch in store here. This being said, the ending is a bit of a cheat, though almost any trick is acceptable when a happy ending is concerned.

In short, Halfway Human is a good SF paperback novel. Not spectacular, a bit too long to be really effective but clear and steadily interesting, Carolyn Ives Gilman could have done worse as a first novel. Now let's see how her second one will turn out.

 

 

Guilt by Association
Susan R. Sloan

Warner, 1995, 529 pages, $6.99 Can., ISBN 0-446-60306-6

From the blurbs reprinted on the first few pages of the book:

As a thriller reader, I want to be entertained. If I can't be entertained I want to be informed. If I can't be informed, at least surprise me. And if you, as a thriller writer, can't do any of these three, you might as well pack your things, stay home and stop writing novels because it's not worth the time to read your stuff.

The back cover of Susan R. Sloan's Guilt by Association promises a good story. Thirty years after being brutally raped, a woman takes revenge upon her aggressor, now running for the White House. Okay, sure, fine, sounds interesting, let's see it.

Now, a competent thriller writer would have immediately seen that the story in here is the revenge. Not the rape nor the aftermath of it, but the payback. Three hundred pages, a well-deserved conclusion, end of book and everyone goes home happy.

But not Sudan R. Sloan. The initial rape takes place upon twenty-eight exploitative pages. Then we're set for nearly three hundred pages of excruciatingly long setup before our two main characters meet again to kick in the revenge story.

You see, our heroine isn't merely raped, but utterly destroyed. Her boyfriend breaks up, her family can't faced what happened to her, she quits school, she can't hold a job, etc... She manages to live in a commune during the sixties and not have sex with anyone. (Obviously, that particular trauma will take pages to resolve) Page per page, we get not a thriller, but pretty much a fictional biography detailing what she does year after year in exasperating detail. Not much of this has any relevance whatsoever to the main plotline of the thriller. SKip, skip, skip pages if ever you want to remain sane. Most of the psychosocial insight in these pages is the very same stuff you can get from watching a few Discovery Channel specials on the past few decades.

During that time, of course, the antagonist has a few kick-the-puppies scenes in which he becomes even more ruthlessly evil.

When the revenge plot finally gets going, something very curious happens. After decades of obsessive details about our protagonist, the narrative skips over a few crucial hours.

Now, why would that happen? Don't think about it. Don't even pause to consider the question, because otherwise you'll figure out the conclusion a hundred pages before it comes up. In fact, you don't even need to pause for it because it's so blindingly obvious that even the dullest thriller reader will figure it out.

As I said, if you can't entertain or inform me...

The ultimate result is a complete mess, a thriller so undeserving of the title that the marketing department at Warners should be fined. Guilt by Association is a boring novel with nothing new to say, a terrible structure, infuriating failed emotional manipulation, an astonishingly obvious "twist" ending and a series of stupid choices made by the author. I'd burn it in a second if I didn't want friends to believe me when I describe what may very well be the most pretentious, most boring thriller ever.

And don't even get me started on so-called "professional" reviewers who were taken by the plot or surprised by the ending...