REVIEWS

2002, Part F: June

2002, Christian Sauvé

Featured this month:

 

The Modular Man
Roger MacBride Allen

Bantam Spectra, 1992, 306 pages, $5.99 Can. pb, ISBN 0-553-29559-4

There are no surer ways to inflame a crowd of Science-Fiction geeks than to try to define the "mission" of the genre. Some will argue that there is none; others will use this as a tangent to discussing the definition of SF; others will simply sneak away for more snacks.

As with many other experienced SF geeks, I tend to be amongst the group that slinks away for more food. Not only because I'm a hungry fellow or because the debate tends to be invariably circular, but mostly because I've made my peace a long time ago with what SF should be. And that, constant reader, would be a literature of ideas.

Of course, SF should be well-written, packed with vibrant characters and constant entertainment. But that's not the point. You can walk into any mall bookstore, head for the general fiction section and pick non-genre novels that do all that. But what other literature can seriously examine the human impacts of technological change? Which other literature always starts with "What if?" (Well, okay, Fantasy is the other one) Where else can you read accessible book-length dramatization of future issues that will soon preoccupy us? In Science-Fiction. Purely and simply.

Certainly, the good old school of SF understood this: A standard template for an Analog magazine story was to find a scientific issue, derive a consequent problem with the power of affecting human lives, discuss the issue and then offer a solution to the problem. Hundreds, thousands of stories have been written to that specification. Some were good, some not-so-good, but most of them were unabashed SF.

It's in this techno-problematic tradition that we must place Roger MacBride Allen's The Modular Man. There isn't much of a plot (dying scientist downloads self in machine, political interests try to convict the robot, courtroom drama ensues), but the novel certainly features a thorough examination of the upcoming blur between humans and cyborgs, along with euthanasia, immortality, wealth hoarding and other such philosophical trifles.

Fortunately, The Modular Man is explicit in what it tries to do. Fourth in the short-lived "The Next Wave" didactic SF series (published in the early nineties by Bantam Spectra), the book comes packaged with an after-word on "Intelligent Robots" written by none other than Isaac Asimov. It's a good piece, though the novel naturally offers most of the same ideas in a more entertaining (albeit longer) fashion.

What MacBride Allen sets up in his narrative is nothing else but an excuse to explore the legal nuts-and-bolt issues that might one day surround the artificial enhancements of humans. The Modular Man isn't set particularly far in the future, and the writing style of the novel is much closer to legal thrillers than to more stereotypical SF. There's certainly a lot of reasonable-sounding realism throughout the book, even though there may be too many issues to untangle simultaneously. But that's what happens when all of your subplots relate to your central theme.

As fiction, The Modular Man isn't much of a show-stopper. The characters are serviceable, but their places in the narrative are clearly delimited. (And yet... and yet... you'd be surprised at how moving some passages of the book are.) The plotting all leads up to the predictable Big Courtroom Victory, though there are a few twists here and there. The writing style is brisk and businesslike.

But as idea-fiction, The Modular Man is nearly exemplary. Ever chapter raises and interesting question or two, and even offers sort of a proposed solution, or at least a path worth exploring. There's a definite pleasure in peeking in the future in that fashion; barring significant progress in nanotech, the increased reliance on artificial body parts is inevitable... and so will be the legal issues surrounding extended life-spans, artificial minds, non-humanoid bodies and such. So why don't to get a conceptual head-start on everyone else and start studying tomorrow's headlines now?

 

Branch Point
Mona Clee

Ace, 1996, 310 pages, $6.99 Can. pb, ISBN 0-441-00291-9

As a literary genre, Science-Fiction nowadays is large enough to accommodate a vide range of views on certain subjects. Nuclear weapons, for instance, have been used in a variety of ways by different authors. From the nuke-happy rhetoric of the most extreme military-SF to the wide-eyed horror of the post-apocalyptic segment, there's been a divergent attitude about the current nec plus ultra in sudden energetic release. Most SF writers have accepted nuclear weaponry as a necessary evil or even as a useful dramatic tool from time to time.

Mona Clee's first novel, Branch Point is definitely not ambivalent about nuclear weaponry. The hook of the novel is how an intrepid group of time-travelers painstakingly avert one nuclear war after another. The anti-nuke discourse is strong and strident, up to a point -as we'll see- that it harms the novel's overall credibility.

Branch Point is set up with a minimum of fuss and believability. We are to believe that by 1962, the US government was able to build a secret facility in California named "The Bunker", designed to protect the best and the brightest of American scientists. The facility is activated when the October Crisis goes nuclear. A hundred years later, the dying facility has perfected time-travel (uh-huh) and is about to send three teenagers to avert the war. All three happen to be half-American, half-Russian, which is weakly justified (Visiting Soviet scientists were in The Bunker when the missiles flew, and they were far more interested in procreation than their nerdy American counterparts) but rather handy when, later, the teenagers will have to go to Russia.

Within a few dozen pages, the October crisis is avoided. But it's not the end of the adventure for our three protagonists: years later, four preeminent American politicians are assassinated and missiles fly again. As it turns out, our protagonists have "three more tries" by which to avoid nuclear war, and they'll avoid that one too, bringing history closer to the one we're familiar with.

But the cycle starts anew as the 1990 Soviet putsch (in our timeline) diverges in yet another nuclear war, which our protagonists mop up once again. The universe of Branch Point then diverges in "our" future. Naturally, missiles will fly again in the early 2020s, and this time our heroine must use her last chance to avoid nuclear war ever again...

Her solution is rather curious, which is to say that she travels back to a time where Russians could have colonized California, and manipulates them in doing so. It's an interesting conceit (suggested in the first two pages of the novel, so don't worry about me spoiling the novel) and interestingly executed.

What I didn't like as much is the way Clee goes out of her way to suggest that nuclear weapons will forever be banned in her "final" future. Physics go a certain way, and it seems highly doubtful that alternate sciences will not re-create nuclear weapons ever again. In this light, a lot of Branch Point seems highly convoluted. (And let's not speak of the parts of the novel which are convoluted, such as seeing an old flame of the protagonist pop up at exactly the right moment.) Knee-jerk condemnation of nuclear weapons isn't nearly as credible or interesting as coming to grip with a responsible usage of them... short of global thermonuclear war, naturally.

Rabid Republicans might also howl at the hero-worship representation of both John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton as minor characters in Branch Point. Baby-boomers are liable to be impressed. Others, like me, are more likely to be amused.

But even despite these problems, big and small, Branch Point remains an interesting novel, more in terms of execution, ideological standpoint and historical Easter Eggs than in terms of overall plot. Certainly, it's a bit more memorable than other time-travel thrillers, and maybe even a bit more desperate. How much of Clee's own pet likes and dislikes show through this novel? I'm sure some enterprising thesis author will try to find out at one point.

 

If Angels Fall
Rick Mofina

Pinnacle, 2000, 477 pages, $8.99 Can., ISBN 0-7860-1061-4

(Necessary Disclaimer: I met Rick Mofina at the local mall, where he was holding a signing session for his three books. Half an hour later, I had discovered that Mofina was a local author and left with three autographed books. Adjust the following review accounting for my favorable bias in favor of Canadian/Ontarian/Local authors. Oh, and visit www.rickmofina.com, willya?)

It can be difficult, in this age of jaded readers, for a new writer to distinguish himself from every other storyteller on the market. Dozen of crime thrillers are published every month; how can they stand out?

Sometime, just doing the job well can be enough. Rick Mofina's first novel, If Angels Fall, is in some way a novel we've seen many times before, with a deranged antagonist, kids in peril, a burnt-out hero whose involvement eventually becomes very personal and an ace policeman who's seen far too many of these cases... but in its own fashion, If Angels Fall is a fine thriller with just enough distinctiveness to make it a worthwhile read.

It certainly grabs you by the throat right at the beginning, as we're witness to the sudden kidnapping of a young girl from her unsuspecting father. Crime is one thing; crime against children is another. You don't need to be a parent to be involved. Manipulative or not, this draws us straight in the novel as we try to figure out what is happening, and as we empathize with the grieving parents. We also identify with the kids, as Mofina draws us into their mind-set in a fashion that is not predictably patronizing.

In short order, we're introduced to the two protagonists of If Angels Fall: One is Walter Sydowski, a veteran policeman whose cynical behavior has been made impregnable by years of police work. The other is the far more interesting Tom Reed, a journalist who has to live, every day, with a fatal mistake. This division of hero-duties is one of the things to like about If Angels Fall, as the protagonist doesn't have to be an omnipotent superhero to be at all places at all time. Sydowski handles the police viewpoint; Reed the media aspect. The two rarely mesh well together.

As a matter of fact, the journalistic angle brought up by Reed is the one of the main selling points of the novel: While crime thrillers all too often consider the media as annoying gadflies (or even worse; bunglers with ghastly consequences), this insider's look at journalism is original enough to be compelling. As both the media and the police investigation converge on the main suspect, this makes things more interesting than usual. As a journalist, Mofina's familiarity with the newsroom shows and illuminates an original section of the novel.

What's less original is that eventually, Reed's involvement in the case becomes very personal. This loved-ones-as-victims crime-thriller shtick is something that's been driving me nuts for a while now, but I can still get over it, and it's not as if Reed's conflict with the murderer isn't completely organic to the story. As a matter of fact, it's one of the crucial elements of the plot and doesn't feel overly tacked-on: Reed has tremendous personal issues to solve, and the involvement of his family only makes a bad situation even worse.

Considered as a whole, If Angels Fall works quite well. The writing is fluid and limpid. The plot converges to a tense resolution. The characters are depicted with an adequate amount of vividness. There's a lot to like here for genre readers. While Mofina's first novel doesn't redefine the genre, it doesn't need to: what it needed to do is to prove that Mofina can handle a genre novel with aplomb, and that is obvious by the time the story ends. On to his next book, then.

 

Sewer, Gas & Electric
Matt Ruff

Warner Aspect, 1997, 560 pages, $8.99 Can. pb, ISBN 0-446-60642-1

I staggered in my local SF bookstore and painstakingly made my way to the counter. "Booktender!" I rasped, knocking on the counter. "Give me an antidote to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged!" "Coming up, chief!" he said, sliding a copy of Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas & Electric on the counter.

It may be slightly insulting to write about Sewer, Gas and Electric as merely an answer to Rand's work. But in these days where hundreds of SF books are published per year, everyone needs a hook to attract readers, and Ruff's second novel does, among other things, offer a compelling counter-point to Ayn Rand's most celebrated novel.

It doesn't stop there, of course. While a holographic projection of Rand (stuck in a hurricane lamp, no less) accompanies one of our heroines throughout her adventures, Sewer, Gas and Electric is a full-course weird trip through a future wacky enough to be believable, starring a variety of fantastical characters and quirky concepts. Fans of Neal Stephenson, Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon, take note; giant sewer critters duel for attention with grandiose conspiracy theories in a delicious writing style that's worth the price of the book by itself.

It's impossible to reduce Sewer, Gas & Electric to a simple plot description, but that's just how the book is written. There's an industrialist named Harry Gant, building a mile-high tower in the middle of New York. There's an oversized shark—named Meisterbrau- loose in the sewers of the city. There's an environmental terrorist defying rampant industrialism aboard his polka-dotted yellow submarine. There's an American Civil War veteran running around. There are black servants called "Negroes", and no one is offended because the whole black population was wiped out years before by a sudden epidemic. (Is this a "funny background detail"? Don't bet on it.) There's what's probably the funniest submarine battle ever written. There's a rather more aggressive Queen Elizabeth II. There's a lot of stuff in these 560 pages.

Make no mistake; it will take you some time to make your way through Sewer, Gas & Electric, if only because this is one of those novels where you'll want to slow down in order to savor the prose and the weirdness. Ruff isn't a professional hack content to churn out a novel per year to pay the rent; he's a real honest-to-goodness author and as far as readers are concerned, this means jolly good fun. A conversation with two possible meanings is one of the comic highlights of the year as far as I'm concerned. ("A thousand ironic... convictions." See P.306-307, but beware spoilers!) Oh, oh, and don't forget the "Mr. Science" segment!

It does get less amusing after a while, though. As the plot mechanics (yes there is a plot) get rolling and more serious issues are tackled, the laugh quotient diminishes a lot. The ending isn't as jolly as you might want, though it remains light throughout.

It's hard to overstate the joy of reading Sewer, Gas & Electric. It's the kind of fun novel you don't see much and treasure forever after. You can make comparisons with Snow Crash or David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, but this novel is its own animal in the weird-future subgenre.

What about Ayn Rand, though? Well, she's a feisty character all right; as one character comments even before encountering her, "Rand's a total loon—but a fun loon" [P.261]. The novel will be highly pleasant to everyone who was amused by Rand's works: Not only does Chapter 12 feature a terrific plot summary of Atlas Shrugged, but later on, one of the characters neatly eviscerates Rand's philosophy in what might best be described as a no-holds barred philosophical argument spectacular.

Naturally, Gas, Sewr & Electric is a lot more fun if you've read Atlas Shrugged. But don't think it's in any way a requirement; Ruff's novel stands on its own as a fun novel. I can't recommend it any strongly.

 

Taking Your Talent to the Web
Jeffrey Zeldman

New Rider, 2001, 426 pages, $59.95 Can., ISBN 0-7356-1073-2

Zeldman. Jeffrey Zeldman. Mis-ter Zeldman... which should be said with a slight French accent: Mys-tère Zeldman, for it's not clear how someone with so much personality was allowed to write a technical book about web design.

Most of the time, a technical book review will focus on the nuts and bolts of the content, the accuracy of the advice and the freshness of the details. But Taking Your Talents to the Web suggests a different approach. Whereas most technical books are dryer than a sunny Arizona day, Zeldman's book is infused with so much personality that reviewing the authors seems as valid as reviewing the content of the book.

Naturally, I'm biased in this regard. Through his evangelism at www.webstandards.org, his editorship of the weekly e-zine www.alistapart.com and his blog at www.zeldman.com, Jeffrey Zeldman has been a guru of sorts for me as a web designer. His tireless push towards web standards meshed with my own preferences, and if I can blame a single person for my increasing professionalism in terms of XHTML design, Zeldman would be it. Reading the book came after my worship of the guy, not the other way around. This being said, I'd defy any professional web-person not to be impressed by Taking Your Talent to the Web.

It's also different from the usual technical manual in terms of target audience: Zeldman is a designer first and foremost, and an XHTML maven second. (Or maybe third; his strong writing skills might make him a writer first.) Taking Your Talent To The Web is, as the subtitle says, "A Manual for the Transitioning Designer". In other words, the target audience for this book already knows design; what they won't know as much is the web. This makes for an interesting reading experience; the readership of the book is decidedly technical, but in a non-computer-related domain. The angle of attack is slightly askew, and for a computer-technical person with deficient designing skills such as myself, this makes for an interesting reading experience. Zeldman is writing for a smart audience, but they may not know exactly what XHTML geeks already know.

Zeldman's overview of the origins of the web is wonderful ("Chapter 4: How This Web Thing Got Started"), as are his considerations on the nature of being in the web design business ("Chapter 7: Riding the Project Life Cycle"). Taking Your Talents To the Web isn't quite so compelling when it delves into acutely specific technical details ("Chapter 12, Beyond Text/Pictures"), but I doubt that by then, most readers will stop reading.

The reason is simple: Zeldman may very well be the funniest technical writer ever to write about web design. Fireworks of wit and humor pepper every page of Taking Your Talent to the Web, from headers to body text itself. I found myself reading this manual concurrently with one of Dave Barry's anthologies and finding scant difference between the two styles. Don't think Zeldman skimps on the technical accuracy, though; it's just that he's funny in addition of being implacably correct.

This sense of fun is also reflected in the advice told by Zeldman. I've had my fill of technical manuals telling me that usability is factor number one, and it took a pro designer to point out a simple truth: All web sites do not have to sell something. They don't all have to provide information. They can be entertaining, or expressive, or simply baffling and there is nothing wrong with that. No one is forcing you to make your personal web site user-friendly. It's all right to be non-linear if that's what you want. It's a stupid revelation, really, but in a field where usability guru Jakob Nielson is worshipped by many, including your reviewer, it's useful to take some time and realize that not all of us are designing for Fortune-500 companies. It's not forbidden to have fun.

It helps, of course, that Zeldman himself looks as if he's having a lot of fun doing what he does. Furthermore, he keeps preaching -through all the fun- rigorous web design methods, from useful divisions of responsibility to adequate use of bandwidth and validated XHTML coding. Hm, an author who's technically adept and constantly fun... Trust Zeldman. Zeldman is your friend. I'm not sure if I can make this book any more attractive to you, so why don't you go out and rush get a copy, already?

(For a preview, extra info and more plain good fun, don't forget the book's wonderful web site, at www.zeldman.com/talent.htm )

 

Bug Park
James P. Hogan

Baen, 1997, 405 pages, $8.99 Can., ISBN 0-671-87874-3

There is something comfortingly pleasant about reading a novel by a professional SF writer. The most reliable of them know enough about satisfying the readers that even the most hackneyed premise can be brought to life with mildly interesting characters and sustained plotting.

There's not much that's innovative about James P. Hogan's Bug Park. In fact, you might even call it retrograde: After reading so much about nanotechnology, going "back" to insect-sized micro-technology doesn't seem to be all that exciting.

And yet... micro-technology is easier to conceptualize that nanotech. You can at least imagine some direct interaction between humans and machinery at those scales. The visual kick in seeing micro-machines meddling around with insects is also suitably cinematic, enough to excite even mildly jaded readers.

Mix the promise of such technology with teenage protagonists and you have the making of a rather interesting SF novel for teen audiences. Even though obviously aimed at teens, Bug Park was published by Baen exactly as one of their more mainstream novel. Still, at the heart of the book lies a teen's novel.

It features kids as protagonists, rich bored teenagers with advanced skills in micro-robotics, which is probably linked to their parent's business interest in such things. But no matter; When Kevin and Taki get to work on something, those teen hackers can do anything. While their interest in micro-robotics is initially driven towards a "Bug Park", their capabilities will become handy when they discover a plot afoot to kill Kevin' father and take over his company.

As you might expect, most of Bug Park is a series of adventures in which our teenage protagonists get to use cutting-edge big-sized machines in order to foil evil plans. It works well, as a matter of fact: Thanks to Hogan's lean prose, there aren't any problem sin picturing the micro antics, from fancy spying to intricate sabotage... without forgetting epic half-inch fights. Hogan manages to transform backyards into battlegrounds! It doesn't take much to imagine this as a film, somewhere between SPY KIDS, JURASSIC PARK and HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS. Except with better special effect.

Hogan's science is reasonably exact, though readers who know about his penchant for weird science will smile knowingly at his short diatribe against the "establishment science's" theory of relativity. Fortunately, he stops there and leaves his usual pseudo-scientific rants for other novels.

There isn't much that's spectacular in Bug Park, but even then the book works adequately well for readers of all ages. Teen might like it a bit more given the lead characters, but the rest is a serviceable fun SF adventure. Give it a try if you want to; it's not essential, but it passes the time.

 

Winning the Loser's Game (Third Edition)
Charles D. Ellis

McGraw-Hill, 1997, 142 pages, $24.95 US hc, 0-07-022010-7

I have long been fascinated by money, and mot merely for the obvious reasons. In a world where money has been standardized as a universal exchange medium, economics are rivaling in importance with political science and sociology as a way to understand why society behaves the way it does. Where does money come from? Where does it go? Where does it accumulate? Can it be seen as a fluid or maybe even a force? How do you even begin to understand the complexities of money flow?

Then again, as with every good citizen/consumer of our oh-so-wonderful capitalistic societies, understanding how to make money ranks only slightly below how to eat and obey traffic laws. There's enough ranting about early retirement to make it imperative to learn how to accumulate enough money to -ironically enough- not work for the rest of your life.

Charles D. Ellis' Winning the Loser's Game is a splendid investment manual, a reasoned treatise that may make almost too much sense for everyone. It's a small book, but every single page is worth its weight in greenbacks. You don't need to be a genius to understand this book, and the advice it provides seems appropriate for everyone. I can't know whether it's the ultimate investment theory, but at the moment it's just perfect for my own level of financial savvy.

Ellis starts by explaining the realities of modern investment. It's not a domain where a genius can simply outperform everyone: it's a field where thousands of equally-capable professionals are all second-guessing each other. (The metaphor here is amateur's sport (where one tends to be scored against through luck or incompetence) versus professional sports (where players will score points, often deliberately exploiting opponent's mistakes). Over the long run, everyone will do equally well, except for obvious mistakes. In this context, time-investing (buying low, selling high such as in commodities trading) won't work, and neither will any scheme trying to "beat the market". The only way is to stay in the game long enough and to avoid obvious mistakes such as panic-selling or impulsive trading.

Winning the Loser's Game appeals to me because it's the ultimate antithesis of those doubtful make-money-fast "magic recipes". It tells you to invest and forget. It explains to you through statistics why stocks aren't such a bad idea in the long run. It drills in the notion that risk is, well, risk: higher margins to gain, higher chances to lose. It busts a few myths and teaches you the counter-intuitive logic of investing. It's reasonable, makes as many warnings as recommendations and it written in a limpid style. Let me repeat that: A limpid style. I've seldom encountered a most compulsively-readable financial treatise.

Naturally, one could make a case that in preaching faith in the overarching system and promoting long-term stock investments, Winning the Loser's Game is a self-fulfilling instrument of capitalist thinking. If everyone followed the advice of the book, everyone would be a winner. Well, yeah. Duh.

But Winning the Loser's Game isn't the soulless capitalistic textbook you might expect. Ellis spends some time discussing the significant disadvantages of leaving too much money to your children, and heavily promotes the virtues of philanthropy. It also helps that Ellis regards unethical business practices as anathema to good investment; even anti-business activists might have a hard time disagreeing with this book, if they would stoop so low as to read it.

As for me, well, reading Winning the Loser's Game is like attending a lecture from an advanced economics course. I'm left with nearly as many questions as before, but they're -I think- entirely more sophisticated questions. I intend to keep the book handy and refer to it once my mortgage is paid and I get into the "Loser's Game" myself. Hey, I'm still a third of a century away from retirement; I can take the long view he's espousing.