REVIEWS

2002, Part H: August

2002, Christian Sauvé

Featured this month:

 

The Coming
Joe Haldeman

Ace, 2000, 218 pages
(Read in French as Le Message, translated by Michel Pagel)

Is it just me, or have Joe Haldeman's latest few books been uniformly disappointing? Forever Peace unexplainably won the Hugo award despite reading like a first novel from a none-too-gifted neophyte. Forever Free was one of the worst SF novels of the past few years. If you want to be generous, you can say that lately, Haldeman has been churning books whose first half may seem promising, but whose ultimate effect is disappointing.

He doesn't break out of this rut with The Coming, a short novel that nominally deals with that most familiar SF situation; first contact.

Oh, it's not your usual average SF novel; from the first few pages, it's easy to be fascinated by the narration, which flows almost seamlessly from one character to another in a manner reminiscent of the first few minutes of Brian de Palma's film SNAKE EYES. As characters intersect on the First of October 2054, our viewpoint shifts, efficiently establishing a series of back-stories in a small academic Florida town.

Haldeman's usual brand of cynicism soon takes over, and we're once more thrown in a mildly dystopian future: Corruption is everywhere, politicians are stupid (and dangerous), the environment is screwed, homosexuality has been outlawed (even though the market for VR pornography seems to be almost mainstream; hmmm?), Europe is on its way to another major war and, generally speaking, you wouldn't want to live there.

In the middle of all that comes a message from a source obviously not of this Earth. The message? "WE'RE COMING". Earth has until January first to get ready. So, what is it? Aliens, a hoax or something else?

The "something else" proves to be easily guessable and rather underwhelming. But that's not the single biggest failing of The Coming, which is too often undistinguishable from the most ordinary crime thriller. Haldeman pads a novella with subplots that are scarcely relevant to the main theme or the Science-Fiction genre and the overall effect feels dull and disconnected.

As the first day ends and a short summary of the rest of October 2054 is fed to us, the cycle repeats itself for the second third of the book (November first) and then the third (December first, with some space left over for January first). Haldeman's viewpoint-changing conceit, however, is less rigorous in the latter parts of the book, with a jarring effect on the unity of the book. The sense of rolling urgency created by the switching viewpoint is also lessened by the discontinuities. It's so much fun to see an author try an original stylistic device that's it's a let-down to see him stop whenever he feels like it.

The other fascinating thing about the style of the book is how we eventually witness catastrophic events through media screens and the viewpoint of people scarcely connected to the action. Overall, I'm rather satisfied by Haldeman's stylistic experiment in The Coming, if rather less impressed by what he does with it and how much potential he squanders on useless trivia, or completely gratuitous (and unpleasant) scenes. It doesn't help that some plotlines are simply abandoned in the latter third of the book without much of an explanation. Coupled with the stupid rushed ending of Forever Free, it suggests that Haldeman's writing is becoming seriously affected by his need to pay the mortgage.

On the other hand, well, it's a quick read and a short book, most probably available from your local library. If ever you're in need of something quick to read, it might just be what you're looking for. Like many of Haldeman's latest few books, it might not be good or satisfying or pleasant, but it's certainly interesting and fascinating to dissect afterward.

 

Fresh Styles for Web Designers
Curt Cloninger

New Riders, 2002, 211 pages, $52.95 Can., ISBN 0-7357-1074-0

I'm not sure why or how, but I have long been fascinated by design. Whether graphical design, web design or pure design (ie; the thousand ways to make a chair), I can be endlessly entertained by the intricacies of putting a detail here rather than there and the effect this can have on an overall piece. (Actually, I lied about not have any idea about the source of my design fascination: I suspect that it stems from my problem-solving fetish, which is a large part of what design is all about.)

Alas, as a quick look at my web site will reveal, I'm not a very good designer myself. I don't have much imagination, and what I do best is either do a lot with nothing or slavishly copy whatever's been done before. "Efficient" is one way of characterizing my work. "Boring" is another.

Still, I approached Curt Cloninger's Fresh Styles for Web Designers with something approximating glee. I looked forward to reading it with the same feeling I have whenever I'm about to read a crunchy good SF novel from a reliable author. Simply paging through the book was difficult, as I wanted to just dive in and read everything at once.

Fresh Styles is a book-length expansion on an article available at http://www.lab404.com/dan/, a list of twelve new "cutting edge" styles to help designers break out of the curiously similar web sites you can find just about everywhere on the web. Cloninger doesn't pay much heed to usability concerns here, usually justifying his position by the idea that personal sites can afford to be slightly user-unfriendly, and some commercial sites do, in fact, demand a slightly edgier look. In any case, anyone looking for usability design tips should read another book.

So Fresh Styles details ten new and unusual styles one could conceivably adopt and modify for one's own purposes. The styles range from soft and cuddly to harsh and industrial, with everything from simple and minimal to complex and dirty in between. Though there is some technical advice here and there, this is more of an inspirational book than an instructional one. Indeed, it helped me come to grip with my own style, which I've come to recognize as an inept take on HTMinimaLism ("Say it! Say it loud! I'm an HTMinimaList and I'm proud!")

Overall, this is a fun and inspiring tour: The design styles covered by Cloninger are indeed fresh (on or off the web) and he does explain a few of the techniques used in creating these styles, in addition to the philosophy (or desired effect) behind them. The book offers proof that everything old can be new again, and a simple exploration of past design trends can be applied in a fresh way to a new medium. The book is abundantly illustrated, so there are quite a few examples for the reader to enjoy.

Maybe not enough of them, though. In fact, my single biggest criticism of the book is flattering; I would have appreciated more stuff. For wannabee designers such as myself who excel in replicating styles, it's also a bit of a bother that Cloninger doesn't spend more time qualifying and explaining why and how to realize a design. One (or two) site does not a movement make! But that's unlikely to bother more seasoned designers who will use the book as a springboard toward something wholly different.

Considering the book from a wider perspective, it can also stand in as a quick tour of the web circa late 2001, at a point where the medium began to acquire an artistic maturity of its own. It's easy to be respectable when there's VC money around, but once the big bucks and the glamour's been stockbrokered away, that's when the medium's resilience shows through. The design philosophies in Fresh Styles are demonstrations that, yes, the web is a bold and new medium that just won't go away, and might actually thrive best once the dot-com hype has died down.

But more prosaically, Fresh Styles is an all-too-rare glimpse in the mind of working design professionals, beyond the dirt-common "design" manuals that are really HTML coding primers. I'm glad this book exists, and I'm even happier that I've read it. Now I want a sequel with more styles, more details and more design considerations. As soon as possible!

 

Callahan's Key
Spider Robinson

Bantam Spectra, 2000, 335 pages, $8.99 Can., ISBN 0-553-58060-4

I have detailed, in previous reviews, my various annoyances with Spider Robinson's unique brand of fiction. With Callahan's Key, Robinson has come up with a novel that is almost indistinguishable from the previous two or three books in the "Callahan's" series. So why have I liked it so much?

This latest installment begins on one of the darkest winter days of early 1989, as narrator/protagonist Jake Stonebender suffers through the indignities of yet another Long island snowstorm. Things look grim, but before long, the usual gang of very exceptional friends shows up and convinces Jake to A> move to Key West, Florida and B> save the universe. Not merely the world, mind you, but the universe. The gang reacts in their usual blasé fashion. ("God damn it. AGAIN?" [P.7] Also see P. 181 and 201 of the paperback edition.)

There remains the slight matter of moving some hundred-odd (very odd) people from upstate New York to Key West. Doing so will require some ingenuity, work and more than a dozen yellow school buses. Most of the novel's first half is spent following Jake and the gang as they first plan and then go on the road trip to end all road trips. Several cool not-so-tourist attractions are visited. A few puns are slung. Authority is defied. A shuttle is launched. A good time is had by all. This first half is by far the most enjoyable; the process of mass-moving from New York State to Florida is far more relevant to us than the process of saving the universe.

Then we're due for the gang's arrival in the Keys, where even their full-blown exceptional nature is unremarkable. There remains the slight matter of saving the universe, but as we all know, that part proves to be a cinch. No matter; you know you'll devour it at once.

No, there isn't much that's new or even original at Callahan's. Robinson has found himself a comfortable niche, and as long as he continues to deliver the goods, he's not tinkering with the formula. Regulars will appreciate the tall stories, the anti-establishment tone, the puns and of course the feeling that every one is welcome at Callahan's.

Callahan's Key is still one of the best entries in the series, though, what with its unusual travelogue that takes the bar away from the characters, somewhat. Robinson doesn't waste as much time setting up elaborate puns and his description of a shuttle launch seems as moving as the event itself. The book isn't nearly as weepy as its immediate prequel. There's also a good role for Nicola Tesla, one of my own favorite historical character, with a wonderful explanation of the man's latter-year slide in crackpot-hood. (Think Siberia, 1908 and slap yourself for not thinking of it earlier. [Chapter 13])

I still hold on to most of my reservations about Robinson's shtick, mind you. His cast of characters is, by now, ridiculously powerful (and bulletproof). Group telepathy seems to be the ultimate answer to a remarkable number of things. He still displays a remarkable intolerance for "bureaucrats and Pentagon dolt-heads" (someone should sit with him and explain the nobility of public service, as well as how We Are Not A Monolith, Damnit.) Robinson also overplays to his crowd (we're go smart, so advanced, so civilized, etc.), but whoever is still reading the Callahan's series after nearly ten volumes shouldn't be surprised at most of this stuff.

So why do I keep counting myself as one of them? Well, one of the surprises of Callahan's Key was finding out that I actually enjoyed reading about Robinson's merry band of iconoclasts. While Robinson and I obviously come from different backgrounds and would probably start arguing the minute we met (not that this would be a bad thing, mind you), the truth is that coming back to Callahan's universe almost felt like going someplace familiar. I suspect that a large part of Callahan's appeal is in offering an idealized representation of a place where all are welcome regardless of prejudice, as long as you enjoy good company, good ale and good songs. I think we're all looking for something like that. Hurrah to Robinson for providing it, even in a diluted fictional form!

 

Blood of Others
Rick Mofina

Pinnacle, 2002, 466 pages, $9.99 Can., ISBN 0-7860-1267-6

(Obligatory disclaimer; adjust the following review according to my acknowledged favorable bias for A> local authors and B> authors I've met.)

Fans of Rick Mofina, rejoice; the Ottawa-area thriller writer shows no sign of slowing down, turning in his third novel in three years. After the unconventional Cold Fear this novel is somewhat of a return to the settings, characters and conventional structure of his first book, If Angels Fall.

For one thing, Blood of Others is mostly located back in San Francisco, where the events of the first novel took place. For another, Blood of Others features the protagonists of Mofina's first novel in a rather more active role than in Cold Fear.

As the story begins, a few months have gone by since the events of the previous novel, but things look a lit like they did two novels ago; Walt Skydowski is still the same irascible super-cop, though he's making progress on the dating front. Tom Reed is still an overworked, underappreciated journalist, hated by his bad boss, hounded by his wife and once again on the prowl for a good story. He's about to get a big one; the spectacularly ghoulish display of a murder victim leads him to an informant who claims to have seen the victim enter a police car on the day of the murder. Clearly, something is up and neither Tom nor Walt have any idea what they're up against. Fortunately, another character looks as if he does, and by the end of the book, we can only wonder if the next novel won't feature a third major recurring character...

It's risky to talk about "an author's favorite themes" after only three books, but risk has never stopped this particular reviewer in the past. Truth is, anyway, that several familiar elements do re-occur. The antagonism between the media and the police is still very present and personified by Tom and Walt's antagonistic relationship. On the other hand, Tom's complicated work/life balance is getting overused as a dramatic device. It would be about time for him to have a good boss and be able to write his articles without antagonizing his whole family. Maybe in time for the next novel!

Still, there's no denying that Mofina is becoming better and better. The overall pacing of Blood of Others is generally more sustained than that of its predecessor, and the hair-raising finale is appropriately located at a San Francisco landmark. I wasn't overly impressed by the antagonist in this volume, but then again I'm liable to unfavorably prejudiced whenever a character like that turns out to be a raving psychopath. (There's also the whole bad-internet-bad! angle, but I need to lighten up about such things) Still, I wonder if the little time-bomb buried at the end of the epilogue will be used in Mofina's next novels in the Reed/Skydowski cycle. Tick-tick-tick-tick...

In the meantime, have fun with Mofina's first three novels. I'm impressed enough to put him on my short to-buy list, though I'll be the first to admit that his stuff fits squarely in the crime-fiction mid-list, there isn't anything wrong with that. At least you can rest assured of a good read; Mofina writes clearly and concisely and with more than enough suspense to keep you intrigued. A promising initial trilogy from a writer to watch.

 

Killing Time
Caleb Carr

Warner, 2000, 335 pages, $10.99 Can., ISBN 0-446-61095-X

We hard-core Science-Fiction geeks have a favorite past-time whenever an author best-known in another genre decides to write a genre novel; it's called "trashing the book." The rationale for indulging in such an immature pursuit goes a little like this: Despite decades of excellent stories, the mainstream "establishment" still poo-poohs SF. Occasionally, a member of the "establishment" decides that s/he wants to write a science-fiction story, but -ah-ha!- it's "much too good to be called SF". The problem is that in most cases, these authors don't have any of the intellectual rigor expected of SF writers and make atrocious mistakes in logic, science and plausibility. Then they usually answer any criticism by saying "So what? It's sci-fi."

So fans usually strike back by tearing apart the novel. It's good fun, it's a group-affirming past-time at conventions and as long as nobody else has to listen to us, it hurts no one. So feel free to skip to the next review if you feel like it.

Caleb Carr's main claim to fame (so far) is a pair of historical crime fiction novels set in late 19th-century New York. The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness have been justifiably lauded by critics for a certain originality (applying modern criminal procedural knowledge at the earliest possible time where it was possible to do so, not unlike Foucault's The Name of the Rose) and a definite storytelling competence. Carr -a trained historian- has no SF background, nor has he ever attended a science-fiction convention. In short, he is Not One Of Us, and as such is a perfect mainstream target for SF geeks. Killing Time itself was published by the general fiction arm of Warner publishing (not the SF "Aspect" imprint) and the blurbs included in front of the paperback edition are all from mainstream publications (George, USA Today, Baltimore Sun, etc.)

Certainly, Carr doesn't do himself any favor by writing a novel in which the first two pages are a broad denunciation of the Information Age, complete with the catchphrase "Information is not Knowledge". If there's one viewpoint certain to infuriate a whole generation of SF addicts weaned on cyberpunk's "Information wants to be free" and the anti-Frankenstein "There are no things humankind isn't meant to know", well, I can't think of a better one.

So Killing Time begins. From a straight-SF viewpoint, it doesn't get much better; Carr's first-person narration details how one Gideon Wolfe (presumably a criminalist/psychologist, though his talents don't play much role in the following story) is taken away from his comfortable 2023 upper-class lifestyle by a band of traveling anarchists who have vowed to destroy the Information Age. Curious echoes of "funny SF" tales such as Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas & Electric resonate here, but Carr seems intent on playing it completely straight. Alas, even the characters seem stenciled from SF's worst stock clichés: the disabled mad scientist, the beautiful female assassin, the sex-starved geek, etc.

It's not as if there aren't any ideas at all, mind you. Carr's novel is an extrapolation on the means at our disposal now for faking the truth. The problem here is that these ideas don't mesh in a coherent whole, nor do they seem organic to the plot. We are eventually asked to believe in a genius who can single-handedly build machines defying our conception of space and time. We are also asked to believe in a future where no one double-checks information against multiple established sources.

It's not as if the novel doesn't have substantial non-SF flaws either; Killing Time's pace is firmly set at "breakneck", almost as if Carr was afraid of us asking too many questions. The protagonist seems content to be a passive onlooker throughout most of the book, being hijacked and led from one situation to another. Even for such a short book (less than 350 pages in large typeface), there isn't much of a story here.

But, even then, Killing Time isn't a complete disaster. Carr's attitude is different from the usual SF assumptions, and that may be a welcome diversion for some. The speed at which the book can be read ensures that not many readers will waste too much time on it. Plus, whoever does read Killing Time will have a lot of fun at the next SF convention, whenever the subject of mainstream authors barging in the genre eventually comes up. Everyone wins!

 

Design for Communities
Derek Powazek

New Riders, 2001, 307 pages, $44.95 Can., ISBN 0-7357-1075-9

As a web designer, I know how easy it is to focus on the information structure, the XHTML coding, the CSS graphical design or the hardware needed to run a successful web site, while ignoring the users who will visit the site. (Or even worse; thinking of them merely as automaton visitors that have to be scientifically managed using "usability guidelines".) I can testify that coding even a mid-sized web site by oneself can be such a huge task that any simplification is welcome.

At the same time, there is a tendency -among organizations and individuals alike- to think of a web site as merely a repository of information. That's a good first step, and sometime all you need... but what sets the web apart from anything else that's existed before is the capability for interaction between creator and visitors, or between visitors themselves. Indeed, you could argue that some of the most successful web sites are made by visitors rather than the administrators.

But there's a very good reason to avoid considering web sites as community tools. It's far more complex, on a technical level, than simply putting up static XHTML pages. It's also vastly more complicated to deal with unpredictable humans when they have a hand in the creation of content. For every five well-behaved net.citizen, there's at least one net.vandal who loves nothing better than the anonymity of the web to be able to send bricks through your virtual storefront. Dealing with those idiots isn't the only challenges of community web sites; administrators also have to define the tone of their community, attract enough users to sustain a critical mass of discussion, nurture their shared conventions, avoid growing too quickly and manage flame wars... the list just goes on. Woe on anyone venturing forth in this area without strong guidance.

Early web pioneers had to learn it all on the job, through mistakes and the wonders of naturally-evolving systems. But not anymore, thanks to people like Derek Powazek and his wonderful book Design for Communities. Anyone thinking about going beyond simple contact forms to a more sophisticated form of web community interaction should put this book high on their must-read list. Not only is it fascinating reading on its own, but it contains enough hard-won advice to save you months of development time.

Powazek quickly establishes himself as a likeable host in the book's first few pages, and this shining personality is one of the things that make Design for Communities worthwhile and so compulsively readable. He integrates the "website by other people" concept a step further in his writing by including great interviews with other web community builders at the end of each chapter (for instance, a discussion with Slashdot.org's Rob Malda is featured at the end of chapter 6, "Moderation, Karma and Flame Bait") Communities are about identity and personality, and Design for Communities has a voice of its own. There's almost no technical jargon in this book and that's a good thing: you're building for a community and not from technology.

Chapter after chapter examines not only the design issues in allowing user interaction on a site, but also how to set rules, enforce policies, why barriers to entry are useful, how communities can become highly intimate, how to set up mailing lists and how even commercial entities can create highly successful communities. I was most impressed by Chapter 11, ironically (or not) about how to gracefully manage the end of a community site. Thoughtful!

At the end of Design for Communities, I felt as if I'd learned an awful lot of stuff in a very short while. In fact, I'd learned enough to decide that I wasn't yet ready to implement such tools on any of my sites yet. But maybe you'll decide otherwise (or have already done so), and in this case, there isn't a better work out there than this book to guide you through the pitfalls of web communities. As web presences become more commonplace, I suspect that many organizations and individuals will start looking at the Next Big Thing for their web site, and communities could be one of those things. In a field where books expire before they roll off the printing presses, it's doubtful that Design for Communities will be obsolete any time soon.

 

The Big U
Neal Stephenson

Harper Perennial, 1984 (2001 re-edition), 308 pages, $20.95 Can., ISBN 0-380-81603-2

Neal Stephenson vaulted to the top of the SF best-seller list with 1992's Snow Crash, (a book that became a surrogate bible for many cyber-heads even as the Internet took off) but this first success wasn't his first book. That honor would belong to 1984's The Big U, which quickly became a collector's item as geeks of all stripes started hunting it down in used bookstores and rummage sales. For a while, copies of the book fetched three-figure prices in online auctions. Stephenson was reportedly disenchanted with the book, but even less happy with the price-gouging and so allowed the book to be reprinted following the boffo mainstream success of his Cryptonomicon in 1999.

After reading the book, it's hard to understand Stephenson's reluctance to acknowledge The Big U: Even if it's nowhere as polished, sophisticated or impressive as Cryptonomicon, it still ranks highly above most of what I've read recently.

It takes place on the pseudo-fictional "American Megaversity" campus, an entirely artificial structure called "the Monoplex" composed by a series of eight massive towers arranged around a central campus building. As an institution of higher learning, it can only disappoint 30-year-old junior Casimir Radon: students seem to be far more interested in drunken partying than good grades and there's more anarchic violence on-campus than anywhere else in the city.

Typical? Maybe, but Stephenson stomps the pedal to the metal and never lets go. American Megaversity students use so little of their brain capacity that they eventually devolve to a state where the halves of their brain stop forming a unified whole. Those morons quite literally start hearing "voices in their heads". It wouldn't be so bad, but alas the campus is also overrun by radioactive rats, fanatical D&D players, anarchists, illegal kitten pushers, religious nuts, foreign revolutionaries and a physics student building a mass-driver railgun. That's in addition to the usual bunch of campus neurotics. Very Bad Things are about to happen and our narrator is in the middle of it all. Unlike many campus novels, this one is quite literally about how university can kill you if you allow it to.

But even then, The Big U is one of those books that will make you laugh out loud repeatedly, a delight of gonzo writing style than you'll have a hard time abandoning whatever the circumstances. Even though my own campus experience was nowhere as bad as the one described here, I only wish I could have read that novel at the time; maybe it would have made everything more amusing. The novel certainly plays well with my own liking for high-concept satire, tech-infused plotting and a dense prose style. The increasing bursts of violence may upset some (there are certainly a few disturbing passages in here) but fit increasingly well with the rising chaos of the book. Too many novels step back from the abyss just before we have the chance to have some fun, but The Big U jumps in it with glee and Jolt-fuelled abandon. The Big U is Hell on Campus. You've been warned.

In the end, my only quibble with the book is that when the dust has settled at the end of the story, we have the outline of a conclusion, but scarcely any resolution about the relationships between the characters. Stephenson makes his characters so sympathetic that the bare-bones conclusion is a let-down.

So what are you waiting for? Find The Big U right now, especially if you're a college-age fan of Stephenson's other works. Despite the original 1984 publication date, you'll find that the book hasn't aged much, and still is one of the best read you'll find even this year. While we're anxiously waiting for his next book (Quicksilver, due 2003), this will do.