REVIEWS

2002, Part J: October

2002, Christian Sauvé

Featured this month:

 

Lady Be Good
Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Avon, 1999, 372 pages, $8.99 Can. pb, ISBN 0-380-79448-9

Faithful readers of these reviews may be excused if they'd rather skip over to the next one. For what I'm about to do will be seen by many as a betrayal of my usual techno-scientific reading standards. A hidden side of my personality will be revealed! Multitudes will be shocked! For I am about to review a romance novel! And, darn it, a romance novel that I liked!

Lady Be Good came to me in a serendipitous way not dissimilar to how hero and heroine usually meet in romance novels: I was walking down a country road at the end of a rainy day when I saw a book abandoned in a ditch, its pages curled by the moisture. I kept walking, but my bibliophile instincts ultimately took over. I felt an irresistible impulsion to pick up this poor lonely paperback, rescue it from an ignoble, humid end and give it a good home. Dried and flattened, it found a place on my bookshelves.

Contrarily to what you may expect from the bulk of reviews on this site (SF, thrillers, scientific non-fiction, etc.), I don't particularly dislike romantic fiction. True, I prefer other genres, but well-written (non-formula) romantic fiction can be a lot of fun if the author knows what she's doing.

And Susan Elizabeth Phillips is an author who knows what she's doing. It doesn't take a lot of time for Lady Be Good to announce its colors. A Texan golf superstar is pressured into acting as an escort to a prim English lady visiting the area. She assumes he's a gigolo, hardly suspecting he's a multimillionaire with attitude problems (hence his temporary suspension from the sport). But then again, little does he know that she's deliberately trying to acquire a reputation as a bad girl in order to shock some folks back home... This naturally enough, is only the first of many misunderstandings that drive the plot in a typically shticky, but enjoyable fashion.

Much as Science-fiction fans really dislike it whenever an outsider broadly confuses the genre with Star Trek, romance readers hate it when outsiders lump all romance with the basic Harlequin series. Well-written romance is much more than that, and Lady Be Good is an illustration why. The quality of the dialogues alone is enough to raise this novel a notch above most romantic fiction: It's sharp, occasionally literate and crackles with intelligence. Characterization is also very well-handled, with enough quirks and convincing traits to endear us to the whole cast.

As with many other contemporary romances, the love scenes are handled with a candid frankness that can easily compare to some pornographic fiction. There's something hot for everyone here: One subplot's denouement even takes the form of a spanking scene!

Ultimately, though, this is the kind of novel to read for comfort value, for a little escape in a reality where good is rewarded, evil is punished, love leads exceptional people to wild impulsive decisions, everyone has devastatingly effective wit and everything ends really well. This is a romantic comedy of the purest order, so if there's something that's not quite right, just wait a few more pages and order will be restored.

Frankly, I enjoyed it. Life's too short for me to devote much reading time to romance, but I'm not averse to a few good fun reads from time to time. Good romantic fiction makes you smile and cheer for its characters, which is a pretty good deal compared to a lot of dour "harder" fiction out there. My knowledge of the genre isn't sufficient to be able to say with confidence that, hey, Lady Be Good may be a shining example of contemporary romance, but I still think it's a pretty nifty read.

 

Ten Thousand Bullets: The Cinematic Journey of John Woo
Christopher Heard

Lone Eagle, 2000, 269 pages, $15.95US tp, ISBN 1-58065-021-X

Even though the cumulative effect of some of his movies is often disappointing (WINDTALKERS, anyone?), I really do like John Woo's work as a director. His eye for action choreography is unmatched, and even when he's hampered by practical constraints, his visual style stands tall above the work of most of his colleagues. It's no accident if I happen to consider films like HARD-BOILED and FACE/OFF to be minor classics.

So, obviously, a book like Ten Thousand Bullets would be naturally interesting. While I know a fair bit about Woo's work since the late eighties, the earlier part of his life isn't commonly discussed in the media, and it seemed to me that this biography could shed some light on that part of his life. Fortunately, it delivers. Unfortunately, it doesn't do much more.

Ten Thousand Bullets is, logically enough, arranged in chronological order. Starting at his birth in 1946 and ending in pre-production for MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 in 1999, this biography details most of the thirty-odd films of Woo's career, with a particular attention to the eight last action films that followed his 1987 breakthrough A BETTER TOMORROW. More information is offered as the book goes along, for reasons that will become clear in a moment.

I noticed that Ten Thousand Bullets was written by Christopher Heard only after I had bought the book. I don't think that this would have influenced my decision had I known beforehand, but the name still rang alarm bells: Heard is the author of Dreaming Aloud, a biography about James Cameron that I'd read some time ago. Though I did like the book, I was concerned, at the time, about the derivative nature of Heard's work, a book that read as if it had been cribbed from a few magazine articles, along with multi-page summaries of Cameron's films. Would it be the same thing with Ten Thousand Bullets?

Well, not quite as bad, but pretty much, yes. On a technical level, Ten Thousand Bullets is workmanlike, presenting basic information in a suitably accessible style without panache or great insight. If you want a quick biographical sketch of Woo's life, this is the book for you, a highlight reel of his career along with very basic biographical information. As a work discussing Woo's motifs, motivations and work methods, though, it's a recipe for disappointment. While material like Woo's Catholicism is briefly mentioned, it's not referenced in the index nor discussed in any meaningful length.

True, Ten Thousand Bullets seems to rely on more sources than Dreaming Aloud (wow, count'em: six books and seven articles), but once again, Heard seems to be writing from second-hand sources. Woo's life is narrated, but we seldom get a glimpse into the reasons why it's happening this way. Coverage of his work seems to increase in proportion to the number of material published in the United States. Save from an interview with Chow Yun-Fat (heavily featured as "Appendix A", even though the link with Woo isn't integral), there isn't much of a sense that Heard wrote much more than a collage of previously-published works, minor interviews and personal impressions. As such, it's a pretty good read, but it may be more appropriate to beginners and casual Woo fans rather than his aficionados. There remains a place on the marketplace for a book delving deeper in Woo' life and passions. For the rest, well, there are plenty of web sites.

This being said, I'm still not too disappointed by the book: It's a fast read, it does a basic job at describing the life and work of John Woo and it brings together information from many sources in one convenient package that fits comfortably on my reference shelf. It's a bit of a bother that it stops short of Woo's biggest hit MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2, but -hey- that's the problem with paper books. On the other hand, maybe it's a relief that Heard's breathless narrative stopped short of his latest two American films. Seeing how he bends himself out of shape trying to compliment HARD TARGET, it would have been embarrassing to see him try to praise WINDTALKERS on anything but a purely visual level...

 

Iterations
Robert J. Sawyer

Quarry Press, 2002, 303 pages, ~$35.00 Can. hc, ISBN 1-55082-295-0

Whenever possible, I try to preface reviews of authors I've met with a short but pointed disclaimer. In this case, the disclaimer might be more necessary than usual. I know Robert J. Sawyer, I've interviewed him, and I've met him at local conventions and SF bookstores. Chances are that he even remembers me, which sorts of ruins the whole author/reader chasm that's one of the underlying assumptions of my reviews.

Do understand that while I can recognize several annoying deficiencies in Sawyer's work, I really do -generally- like what he writes. Despite the repeated themes and characters, mechanistic writing techniques and occasional cookie-cutter plotting, Sawyer strikes me as a professional's professional, a career-minded writer who happens to understand and love the genre like few others. I could quibble endlessly about the repetitive and unoriginal nature of some of his books, but keep in mind that I'd do so even as I own most of his books in first edition, usually in hardcover.

Buying Iterations, his first short story collection, was a must. But enjoying it, well, that was another matter. Some writers are best suited to short story lengths. Others thrive in the extra space allowed in a novel. Sawyer definitely falls in the second category, and Iterations demonstrates it.

The principal problem is Sawyer's quasi-mechanical approach to writing. In a novel, this works well given that the characters, ideas and overall narrative drive can sustain our attention even though the writing doesn't. At the very least, one can say that the writing doesn't interfere with our reading. But things don't work like that in a short story, where the strings of mechanical writing are too obvious. While I wasn't overly bothered by this, I'm usually tone-deaf to this kind of stylistic issues, and yet I noticed it in the course of the book.

Okay, this being out of the way, on to the blow-by-blow account: The book begins with the strong "The Hand You're Dealt", a formulaic but interesting murder-mystery set against a libertarian background. Sawyer loves mysteries and you can feel the fun he's having doing a hybrid story. Other standout stories in the volume include the title-story "Iteration" (despite a horrid "I Wish" plot device), the whimsical "Lost in the Mail", "Just Like Old Times", and the closing story "On The Shoulders of Giants". I could "but..." most of these stories, but they're the best the volume has to offer.

There are more "eh?" stories whose point seems too lame to discuss. "The Peking Man" reads as the first chapter of a longer novel; all setup, no resolution. "The Blue Planet" is one of the most useless short stories I've ever read, even on a second read. It might have been best-written with an explicitly humorous story, but Sawyer's track record as a writer of droll stories isn't particularly better: "The Contest" will have you looking for a punchline, and that's an impression shared by a few of the other stories in the volume, as readers collectively ask "Is that it?" There are quite a few duds here; not disasters, but stories that never build up to something interesting. "Where the Heart Is" strikes me as a perfect example of a short story about three times as long as it should be, a story driven mostly by the obvious authorial manipulation of a protagonist who should know better.

Again, please remember that all of the above comments are coming from a tone-deaf Hard-SF fan who does actually like Sawyer's fiction. I'm so certain that your mileage will vary that I actually hesitate to recommend the book to you even though I found it, overall, worth my while.

Sawyer writes on page 156 that "since 1992, I haven't written any short fiction without a specific commission; I just don't seem to find the time for short work otherwise." You may infer what you want from that statement, but I think that it illuminates the rest of the book.

 

Dianetics
L.Ron Hubbard

Bridge, 1950 (1987 rev.), 628 pages, $6.95 Can. pb, ISBN 0-88404-279-0

This is how Dianetics begins:

Important Note: In reading this book, be very certain you never go past a word you do not understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood. [P.viii, bold in text]

Okay, so how about the following reasons: A person may give up because the writing style is so redundant that even clear language wouldn't help. A person might give up because the author himself doesn't have a clue what he's writing about. A person might give up because the writing style is juvenile despite (or even because) a pretentious vocabulary. A person might give up because they realize that what they're reading is total garbage.

I haven't been shy, elsewhere, in dismissing Scientology as a sham and a cult based on nonsense. The information is available elsewhere for your own edification. But even then, I wanted to give a chance to "The Book" that started it all, Dianetics, in the hope that I may be wrong.

Turns out I didn't have the slightest clue how much crap is at the foundation of Scientology.

Readers with the internal fortitude to read the entirety of Dianetics will go through three stages. The first is bewilderment, as they'll try to wrestle with L. Ron Hubbard's embarrassing writing style. The opening "Important Note" is only a mere warning against the awful prose in which this piece of trash is written. Seemingly written for none-too-bright teenagers, Dianetics is nevertheless sprinkled with pretentious vocabulary that's as ridiculous as it's unnecessary. The book contains hundreds of footnotes referring to definitions, but when you see footnotes like "11. craven: cowardly." [P.205] or "21. harlot: a prostitute" [P.323], it's obvious that Elron's just playing at sounding smart. The writing style is even worse; nonsensical phrases are written as if they meant something and then immediately followed by patronizing passages that assume that the audience is a bunch of morons.

Bafflement leaves place to amusement, and it's not uncommon to encounter passages so insane that they can only elicit laughter. (Merely take the straight-faced citation of Shakespeare as a scientist [P.173] as a particularly incongruous passage) It turns out that according to Dianetics, all can be explained by trauma-induced "engrams", harmful mental patterns that can be formed even inside the womb. (Allow me to cite once more: "The engram is not a memory; it is a cellular trace of recording impinged deeply into the very structure of the body itself" [P.140, italics in text]) The mind is a computer, and knowing how to debug engrams can set you free. Sounds iffy? It's even worse in the book: "An engram received from Father beating Mother which says "Take thay! Take it, I tell you. You've got to take it!" means that our patient has possibly had tendencies as a kleptomaniac." [P.281] Hubbard's tirades against psychologists, hypnotists and "Juniors" are especially amusing, especially when you realise that Dianetics is a brain-damaged take-off on Freudian psychiatry, and the so-called treatment nothing more than a form of ill-guided hypnosis.

But as you go along, amusement will eventually turn to fierce loathing. Hubbard's view that homosexuality is an illness "extremely dangerous to society" [P.140] is disturbing, nearly as much as his warped vision of society. According to him, it seems that all husbands beat their wives regularly, adultery is widespread (especially for pregnant women), "attempted abortion is very common" [P.211] and women generally do their best to screw up their own children.

Would you trust this man? The real shock of the book comes as you realize that, yes; people actually fall for that stuff. Even without knowing about the ludicrous "Operating Thetan" garbage of higher-level Scientology, people fell for Dianetics, maybe taken by the false impression that Elron was discussing "touchy matters" in a repressive age.

In some ways, Dianetics reminded me a little of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, by the way a thick book can convince a lot of people. Where the comparison fails for me is that it insults Rand's followers: While Objectivists might be selfish and rude, Scientologists are just plain nuts. There's no real contest which group I'd rather hang with, given the unpleasant choice.

I may be restating the obvious, but Dianetics is one of the most odious books I have had the misfortune to read. Horribly written, devoid of any basis in reality as we know it and an affront to both intelligence and good taste, Dianetics is a masterpiece of crackpot literature. Stay far, far away from this book. Unless you want to double-check what I'm writing, in which case you will quickly realize that the above review barely understates the true insanity of Dianetics. Have fun...

 

ClearWater
Bill Buchanan

Berkley, 2000, 475 pages, $9.99 Can. pb, ISBN 0-425-17364-X

There is something about technothrillers—their disregard for literary values, their techno-fetishism and their infallible sense of right and wrong—that simply makes me comfortable. Some people read romance to reassure their world-view; I reach for techno-thrillers. It's not a political thing (as a Canadian, most of my American readers will easily lump me in the "liberal" end of the spectrum) but it is definitely an ideological preference: I like technology, I'm fascinated by political/military matters and from time to time, I wish that the world wasn't as messy as it actually is.

So to me, even very average technothrillers like Bill Buchanan's ClearWater possess a value that, say, average romance novels won't. While other readers may slog through this novel without much enthusiasm, I'm quite willing to forgo traditional dramatic values if Buchanan's willing to pack in one more cool gadget.

Certainly, there isn't anything wrong with ClearWater's premise: In the near future (the novel takes place in 2008) the US has developed a way to track submarines around the globe, wherever they may be. (Well, as long as they're no deeper than a hundred meters, which is standard operating depths for most submarines anyway) The impacts of this innovation are far-reaching and highly unsettling for smaller countries without defence for this technology. One of them reacts, and hijacks an American submarine with the intention of using its offensive capabilities to attack targets around the Pacific Rim. Naturally enough, this causes everyone to race against the clock...

Let's make it very clear from the onset that there isn't much in terms of characterisation here. There's an evil antagonist, a few protagonists and most of the time, their characterisation is dictated by the demands of their moral alignment and their job. It's a telling thing when the back-cover jacket blurb doesn't even mention a character's name... As with many thrillers of the genre, humans are pieces to move on the game-board, not characters worth exploring in their own right. In fact, whenever Buchanan attempts to deal with human emotions, he either doesn't succeed, turns to cynical clichés or abandons his efforts well before they can succeed.

What's eventually more frustrating is the plot. While the first half is well-handled, things begin to disintegrate in the second, as the ClearWater technology turns to be somewhat extraneous to the plot (you can remove it and, yes, the novel suffers a bit, but not that much), the hijacking of the submarine turns out to have a tenuous relation to something else, some long-awaited payoffs are glossed over and the ending doesn't conclude anything as much as it winds down to a stop, leaving a considerable amount of loose ends still untied. (Or dismissed with a casual "but that's another story") I'm not sure if Buchanan sort of lost interest in his own story (heck, he even skips over a whole ground war!) or if it was something he'd planned all along, but ClearWater's resolution is one of the most unsatisfying I've read recently.

I could also quibble about the lack of dramatic focus around clearly-identified protagonists, an unpleasant scene about women in submarines (maybe realistic, but I didn't care for it) and the relative incapacity of the "good guys" to do anything. (Indeed, save for a few occasions, it looks that most of the "lucky breaks" come from mishaps, mistakes and sheer luck rather than their actions.)

No matter: While I wasn't much impressed by ClearWater (no cool scenes, tell-not-show and a definite lack of dramatic tension are my main problems), I'm not terribly disappointed either. It's got one or two good ideas, and that -plus the genre comfort factor- makes it a worthwhile read. You may have a very different take on the subject, though...