REVIEWS

2004, Part A: January

2004, Christian Sauvé

Reviewed this month:

 

Titan,
Stephen Baxter

Harper Prism, 1997, 676 pages, C$8.99 pb, ISBN 0-06-105713-4

In the first few chapters of Stephen Baxter's 1997 novel Titan, space shuttle Columbia crashes upon re-entry and China sends its first astronaut into space. The timing is slightly off (both happen simultaneously in 2004, rather than over 2003 as it happened in our reality) but here's hoping that Baxter's extrapolative powers stop there, because the rest of the novel is of a bleakness quite unlike anything you've read outside of, well, other Stephen Baxter novels.

Once Columbia reduced to bits and pieces over the desert, America goes in a tailspin. NASA is told to mothball itself, an ultra-conservative president is elected to the White House (eek), tensions between China and the USA grow ever more dangerous and apathetic American teens seems content to wear tattoos while shaping their own feces in artistic shapes. All is lost? Not quite: Space convert Paula Benacerraf comes forth with a bold new plan to take over all that's left of the American space program and send a Shuttle to Titan. It's a desperate mission, maybe even a suicidal mission, but if it can show the way to bigger and better things...

Well, don't bet on it. A decade-long Shuttle mission to Titan is insane in even the best of circumstances, and Baxter doesn't miss a nasty trick as he whittles down his cast of characters. Titan is positively ghoulish in how it starts badly and keeps getting worse. And worse. And even worse. This novel rivals most horror films in how it keeps upping the body count through the stupidest and most gruesome ways possible. Baxter has often been a gloomy writer (see the Manifold series for more unremitting bleakness) but there's a sadistic streak to Titan that makes it his most depressing book yet even as the ending is meant to be uplifting.

Heck, it's depressing even it's obvious that he's unfairly stacking the deck against his characters, if not humanity itself: Professional astronauts get stuck in solar flares, biochemists poison themselves, humankind dooms itself to destruction and no-one says a peep as America takes itself apart. The Internet is shut down, ethnic viruses are planned by the US government (huh?) and everyone whistles as the extreme right-wing shuts down institutions of higher learning and humans are left to die in space. You would have thought, somehow, that there was more to space exploration than the USA, that the left-wing would have emigrated to Canada or that no one would be stupid enough to re-align an asteroid on Earth, even for some (hand-wave, here) obscure reason. Baxter may have forgotten to include a chapter in which all of humanity undergoes forced lobotomies. Titan often doesn't make sense, and even acknowledges its silliness at times, such as one character wonders how they've been able to take control of everything in the American space inventory from Shuttles to Saturn-Vs. Character development? Don't look for it here; they remain sketches even as their hardware is lavished with details. Social/political development doesn't fare any better. Titan, in many ways, is a profoundly stupid book.

Plus there's the length factor. Titan, as a proud hard-SF novel, is positively crammed with technical details. While it enhances the feel of the book as a credible piece of Science Fiction, it can quickly overloads the narrative with far too much detail. Exhibit number one: The first section, a snappy little action sequence that ends up splattered over not less than seventy pages. Yikes. It doesn't really get any better. Exhibit number two: An entire X-15 subplot which has absolutely no impact on the rest of the book. Exhibit number three: The entire last section, which could have been cut with no detrimental effect on the novel's impact.

So; Depressing, silly and overwritten. Is there anything left to save from Titan? Why yes. Even despite all of these flaws, it remains compulsively readable throughout. There's a fascinating sense of inevitable doom floating over the whole story, as the window of survival shuts down over humanity. Part of it is shared sadistic delight at how bad things can become. Another is just, well, narrative inertia: We might as well see what will befall our characters next. Certainly, Titan is an unusual piece of hard-SF. A more conventional work would have used the Titan expedition as a rallying cry for the forces of light and rationalism. Here... well...

A word of caution, though: There are few words to describe the choking sense of dread that ends up contaminating the novel, and by extent the mind of anyone reading it. If you want a pleasant New Year's Eve, for goodness' sake don't spend it reading Titan!

 

The Posleen Tetralogy,
John Ringo

A Hymn Before Battle, Baen, 2000, 480 pages
Gust Front, Baen, 2001, 736 pages
When the Devil Dances, Baen, 2002, 704 pages
Hell's Faire, Baen, 2003, 336 pages

I was originally going to write a separate review for all four books in John Ringo's Posleen tetralogy. Fortunately, a silly slip of the mouse led to the accidental deletion of the first review and forced me to re-think my plans: Given that I hadn't really enjoyed the first volume of the series, why prolong my bad experience fourfold? Why attract four times the hate-mail from Ringo fans? Why explain four times why I think that these books are sub-standard?

As it turns out, the third and fourth books of the series mollified my initial dislike somewhat, but my initial thesis remains unchanged: As far as good military science-fiction is concerned, the Posleen series has a few significant problems. While this doesn't necessarily mean that the series should be avoided, it does suggest that its appeal to readers not already convinced of Baen Military SF's righteousness will be very limited.

In a few short words, the tetralogy is the story of how Earth is abruptly thrown into an ongoing galactic war. On the other side: The Posleen, evil lizard-like creatures whose only use for humans is fodder (as opposed to "our" side of the Galactics, which at least considers humans cannon-fodder.) While the first volume tells the story of the first (somewhat) successful encounter between humans and Posleen on another Galactic world, the rest of the series focuses on the invasion of Earth. As you may guess, the aliens are numerous, well-equipped and rather stupid. Of course, only the US of A will be able to mount any kind of successful resistance. A great number of nuclear explosions ensue until the very end of the story.

Liberals and foreigners are not welcome here: This series exhibits all of the traditional characteristics of the typical Baen Military Science Fiction book: The military machismo, the American jingoism, the casual acceptance of violence as a way of life and the necessity to arm toddlers are all exhibited here, along with a healthy disregard for liberalism, feminism, pacifism and environmentalism. I suppose that this strikes a comfortable chord amongst Ringo's audience; on the other hand, readers from other persuasions are liable to find a lot of it profoundly silly.

It's not to say that there aren't moments of fun here and there; the "megascrapers" sequence in the first volume is a lot of fun and so are most of the "Bun-Bun" scenes in the last two volumes. As is the norm for most extraterrestrial invasions, there are a number of explosive vignettes and spectacular visuals. But all of this is lost in far too many words. The repetitive scenes are described in entirely too many details with barely adequate writing. Characters are introduced and then discarded at an alarming rate; even the recurring characters have to wait until the third or even fourth volume to acquire any kind of consistency. It doesn't help that all of them think along pretty much the same ideological lines; there isn't much difference between them. But the aliens are worse; for some reason, Ringo feels compelled to add scenes from an alien viewpoint with plenty of made-up words; I reached an epiphany of sorts during the second volume, when I realized that the Posleen could be shouting "Let's shizzle their nizzle!" without any appreciable difference in coherence.

Plot-wise, well, there are occasional flashes of deep interest buried under the rubble. The various political interplay between the factions, the promise of a secret "Société" among other occult groups and occasional betrayals by the Galactics promise a universe of greater depth. Unfortunately, it's not in much evidence here. It's one explosion after another until no one is left standing. Heck, the whole cycle ends with a cavalry rescue that borders on a plot cheat after so many pages.

In short, the Posleen tetralogy is a massive slog for anyone who already isn't a flag-carrying American Baen fan. The attention to military detail isn't even remotely matched by the series' more conventional literary attributes. Those who already want to like it before reading it will remain convinced of its interest afterward. But as for others... much as I didn't need to write four reviews about the series, they won't have to read four of them to get the point.

 

Turbulence,
John J. Nance

Jove, 2002, 405 pages, C$10.99 pb, ISBN 0-515-13486-4

Civil aviation has changed a lot since the jet-set era of the fifties. Lower ticket prices coupled with the airlines' insatiable lust for higher profits have made modern air travel less comfortable and more stressful. "Air rage" has entered the vocabulary, reflecting the distasteful truth that planes will still take you to destination, but in unpleasant ways that may be unacceptable to an increasing proportion of passengers. As if that wasn't enough, the demonstrated propensity of terrorists to use airliners as guided missiles has tightened the screws even further on the pressure boiler of civil aviation.

While aviation thrillers have existed for decades (reaching their height in popularity during the seventies, following the 1970 film adaptation of Arthur Hailey's Airport), one of the best things about Turbulence is how uniquely modern it feels. Here, there is no glamour left in the cattle-like industry of air transport: Passengers are herded in uncomfortable planes, abused by airlines staff, ill-served by incompetent personnel, plunged in the middle of an overburdened airspace control system and at the constant mercy of a paranoid US government only too happy to eliminate security risks. Take a good long look at the 2002 publication date, because this book couldn't have been published any earlier.

In this particular case, Turbulence's Meridian Flight Six is -thanks to the author- custom-loaded with a powder keg of resentment: a heart surgeon with a deep hatred for the airline that killed his wife, a sadistic senior flight attendant, an insecure captain, rowdy passengers, unsafe equipment and plenty of aggravations. The first leg of the flight, from Chicago to London, is bad enough. But when things go really wrong over Africa on the way to Cape Town, it all spins out of control: The passengers mutiny, the planes is forced to land on a jungle airstrip and the US government becomes convinced that terrorists armed with chemical weapons have taken control of the aircraft. When the plane doubles back toward Europe, fighter jets are mobilized to shoot it down before it can do any harm.

Nance is an old hand when it comes to thrillers (most who recognize his name will do so in his capacity of the author of the novel from which was adapted the TV series Pandora's Clock, but he's written ten other thrillers) and it shows: Turbulence is an ever-increasing exercise in heightening tension, as bad attitudes aboard the plane translate in small spats, leading up to more forceful arguments, physical confrontation and -ultimately- a good deal of violence. Meanwhile, the US government is confronted with mounting evidence of terrorist activities and is forced to take action against what it's perceiving as a clear and immediate danger. While the various elements of Turbulence's suspense are a bit outlandish in how they all converge, there's no denying that the result is a satisfying crescendo.

It helps, of course, that Nance has got the traditional thriller style down pat. The characters are developed just enough to make them sympathetic. It takes a while, but eventually all the pieces of the plot have a place in the action, and the result is quite a readable novel. As the clock ticks down to a conclusion, Turbulence delivers satisfying suspense and entertainment. Unfortunate readers struck down by a sudden cold half-way through the novel may end up having plane-related nightmares.

It's not great art (the prose can be clunky at times) nor is it likely to be memorable, but it's likely to be optioned by a studio any time soon. It it would be too presumptuous to flag the book as a call for reform in the airline industry (Meridian's behaviour is a touch extreme, shall we say), but there's no doubt that the picture described in this novel -however hyperbolic- reflects what many are thinking about modern civilian flight. It's a fine line between affordable air travel and dangerous air travel; here's hoping that Turbulence's suspense becomes increasingly unbelievable as things evolve.

 

Of Paradise and Power,
Robert Kagan

Knopf, 2003, 103 pages, C$27.00 hc, ISBN 1-4000-4093-0

In the June/July 2002 edition of Policy Review, Robert Kagan wrote an article titled "Power and Weakness", in which he tried to explain the growing policy differences between the US and European leaders. It begins with "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world." and goes on from there. Lucky readers who consulted the article early on had the rare privilege of prescience over the next few months, as the whole unilateral rush toward the American invasion of Iraq gave proof to Kagan's theory.

While the article is available on line (and yes, you should read it), its lucid description of Pax Americana geopolitics was deemed worth of expansion and book publication. The resulting work, Of Paradise and Power: American and Europe in the New World Order, may be an exceedingly thin book, but don't be fooled by its succinctness: It's a brilliant piece of work.

Kagan argues that since the winner of the Cold War has been decided, the western world is gradually losing its convenient cohesion. National interests are once again taking precedence over global ideological goals. Now that the burden of the "War on Terrorism" has been taken over by America, allies of convenience are looking at each other warily.

But America and Europe (as Kagan explains, the success of the European Union is proof enough that "Europe" can now be considered as a cohesive entity) are dealing with this era in vastly different fashions. America's thinking is being influenced by its military strength and its economic power, much like Europe's thinking is being affected by its lack of military strength and its own version of economic success. The tools dictate the ways to perform the work and this has substantial implications in the way those two entities approach conflicts and dangers. If Europe can't field an effective army, it will depend on economic and diplomatic negotiation to develop a mutually acceptable settlement. If America has unstoppable destructive power, it will try to fix a problem through overwhelming force before bothering with other options.

But it doesn't stop there: While America is increasingly willing to use power, Europe seems equally complacent in assuming that the United States will come in and solve everyone's problems. Hence the lack of progress on the notion of unified European armed forces. Europe, in some ways, thinks of itself as beyond history, as living in a sort of postmodern paradise.

Kagan takes great care to point out that this kind of thinking is not recent, nor has it been precipitated uniquely by the inauguration of the Bush Administration or the attacks of September 11, 2001. While the Clinton administration may have soft-pedalled America's growing hegemony after the fall of the USSR, it established the bases of its successor's unilateralism. Similarly, Europe's insistence on multilateralism is an entirely consistent response with past decisions, including the formation of NATO. Then there's the trifling detail that America is now acting like European powers did when they had power; the players may have changed, but the tactics certainly haven't. It just depends on who has the most weapons at any given moment.

This book doesn't think small. Barring catastrophe or singularity, it's a roadmap to the likely geopolitics of the early twenty-first century. Reading it is like placing the last pieces in an especially difficult puzzle. With clear prose and lucid examples, Kagan manages to link together past events, policy decisions, social trends and news items. Time will tell if it's a truly important book, but at this moment it reads like one of the most compelling explanations of the way things are at the moment. It's a perfect tool for anyone looking at international affairs, and can be applied to a surprising number of current events.

There are a few objections, mind you; America's trend toward self-centred isolationism is not particularly well-debunked (though Kagan does attempt to do so rather than ignore it) and there seems to be a lack of acknowledgement at the economic dimension of power and paradise. It's unclear whether US military superiority can be maintained without massive amounts of foreign investment, and whether this money flow can be sustained even as foreign investors are figuring out the extent of American hegemony –not to mention the fact that they are the ones paying for it. (More speculative commentators are welcome to ponder whether America has finally put conventional warfare out of financial reach for everyone else. Wouldn't that be a kickin' application of lassez-faire market forces? An American monopoly on war!) Finally, the book may offer a cogent thesis of what is happening, but it's not as successful in explaining what can happen next.

But those are small quibbles. Letting aside the fact that the book is a pure delight to read and understand, its worth is obvious, because it just makes sense. It's consistent with the evening news: Doesn't Europe's relationship toward American power also reflect the attitude of smaller states such as, say, Canada? Granted, Of Paradise and Power doesn't have the eerily predictive aura of the original article... but chances are that over the next few years, we'll see plenty of empirical proof for Kagan's assertions. For better or for worse. Expect this book to be a fixture of political science courses for a while, and the precursor to other work expanding its central thesis.

 

Wheelers,
Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen

Warner Aspect, 2000, 505 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-446-52560-X

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating again: The most representative works of Science Fiction, the ones that really rekindle our burning love for the genre, are not necessarily the best. Great characters, gripping plotting and superb writing are nice, certainly, but they are in no way what differentiates SF from the vast body of "other" fiction. Fans of the genre can appreciate a good work of fiction over a bad one, but we read the stuff for other reasons: The ideas, the concepts, the unflagging dedication to logic and reason as our best hope for the future. These are what makes SF so special. Call it an ideological position fit for nerds and geeks if you want, but you won't be able to shake the appeal of fiction that speaks directly to what we believe in.

Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen's Wheelers is pretty much a textbook-example of how to write hard-core Science Fiction. It's not particularly strong in any area save for ideas, technical accuracy, respect of science and sense of wonder. In short, everything that makes this genre so great and so much fun.

The plot ball takes a while to get rolling, but when it does, it places circa-2220 humanity in the path of a comet. (The situation is actually more complicated than that, given how the comet was redirected toward Earth after a decidedly unnatural realignment of Jupiter's moons.) Given the nature of celestial mechanics, there's both plenty of warning and not much time to spare: A team of crack scientists is assembled and shipped off to Jupiter to investigate the findings. It helps, somewhat, that proof of some Jovian intelligence had been discovered by the book's protagonist right before everything started to go wrong.

Naturally, the plot isn't the main attraction here. Stewart and Cohen are both working scientists and so the real meat of Wheelers is in the details. While not staggeringly original, the imagined future presented in this novel is intriguing, what with Earth clawing its way out of an anti-technological age, the moon and the asteroids in the hand of a Zen sect and plenty of alien activity underneath Jupiter's clouds. Just you wait, though: The revelations get progressively more exhilarating and even if the plot concludes far too early, the last few pages are a carnival of neat ideas.

It speaks volume that by far the most interesting segment of the book is a pure application of physics: When, midway through, one character absolutely has to go from planet A to planet B in mere days rather than the usual months dictated by chemical propulsion technology, a hair-raising hack is devised involving celestial mechanics and mass drivers. It's a wonderful, jaw-dropping sequence, and a neat idea that wouldn't feel out of place in, say, one of Niven's good hard-SF stories. Real SF fans will lap it up like milk chocolate.

Happily, the rest of the book is a lot like that. To their credit, the authors manage to craft a good novel without too many obvious flaws --though the way the POV kept switching from one paragraph to another in the same scenes is truly annoying. Yes, the novel spends far too much time establishing back-story, ends too soon, muddles its "alien viewpoints" segments and doesn't create much empathy with its human characters. But it does conform to most accepted standards, and heaven knows that other working scientists have churned out far worse stuff in the history of SF.

But few of those things matter when considering the intellectual ride that is Wheelers. The erudition of the authors is obvious throughout (they can't resist "As you Know Bob" scenes, but they do it in a reasonably entertaining fashion; see P.25-30), there are a fair numbers of cute little gags and the steady escalation of revelations is profoundly satisfying to anyone weaned on a diet of classic hard-SF.

Every year, dozens of hard-SF novel pass unnoticed by fans who would rather complain that there's nothing interesting being written in the Asimov-Clarke-Heinlein vein. While Wheelers is not -let's be honest- in the same league, at least playing the same sport, and sometimes that's just good enough. Hard-SF fans, rejoice... and give Wheelers a spin or two.

 

How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway,
Lawrence A. Canter & Martha S. Siegel

Harper Collins, 1994, 234 pages, C$28.00 hc, ISBN 0-06-270131-2

Do you like spam? Well, if so, you're the perfect target audience for this piece of trash book whose repellent reputation is only exceeded by the scorn heaped upon its authors.

Allow me to use some of my Internet-Old-Timer credentials: In April 1994, Usenet users saw something very strange and very unusual: A message hawking legal services, posted to thousands of unrelated newsgroups. It wasn't the first piece of spam, but it was widely acknowledged as such as the "Green Card Spam". (Some will say that it was so appropriate that the first Internet hucksters would be lawyers with the temerity to charge hundreds of dollars for something that can be accomplished with a simple postcard) What we feared at the time (but really had no clue about, of course), was this was merely a small taste of things to come. For better or for worse, it was a significant event, a watershed in the transition of the Internet from its academic origins to its mass-market future.

Almost immediately after, flush with their success, Canter & Siegel decided to further annoy the burgeoning Internet community by writing a how-to book. As the title so obviously indicates, How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway is decidedly a book dating from 1994 and a proud inheritor of the "Make Money Fast!" school of business methods halfway between doubtful legitimacy and outright fraud. Here, the spamming duo tells all about both using the Internet for making money and forcing any message on unwilling users.

While I'm sure that the book must have been infuriating back then, things are somewhat different today: While I defy anyone to read this book and not want to slap its authors silly, this anger is somewhat diffused by the unfair advantage of hindsight. Nine years later, the Internet has changed a lot (No one ever calls it the "I-way", for instance), and there's a lot of twisted delight in seeing Canter & Siegel make bone-headed assumptions about Internet commerce that, of course, didn't pan out. (The web as a series of virtual malls modelled after shopping malls? Er, not quite.)

But it's somewhat disingenuous of us 2004-folks to laugh, right? As much as it pains me to say so, the truth is that this book does "get" the potential of legitimate business on the Internet, and did so years before everyone else. Yes, the "you too can make tons of money!" tone is grating, and it doesn't take along time for the authors to reveal their true anti-technological colours (Page 3: "You're here to make money. Therefore, our best advice is to ignore those clowns. (By clown, we mean the glassy-eyed nerd over there with the pocket protector.)"), but there's a kernel of truth in this book that, frankly, has to be acknowledged.

That doesn't let Canter & Siegel off the hook for what they did, of course. The first few pages of the book are a retelling of the infamous "Green Card Lottery Spam" as seen from their perspective, and no amount of self-congratulatory rhetoric and vituperation about those evil, evil techies can masquerade the authors' venality. By the third time they're kicked off their ISPs for their activities, no amount of tearful victimization can justify their wilful disregard for Usenet community standards. Time and time again, self-serving justifications show that Canter and Siegel have heard the right arguments against what they were doing. (Four simple words: "Tragedy of the Commons". OK, one simple word: "inappropriate") Yet they pooh-pooh the objections as ravings of marginal curmudgeons and proceed as if everything was OK. It's during those passages that you start wishing for lighter fluid, a match and a private meeting with the authors.

Internet historians will undoubtedly get a kick out of this book, if only to hear "the other side" of the story. The delightful text screen-shots alone brought back many memories of very early excursions on the pure-text Internet. Otherwise, well, the web has left this book behind as an artifact of a time that was both simpler and more difficult. In the light of the subsequent spam scourge, it's interesting to see that even Canter & Siegel are somewhat leery of using unsolicited mass mailings to drum up business [P.104-105]. Go figure why their ethics went so far and no further.

In the real world, there is a ghoulishly happy conclusion for all Canter & Siegel haters. According to sources around the Internet, the couple had a falling out soon after the publication of the book (a later edition was republished bearing only Siegel's name), resulting in divorce. Then they lost their license to practise law once again. (They'd lost it in another state for unethical activities well before the "Green Card" spam) Siegel died of cancer in 2000 while Canter established a software company in California. Perhaps proving that there is such a fate worse than death, a 2002 CNET interview revealed an unrepentant Canter bemoaning the fact that he receives over three hundred spams per day.

How fitting. Welcome to the Internet you have created, you idiot.

 

Every Man a Tiger,
Tom Clancy & Chuck Horner (ret.)

Putnam, 1999, 564 pages, C$39.99 hc, ISBN 0-399-14493-5

Tom Clancy may or may not have written any part of this book (it's getting hard to tell with the spin-offs, sequels, computer games, recurring allegations of ghostwriting and substantial dip in quality), but his name certainly figures large on the cover. This second tome in the so-called "Command" series ends up combining the mass-market appeal of the Clancy brand with a detailed military study, once again bringing a highly specialized account to wider audiences. I wasn't particularly impressed with the first volume, Into the Storm (by Clancy and Fred Franks) but if the second volume it still not quite perfect, it's a great deal more interesting than its predecessor.

Part of this appeal is Horner himself, a retired fighter/bomber pilot with plenty of tales to tell. From training to a difficult tour of duty in Vietnam to the dark era of the American armed forces to its rebirth through the eighties and its ultimate success during the Gulf War, Franks makes a sympathetic hero. His stories give a good idea of the life of a pilot during that time, and also serve as a key to understand the transformation of the US Air Force from Vietnam to Kuwait.

This mini-biography takes nearly the first third of the book, and it's essential in setting up what follows. The Gulf War, in some respects, was the first computerized war. In this case, however, the important things are not the computers, but the things now made possible through them. Coordinated sorties. Inter-forces communications. Precision bombing. Instantaneous battlefield monitoring. Lightning-fast supply lines. Unbelievable logistical feats. The Gulf War was also unprecedented in that air power effectively filled the role of ground forces in "plinking" the opposing land army, reducing their ability to fight well before the army got in action.

The bulk of Every Man a Tiger offers a description of the Gulf War from Horner's point of view as one of the allied commanders, with an obvious emphasis on air power. Gulf War buffs will relish the level of detail offered here, from logistical issues to anecdotes and step-per-step progress of the air campaign. Horner isn't shy at telling what worked and what didn't: He particularly singles out the search-and-rescue operations as deficient during the air campaign, and lucidly explains the reasons for this problem.

Through it all, Horner comes across as a model soldier, a man who's aware of the painful necessity of war, and the need for multilateral cooperation. His sense of humour comes through clearly, and so does his understanding of the constraints in which he operated. There are poignant passages in the book in which he professes his admiration for Arab culture and explains the sacrifices made by the American military forces to include as many allies as possible in their decision process. While it has become fashionable, in these days of the Bush administration, for non-Americans to decry the military might of the United States, it's easy to forget that the real issue here is the political leadership and not the military forces. Men like Chuck Horner only represent a most admirable professionalism, and professionalism is exactly what we need from them.

In fact, one of the unexpected treats of Every Man a Tiger is the meticulous description of the political decision-making behind the American intervention in Saudi Arabia and, eventually Kuwait. Horner was lucky enough to be a fly on the wall during some of the crucial top-level meetings, and it's fascinating to see the ways in which military power is approved, and then how the military itself arranges to deliver this power. (It's also somewhat unremarkable to notice many of the names which would later star in Gulf War II: Iraq Invasion. Hello Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz...)

All in all, while this second volume can't escape a certain trivial dreariness, it's a somewhat better effort than the frequently-dull Into the Storm. Horner benefits from a bird's eye perspective on the Gulf War (literally) and this perspective, coupled with a good flow of anecdotes and personal recollections, make this one of the best books yet written on that particular conflict.

 

Nobody's Safe,
Richard Steinberg

Bantam, 1999, 469 pages, C$9.99 pb, ISBN 0-553-58188-0

I remember standing at the local Chapters bookstore, looking over the New Fiction paperback rack. "For over fifty years, a mysterious organization has been guarding a secret that will change everything you have believed about our government" said the cover of Richard Steinberg's Nobody's Safe. I took a look at the back cover, read the blurb and frowned. Aliens, I said to myself. That's the secret. I don't normally glance at last pages, but this time the impulsion was too strong: I peeked. And confirmed that, indeed, aliens were the twist of the novel. Needless to say, it went back on the shelf.

But everything comes around, and years later I met Nobody's Safe again, this time at a dirt-cheap used book store. Things had changed between that initial contact and this one, though. I admit that I read some authors because they're bad in interesting ways. Patrick Robinson is one of those, and Richard Steinberg certainly earned his place in that category after The Gemini Man (a rather silly story glorifying a serial killer) and The 4-Phase Man (one of the dullest thrillers I've ever read). If Nobody's Safe measured up to his two other books, I might have been due for a treat.

As it turns out, Nobody's Safe is bad, but bad in different ways from his two other novels. Taken together, they could form an unholy trilogy of What Not To Do when writing thrillers.

The novel starts a lot like Absolute Power (the David Baldacci novel or the film, take your pick) in that a master burglar at work witnesses a brutal murder. But the similarities end there, as Nobody's Safe's Gregory Picaro has a bit more on his plate than a simple presidential homicide: the murdered man had some very intriguing things in his possession, and powerful forces are ready to do anything to retrieve them.

Take a guess as to the nature of those documents and artifacts retrieved by Picaro. Or better yet, don't: Among other stupid ideas, Steinberg bluntly reveals documents stamped "MJ-12" on page 72, but remains curiously coy as to the significance and meaning of those documents. Two problems, here: First, the fact that "MJ-12", or "Majestic-12", is ridiculously well-known in pop culture as being associated with UFOs, aliens and government cover-ups. Given the success of The X-Files, the prevalence of the Internet and UFO-literature, you'd have to work overtime to find a thriller reader who doesn't already know about the MJ-12/Aliens link. Why does Steinberg spend so much time, then, pretending that there's a big secret? Is this a sign that he's taking his readers for idiots? As the author self-gratifyingly re-invents the big "alien" twist, more experienced readers are liable to frown and bristle at the dripping condescension.

The second problem with MJ-12 is both more and less serious. It's quite well-known, by now, that the MJ-12 documents are pure fantasy. No, not just "UFO freaks are nuts" fantasy, but well-disproved forgeries fantasy. (Search around for "MJ-12" and "Phillip Klass" for details) This is a minor issue because it's been a while since I have expected total realism from my thrillers. To point out that this is a bad novel because, obviously, there's no such thing as an aliens cover-up is not just highlighting the screamingly obvious, but it's also somewhat besides the point. What is far more damaging to Nobody's Safe, however, is that in cheerfully reusing the MJ-12 mythology, Steinberg demonstrates an appealing laziness. Not only does he stoop to recycling stuff, but he's content to recycle debunked stuff too!

The rest of the novel isn't much better, and in fact gets worse and worse. Whole segments of the action are telescoped between chapters, and trivial inanities end up taking forever. (Hint: It's easy not to care about gypsies if you're not as fascinated by them as Steinberg is. Really easy, as a matter of fact.) Dozens of pages are wasted on dull scenes even as the action should accelerate. The characters are colourless, and so is the action as contact with the aliens is made. Nobody's Safe is worse than insulting and condescending like The Gemini Man; it's dull, and as such clearly points the way to The 4-Phase Man. (I simply can't resist suggesting the blurb "Nobody's safe... from that piece-of-crap novel")

There are, to be fair, a few interesting details about the art and science of burglary, and at least one intriguing scene where a judge discusses the status of truly illegal aliens. But that's not nearly enough. The rest of Nobody's Safe speaks for itself: It's a bad thriller regardless of how one looks at it and it solidifies Steinberg's credentials as someone who should be doing other things. Indeed, he doesn't seem to have published a fourth novel... and while it would be catty enough to suggest that it should remain that way, another part of me can't help but to mourn this drying fountain of bad books. It means that I'll have to look forward to the next Patrick Robinson opus.