Reviews

December 2004

2004, Christian Sauvé

Reviewed this month:

Plus the annoying December retrospectives...

 

America (The Book)
The Daily Show (and Jon Stewart) presents...

Warner, 2004, 227 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-446-53268-1

Reading America (The Book), I kept flashing back to historian J. Barlett Brebner's saying that "Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States." I mean; here I am, good little Canadian, reading a parody of an American civics book and laughing at American politics as if they were my own.

But when you're in a country sharing a border with the elephant known as the United States of America, there's not much of a choice: We Canadians know that even the slightest American tremor will have repercussions everywhere else in the world, starting here. Watching America isn't just a Canadian pastime rivalling hockey: it's sheer national self-defence. The USA may not care too much about Canada, but we're still the ones getting shoved around when the elephant gets prickly.

Hence our national amusement at TV shows like The Daily Show, a blistering look at American politics front beneath a veneer of silly humour and parody. Hence (I imagine) the good sales figures of an America-centric humour book north of the 49th parallel. Some of us know the American political process better than most US citizens. Part of our national pride (I hate to say) is based on not being part of it.

What the writers of America (The Book) intended was a picture-perfect parody of your usual Civic Education textbook, down to the full-colour hard cover case binding, wide layout and abundant use of photo clip art. There's even class exercises and a topical supplement covering the 2004 presidential election. Physically, it's a wonderful design job. Fortunately, the content is up to the presentation.

America (The Book) is a sarcastic look at the American political process, from its historical origins ("For purposes of this chapter, 'person' still means 'white males' up until 1870, then 'males' until 1920, then 'all people but really still just white people' until 1964" [P.62]) to its current implementation. There's usually one or two good gags per page, and two or three audible laughs per chapter.

But as you may guess, it's not all gags and giggles for the masterminds writing the book: America (The Book) is at the same time a sharp criticism of the less-salient aspects of the US political process, starting with the influence of lobbyists, the way amendments are grafted upon unrelated bills and the structural factors discouraging anything but a two-party system. There's plenty of serious material in the book, as long as you're willing to see past the jokes. (Sometimes, you don't even need to: The pixelicious "Third Party Graveyard" [P.110-111] is worth framing by itself.)

Ironically (or not), the only let-down offered by America (The Book) happens once it starts looking outside its borders. Canada is gratified with recurring and appropriately self-depreciative "Would You Mind If I Told You How We Do It In Canada?" segments, but passages like "All governmental business is conducted in both French and English, because a small minority of Canadians, called 'Québécois', never wanted to learn English, and we thought it was rude to ask them to." [P.59] don't exactly betray a witty understanding of the situation. Still, it a comfort to realize that all other countries fare worse; Chapter 9 ("The Rest of the World: International House of Horror") tries to satirize the appalling isolationism of some Americans, but it merely comes across as a lamer, less funny section. Oh well. Also worth noting as a weaker element is the appearance of some Daily Show regular characters, an inclusion that could puzzle readers who aren't familiar with the TV show.

But never mind the above: as self-effacing Canadians, we're just grateful to be able to buy your wonderful books and find mentions of our country in them. It would never occur to us to have the nerve and write, in bold capitals, FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR DEMOCRACY AND THE FATE OF THE REST OF THE WORLD, BUY THIS BOOK AND UNDERSTAND THE POINTS IT'S TRYING TO MAKE BEFORE YOUR BIPOLAR POLITICAL DISORDER ENDS UP LEADING TO THE DEATH OF THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT FOREIGNERS!!!

Oh no. Never. We'll just read the book and laugh respectfully. Tee-hee.

 

The Eyre Affair
Jasper Fforde

New English Library, 2001, 384 pages, C$14.99 tp, ISBN 0-340-73356-X

Every book has an intended audience, and it's not hard to see that The Eyre Affair is best dedicated to hard-core book lovers, avid readers and English Literature majors. Who else could appreciate this mixture of romance, adventure, mystery and fantasy in an alternate universe where the Crimean war still unfolds in 1985, where time travel is not unheard of, where the written word is still the dominant form of entertainment and where people can travel in and out of novels?

Oh yes, Jasper Fforde's fiction is aimed straight at the intellect of people who wish that coin-operated Shakespeare quoting booths were installed in every train station. That Richard III showings had the popularity of camp ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW revivals. That there would be such a thing as a "literary detective", ill-paid would it be.

In the meantime, we can live vicariously through the adventures of the capable Thursday Next, a SpecOps agent with curious family relations, much historical baggage and a messed-up sentimental life. A classified assignment with SO-9 quickly turns ugly as arch-criminal Acheron Hades (such a great character name!) kills off her partner and escapes in the wilderness. It gets more complicated when the original manuscript of Jane Eyre is stolen and Hades starts messing with the novel, changing all copies of the book worldwide...

Oh, what a charming alternate universe is weaved by Fforde in this first volume of what looks like an open-ended series (three more volumes have been published so far; reviews forthcoming). Satiric and believable, with enough hooks to allow further development if needed, Thursday Next's universe is a book lover's fondest wish come true. Barriers between fiction and reality are malleable, the written word reigns supreme and one never quite knows what's going to happen next.

As you may guess, the reading pleasure derived from The Eyre Affair is considerable. Narrator Next is a capable heroine with just enough problems to make her sympathetic and even the avalanche of convenient coincidences (let's see: her father is a renegade time-traveller, her uncle is a genius inventor, she's an ex-student of Hades and all of those things come into play as the plot unfolds) doesn't do much to dampen our amusement.

Perhaps the best thing about it is the sense that this is unabashedly high-brow comedy. I may not have caught all the literary references, but it doesn't change the comfortable sense of being in an imagined universe that's utterly sympathetic to hard-core readers. References fly high and low, but catching them all isn't necessary in order to derive considerable enjoyment out of the whole tale.

Also worth noting is the easy way Fforde mixes and matches genres in order to develop his story. While a thriller template forms the backbone of The Eyre Affair, it also features a substantial romance and borrows the atmosphere of classic comedy. The alternate universe in which Thursday Next operates is introduced through techniques borrowed from the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, leading to a book you can equally lend to SF fans and mainstream readers.

Some will say that this book could only have been written in Great Britain, and they're probably right: It co-exist comfortably alongside the dry wit of series such as Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Terry Pratchett's Discworld sequence while possessing its own distinct identify.

What else is there to say in order to convince you to go out and buy this book? You know you you are. You already know if a trip to an alternate universe in which books are wildly popular appeal to you. If not, what are you doing reading this review?

(Sequel: Lost in a Good Book)

 

For us, the Living
Robert A. Heinlein

Pocket, 2004, 329 pages, C$11.99 pb, ISBN 0-7434-9154-8

Wonders are all around us if we know where to look, and so that's how the wonderful capitalistic system conspired to allow me to buy, in very late 2004, a paperback copy of a brand-new Heinlein novel at the local grocery store. Imagine that.

I may never fully understand what possessed me to got check out the paltry selection of books at the neighbourhood Loblaws during an uncharacteristic salad-dressing-and-soy-sauce buying expedition, but there it was, in a smart hip cover: For us, the Living, by Robert A. Heinlein, "the author of Starship Troopers". Imagine my thrill at dropping the novel onto the conveyor belt at the checkout. "Found everything you were looking for?" asked the clerk as per store guidelines. Yeah, I was tempted to answer, I'm buying a brand-new Heinlein paperback and it tickles me.

It's not as if I hadn't heard about For us, the Living previously. The unexpected discovery of a copy of the original 1939 manuscript, shortly before the 2003 Worldcon, was widely discussed in the SF&F field. Reviews seemed unanimous in saying that it wasn't a very good novel, but it was a mesmerizing piece of work for all Heinlein fans.

I quickly found out what they meant by that. Yes, For us, the Living is a shoddy novel. A study of a 1939 man somehow thrown in a weird and wonderful new future, it's not dissimilar to the utopian musings of H.G. Wells' The Sleeper Awakes and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. Structurally, it's what I'd call a walkthrough novel, designed to show the audience the achievements of a new age: the plot is loosely arranged to allow the hero to explore facet after facet of Heinlein's imagined 2086, a world where everything seems to be working remarkably well.

As fiction, thus, For us, the Living isn't a marvel of plotting, or even of characterization: Our protagonist is designed to be a bland stand-in for the readers. The heroine is saddled with -believe it or not- a three-page footnote explaining her life history. (Yikes!) Dialogue is often of the "As You Know, Bob" variety. (Or, more accurately, "Bob, you ignorant twentieth-century dweeb, this is what you should know.")

This being said, the fiction may not be gripping, but there's no mistaking Heinlein's gift for compelling prose. Even at its most didactic (and believe me, few things are more didactic than a chess game being used to demonstrate the fundamentals of Social Credit), For us, the Living retains an essential interest: It's just plain fun to read. And some predictions ended up hitting surprisingly close to the mark. Take a look at this quote, for instance: "...if those bankers who were killed in the raid on Manhattan had expected to be bombed and gassed, there wouldn't have been any war, But they didn't. They thought the war would be fought far away by the professionals." [P.88] Hmm!

For Heinlein fans (and I classify myself as only a mild one), For us, the Living is a virtual treasure chest of early discoveries. Pay attention, and you'll find the early outline of Heinlein's "Future History". Nehemiah Scudder is mentioned by name, as is Coventry. Rolling roads are introduced. Open marriages caps off the novel's last chapter. If none of these things mean anything to you, well, you're not the target audience for the book.

No, the target audience for the book is composed of SF fans who just want a look at Heinlein's first finished manuscript, and who will nod in agreement when Spider Robinson, in his introduction, refers to the novel as Heinlein's "literary DNA." The kind of SF fans who, upon reading the last line of Robert James' excellent afterword, "A clean sweep at last.", will know exactly which of Heinlein's law of writing is being invoked, and what it ultimately means. The kind of SF fans who, in considering the meaning of "a clean sweep at last", will feel a rush of blood to their heads and maybe even a dab of salty water in their eyes. A clean sweep at last.

Oh yes, marvels all around us.

 

Pen Pals
Olivia Goldsmith

Dutton, 2002, 360 pages, $C35.99 hc, ISBN 0-525-94644-6

With the untimely demise of Olivia Goldsmith in early 2004, we can expect her literary output to become a finite set (allowing for the usual posthumous publications). As a reader who likes to make sweeping generalizations about one's life work, this places me in an advantageous position: I just have to "complete the collection" and I'll be ready for a scathing assessment. I'm not there yet, but Pen Pals ends up being Goldmith's last novel published in her lifetime (with Dumping Billy already in the publishing pipeline), leading to a cautious preliminary assessment.

Unfortunately, the pattern of Goldsmith's book follows the typical downward arc. From her capable debut with The First Wives' Club (1992, adapted in a movie, etc.), Goldsmith toned down the "female revenge fantasy" aspect of her first novel to produce a trio of rather moralistic-but-enjoyable docu-fiction studying different industries, from fashion (Fashionably Late) to TV/cinema (Flavour of the Month) to the publishing world (The Bestseller) As the nineties grew to a close, she went back to (poor) female revenge fantasies with Young Wives (2000). Pen Pals ends up being a mixture of both female revenge fantasy and docu-fiction.

This time around, poor Jenifer Spenser is the victim of a plot hatched by her male bosses: She takes the rap for corporate malfeasance, goes through what is anticipated to be an abortive trial and walks away free in exchange for future considerations. Alas, as you may guess, things don't go as planned and she ends up serving three-to-five in the pen. Ideal conditions for a revenge plot and a study of the carceral environment? Why, of course: Within pages, Jennifer meets her crew, suffers through the American prison system, engineers a corporate takeover, toughens up and ends up punishing her no-good traitorous boyfriend. Good times, good times.

As pure entertainment, Pen Pals sustains interest much better than Young Wives (which got old really fast), providing at least the basic requirements of that sort of books. But it's not quite as fascinating as her previous docu-fiction because the sense of wilful deceit is far greater than it was in, say, Flavour of the Month: Despite a few bad moments early on, prison life turns out to be a blast once snappier outfits are delivered. If we were to believe Goldsmith's characters, most women in prison are victims of the system, innocent wallflowers that either killed their men when they deserved it, or got lifelong sentences for selling pot to their ailing kids. The few violent and mentally disturbed prisoners can be safely isolated in their own wing (they, of course, are nothing like the heroines of the novel.) Once prison management gets its act together, all can live in peace and harmony.

Pardon me as I raise an eyebrow.

Now, it is true that I don't know much about the subject, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that writing a feel-good novel in a prison environment just begs for selective vision. Even Goldsmith acknowledges as such in the after-word. What compounds this basic problem, of course, is Goldsmith's knee-jerk repetition of the female revenge theme. While there are ways to make it palatable and not too derivative (see her docu-fiction trilogy for examples), it doesn't even take ten chapters for Pen Pals to fall into familiar plot templates.

Goldsmith should be applauded for at least trying to raise awareness of problems related to the modern justice system, the increasing privatization of prisons and the plight of prisoners in an overburdened, underfunded environment. But really, the vehicle she has built to share her concerns actively works against what she's saying: Whoever remembers Pen Pals weeks after reading it won't recall an impassioned plea for better prisons: They'll either remember a heart-warming tale of female empowerment, or a bad novel.

What's equally worrisome is that Goldmith's latter work itself will be remembered more as bad fiction than good entertainment.

 

The John Varley Reader
John Varley

Ace, 2004, 532 pages C$23.50 tp, ISBN 0-441-01195-0

Let's make this very simple: If you have never read anything by John Varley, you should get this book. If you have read everything by John Varley, you should get this book.

If you even nominally consider yourself a Science Fiction fan, I don't have to explain Varley to you. How he was the Larry Niven of the late seventies; how his short fiction effortlessly slapped around the rest of the genre through limpid writing, audacious concepts and relentless optimism; how vital he was at a time where SF was still trying to sort out the fallout of the New Wave. He combined mature gender politics with Heinleinian verve, anticipated cyberpunk (never being properly credited for it) while writing SF that was decades before its times, shocking and delighting contemporary audiences. His combined body of short stories is, even today, an amazing piece of work. And now The John Varley Reader brings a lot of it together: Seventeen tales spanning thirty years of writing, including three Hugo-Award-winning stories.

If you haven't read Varley yet, this is the best place to start: His short-story collections are woefully out of print (Heck, I had to read The Barbie Murders in French translation, and I've never seen a copy of Blue Champagne to this day) and trying to accumulate his fiction on a piecemeal basis is an exercise in frustration. (Especially when you consider his sporadic publishing history, with novels published in clusters half a decade apart.) This anthology presents a dynamite assortment of stories that have not lost one whiff of relevance even decades later. This last point seems particularly important, so allow me to rephrase it: The is no nostalgic value in The John Varley Reader: Every one of these tale is as current and hip today as they were when they originally appeared. Even now-historical pieces such as "Press Enter []" have an immediacy that remains current to this day.

And this goes to everyone, including non-SF readers. John Varley is one of the rare SF writer I would confidently recommend to any sufficiently daring non-genre reader. Now you can just give them a copy of The John Varley Reader and wait until their minds explode from all that accumulated pure-SF goodness. How do you explain something like "The Persistence of Vision"? As the description of an alien society made out of humans? As a realistic piece marred by the inclusion of an explicitly SF element at the very end? Heck, Varley's take on gender roles alone (what with casual gender-switching so prevalent in his "Eight Worlds" universe) is still amazing today, not to mention his gentle brand of optimistic let-live philosophy. He's not just an excellent SF writer; he's -in many ways- the example of what a SF writer should be. His stories are readable, clever and provocative: true models of the short Science Fiction form.

But for die-hard Varley fans, The John Varley Reader includes another bonus in the form of lengthy autobiographical passages. Varley hasn't led an easy nor a conventional life, and the autobiography that emerges is both heartening and surprising. As he describes his adventures, we're privileged to get a glimpse behind the fiction and be amazed once again, this time not at the fiction but at the writer. But wait; there's more. There are previously-uncollected stories, such as the nifty "Just Another Perfect Day" or "The Bellman", rescued from the time-capsule that is Harlan Ellison's mythical The Last Dangerous Visions.

I bought the book planning to read only the introductions and the stories I hadn't yet read. But I found myself sucked into the whole thing, even the classic stories, re-reading all once more just for the sheer pleasure of it (Ah, "The Barbie Murders", ah, "The Phantom of Kansas").

Hopefully, this collection also signals a return to form for Varley, whose output has been marked by lengthy periods of quiet followed by bursts of excellence. And maybe it'll even lead new readers to his other work, from the succinct brilliance of The Ophiuchi Hotline to the wide-screen eccentricity of Steel Beach and The Golden Globe. Every half-decade or so, SF critics collectively say something like "thank goodness John Varley is back". Now let's hope he's back to stay.

 

House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski

Pantheon, 2000,706 pages, C$29.95 tp, ISBN 0-375-70376-4

Reviewing books on this site for the past few years, I've said plenty of ignorant and silly things about a mythical group of "literary types" who would (I imagine) snottily read pretentious literature, pooh-pooh genre fiction and cling to their English Literature degree as if it had any real-world relevance. As I grow older, weaker and softer, I'm ready to admit that this confrontational attitude may not be the best, and that I do no one any favours by opposing the worst clichés of "mainstream literature" to an idealistic image of "genre fiction". In the real world, isn't it all middle ground anyway?

Certainly, books like House of Leaves do a lot to bridge the gap between the two mythical groups I have the unfortunate tendency to oppose. At its heart a horror story merged with a suburban romance, Mark Z. Danielewski's debut novel also earns the distinction of being one of the most playful literary experiment I've ever read, all categories combined. A dazzling mixture of book design, subtle jokes, mixed storytelling and erudite writing, it's also devastatingly effective as a horror novel.

Where to begin to describe the unique features of the book? How about this: all mentions of house in the book's 706 pages (in all languages) are printed in blue. It has footnotes, footnotes within footnotes, circular footnotes, "transparent footnotes", sidenotes and endnotes. It purports to be a manuscript studying an eerie film about an impossible house, commented by the discoverer of the manuscript, further commented by the editors of the book. It consciously mixes fonts according to the author, features struck-out passages and accelerates the pacing through fewer words per page during action scenes. Pages are printed sideways, at an angle and upside-down. It includes pictures, letters, manuscripts and tons of spurious references to things that don't exist.

It is, in short, a book that you can't read passively. It's constantly playing along with the audience, daring it to follow as it gets weirder and weirder. One of House of Leaves's best aspects is how it gradually reveals its madness, up to a paroxysm where you have to flip over the book frantically to keep up with the action. Wonderful!

What is perhaps more amazing for genre readers is how the low-key terror of the book ends up being far more effective than pure out-and-out gore horror fiction. The uneasiness is introduced so seamlessly in the course of the character's ordinary life that a 5/16" discrepancy in measurements is almost unbearable. Then delicious shivers start as shelves don't meet the walls. Latter scenes featuring a multiplicity of closing doors and (later) a wall dissolving in nothingness produce reactions that have everything in common with the best shock horror movies. There's never been such a haunted-house story before, and there's seldom been more efficient ones. But you'll have to read the book to find out why a line like "Ftaires! We haue found ftaires!" [P.414] can produce an audible "whoah!"

It's not all effective, mind you: As playful as it is, House of Leaves often gives the impression that it's just screwing with the readers for the author's own perverse pleasure. Most footnotes are supremely gratuitous, but few are so useless as the ones extending for pages on end, simply enumerating names, places and things that are or aren't of relevance at this point in the story. Sadly, the book is also overwritten: As a big believer in the "Less is more" philosophy, I could have lived quite well without most of the Johnny Truant passages, or some of the most self-conscious passages that exist solely to demonstrate the author's erudition.

But it's easy to forgo even those problems when considering the overall impact of House of Leaves. As a stylistic experiment, it's not just impressive: It's compulsively enjoyable. This may not be the most fun you'll get from a novel this year, but it's almost guaranteed to be the most fun you'll have with a novel. (I'm also fascinated by the idea that House of Leaves may be just about impossible to replicate satisfyingly in electronic form for years.) As a genre novel (romance or horror; take your pick), it's quite good. As a bridge between mainstream and genre, it's just about perfect. What do you know,maybe it extends forever...

 

A Year at the Movies
Kevin Murphy

Harper Collins, 2002, 362 pages, C$22.95 tp, ISBN 0-06-093786-6

Ask two cinephiles about a certain movie and you'll get at least three different opinions. This is, mind you, before the cinephiles use the films as branching point for discussions about life, the universe and everything. Soon enough, you will find that every film can lead to hours of free-ranging discussion, and it doesn't take much ("So, hey, how was the last Spielberg?") to unleash the average cine-geek.

We're like that. And I say "we" self-consciously, because it's a bit useless to deny any association with cinephiles when I consider my weekly movie theatre habit, my movie-reviewing column, my obsessive reviewing and/or my own tendency to use movies as intellectual springboards to just about everything else. So when I saw Kevin Murphy's A Year at the Movies, I didn't have to make any particular effort to understand what he wanted to do.

And his particular premise for the book is simple, insane and admirable: For the entire year of 2001, Kevin Murphy (best known as "Mystery Science Theater 3000's "Tom Cervo") saw at least one movie per day. And no cheating: At least one movie per day in theatres, with a backup plan that included a portable movie projector. Whoa.

It's a quest that would take him on at least three continents to visit theatres big and small, hot and cold. Assorted challenges (such as seeing the same romantic comedy seven times with seven different women) are included in the mix, and the book takes a chapter-per-week (roughly) approach at telling Murphy's odyssey. Every chapter begins with an itemized list of movies seen, and usually takes the form of a short essay on this or that aspect of cinema-going. From the onset, it's obvious that Murphy isn't interested in the films themselves than in the cinema-going aspect. He seldom discusses the merits of specific films, preferring a broader approach suggested by the week's experience. In short, this is a book for moviegoers, not critics.

The first few chapters strike an intentionally jarring note. As Murphy bitches and moans about the sorry state of Hollywood movie-making, doubts begin to creep in: is the entire book going to be like this? Saddled with gratuitous slams at mainstream cinema? It doesn't help that there are contradictions: more artistically challenging films are alternately praised and dismissed, proving that Murphy has as many conflicting opinions as the rest of us. Then there's the supplemental amusement value in reading Murphy complaining about modern audience's talkback and ironic detachment... after spending so many years on MST3K.

But Murphy's initial snobbishness proves to be an integral part of the book's main dramatic arc. By the time new year's eve rolls in, Murphy has learnt to appreciate cinema once more, with perhaps a little bit less condescension. Still, he suffers for his art: his travels take him to googolplexes and the world's coldest theatre (in Canada, obviously), from Australia's outback to the long Scandinavian day. It is, indeed, a moviegoer's odyssey, and from what I could gather from the narrative, he only missed his self-imposed objective once, stuck deep in Italy with a broken projector.

As a fellow movie geek with plenty of stories to tell (2001 was also a big cinema year for me, from plenty of free screenings, movie dates, first movie-reviewing column, 9/11 at the movies, to breaking out of mild depression during ZOOLANDER), it was remarkably easy to cheer for Murphy one the initial unpleasantness rubbed off. In a year that included JOE DIRT, FREDDY GOT FINGERED, CORKY ROMANO and PEARL HARBOUR, I kept saying: Oh, poor you! But imagine my whoops of laughter as Murphy managed to smuggle an entire Thanksgiving dinner to a screening of MONSTERS incorporated, or his fabulous adventures at the world's classiest theatres.

I may be considerably softer on the commercial imperatives of the movie industry (I would love, for instance, to spend time at the business side of Sundance or Cannes) and my threshold for entertainment is far more lenient than Murphy, but there's no denying that we're part of the same tribe of cinephiles. A Year at the Movies is an example of great film writing. Read it and cheer. Heck, no, Murphy and I don't have the same opinions, but that's how it should be... and I certainly enjoyed disagreeing.

 

Light
M. John Harrison

Gollancz, 2002, 320 pages, C$24.99 tp, ISBN 0-575-07026-9

I seldom check other reviews of a book before I write the first draft of my own reviews: doing so could compromise the integrity of my thoughts as they're initially set down. (I have no such qualms checking other reviews between the first and final draft, if only to see if I haven't missed anything, so it's not as if I'm a purist about this.) The exception in this case is that I read a lot of reviews about M. John Harrison's Light well before purchasing the book. It was hard not to, given how the book was uniformly lauded by just about every member of the online SF critic community. From Cheryl Morgan to Matthew Cheney, sfsite to scifiweekly, Light scored reviews that read a lot like "Buy it, read it, it's the best book of the decade, in fact it's so good that I'll never read anything as good, aaargh, I might as well kill myself now."

Wow. How do you resist such unanimous applause? So I chose not to.

But a caveat came attached to just about every recommendation: Light was a difficult book. A stylist's book. A stylistic hologram where every sentence was linked to some other part of the novel.

Now this is exactly the kind of warning that would mollify my enthusiasm. I'm not a very patient reader, nor much of a stylist. In fact, years of reading have revealed that I have something like a tin ear whenever prose quality is concerned: I'd rather wade through journalistic prose to get to a dozen ideas than to read twelve finely crafted sentences containing a single concept.

So I set aside an afternoon and waded in Light with a certain amount of apprehension. I ended up satisfied and relieved, though I fear that my own take on the book will prove to be a lot less enthusiastic than the Big Boys (and Girls) of SF Criticism.

Light is made of three strands of story. The first stars a physicist who murders more people than he does science. The second is all about a starship pilot who, in essence, is so melded to the ship that she barely qualifies as human (and flippantly kills even more people than the physicist). The third is about a burnt-out explorer who lives on the run from the mob. The last two story lines take place in 2400; the first in 1999. But they're all related, oh yes.

The first few pages make it clear that we're in for a long read despite the book's short length and big typeface: the density of the prose is quite amazing, and Harrison had honed the prose for maximum efficiency. It's a style that requires some unpacking, so don't be surprised to rewind and read a few sentences a few times to understand what's going on.

And yet, it's not a bad read. Despite my own problems with fine writing, I had no problems making my way through the book, despite the unpleasant characters, tortured psychodramas and alternating viewpoints. I grew worried that the three strands of the narrative wouldn't mesh together beyond the obvious ironic value, but the last few pages managed to bring everything in a satisfying whole.

But as I closed the book, I found myself wondering if that was it. Competent, sure. Satisfying, yes, but hardly worthy of all the hype. Re-reading the raves, I belatedly noticed that most reviewers had far more affection for the previous works of Harrison than I did (whereas I approached it as, essentially, a first novel by an unknown author), which probably had something to do with it.

But at the same time, I would myself agreeing with some of the most laudatory statements about things I may have dismissed too easily upon first reading. Light increasingly seems like one of those novels that appreciate with time: You find yourself reflecting on what had seemed like an easy trick at the time and realizing that it was, in fact, fiendishly clever of him. Harrison makes it all appear effortless, even matter-of-fact, but isn't that the mark of great art; to make it seem natural?

Clearly, my opinion of the book is shifting upward even as I write this. Should Light come bundled with a reader's guide? Maybe reading a few other reviews could help...

 

Salt
Adam Roberts

Gollancz, 2000, 248 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-57506-896-5

Having been favourably impressed by Stone, my quest in reading the whole Adam Roberts back-catalogue properly begins with his first novel Salt. Even without the benefit of more than two data points, I can see a few trends in the entire Roberts oeuvre.

The first is, obviously, Roberts' fondness for weird planetary environment. Salt's main claim to distinction isn't the story (an early-colonization tale of war between cities of different cultures) but the environment in which it takes place. As the title suggests, the human colonists of Salt end up on a planet covered in deserts of fine salt. There are only two main water bodies to provide essential fertile ground and we're constantly reminded of the difficulties in colonizing what remains a hostile planet. Life on Salt is dominated, well, by salt. Howling winds that can sand-blast everything through fine grains of NaCl. An atmosphere containing mostly chlorine. Vegetation that isn't much more than an organic salt arrangement. Undrinkable water. High levels of solar radiation. It's not particularly convincing (you'll have to suspend your disbelief for a while as the colonists manage to raise the oxygen content of the atmosphere from zero to fifteen percent in a few years, and believe a world map with only a few distinguishing features) but it's a fine and original playground for a short novel.

The second of Roberts' distinctive traits would be a tendency toward gentle stylistic experimentation. Salt's tale of strife is told, alternately, by Petja and Barlei, two representatives from opposing sides. The Alists are anarchists without a central government, organized only through strong motherhood rights and computer-selected work rotas. The Senaarans, on the other hand, are ultra-capitalist fundamentalists with an absolute belief in hierarchy and military power. You can see the basic problem between those two factions, and it doesn't take a long time (say, half the book) before shots are exchanged. Roberts chooses to tell the tale through self-serving alternating viewpoints, with both sides colouring events and perceptions to suit their own beliefs. (With sometimes curious ironies: Petja, we quickly learn, is an anarchist who takes up leadership quite naturally) As with Stone's "translation footnotes", Barlei's manuscript is occasionally interrupted by vocabulary notes from a transcription machine, raising the possibility of built-in censorship in between the teller and the receiver. It's easy to be fascinated by the alternating viewpoints, which makes the structure of the book more than an empty trick.

Unusual world-building and gentle structural/stylistic experimentation are both admirable in a Science Fiction book, and they do much to gain goodwill amongst hard-core fans of the genre. Fortunately, Salt benefits from a certain innate interest beyond those two characteristics: I'm a sucker for colonization stories and so the nuts-and-bolts details of how Salt is tamed into (slight) submission were almost endlessly fascinating. Later, the details of the military engagements between Als and Senaar are similarly interesting, without falling in the usual military SF tediousness. Some may have problems with the pacing (and I do have issues with the last tenth of the book) but hard-SF fans should breeze through Salt.

But easy reading and a bunch of good ideas aren't all it takes to deliver an above-average reading experience. In fact, they may make obvious fundamental problems that wouldn't be so glaring in a badly-written novel. In Salt's case, what quickly becomes obvious is that the opposing factions are so unspeakably dumb that all pretences of a realistic conflict are erased. The "negotiations" between the two groups have no basis in reality as we know it; even the most elementary political rudiments are ignored. Heck, all of Salt's decks are stacked: think "ADD-addled Hippies" versus "Fundie Patriarchs" and reflect on how such political structures could exist. They can't (and neither could such monolithic ideologies stay pure in a population numbering at least hundreds) and so Salt feels a lot like a contrived moral lesson.

And what's the lesson? Wars are pointless. Many die. Wow. Good thing that the book is only 250 pages long, because as it peters out to its weak ending (including a last twenty pages that tells nothing new), I may have been frustrated by the novel's lack of a stronger point. Oh, wait, I am.

No surprise, then, if Roberts's debut is such a mixed bags of impressions. It fulfils a basic level of expectations, but at the same time contains such fundamental flaws that it's hard to take seriously as a contemporary piece of SF. As a fable, it may have worked back in the sixties. But with the amount of serious details and sophistication, it simply invites a degree of real-world scrutiny that it can't withstand. Oh well; on to Roberts' next novel then.

 

2004: A Year of Reading in Review

Sorry, this isn't a retrospective of the publishing universe circa 2004, but a short summary of my own notes for the year. It's provided as a look at my reading habits, for those of you who care.

2004 marked a record-setting year of sorts, given how I read 300 books during the year, easily beating the previous record-holding year of 1995 and 1997 (260 book each) and substantially above my twenty-first century average of 200 books/year. Three factors explain this rise: First, February/March jury duty on the Grand Prix de la Science Fiction et du Québécois, a literary prize which required me to read some 25 books I otherwise wouldn't have. The pace of the year having thus been set, it wasn't much of a stretch to aim for a total of 300. Not coincidentally, I was a far more impatient reader this year: substandard books (of which they were not a few) got the speed-reading treatment. Finally, the month of December was dedicated to reaching the 300 total through selective readings of short books and whole evenings dedicated to reading (oh, sweet sacrifice). The funny thing is that four years ago, I took a look at my declining totals and opined that buying a house meant never having as much time for reading than before; is it any coincidence if I went back to my non-owner totals the year my mortgage got paid off?

(If pages are your thing rather than the number of books, that's 99,033 pages in a year, or an average of 330 pages per book. Yes, dammit, I missed out on the big 100Kpages)

Good news: Diversification is in full effect as merely 28% (83 books out of 300) of my reading material was categorized as Science Fiction, still outshining non-fiction (21%, including humour) as its closest competitor. Fantasy made an unusually strong showing this year at 12%, squeaking under thrillers at 13% (though the mystery/crime genre goes up to 25% once you throw together crime, military fiction and thrillers) Taken together, SF&F (and horror) made up 46% of my reading menu, with a scant 7% left for so-called mainstream fiction and romance. (Yes, romance. Deal with it.)

The vast majority (70%) of the books read this year were bought, not always new. A significant number (8%) came from the Grand Prix secretariat, while gifts accounted for a rather high 15% of the total, and that's because that category includes "getting a whole book collection". Libraries, contests, convention book giveaways and friendly loans completed the total. Only one book, Neuromancer, was re-read from my existing collection.

Given how much of my reading takes place on the bus, it's no surprise if over 61% of all book read this year were in mass-market paperback format. Despite my general loathing of trade paperbacks, they still made up for 21% of all books read, ahead of the 16% in hardcover. (A smattering of oddball formats completed the total, from The McAtrix Derided's mini-hardcover to America (The Book)'s oversize format.)

If ever you find yourself wondering how much a serious reading addiction can cost, come back here and glance at the C$4,787.19 sum of all the cover prices for those 300 books (Average: C$15.96). But, hey, I don't scour used book sales for nothing: It "merely" cost me C$1,301.61 for it all (average: C$4,95, though there's a very long tail after the 45 books that cost me C$10 or more), which is about twice the total for 2003. Yes, paying off the mortgage has created a book-buying monster...

Distribution of books per year followed the usual distribution, what with the majority of works being 2-4 years behind, as per a healthy paperback-to-used-sales life-cycle. Most (53%) of the books read were published after 1999, though a significant number (10%) had a 2004 publication date. There was, obviously, a good correlation between a 2004 publication date and the price I paid for the book, but let's not go there.

55 books (18%) were read in French; all others in English.

Finally, should you be curious, here's my (highly variable) top-16 list for the year:

As you can see from the above list, I wasn't completely disconnected from the flow of current-day publishing in 2004. In addition to the three most-recent titles in the list above, I'll single out The Zenith Angle (Sterling), Iron Sunrise (Stross), Eastern Standard Tribe (Doctorow) and The John Varley Reader (Varley) as noteworthy 2004 releases. For 2003, you can add Phaos (Bergeron; in French), Blind Lake (Wilson), Singularity Sky (Stross), Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (Franken), Veniss Underground (Vandermeer), The Da Vinci Code (Brown), Tilt (Shrady) and Ilium (Simmons) on my recommended short-list. Happy reading...

 

SF Movies of 2004

Ay-yay-yay. You can slice it and dice it any way you want, but 2004 just wasn't a good year for Science Fiction cinema, even if you want to include Fantasy in the list. Oh, there were a few tolerable films here and there... but once again, SF cinema remained the retarded cousin of SF literature this year.

The good

I suppose that once all else is said and done, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW remains my favourite Science Fiction film of the year, though in this particular crowd of misshapen lumps of media SF trash, that's not saying much. But hey: good visuals, chilling premise and excellent SF attitude (The universe doesn't care about you! Knowledge is power! The nerds survive!): Who needs sophistication where there's world-wide death and destruction?

I've got roughly the same attitude toward I, ROBOT: Yes, it's a parody of Asimov's original stories with plot problems the size of Lake Michigan. No, it's not good or memorable if you're not an action junkie. But I was swept along with the film when it became obvious that, at least, it was reasonably authentic to its low aspirations: There are a few amusing nods to Asimov's fiction, a few creditable attempts at world building and a few fantastic SFX shots. There's not much more to it, but it works reasonably well as an action SF film for the blockbuster crowd.

Finally, calling THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT Science Fiction is generous when it's more accurately lumped in the horror or even the fantasy category. But the film reminded me of 1960s SF short stories like few other this year and still comfortably fits in the "speculative fiction" category. It also helps that's its dark, tense, surprisingly scary and, all told, rather good. Well worth a look if you've missed it so far, or have been stuck in the anti-Kutcher hype.

The okay

What can I say about SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW that hasn't been said already? Fantastic retro-SF visuals, lovely classical photography, luscious Gwyneth Paltrow. But that's not quite enough when the dialogue is so ordinary and when the plot-holes accumulate at a ferocious clip. Ah, wouldn't it have been nice if a competent writer had been on-staff? I would love to love this film, but it's just too difficult to be overly indulgent in this case.

I have similar feelings about ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: On one hand, it's inventive, original and clever in how it wraps a pure SF premise in mundane characters. On the other hand, it's far too self-absorbed for its own good, and the gritty visuals end up making the film an unpleasant viewing experience. I love it and I hate it at the same time; what's wrong with me?

Loving and hating are also the end result after watching THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: Vin Diesel is good! Some of the concepts are great! The design is original! But! It's ugly to look at! It doesn't make a shred of sense! My brain stopped working when they tried outrunning the sunrise!

The bad and ugly

RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE: I admit it: It was pretty damn sweet to see Toronto being destroyed as "Raccoon City" and the last two minutes of the film are a blast. But it is too much to ask than to expect more than a trailer's worth of goodness?

What can you say about ALIEN VS PREDATOR? Heck, can you even remember ALIEN VS PREDATOR six months later?

THE FORGOTTEN: Hey, I'd love to talk about this film, but as it happens I can't remember anything about it. My notes say that I shouldn't be surprised nor worry about that.

Oh, and there was a STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 this year. I recall being generally unimpressed by this straight-to-video release, though it got steadily better as it went along, and featured two or three truly good scenes.

The fringes

Lord of the Rings was out of business for 2004, which only left HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN in the running as the dependable fantasy series of 2004. Potter was okay, despite adaptation problems and a generally less-memorable experience. Far more successful was THE INCREDIBLES, by a significant margin the best superhero film of the year. (No, don't talk to me about the saccharine blandness of SPIDER-MAN 2) HELLBOY almost managed to deliver a great film, but somehow ended up just being a good one. The less said about VAN HELSING the best, I suppose, though to this day I remain favourably impressed by the fantastic special effects work and the virtual cinematography. SHREK 2 and ELLA ENCHANTED were both quite good for feature films destined to the younger audience, with ELLA ENCHANTED being an unexpected surprise.

In horror fiction, I've got a huge fondness for SHAUN OF THE DEAD: romance, zombies and laugh-out-loud comedy... what else can you ask for? I was creeped out, but not particularly impressed by THE GRUDGE.

Coming up

We've been here before: After finding out that the previous year has sucked, we take a good look at the list for the next year and foolishly get excited all over again. Well, no more of that. Just let me warm up the Internet Movie Database's power search, search for all 2005 "Sci Fi" releases and let the trashing begin... OK, here we go:

Even at this point, the blockbusters are obvious. These are the films that are going to be promoted until we can sing along with the trailer. Ready? Okay, how about The Spielberg/Cruise WAR OF THE WORLD? How about Yet Another Comic Book Adaptation THE FANTASTIC FOUR? How about the animated ROBOTS, featuring the voice of Robin Williams, always an indicator of good filmmaking? Still not convinced? Okay, how about STAR WARS III? Oh, yeah I can sense that you're as excited as I am; there will be plenty of fanboys in line for this one!

If adaptations are you're thing, maybe you'll be relieved to learn that A SOUND OF THUNDER will finally be released in 2005. Hey, it's got to be good if they've delayed it for a year, right? M'kay, how about THE CHILDREN OF MEN, from the "science fiction" novel of Patricia Higgins Smith? The original was such a good book... How about DOOM, from the video game? These adaptations have such a reliable track record after all... TV Shows to the big screen? Take your pick: RED DWARF, SERENITY or AEON FLUX, anyone? Anime-wise, are you more excited about ASTRO BOY, EVANGELION or POKEMON: DESTINY DEOXYS? Unless it's remakes you want? Which one do you think they'll screw up the most: THE FLY, SECONDS or LOGAN'S RUN, Oooh, you say you're more of a reader, aren't you? Well, which one of the following classic books are you most anxious to see completely misadapted to the big screen? THE DEMOLISHED MAN, FAHRENHEIT 451, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, A SCANNER DARKLY, WATCHMEN or THE HITCHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY? Which integral part of your childhood are you most ready to see desecrated and left in the trashcan of pop-culture three weeks after release?

Of course, maybe you're brain-damaged enough that the mere mention of sequels has you drooling. You're still in luck, for DECOYS 2, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 4: NECROPOLIS are films made just for people like you.

Now, if you'd hang me over a fire and ask me if there are four films I'm intrigued about, I may be tempted to say something about Kurt Wimmer's ULTRAVIOLET, Michael Bay's THE ISLAND, Darren Aronofski's THE FOUNTAIN and Francis Ford Coppola's MEGAPOLIS. But with the strict understanding that they may not come out in 2005, that they may not be very good and that you'd be holding me over a fire, dammit!

Looking at the on-line trailer for the spoof THE HELIX LOADED, I can't decide whether I really, really really want to see this right now, or if hanging over a fire may not be preferable.

And, of course, there's the rest of the list. In alphabetical order: 11 MINUTES AGO, ADINA, THE ADVENTURES OF BUSTER SMITH, ALIEN ABDUCTION, ANIMAL, CARGO, THE CAVE, CONTACT, DELTA, THE GENE GENERATION, THE GHASTLY LOVE OF JOHNNY X, THE GIRL FROM MONDAY, THE GIVER, GODSPEED, HEADSPACE, IT CAME FROM TRAFALGAR, L.V.J., MAN-THING, MANSQUITO, NIGHTFALL, PERFECT CREATURE, RAGING SHARKS, RAIDERS OF THE DAMNED, RAM, REPLICA, REPTILICANT, STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM!, SURVEILLANCE, TARGET AUDIENCE 9.1, TELEVISION, THROUGH THE MOEBIUS STRIP, THE WATER WARRIORS and WICKED PRAYER. Most those will never see widespread distribution. Most of those will be complete trash. But, seeing the year we've just had, the prospect of even one of those having any merit is enough to fill me with hope.

But then I come back to reality and don't expect much. You'll see how right I was in twelve months.