Year: 1998

  • Yat goh ho yan [Mr. Nice Guy] (1997)

    Yat goh ho yan [Mr. Nice Guy] (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, March 1998) What can you say about a Jackie Chan movie? You either like the goofy humor, the incredible real-life stunts, the lousy stories, the insulting sexism and the hammy acting or you don’t. As a confirmed Jackie Chan fan, I can say that it’s one of the most enjoyable movie he’s done, mainly due to a certain lack of repetitiveness that had plagued some of his earlier films. The action is also nicely distributed, with at least four memorable sequences in the movie, including a horse-carriage chase and a construction site fight. The Pepsi-fight is also fun to watch. The ending might be disappointing for martial-arts aficionados, but is a blast if you like monster-truck shows. Better than Operation Condor, if less hilarious. Unpretentious fun, Mr. Nice Guy is exactly what you need to take a 90-minutes brain break.

  • Interface, Stephen Bury

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1995, 583 pages, C$15.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37230-0

    American politics are -rightfully- an endlessly fascinating topic, especially when seen from the outside. With power, greed, money and lately -as if it was the only thing missing-, extramarital sex, you can’t really go wrong. The increasingly mediatic aspect of, specifically, high-office campaigning have been the inspiration for many fine works (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, Primary Colors, ROB ROBERTS…) and Interface is an attractive new high-tech work dealing with the subject.

    Half of Stephen Bury is better known as Neal Stephenson, writer of such SF masterpieces like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. With Interface, he switched technological gears and collaborated with his uncle to produce one of the most entertaining political techno-thriller you’re likely to read this year. Or any year.

    The jacket blurbs will try to sell you Interface as a chilling novel where one presidential candidate has a chip implanted in his brain that lets him get instantaneous audience feedback. The truth is that this particular subplot is fairly insignificant, barely exploited and then quickly forgotten. But the remainder of the novel is even better: Public Opinion moguls, redneck psychos, government-controlling conspiracists, crazy spin doctors, humble housewives, foreign neurosurgeons, nerdy engineers and a few million voters all tangle, fight, debate, act, flee or react to make this a complex, but engrossing story.

    Interface is an incredibly dense novel. This is definitely one that you’ll want to read attentively; not only is there a lot of plot, but there’s also a lot of details. Stephenson is also known by his articles for Wired magazine, and his fascination for the sociologies of America is evident.

    The style of Interface is even better than anything we could have hoped for. Bury’s combined voice is sardonic, clear, often hilarious and always compelling. With some books, the reader feels smarter than the author but here, not only are we conscious that Bury’s smarter, but we accept this without resentment. (“Why didn’t I think of that?”) The amount of detail is incredible; protagonist Cozzano is not described as a rich guy, but his whole family history is unwrapped before us. It’s a measure of Bury’s talent that this exposition and erudition does not feel forced or boring. Similarly, these authors don’t skimp on characterization: Everyone here, despite some very unlikely stunts, feel like actual human characters, and not puppets moved on a stage for our entertainment.

    But beyond all this, beyond the enthralling prose and the grrrreat characters, what makes the novel are the Cool Scenes. Cool Scenes are these almost-perfect snippets of prose that aren’t always related to the plot, but stick in the mind for a while. We’re talking Dune‘s sandworms. Neuromancer‘s public-telephone trick. The snowballs thrown at the Moon in Earth. The cruciform resurrections in the first Hyperion volume. Interface has a lot of these Cool Scenes: A Politician vandalizing an ambulance; a blow-by-blow description of dirty campaign tricks; a psychological test; an unemployed housewife taking on a presidential candidate—and winning. This is what elevates Interface over the rest.

    Despite all of this, Interface‘s conclusion is a bit rushed. Some of the parts don’t quite gel together. Threads are left untied. And we never get the “robo-candidate” novel promised on the blurb.

    But nevertheless, Interface is more than a keenly successful satire on American politics: it’s great, great entertainment. You will probably even learn a few things. Buy it.

  • All Our Yesterdays, Robert. B. Parker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dell, 1994, 466 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-440-22146-3

    It’s become something of a cliché to represent every best-selling author as someone with deep literary aspirations who resort to simple, exciting, shallow novels to support himself while s/he’s writing the Great American Novel. (Even Olivia Goldsmith’s The Bestseller does this…)

    For instance, everyone knows that Stephen King can write shlocko horror novels at the rate of two or three a year, but his fans also know that meanwhile, King is also writing deeply serious, profound works of literature with his Dark Tower series (among other things, including his short stories.)

    In this case, Robert B. Parker is best known as the best-selling author of the detective series “Spencer”. In these novels, a witty Boston private investigator fends off the Mob and other assorted thugs while solving crimes and engaging in witty banter with his psychologist girlfriend and a gallery of sharply-drawn characters.

    I more or less became hooked to Robert B. Parker in early 1997, when one friend gave me a box of crime novels which contained two “Spencer” thrillers. I don’t usually read much crime fiction (perhaps ten-fifteen books a year in good years) but somehow became a “Spencer” fan.

    And now this, a non-Spencer Parker novel.

    All our Yesterdays traces the affairs between two families over three generations, beginning in 1912 and ending in 1994. The legacy of an affair between an Irish revolutionary and an American nurse will ultimately end up in Boston (considering Parker—where else?) being played-out in a city-wide gang war. Three generations of cops, trying to deal with crime and love.

    This book is a much more ambitious novel than any of the “Spencer” novels. It’s also nastier, as if Parker realized he was writing for a more jaded audience than his usual crowd. His characters are darker; his prose style is harsher. People swear, have sex and beat up others even more. (They don’t seem to kill off each other in greater quantities, though.) Even given the not-always-fluffy tone of the Spencer novels, this is something. Unfortunately, a lot of the humor is also left behind. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since Parker retains his grip on how to write crackling dialogue.

    The characters of the novel are deliciously complex, and often end up acting in ways you’re not supposed to expect. The relationships between the characters is more dynamic than in the average novel, and it’s one of the pleasures of the novel to see everything being played out. It may be argued that the small scale of the novel is unsatisfying, but Parker makes simple dialogue more exciting than explosions, so everything evens out. The style is unusually readable, this 450+ pages novel being easily readable over a single day.

    All our Yesterdays, despite its bigger aspirations, isn’t that much of a step over the Spencer series. (A testament of the overall quality of Spencer novels more than anything else) As such, fans of Spencer will certainly enjoy this novel as much as the other ones. Others might see this as a good one-time introduction to Parker’s fiction.

  • The Quintaglio Trilogy, Robert J. Sawyer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1992-1994, ??? pages, C$??.?? mmpb, ISBN Various

    Far-Seer (1992), Fossil Hunter (1993) and Foreigner (1994)

    Funny animals, dinosaurs.

    Funny in the sense that they can lend themselves to a multitude of interpretation; their image in the popular psyche includes things from Barney to the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. You can have’em fluffy or bloodthirsty; there’s room for everything in-between. Even intelligent dinosaurs.

    With the Quintaglio Trilogy, Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer sets out with big ambitions. He set sout to explore no less than the path to our modern Western scientific mindset by telling us a three-volume story about an alien race (said Quintaglios) gradually discovering the truths of the universe. In the few hundred pages composing the trilogy, they (we) will go from Galileo to space-flight. It’s a lot of stuff, but Sawyer manages it well.

    The first book of the trilogy, Far-Seer, is simultaneously the most interesting and the most ludicrous book of the cycle. The narrative structure is familiar; a young protagonist goes on a voyage of discovery that will change him. (The rest of the world will follow) It’s a fine coming-of-age story. Some parts are breathlessly exciting. Unfortunately, this volume doesn’t unfold as much as it is unwrapped by the author. Like most Sawyer novels (although this one is worse than most), Far-Seer relies a lot on suspicious plotting and awfully convenient coincidences. Earthquakes, sudden deaths and leaps of logic happen when they are the most needed.

    The other books are less classically definable, but also rely less of Amazing Authorial Plot Tricks. If the first volume is about Galileo, Fossil Hunter is about Darwin and Foreigner is about Freud. You’ll have to supply the ability to believe that all of this happens in less than a century. With protagonists mostly related to one another.

    But reading the Quintaglio trilogy only for the story is a bit unfair. For one thing, the characterization is adequate and the style is the usually limpid prose that Sawyer has used with great success in his other novels. Like the author’s other novels, the Quintaglio books are readable in a single sitting, although you might want to make them last a bit further. Scientific details are exceedingly well-researched, which brings us to the biggest virtue of the Quintaglio trilogy: World-building.

    The most amazing thing about the Quintaglio trilogy is the way everything holds well together. The world has an impact on the biology, which has an impact on the psychology, which has an impact on individuals… A lot of subtle and unsubtle details show us how the Quintaglio differ from us and how we can emphasize with them. (My favorite is an insult: “Eat Roots!” Pretty offensive statement for a carnivore…!) Despite dealing with beings closely related to our dinosaurs, Sawyer makes them as sympathetic and likable as human characters.

    Careful readers of Sawyer’s work won’t be surprised to find that his usual themes of religion and marital problems find their way into the fabric of the Quintaglio trilogy. A concordance of the Quintaglio world is included at the end of the third volume. Very useful material, but contains spoilers so don’t peek ahead. The illustrations by Tom Kidd (Vol.1) and Bob Eggleton (Vol.2-3) are okay. This trilogy cries out for an omnibus edition.

    A final comment; the third book’s emphasis on Freud might not go down well with a few readers overly unconvinced by Old Sigmund’s theories. It would be a mistake, however, to assume a one-to-one analogy with our human theories; the Quintaglio way of life is suitably different from ours, and we get the drift that Freud would have been vastly more successful (or at least, accurate) there than here. (In a bizarre coincidence, I read Foreigner while my elective psychology class was studying Freud. Talk about synchronicity!)

  • L.A. Confidential (1997)

    L.A. Confidential (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1998) I can’t wait I waited this long to see this movie. To L.A. Confidential, I offer my ultimate movie-criticism compliment: It was as enjoyable as a good book. A triumph of storytelling, L.A. Confidential packs a staggering amount of material in less than three hours, which fly so fast that you’ll never realize it is almost a three-hour movie. Every minute is worthwhile, and few moments are boring. A masterful script is backed-up by excellent performances by all six lead actors (Kim Basinger, yeah!), surprisingly great direction and equally excellent editing/scoring. L.A. Confidential gives me back my faith in cinema. Or rather; I go see movies for things like L.A. Confidential. I’m not sure if Titanic or L.A. Confidential is my favorite film of 1997, but I’m sure that L.A. Confidential is the better movie of the two.

  • Dark City (1998)

    Dark City (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1998) Somehow, great things spring up from nowhere. Last year, low-budget lower-impact movie Gattaca managed to be the best SF movie of 1997, appearing out of the blue and sinking almost as fast. This year (so far), Dark City can claim to the same distinction. It’s not a “warm”, “easy” or “fun” movie, but it’s certainly cool, impressive and tremendously exciting. Dark City is a riff on the unusual themes (for cinema) of memory and identity, well-mixed with a good old-fashioned mortal-against-gods story and a very stylish noir atmosphere. Not your run-of-the-mill SF flick, but possesses terrific editing and visual effects. It’s not without faults, of course (said editing is often over-the-top, premise more “Science-fantasy” than otherwise, parts of the ending are disappointing, some visual effects are uneven) but it’s likely to be some of the best stuff this year.

    (Second viewing, In theaters, July 2000) Ironically for a film about memory, I had nearly forgotten how good a film Dark City was. Decently scripted, wonderfully directed and amazingly designed, this is a film that will endure, most probably because it was designed from the onset to be timeless, which its quasi-retro look and atmosphere. A second viewing reveals wonderful small details that may be missed on first viewing (such as the protagonist’s fish fascination, or a shot where a rock thrown through a window flips over a sign from “Closed” to “Open”) Best of all, this is a film that’s enthralling for its whole duration. Most assuredly one of the best genre films of the decade, Dark City is a must-see-again.

  • Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

    Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1998) I began 1998 with the firm resolution to go only to worthwhile movies. It’s a downer to find that my first movie of the year is so very ordinary. The Blues Brothers still stand in my mind as one of the best musical comedies ever, but this sequel doesn’t even approaches the 1980 original in terms of coolness, musical energy, plotting, general fun or even coherence. Despite having seen the man in person, I’ve been less and less of a fan of Dan Aykroyd ever since his shameless propaganda for paranormal phenomenon, and he sinks even lower after the markedly mercenary intent of this film. (It’s probably no coincidence that it features an explicit Revelation From God and a witch temporarily turning the heroes into zombies.) The musical numbers are so lousily integrated in the movie that we almost expect the little MTV logo to appear in the corner at the beginning and end of each song. Finally, if everything else wasn’t depressing enough, the movie isn’t even very funny, and has no real conclusion to speak of. On the other hand, Joe Morton, John Goodman and the few female roles are somewhat enjoyable. There are also a lot of blues in-jokes you won’t understand.

  • The Bestseller, Olivia Goldsmith

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 1996, 514 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-06-017822-1

    It’s inevitable. After reading a few hundred books, the compulsive reader is not only interested in the stories that the book tell, but in the books themselves. Some become authors; other read about authors.

    So, it’s quite a treat to see such a witty and accomplished novelist as Olivia Goldsmith (The First Wives Club) turn her attention on the wonderfully twisted world of New York publishers. Of course, since this is a best-selling novel about best-selling novels, it naturally follows that adultery, crime, punishment, sex, sex, sex, betrayals, horrid incurable diseases, sex, suicides, multimillion contracts and more sex than usual is portrayed here.

    In short, The Bestseller is a blast.

    At 514 pages, The Bestseller manages to be long and compulsively readable… after a while. The premise is simple: Five books are eventually bought by one of New York’s biggest publishing house. We follow their fates, along with their authors and almost everyone remotely associated with the books’ publication: Editors, agents, librarians and the other members of the family…

    Author number one dies in the first pages of The Bestseller: Her mother goes on crusade to publish her daughter’s masterpiece. Author number two is a best-selling romance writer on the decline: Is she going to be able to keep her sanity in addition to the number one spot? Author number three is a young Englishwoman in Italy: Is love or fame the most important thing? Author number four is not only an author, but the publisher himself: Vanity publishing, or honestly good novel? Author number five is a pseudonym for a husband-and-wife collaboration: What happens when the husband “forgets” about his wife and claims the credit?

    Then there are the agents (the good and the bad ones), the editors (the good and the bad ones) and the publishers. (again; the good and the bad ones) We visit sales conference, the ABA, bookstores, a few author tours. We read about ghostwriters, famous scandals, publishing lore and wisdom… Truly, The Bestseller tries to reward its reader, who should preferably be a Reader.

    Due to the number of plot-lines kept in the air, it does take a while for The Bestseller to cohere. Once it does, however, we’re in for the ride! Goldsmith paints her characters adequately enough to care for them. By the end of the book, it feels like we’ve made new friends.

    The Bestseller, however, is rather heavy-handed. As the novel advances, characters are further divided in two mutually exclusive camps: The Good characters will get most of what they want. The Bad characters will get what they deserve. Melodrama happens, but strangely it does not harm the book. In fact, The Bestseller would have been much less enjoyable with moral ambiguity. Everyone likes a happy ending, and it’s refreshing to be in a narrative where everything happens as it should happen.

    Escape reading? At its best! Goldsmith’s prose is undemanding yet not without a certain elegance. Whatever happens is clearly described (aside from one unfortunately intentional “Let’s hide the gender of this character” misstep.) and there are very few barriers between the reader and the story.

    A few audacious in-jokes pepper this book, further rewarding the attentive reader. But most will be content just to read page after page, sinking in the story like it should be with any big, good bestseller.

  • The Gaea Trilogy, John Varley

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1979-1984, ???? pages, C$??.?? mmpb, ISBN Various

    Titan: Berkley, 1979, 309 pages, C$2.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-04998-1
    Wizard: Berkley, 1980, 372 pages, C$2.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-04828-4
    Demon: Berkley, 1984, 464 pages, C$3.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-08271-7

    In early 1994, I took a chance by buying a hardcover edition of John Varley’s Steel Beach, none too sure that I’d enjoy a 500-pages book by an unfamiliar author. It was one of the first SF novel I bought, and also still one of my favorite. (The killer opening line is: “’In five years, the penis will be obsolete’, said the saleman.”)

    Afterward, I read most John Varley’s stories and his other novels (Millenium, The Ophiuchi Hotline), enjoying most of it and wincing at the film adaptation of Millenium. Varley is often brilliant, even oftener shocking (deliberately so) and also pretty fascinating. He took on issues like biotechnology and gender roles, starring most often than not females as strong protagonists.

    I bought used copies of Titan and Wizard a while back, but never got around to read them before I finally thought of buying the third volume of the trilogy, Demon. Then I sat back comfortably, and read.

    The most shocking thing about the Gaean trilogy is that despite being desperate to shock the reader, it ends up being a very long, somewhat boring and utterly ordinary trilogy. Varley packed more ideas in the slim 200 pages of The Ophiuchi Hotline than his thousand-pages trilogy. Granted, the characters are more fully developed… but was it really worth it?

    Probably not.

    The trilogy opens on an exploratory voyage to a newly-discovered moon of Saturn. A quick sketch of the characters later, the NASA spaceship Ringmaster is trashed, and our characters are stranded on (or is it inside?) an alien world. Titan is perhaps the most interesting volume of the three, since it has the advantage of being the first glimpse at Gaea. A novel of exploration and discovery, it has a more-or-less satisfying payoff. Unfortunately, Varley throws in more than is necessary, and most of his attempts at shock value smack more of over-indulgence than actually useful plot development. Like most adventure stories, it’s also by times a travelogue of less than gripping interest.

    Wizard logically continues the adventures of Cirroco Jones, the protagonist of the Gaean trilogy. A few new characters are introduced, and go through yet more seemingly interminable adventures. More shocking things are introduced and they still don’t feel really unsettling. Again, the conclusion is pretty satisfying, especially if you like the “one-mortal-against-the-gods” kind of story.

    While Demon acceptably conclude Cirroco Jones’ personal evolution, this third tome nevertheless feels disjointed compared to the rest of the series. Perhaps this is a result of the four-year-break between Wizard and Demon, or maybe the sudden emphasis on movies in-jokes that permeates this final book. Even then, the book feels overlong despite the nice character development, and the conclusion feels empty more than would be the norm for the conclusion of a trilogy.

    Even confirmed Varley fans might want to think twice before attempting the Gaean trilogy. It’s not that it’s a particularly horrendous work; technically, it’s pretty good despite its length (somewhat compensated by the character development and the easily-readable prose). However, in a world where there are so many good books and so little time, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that better books should be read before the Gaean trilogy.

  • King of Infinite Space, Allen Steele

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 1997, 312 pages, C$32.50 hc, ISBN 0-06-105286-8

    Admit it: You just want to be immortal.

    No, don’t try this surprised air with me. Nor some half-hearted excuse about how infinite longevity would be infinitely boring. You just want to be able to laugh at evolution, at interest rates and at seasonal fashions. You want to escape the blink that is the human life-span, the ridiculous amount of time that we waste a full third of by sleeping more or less soundly.

    So, what are you going to do about it? Wait until nanotech cooks up a few nanodocs? But what if that takes too much time? Or if you’re pretty sure not to last until then?

    Well, there’s always cryogenics. Pay a fortune in cold hard cash! Stay cool for centuries! Become a corpscicle and amaze all your friends! Be the first one on your block to have a one-way ticket to the future!

    That’s more or less what happens to William Alec Tucker III, the young protagonist of Allen Steele’s A King of Infinite Space. After the particularly memorable 1995 St-Louis edition of Lollapalooza, Alec dies in a car crash only to wake up two centuries later as a brain-damaged idiot, courtesy of rich guilt-ridden parents…

    He soon recovers his mental faculties, and discovers that he’s now a slave of a powerful, shady character along with a few dozen other “deadheads.” Of course, he’ll try to escape…

    A King of Infinite Space is a novel of almost-Heinleinian verve, of lovely narration, of strongly-plotted narrative, of imaginative detail and of some fast-paced action.

    Unfortunately, it’s also a cheat.

    Part of the problem resides in the protagonist. As a drug-using, spoiled, selfish, unfocused young man who’s more an overgrown teenager than anything else, Alec might be a terrific storyteller, but he’s also a terribly unsympathetic character. Of course, this being a coming-of-age novel, he’ll have to grow up. His path toward maturity is fraught with the usual escapes, fights and hard lessons. And then-

    Then there’s the structure of the novel, which doesn’t involve the reader until Alec can finally act against something and make a hero out of himself. Then the novel becomes gripping, and despite a few misgivings about the remainder of the book, this is clearly the work of someone who knows his stuff: Allen Steele has almost won over a new fan here. The tension rises and rises as Alec fights against superior opponents and teach a few things to a few traitors. And then-

    Then Steele pulls the rugs from under our feet and we’re as helpless as poor Alec as he’s told that his dazzling deeds of derring-do were carefully allowed, encouraged or predicted. His victory is as hollow as the asteroid he started on, and the extent of the manipulations exerted on him are as stunning as they are disappointing. He is -as we are- completely dismissed. In other words, ha-ha, it was almost a dream.

    That’s a cheat. That’s a cop-out. That was unfortunately also the only way to conclude the novel… but it’s still cheap.

    So, if being corpsicled is still too expensive an option to visit the future, grab A King of Infinite Space at the nearest library. It’s a good read, it’s even quite pulse-pounding by moments, but don’t get too excited: It’s all a dream. Or almost so.

  • Point of Impact, John Nichol

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Hodder & Stoughton, 1996, 310 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-340-67181-5

    The relationship between authors and their novels is often surprising. After all, it’s their job to feel, to imagine and to describe what the ordinary readership hasn’t got a chance to live. Despite this, most thriller writers have never been chased across countries by international conspiracies. Most Science-Fiction authors have never gone into space. Romance writers are usually comfortably married, and it’s a fair bet to state that their romantic experiences were far less extreme than those of their protagonists.

    Military thrillers (to isolate a particularly interesting segment of the publishing spectrum) often buck this trend by being written by active, or retired military personnel. (Even then, it’s quite an irony to see that the best known of them, Tom Clancy, has never been in the military.) The list is impressive (Dale Brown, Harold Coyle, Ralph Peters, Joe Weber, even the late General Sir John Hackett) and now include ex-RAF pilot John Nichol.

    Fact is, you may have already seen Nichol on TV: During the Gulf War, we was shot down over Iraq and held forty-nine days as a POW. But his career neither began nor ended there: He flew over Bosnia, the South Atlantic and other bases around the world during his fifteen-year career. In short, he knows what he’s talking about when dealing with military planes. After two co-written nonfiction books (Tornado Down and Team Tornado, with John Peters), Nichol flies solo with his debut novel, Point of Impact.

    This novel opens with an airplane crash, a scene we’ll see often during the following three hundred pages. The niggling problem of unreliable machines thus being introduced, we encounter our hero (all-around good guy Drew Miller), his sidekick and his love interest, in addition to the usual crowd of interlinking supporting characters. (Would you believe that the love interest’s father is the Vice Air Marshall? Shocking!)

    Before anyone can catch their breath, the protagonist crashes a few time, sleeps with the love interest and gets to kill a few people. While savvy readers of genre have already seen all of this before, it’s always a relief to see the ingredients being mixed in such a competent manner. As could be expected, the technical details seem plausible enough, and the atmosphere of the flying brotherhood of pilots is sharply drawn.

    This isn’t an overly ambitious work, and it works pretty well most of the time. The romance angle is inconsistently convincing, and the novel does take a while to get going (not to mention that the solution of the “mystery” is fairly evident to readers well-read in computer sciences…) but the ensemble is a pretty enjoyable read up to the end, where…

    [Strong, but vague and ominous, spoilers in next paragraph]

    …Point of Impact takes a depressing tragic turn. Just as all the chips have been turned, just as the hero is proven right, the heavy hand of Fate Itself slaps down Drew Miller and the reader at the same time. Nichol won’t be accused of a gratuitous happy-ending. It can be argued that it was the only way to wrap up the novel decently, but even then, this conclusion is unsatisfying, with unnecessary suspense about the identity of a survivor (Note to authors: Do it only if you have to.) and a suddenly passive love interest. Then again, an unhappy ending is just the kind of thing that give (unwarranted) credibility to an author. But after the meanly efficient Bosnia passage, it’s not as if Nichol could be accused of being an “easy” author.

    This caveat aside, Point of Impact is a slightly superior military thriller. The British perspective is different enough to interest even the slightly-jaded American genre fan, and the novel makes great summer reading once it takes off.

  • The Truth About Uri Geller, James Randi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Prometheus, 1982, 234 pages, C$26.50 tpb, ISBN 0-87975-199-1

    Do you honestly believe that aliens have secret agreements with our government? Do you trust the claims of clairvoyants, prophets, astrologers or new-age devotees? Do you think telepathy is a proven, significant phenomenon? Do you consider The X-Files as Holy Gospel, not to mention the Holy Gospel as literal truth?

    If so, you’re not reading the good reviewer.

    Faithful readers (if there are any), will remember my skepticism -if not outright disgust- toward alleged manifestations of the paranormal and other wacky money-making enterprises on the edge of so-called science and credulity. Unfortunately, such a viewpoint isn’t popular (ie: does not cater to fantasies) and so “psychic healers”, “alien abductees” and “government conspiracies” continue to exist, and sell, and sell, and sell…

    It’s somewhat reassuring to find that still a few rational people exist in the world, and that the fine folks at Prometheus Press are publishing their books. The Truth About Uri Geller is one of the most lucid non-fiction book I’ve read in a while.

    As a faithful reader of the Skeptical Enquirer, I’m quite familiar with the names of James Randi and Uri Geller. The general public might not remember the names (hurrah!) but let me do a brief historical recap:

    In the early seventies, America discovered a young, handsome psychic named Uri Geller. Geller allegedly had the ability to read minds, to bend keys and spoons, to read through envelopes and to repair stopped watches. His powers were examined by one of the USA’s biggest scientific institute. He appeared on the Johnny Carson and the Merv Griffin show. His own “psychic” shows attracted thousands. He was repeatedly used as “proof” that psychic powers existed.

    Yeah, riiight.

    Time can do many amazing things, even more amazing that the elaborate parlor tricks of a magician-turned-psychic-phenomenon. Today, the name Uri Geller draws a blank among the general populace. Even if a quick Internet search revealed that Geller is still in the psychic business, he has lost considerable fame since his early seventies heydays.

    Even if it would be an overstatement to say that The Truth About James Randi has anything to do with it, this devastating exposé might explain why Geller didn’t have any staying power, psychic or otherwise.

    James Randi is a magician. He deals with illusions; that’s how he makes a living. But as he makes clear in this book, the only difference between him and Geller is that Randi at least has the moral integrity to admit that he’s not a seer, a psychic or a telepath. Everything he does is at the grasp of any normal person, and he “proves” this over and over again in the book.

    I say “prove” because the biggest flaw of the book is that Randi cannot reveal the how of certain illusions, since it would be like revealing trade secrets to competitors. Magic has a strict code of honor, and thus you have to be content with Randi’s claims that he can (and did) duplicate Geller’s feats without any kind of supernatural intervention.

    [January 1999:  After seeing the two first “Secrets of Magicians” TV shows -who do reveal how magic tricks work-, I am more inclined than ever before to trust James Randi over Uri Geller.]

    But even then, Geller’s account contains enough verifiable claims that it’s impossible to take Geller’s claims seriously afterward. Simple logic, a bit of quick comparisons, and outside sources serve Randi’s purposes wonderfully: Uri Geller simply cannot stand up to scrutiny.

    In retrospect, The Truth About Uri Geller‘s greatest contribution is to show how easy it is to fool people who want to be fooled. That’s how Geller did it, mostly, and that’s why we must develop at least a sense of skepticism about these claims. Read it and weep, rage, but above all, get an education.

  • Wrath of God, Robert Gleason

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Prism, 1994, 397 pages, C$20.00 tpb, ISBN 0-06-105311-2

    You’ve never read a book like this. It’s a promise.

    A post-apocalypse setting. A Mongol horde invading the United States. Stonewall Jackson, George Patton and Amelia Earhart brought back from the dead through time along with a triceratops. A torturer named “The Cuddler”. A bunch of good guys led by a tough grandmother who has an eagle as a pet. And so on…

    Stylistically, it’s also a fair bet to say that you’ve never read a book written this way before: The first fifty pages are as slow as molasses, the pacing picks up and drops off at strange intervals, some characters bite it unexpectedly, others survive needlessly.

    Then, what is Wrath of God? Religious allegory? Cheap patriotic propaganda? Slightly above-average men’s adventure? Science-Fantasy? Military fiction? Mystical adventure? All of the above? In the end, this novel looks more like a 400-pages indulgence than any kind of coherent story.

    Science-Fiction fans probably won’t remember the name Robert Gleason, but should be interested to know that he was Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s editor. (Readers of Niven’s N-Space will remember how an early outline for Footfall became Lucifer’s Hammer when their editor said “Drop the aliens; do the asteroid novel.” Gleason was that editor.)

    So it could be natural to assume that Wrath of God would be slam-bang SF with dashes of mainstream narrative structures and a few random wacky post-apocalyptic details. The truth is harder to describe.

    There’s no SF here despite the time-travel, which is much more a fantastic/spiritualist device than serious extrapolation… a flaw often repeated: In Wrath of God, it’s difficult to separate the seriously earnest with the ridiculously tongue-in-cheek. A ground-bound eagle named Betsy Ross, symbol of an impotent America? Pleeeaaaassseee…

    There are six pages of raving quotes at the beginning of Wrath of God, but a quick glance will reveal that most of these quotes are from authors. And Gleason’s an editor, get it? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!

    By times ridiculous and boring or exciting and gripping, Wrath of God is disjointed, and the ultimate irony is that Gleason might have needed a good editor to suggest necessary changes to this novel. Characters could have been tightened, the action could have been more evenly distributed… even the writing could have been improved. (Although not by much: For all its faults, Wrath of God is written with a certain flourish.)

    And let’s not get into not-so-subtle errors of logic and credibility, such as why a Mongol horde would take the trouble to invade the United States…

    It would be a mistake to assume from the preceding paragraphs that Wrath of God is a worthless book. Truth be told, there’s a certain raucous enjoyment to be gleaned from it, much like shlocko, over-the-top B-Movies can be much “better” than preachy, ponderous Oscar-list motion pictures. It’s still a bit depressing to find here a variety of elements that don’t quite manage to gel together, despite offering a few intriguing possibilities. It ain’t The Stand, despite what the cover blurb promises.

    Ultimately, Wrath of God can’t be recommended strongly, although it’s a definite curio for the curious reader. Niven and Pournelle can rest safely, knowing that their jobs remain secure.

  • "So, What Are the Boys Saying?", Michel Gratton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Paperjack, 1987, 294 pages, C$4.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-7701-0976-4

    Living near Ottawa like I am, (and currently working as a part-time civil servant) it’s impossible to be indifferent to the continuous stream of political commentary coming down from Parliament Hill and its assorted observers. Canadian politics might be appreciated only by a select group of Canadians (if not anyone else) but when it rocks, it rocks.

    For anyone south of the border not following Great White North Politics, don’t bother to read further.

    In 1984, Michel Gratton went from being columnist at the French-Canadian newspaper Le Droit to being a member of Mulroney’s Prime Minister Office as his deputy press secretary. He stayed there until 1987, when he was driven to resignation by a hostile press corps, an indifferent government and unsavory allegations of misconduct.

    Gratton’s stint as a member of Mulroney’ staff neatly paralleled the incredible rise, and as incredible (first) fall of one of Canada’s most interesting Prime Minister. “So, What are the boys saying?” is the chronicle of these three years.

    And what three years they were! Coming from almost nowhere, Brian Mulroney won the election under John Turner’s nose in the biggest landslide in Canadian Politics history. The fatal blow for the Liberals happened during one of the televised debates, when Mulroney thoroughly slammed Turner on the issue of patronage, calling him a liar on national TV.

    The first half of Gratton’s book tells of the election, and introduces the principal players of the book. The tale is told crisply, and this part of the book reads more like a Canadian version of Primary Colors than anything else. (minus the odd sexual scandal involving the candidate, although there’s something about John Turner and backside-patting here… but I digress.) The bit about the fateful televised debate is especially exciting, a real-life event that has its place in political fiction.

    But power had a few surprises for the Conservatives. Not only did the Canadian electorate recover with their temporary infatuation with the Conservatives, but the Mulroney government had to deal with a seemingly-unbreakable chain of various scandals. Rotten fish, shady land deals, inflated expense accounts and other misconducts shook the Conservative approval rating until is had sunk to impressive lows.

    This section of the book also deals with Mulroney abroad, and visits of foreign dignitaries in Canada. The various stories about the arrogant American press office are almost worth the price of the book itself…

    Boys is incredibly engrossing reading. The style is brisk, frequently hilarious, and studded with carefully chosen anecdotes. Gratton’s journalistic instincts makes this an exceptional overview of the Canadian political scene during the mid-eighties.

    But Gratton’s own story is less fascinating. An autobiography works better when you can like the person telling it, and that’s not really the case with Gratton: The book turns sour near the end, when he is accused of sexual harassment by a few ex-girlfriends (of which we are told there are many). Not only is Gratton’s character put in question, but his own revelations make him appear more as an unlikable lout than a wrongfully accused man.

    Still, it’s worthwhile reading for the select few interested in Canadian politics. Unfortunately, while Gratton’s book nicely wraps up his own involvement with the Mulroney government, it only tells half the tale. Events after 1987 would find Mulroney’s Conservatives re-elected with a majority, only to be nuked out of the political landscape in 1993 after a lackluster five years of government which would see such quiet revolutions as Free Trade, a new Federal tax (the GST) and another string of scandals… The wheel turns!

  • The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1997, 579 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-10652-X

    There’s SF and then there’s SF.

    The difference between the two, as the saying goes, is unquantifiable yet evident. The difference between the average SF novel and the Hyperion series is similarly hard to isolate, yet there is no doubt that it is there.

    The Rise of Endymion is the fourth -and last, we’re told- volume of the enormously popular “Hyperion” series, by Dan Simmons. Since the first two volumes came out in 1989 and 1990, most serious SF fans have since read the two first volumes of the series. The Hyperion Cantos (Simmon’s name for the first two books) delighted jaded and newer readers alike with a complex story that seemingly used almost every Science-Fiction device in existence. The style was marvelous, the ending was apocalyptic and the ensemble was simply awe-inspiring.

    Endymion fast-forwarded a few centuries after, and posited an empire built by a Christian Church with the literal power of resurrection. But most of the novel’s 500-odd pages was about an extended chase between the Church and a trio composed of a young girl, a blue android and a wholly average man called Raul Endymion.

    At the beginning of the fourth volume, events conspire to bring the young girl, now destined for messiah-status, out of hiding and in direct combat against the Church. More adventures, more revelations, more ends of empires ensue. Characters meet fates that are mostly tragic.

    The Rise of Endymion has the merit of not only being a good book in itself, but also of enhancing its prequel. Whereas Endymion seemed to go nowhere slowly, The Rise of Endymion finally delivers the payoffs of all setups. Enigmas held mysterious ever since the first volume (the identity of the Shrike, the role of the cruciforms) are explained, and the seemingly senseless travelogue of book three now makes more sense. (It’s still too long, but that’s a flaw shared by this book too.)

    Simmons weaves into his tale a great many thoughts about information ages, religion, sentience, poetry and theo/philosophy. Yet, surprisingly, this space-opera is not harmed by such statements as “love is one of the universe’s major forces” and a ritual of blood-drinking that’s part salvation, part bizarrely Christian. These musings go on for pages at a time; whether or not you’ll find them interesting is up to personal preference. As a heroine, Aenea is a bit of a cypher… but that’s completely intentional.

    There are also a few inconsistencies, much of them due to the inherent nature of A> time travel, B> the gift of prophecy or C> antagonists set up as all-powerful but ending up being fought with bare hands.

    Old friends of the Hyperion saga make their final (sometime surprising) appearances. The role of Colonel Kassad and Rachel Weintraub, in particular, are quite unexpected, but still logical. No long-standing fan of the series should be disappointed by the pilgrims’ final fates.

    Ultimately, though, it’s not the galaxy-spanning tale of corrupt religion and messianic fate that holds The Rise of Endymion together: It’s the love story between Aenea and Raul Endymion. In a genre where romance is so shoddily treated, it’s nice (yes, nice) to find at least one example of solid SF married to solid romance. It does takes a while to begin, and a further while to be believable, but the payoff is one of the most gripping conclusion in recent memory.

    The characters are great (all of them), the prose is superb (truly some of the best in the genre) and this novel has the unusual quality of making you feel in addition of making you think. For this, and more, The Rise of Endymion isn’t only good, but great. Read it and weep.

    [April 1998: Rise of Endymion is nominated for the 1998 Hugo Awards.] [September 1998:…but doesn’t win.]