Year: 1999

  • Election (1999)

    Election (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 1999) This film despite what one might infer from the plot (which revolves around a High-School Council presidential race), is too original to be simply considered a “teen movie”. Unfortunately, as with Rushmore, it’s not enough to be original is you want to be enjoyable. Election is -fittingly enough for its chosen sub-genre- a film with identity problems. It’s a tale where the protagonist is not the good guy and the antagonist is not the bad girl. It’s a tragedy with pretensions of comedy seen through the eyes of the loser who thinks he did the right thing. I ended up cheering for Tracy Flick and agreeing with her assertion that “great minds are always brought down by idiots”. As a former High School council president, I experienced a bit of flashback when a candidate voted for the other because “it didn’t seem right to vote for myself”: Been there, done that, won the election. Election, on the other hand, is a mixed bag of elements not fully integrated.

  • Macrolife, George Zebrowski

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1979, 284 pages, C$3.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-55483-6

    One of the unique aspects of Science-Fiction as a genre is that is some instance, it’s possible for a novel to be completely interesting while also being completely rotten. George Zebrowski’s Macrolife is a good example of this.

    In many ways, this is an incompetent novel. For most of the books, you can’t discern the characters, and it doesn’t help that most are members of a same anglo-saxon family, so you’re stuck with boring names like Jack, Richard, John, James… Everyone talks the same way and act identically so that it’s a waste of time to figure out the characterization.

    The novel is divided in three parts, and I’ll be the first to admit that the third one should have been a two-page epilogue, not a thirty-five page chapter. The pacing is also sadly deficient in the middle section, with our protagonist going down on a primitive planet to… er… do some stuff I couldn’t get interested in. Whoever Macrolife‘s editor was, s/he could have spend some more time on its structure. The prose is okay, though Zebrowski didn’t bother with dialogue.

    Which leaves us with the first section and segments of the second part. Fortunately, the novel improves sharply in the fist section. “Sunspace: 2021” resemble Clarke’s work in many ways, with its portrait of a future human society just beginning to step into space. The near-magical “bulerite” element isn’t very convincing, but it does sets up a few interesting situations. More significantly, this section revolves around an event that doesn’t require a lot of effort to be gripping; the end of Earth always requires some attention..

    The beginning and ending of the second sections also have some interest, mostly in the description of how humanity is able to evolve beyond Earth and even thrive elsewhere. Though I’m not really familiar with the whole of Zebrowski’s work, this really fits well with the end of his 1998 novel Brute Orbits and elements of The Killing Star, his 1995 collaboration with Charles Pellegrino.

    The true value of Macrolife, as is the norm for a hard-SF novel, are the ideas that it showcases. Though it would be useless to pretend that the notion of space colonization is as surprising today as it was in 1979, Zebrowski makes an interesting argument and his “Macrolife” (ie; human settlements as cells of a super-organism) terminology is thought-provoking. Though the novel is twenty years old, it hasn’t perceptibly aged and compares in theme with the latest hard-SF. (It’s fun to see Greg Egan’s Diaspora as an update to Macrolife. Or maybe not.) In any case, this is a novel of considerable ambition. As the blurb says, “From the end on the world to the end of the universe”!

    One can’t say that Macrolife has much of a reputation today. (Though its worth noting that the Library Journal selected it as one of the “100 best SF novels”) It’s unfortunate, given that it seems as significant -in SF terms- as its contemporaries like Sheffield’s The Web Between the Worlds and Clarke’s The Fountain of Paradise. In fact, I’m surprised that “Macrolife” as a term hasn’t received much more attention (an Altavista search reveals only 35 mentions) in this age of enlightened environmentalism and impending private colonization of space.

    You can easily dismiss Macrolife on literary merits; no argument about that. You can scoff at the weak characters and chances are that they’d agree. You can even ditch most of the last two-third with nary a qualm. But you can’t really argue that the novel isn’t worth a look. Such is the strength of SF, which can get away with escaping most of the criteria of good fiction and still end up with a worthwhile result.

  • Desperado (1995)

    Desperado (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, May 1999) “Oh, I’ll just re-watch the first fifteen minutes” (…) “Hmmm, I’ll just watch until after Salma Hayek comes in” (…) “Hey, there’s a good action scene coming up after the nude scene” (…) “Gee, what the heck, I’ll watch it all again”. Desperado sits on my Top-100 favorite movies list and re-watching it only highlights why it’s there: The story in itself is ordinary (man goes after bad guy, gets in gunfights, meets girl) but the treatment is superlative. The directing style is wonderfully kinetic, the script pushes everything over the top, Banderas and Hayek make a couple of Beautiful People… Desperado is a modern western with an far-east attitude, a mix of John Wayne and John Woo with a style of its own. If anything, it’s even more interesting the second time around, as you’re able to appreciate the technique even more. (Though the “missiles” effect now looks obvious.) Watch it again.

    (Third viewing, On DVD, April 2004) Goodness gracious, I so love this film. The action scenes are low-budget miracles. The character introductions have seldom been more effective. The whole western-meets-Hong Kong-action vibe is delicious. The principal casting is perfect. Salma Hayek has rarely been so drop-dead gorgeous. I’m still pretty annoyed by the let-down ending, but at least the good audio commentary by writer/director Robert Rodriguez helps to explain why it feels like such a cheat. (While a bit less polished than his usual commentaries, Rodriguez’s track is very informative as to the technical making of the film) A smattering of small documentaries complete the special edition DVD package, a must for any action enthusiast.

  • Atomic Train (1999)

    Atomic Train (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 1999) A pretty curious made-for-TV movie, structurally speaking. Presented in two two-hour parts, it has the particularity that the first half (A train racing to destruction!) is far more involving than the second one (Denver destroyed by an atomic explosion, the aftermath!). Some easy cutting would not only have brought the movie back to a more manageable 120 minutes, without sacrificing the action sequences. At least three useless “family drama” subplots bring the movie to a grinding halt. The result is a stupid (no points for science or logic, here…) bloated mess that damnably shows the promise of a pretty decent action B-movie.

  • Affliction (1997)

    Affliction (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 1999) The story of a man’s slow and inevitable descent in insanity and violence. It’s not a feel-good movie; there is no redemption. (Though there’s a car chase) Call me crazy, but I prefer happy endings. On the other hand, the performances are top-notch and the direction surprisingly interesting at a few moments. I also, for some reason, really liked Willem Dafoe’s narration and character. If you’re able to distinguish between enjoyment and appreciation, you’ll find that this is a very good movie, but that you probably won’t watch it again for fun. Not exactly a good date movie. (Oh, and it’s perfectly clear that no one in the production of the movie knows anything about sub-zero winter and snow; just watch Nolte and Defoe try to shovel the garage driveway. Hilarious!)

  • Starlight 2, Ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 318 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86184-2

    In his introduction to Starlight 2, editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden reopens a well-stirred can of worms by noting, unapologetically, that his anthology series includes both Science-Fiction and Fantasy. The SF-vs-Fantasy debate has torn apart many otherwise-solid relationships, destroyed entire families and plunged not a few countries into internal strife. Well, maybe not, but in the fannish community, there are few more acrimonious subjects.

    Hayden, -noted contributor to rec.arts.sf.written, in addition of being one of the best editors in the SF business- forces the debate in his introduction to Starlight 2, when he writes such combative statements as “[both genres] share the same readers” (not sure) and “much of SF is fantasy with hardware” (much of bad SF, usually) as well as his counterpoint to David Hartwell’s “all-‘true SF’” credo for his “Best SF” anthology.

    Past this rather doubtful three pages, Starlight 2 is a collection of thirteen Science-Fiction and Fantasy stories. There’s something for everyone, and that’s the biggest failing of the anthology.

    I’ll be honest and admit that I skimmed over the stories by Suzanna Clarke, Carter Scholz, Ellen Kushner, Esther M. Friesner, Angelica Gorodischer (as translated by Ursula K. LeGuin): Life’s too short to waste on that icky fantasy stuff, especially when it gets boring on page two and the last few pages offer no big surprises.

    The anthology starts off with a bang with Robert Charles Wilson’s Divided by Infinity. Smooth introduction, great paradigm change(s), terrifying conclusion, great premise. If only the other stories would have been like that…

    M. Shayne Bell’s “Lock Down” offers the promise of a much better story that what is actually delivered. No big conflict, no development… just… almost a vignette. Disappointing. With luck, Bell will develop his premise into something more substantial. Maybe a novel?

    Raphael Carter is almost invariably a constant joy to read, and “Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation” is no exception. Despite a relatively meaningless premise, the story is presented, quite originally, in the style of a scientific research paper. Fun stuff.

    Martha Soukup’s The House of Expectations veers close to comedic territory at times, but finally ends up as one of the best -and most poignant- stories of the volume. Classically structured and clearly written, it’s a pleasure to read.

    Many people will be surprised by David Langford’s A Game of Consequences. Not because it’s not up to Langford’s usual high standards of writing, but because it deals with rather more serious themes than the British author’s usual brand of comedy. One of the best of the volume.

    “Access Fantasy”, by Jonathan Lethem, conforms to expectations of difficult reading (one story, one paragraph), cardboard future, ironic humor and inconclusive conclusion that we’ve come to expect from Lethem. Surprisingly, it’s also a lot of fun. Who would have thought?

    Geoffrey Landis is best known for hard-SF, but Snow looks a lot like pure realism. The sympathetic protagonist, however, is miles removed from the usual clichés or squeaky-clean hard-SF protagonists. A very good short-short story, with a twist.

    Finally, we come to Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life, which always seems poised of the verge of something much bigger and much better, but ends up rather weakly, with the sense that an opportunity was missed. I still think it’s a pretty good linguistic SF story, but a lot of the extra stuff should have been cut.

    SF or Fantasy, magic or reality, Starlight 2 offers a collect of sophisticated speculative fiction. Though I didn’t find it as uniformly marvelous as some other critics (too much fantasy, not enough oomph in the conclusions), it’s good reading as long as you know which story to pick and read. “True-SF” fans, however, should be best served by the Hartwell anthologies.

  • Trunk Music, Michael Connelly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Little Brown, 1997, 383 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-316-15244-7

    The biggest problem with crime fiction nowadays is that a lot of it tends to be written as part of a series. You know the setup: One author will create a really good protagonist, and then re-use him in multiple books. Never mind the unlikeliness of someone going though all of these adventure; it seems to be the norm.

    Publishers will undoubtedly tell you that this is a great way to sell more books. If a reader likes one book, then s/he’ll be more likely to try the next book in the series. For the authors, it arguably allows them to concentrate on the all-important plot and proceed with an already-established protagonist in a familiar environment.

    Unfortunately, there is a darker side to this practice. The most significant is that this assumed background gets more inclusive as the number of books piles up. Readers jumping into a series in mid-stream can be bewildered. It becomes a major challenge for an author to find ways to integrate this background in their newest novel to allow them to pick up new readers. (The limitations imposed by the existing background are of no relevance to this review and will thoughtfully be ignored here.)

    Trunk Music is the fifth book in Michael Connelly’s series about an LAPD detective with the unlikely name of Hieronymus (“Harry”) Bosch. Novice readers need not worry about jumping in mid-stream, however: Bosch begins the novel by opening his first case since coming back from disciplinary leave. As Harry gets back into the Homicide-solving business, we readers are offered the opportunity to meet with his new colleagues and reflect with the protagonist about how his job has changed. Nice.

    Furthermore, Harry’s first case isn’t your boring run-of-the-mill murder: The victim is discovered stuffed into the back trunk of his car, a white Rolls-Royce. His name: Tony Aliso. His profession: Movie producer. Of course, things are about to get far more complex. The wife reacts strangely. The Organized Crime unit reacts strangely. Internal Affairs reacts strangely. We’re in for a suitably twisty maze of a plot.

    Almost every interesting element of crime fiction is present in Trunk Music: California, Murder, Las Vegas, Double Agents, Theft, Escapes, Hollywood, Mafia, Romance, Blackmail, Los Angeles, Internal Affairs, Racism, Prostitution, Cars, Old Flames, Gambling, Corruption, Interrogations, Movies, FBI… the list goes on. The result is a complex novel that uncharacteristically remains understandable throughout.

    Even more convincing is the accumulation of procedural detail. It’s crucial for most crime fiction to convince the reader of their plausibility and Trunk Music is undoubtedly a novel of the nineties, with its post-Rodney King LAPD, attention to Employment Equity issues and usage of modern communication and audiovisual equipment.

    Connelly’s writing style has a lot to do with the novel’s success. His characters are well-introduced and suitably handled. Nobody’s perfect, and even the hero is motivated by goals that aren’t always admirable; watch as his initial handling of the case is more a case of personal advancement than reasonable procedure. The dialogue is spot-on and there are more than a few chuckles to be enjoyed from Harry Bosch. Great Scenes also pepper this novel, raising it from the ranks of the merely good novels to the status of a little great yarn.

    Despite being a fifth-of-a-series, Trunk Music starts out in a way that’s easy to immerse newer readers. Then the plot, the characters and the details take over and the result is nothing short of a superb police procedural. Publishers will undoubtedly be pleased to note that gee, if Trunk Music was that good, it might be worthwhile to read Connelly’s next book…

  • Shadows of Steel, Dale Brown

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 1996, 367 pages, C$33.95 hc, ISBN 0-399-14139-1

    Another book, another enemy, another war.

    It must not be an easy job to be a techno-thriller writer. The standard formula -to which one must adhere in order to keep readers- requires at least one non-negotiable variable: An implacable enemy who threaten America’s interests. In the eighties, such an enemy was easy to find: Every country behind the Iron Curtain was an acceptable foe and most novels featured Evil Soviets.

    Of course, things weren’t as simple after the Berlin Wall came down. Writers have been forced to use drug dealers, American Terrorists, India, Russian extremists and other more-or-less convincing enemies.

    Iran, however, has always been a good enemy (Clancy’s Executive Orders, Coyle’s Sword Point, etc…) and in Shadows of Steel, we go back to the tried-and-true Iranians, whose usual anti-American stance and aspirations toward becoming a regional power makes up for at least a willingness to fight.

    On the other hand, these are the enlightened nineties, and only a few of Iran’s craziest military officers wish war with the United States. No matter; before long we’re bombing them again. What else do you need to know about a Dale Brown novel?

    If it’s any good? Tough question. Shadows of Steel is a competent technothriller, but invites comparison with other works that will inevitably make it seem less enjoyable than it actually is.

    The biggest problem with Shadows of Steel is that it’s part of Dale Brown’s long-running “Patrick McLanahan” series. It brings together characters from many novels, including Skymaster‘s Jon Masters, Day of the Cheetah‘s Wendy McLanahan and Storming Heaven‘s Kevin Martindale. In internal chronology, it takes place after Brown’s second novel Day of the Cheetah. And there lies the difficulty. Brown’s 1989 novel wasn’t very realistic, featuring several fictional high-tech devices in a future seven years removed and postulating a dastardly plot by the Soviets to steal one of America’s newest fighters. On the other hand, it’s still one of Brown’s most exciting novels: Plausibility was more than compensated by slam-bang action and the result was one heck of a good read.

    You can guess the rest: Shadows of Steel is so much more down-to-earth (fewer high-tech, more jargon, more actual procedures) that compared to Day of the Cheetah, it’s downright boring. Not entirely boring, mind you: Brown is incapable of delivering anything else than a good read. But the difference between the two novels is shocking, almost as if a soft-spoken attorney reminded you of his past as a Black Panther.

    Either Brown wants to be exciting, or he has to match his series’ coherence with real-world markers. There is increasingly less middle ground. Unlike Tom Clancy, whose “Jack Ryan” novels are now ludicrously diverged from reality, Brown is trying to take his wilder earlier novels and tighten them up even more closely with current events. It doesn’t work. Time for new singletons.

    Two other major annoyances: Along with the previous Storming Heaven, Shadows of Steel also feels like a series of good-to-great scenes linked together by a thin thread of plot. More ominously, Shadows of Steel concludes on a note that more than feels like if the whole novel was a setup for Brown’s next book (Fatal Terrain).

    Is Shadows of Steel still worth a read? As usual, the answer -despite the relative lack of excitement in the plotting- is still that military aviation fans will find here one of the most polished novels dealing with their favorite subject. Non-fans need not enlist.

  • Mars Underground, William K. Hartmann

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 428 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-58039-7

    The most unfortunate consequence of Science-Fiction’s fascination for Mars during the nineties is the production of the planet’s definitive future history. From now on, every novel about the Red Planet have to contend with the towering shadow of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, which more or less said everything that needed to be said seriously about Mars until we eventually get there: Lesser Mars novels like Jack Williamson’ Beach Head are eaten for lunch by Robinson’s Mars.

    It seemed to me that the only serious way to avoid comparison to Robinson’s story was to go gonzo and write far-out novels like Greg Bear’s Moving Mars, so different from Robinson’s history that it couldn’t be compared. So, I didn’t really expect anything like Mars Underground to succeed, given the way it almost retreads the first half of Red Mars. And yet…

    Mars, 2032. We will follow four persons: Dr. Alwyn Stafford is the closest thing to a Martian: He’s been on the planet for almost twenty years and continues his research in Martian life-forms. Carter Jahns (shades of Burrough’s “John Carter”?) is one of the engineers responsible for planning human expansion on Mars. His friend Philippe Brach is the French artist-in-residence on Mars. And, disrupting the cards by her arrival from Earth is Annie Pohaku, news journalist.

    One day, Stafford disappears while on a solitary exploration trip. The whole Martian contingent is mobilized to find him, including Jahns. The clues they find are puzzling, suggesting deliberate intent to confuse the situation rather than accidental disappearance. But why, and how, would Stafford disappears? The story gets even more complex when Annie gets much closer to Philippe and then to Carter… serial seduction, or ways to ensure she doesn’t miss a potential scoop?

    For a newcomer to science-fiction, William K. Hartmann has impressive credentials: Multi-degree scientist involved with projects such as Mariner 9 and the Mars Global Surveyor Mission, Hugo-nominated author/co-author of eleven science books, be brings both knowledge and technique to Mars Underground, with fascinating results.

    The biggest surprise, I suspect, is that despite Mars Underground‘s clear membership to hard-SF, it is written with an elegance uncommon to the subgenre and an attention to characters that is far removed from the quick sketches we’re almost used to read. Uncommonly, this novel centers almost as much on a love triangle than on the promise of a good old-fashioned scientific mystery.

    As far as enigmas go, this is a good one. Stafford’s disappearance has a few quirky aspects that can’t be easily explained by Jahns, who presses on further and further until he discovers an explanation, then another, then a conspiracy… The intrepid Annie is with him at each step of the way, but whose side is she really on, besides herself? Hartmann keeps the reader guessing throughout the novel, only letting the answers appear near the end. Even though the conclusion isn’t as strong as it could have been, it’s spectacular enough to be interesting.

    Ironically, it’s the reverse that’s true of the novel: While Mars Underground is very strong in terms of characters, plotting and overall writing, it’s not as spectacular as it could have been. Hartmann stays as close as possible to the realm of the possible -his Mars is uncannily *real*- and while the result is commendable, it’s not as awe-inspiring as one might have expected. This is not really a failure as it is a slight disappointment, and even then not very much. Mars Underground is a better-than-average Hard-SF novel that’s surprisingly human and should gather a readership beyond the usual school of Science-Fiction realism. It needs no comparison to Robinson’s Mars to be appreciated.

  • Stalker Analog, Mel Odom

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    ROC, 1993, 367 pages, C$6.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-45257-7

    Legend has it that the late famous Amazing editor John Campbell used to tell writers that he didn’t want their old recycled western stories. After all, it’s so easy to go through an old story and replace every “John” with “Blorip”, “horse” with “tronaap” and “colt” with “pistolaser”. SF, argued Campbell, must be -in addition to everything else- uniquely SF. Remove the SF element from the SF story, and there should be no coherent story.

    I never expect too much from ROC books, and Stalker Analog finely upholds this publisher’s track record as an inconsistent peddler of sorta-SF. Examples of fantasy disguising as SF from ROC are numerous (see a good proportion of Emily Devenport’s production, or a large part of the stories in “SF” anthologies like Future Net) and it’s no coincidence if their books tend to be forgotten come award time and if you have a hard time finding ROC books in mall libraries. Put put it simply, they don’t measure up to the good publishers in the field of SF.

    (There’s also an issue of boring covers, which is not worth getting into today.)

    Stalker Analog starts out as a pretty good illustration of what I mean by sorta-SF. It takes place in a near-future Houston economically dominated by the Japanese and stars a young female cop named Bethany Shay. After an opening sequence where Shay busts up a casino, the real story begins: A serial murderer in the Jack-the-Ripper tradition is terrorizing the city, and it’s up to Bethany to find him/her.

    Up to maybe the two-third of the book, we get a police procedural—a rather enjoyable one, but a police procedural nonetheless. There are a few hints of cyberspace stuff and oh-so-early-nineties Japanese influence, but nothing you couldn’t excise easily from the novel.

    It’s only in its final hundred pages that the plot moves resolutely in Science-Fiction territory, and then only to conclude on a note strongly reminescent of ROBOCOP II. Elsewhere, there isn’t much to attach the novel to pure SF… not even a few high-tech gadgets.

    Interestingly, apart from a brief flash of interest at the end, the novel was substantially weaker in its SF phase. The police procedural is well-handled, and the character development is worth it. When all rules fly out to cyberspace, however, the novel loses a lot of its coherency and evolves in ways that aren’t really clear or satisfying.

    Too bad; I would have liked to see a version of Stalker Analog as a modern crime novel. The elements for a good procedural are all there, and Odom can really write in a manner to hold our attention. The plotting is also quite good, moving rapidly from one point to another. Finally, the action scenes are well described, which is always a must for action thrillers of this type.

    In the meantime, ROC remains a publisher without a clear idea of what SF stories should be. It’s not enough to add “Analog” to a generic title to get a science-fiction novel: you also have to put some of it in the plot too.

  • Death Drives a Semi, Edo van Belkom

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Quarry Press, 1998, 263 pages, C$19.95 tpb, ISBN 1-55082-214-4

    In his introduction to Death Drives a Semi, Robert J. Sawyer writes that Edo van Belkom is “the ideal of what used to be called, back when the term wasn’t disparaging, a pulp writer—he writes stories quickly, often to a given editor’s specification, always producing a quality, salable product on time.” Disparaging or not, “pulp writer” neatly encapsulate both what’s good and what’s not about this collection.

    Horror is a very curious literature that has become even stranger in the last decade. The nineties have seen the popularization of the genre through movies, television series and, more ominously, “young adult” novels. Much like post-STAR WARS Science-Fiction, Pop-Horror finds itself reduced to the lowest common denominator. The result, more obvious on the silver screen, is more successful at inducing laughter (GHOST IN THE MACHINE) when it’s simply not successful at all (I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER).

    Horror is losing potency, slowly being defanged by its increasing accessibility to everyone—including teens and pre-teens. We’re slowly ending up with a genre synonymous with tame, formulaic, lifeless (ho-ho) stories where everyone dies at the end, but readers couldn’t care less.

    This reviewer might already be too jaded despite only a passing familiarity with the genre, but the biggest problem with Death Drives a Semi is that for the most part, it’s nothing special. Many stories can be resumed as “Person discovers supernatural thing, supernatural thing kills person, another person comes in.” Most of the stories end up of the sort easily shown on prime-time television: few chills and even fewer scares. There is no feeling of dread, of disturbing visions. Horror without bite. Morality tales of dark irony, not horror.

    This being said, a few stories are successful in a Twilight-Zone type of way, mostly those who escape the “and then he dies”-type of pat ending. “Roadkill”, “Death Drives a Semi”, “Rat Food”, “And Injustice for Some”, “S.P.S.”, “Baseball Memory” are all superb.

    Furthermore -this is where the good side of being a “pulp writer” comes in-, even van Belkom’s most ordinary stories are a lot of fun to read. The man writes clearly and tells a story. A perusal through a recent “Best New Horror” anthology revealed that the “best” of the genre has evolved in a rarefied realm of smothering over-characterization and emphasis of atmosphere over point or story.

    Thankfully, none of that here. There are no “bad” stories in Death Drives a Semi. (Though “The Ice Bridge” is problematic, with its resolution having nothing to do with the main conflict of the story.) Van Belkom’s character are almost invariably well-defined, with just enough background to make them believable. Technically, this is a very instructive collection.

    But there is a difference between being technically perfect and being actually terrifying. That’s what’s missing from Death Drives A Semi: a willingness to go further than just the usual. “Blood Count”, for instance, stops just when it was getting interesting, just when we were in for some major supernatural disturbance. It would also be interesting to see van Belkom write some more about his “Zombie” world, here represented in “But Somebody’s Got To Do It” and “Roadkill”.

    Hopefully, Death Drives a Semi is the first collection of a writer who will go on to better and more horrific things. It’s only a matter of taking that last step that separates very good from great. In the meantime, Death Drives A Semi is worth your attention; borrow it at the local library or do your part for Canadian-published horror and buy the book.

  • Aggressor Six, Wil McCarthy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    ROC, 1994, 253 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-45405-7

    The Alien, in Science-Fiction, has been a symbol for many things, most of them contradictory. It has gone, from story to story, from ultimate enemy (The War of the Worlds, ALIENS, ID4, The Forge of God) to benevolent friend (ET, Stranger in a Strange Land) while going through stages of Enigmas (Schismatrix), Caricatures of human traits (Star Trek), All-Powerful Guardians (The Ophiuchi Hotline) and everything in between, as needed by the authors. Most of the above-mentioned stories are tales of First Contact and it is in this tradition, more or less, that Wil McCarthy’s Aggressor Six belongs.

    Technically, it’s not quite a “first contact” story, given that the first, first contact is vaguely described through flashback. But it’s certainly the account of the first meaningful exchange between humans and Waisters.

    But Aggressor Six is also a war novel and it begins as humanity is going down for the count. Human colonies have been implacably destroyed by the Waisters, who are now heading for the solar system. Meanwhile, a team of human experts on Waisters is put together to try to emulate the alien thought processes and find a way to beat the invasion.

    It is a miracle that Nietzche’s advice on fighting evil doesn’t figure on the first page of the book, because Aggressor Six is all about Becoming the Alien. That the process is intended by the characters doesn’t make it any easier: The protagonist’s superiors and colleagues are unsettled when he truly begins thinking like the Waisters.

    This was Wil McCarthy’s first published novel and it has a few regrettable deficiencies that we can blame on inexperience. For a 250-pages story, it has considerable lengths. Most of the middle section, for instance, is spent in internal monologues and not enough in external action. In his willingness to represent the strangeness of the aliens, McCarthy initially goes too far, eliciting confusion instead of comprehension. This confusion eventually abates, and the conclusion of the novel is well-handled. The aliens might be strange, but they have internal coherence.

    The end result is a novel that’s moderately satisfying, though perhaps more worthwhile for a hint of the author’s latter works than the actual narrative. The action scenes are well-done, and McCarthy manages to inject interesting ideas in his First Contact story. The Machine Intelligence sequences are particularly chilling, even though not exactly ground-breaking. Aggressor Six is a cut above the usual ROC material.

    Personal Trivia: I happen to remember Aggressor Six as the first novel I’ve seen promoted on the Internet by the author itself. It was, as I recall, in 1994 on rec.arts.sf.written. It took five years, but the promotion effort did pay off!

  • The Phantom (1996)

    The Phantom (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 1999) The presence of sultry Catherine Zeta-Jones in this movie immediately reminded me of The Mask Of Zorro, and that’s the frame of mind in which The Phantom is best-appreciated. A charmingly quaint adventure story set in the 1930s, this movie adroitly straddles the line between self-awareness and camp and the result is something that is far too sympathetic to dislike. Billy Zane pulls off a role that requires him to parade in a skin-tight purple jumpsuit (!) without embarrassing himself too much. Though inconsistent with its approach to the supernatural (The Phantom isn’t; the villain is) and a bit overlong in its middle part, this movie is a good choice for a family adventure film.

  • Favorite Deadly Sins (1995)

    Favorite Deadly Sins (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 1999) Very uneven collection of three sketches supposedly about deadly sins. The first one (“Lust”) is promising but ends on a “conclusion” that’s both pointless and senseless. (Hey! Isn’t it supposed to be about a deadly sin?) The second sketch (“Greed”) is not only the longest, but also the best. A sharp satire about the media, it’s worth watching by itself. (Though maybe five minutes overlong.) The third piece (“Anger”) stars the repulsive Andrew Clay, who pretty much sinks whatever value the sketch might have once had.

  • Orbital Decay, Allen Steele

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1989, 324 pages, C$4.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-49851-5

    Science-Fiction, for all its vaunted capacity to extrapolate logically into the future, is often an awfully unrealistic literature. Consider one of the genre’s flagship universe: Star Trek. In the first two television series, everything ran smoothly on the Enterprise: Few crewmembers disagreed with each others (when they did, it was a sign of alien possession), everyone had comfortable living space (no one complained about cramped quarters, at least), nobody was bored or burnt out, the food was great… In short, quasi-utopia in space. From Star Trek, we were meant to interpret this as a better future, with better specimens of humanity that never bickered, bawled or belched.

    Our “real” future is likely to be very different.

    Allen Steele is not your typical Science-Fiction writer either. His “real job”, before writing SF, was being an investigative journalist for an alternative paper. This, to say the least, differs somewhat from the usual SF writer, who either goes through science, engineering or Eng.Lit. degrees before putting pen to paper. This difference has permeated his fiction: Steele is interested in the blue-collar guy, the working man who makes it happen, not the scientist, the engineer or the politician who makes grandiose plans.

    Orbital Decay might be the novel that most clearly illustrates this difference yet. It’s the story of the blue-collar workers who actually have to build those fancy new solar power satellites and space stations. These workers aren’t exactly very bright, nor completely at ease with the law. Stuck away in a tin can without sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, they’ll soon rectify matters…

    Orbital Decay distances itself with glee from the squeaky-clean futures of SF: The only engineer in the novel is a space-sick spoiled brat who’s there for maybe three scenes. The commander of the construction project is a picture-perfect astronaut who believes that space is for a superior breed of man: he becomes insane. The government is installing a device to overhear all telephone conversations across the globe. The new hydroponic technician brings up marijuana seeds. Two (2!) of the main characters are on the run from the law.

    The resulting book is a novel that has plenty of potential to annoy the readers more comfortable with the “good old (conservative) stuff” of SF. Your reviewer (a straight arrow if there was one) anticipated the drug subplot with dread, even though it finally wasn’t as bad as expected. (The characters come to the same conclusion as anyone with a brain would foretell in five second: Drugs are dangerous in space, for even worse reasons than drinking is dangerous in a car.)

    Unfortunately, the stupidity of the drug subplot brought this reviewer to reflect on the other absurdities of the novel. So Bruce can’t request a tape deck for weight reasons, but can bring in a lot of cassettes? So none of the construction wroekrs can communicate down there while ham operators can do it with our current-day astronauts? So they’re limited to PG movies tapes while satellites around them are broadcasting the Spice Channel? Granted, the novel is now ten years old, but the concept of next-generation launchers like the Delta Clipper has been kicking around for a while… are we still supposed to believe that it still costs X,000$ per pound to ship stuff into space? Add to that the unlikeliness of a corporation signing up the first-arrived (like, uh, criminals on the run?) as space construction workers. What do they do now for oil rig crews?

    Don’t be mistaken: For all its faults, Orbital Decay is an acceptable novel, bringing a unique perspective to SF’s assumption. But it isn’t as good as it think it is. To challenge the basics, one must be sure to understand them correctly. But that, would say Steele, is exactly the kind of reaction he was aiming for. So don’t be discouraged by this review and pick up Orbital Decay. If nothing else, it’s a darn good read.