Year: 2001

  • The Cider House Rules (1999)

    The Cider House Rules (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, April 2001) I hope that one of the sign of impending critical maturity is the ability to find value in film about which you don’t really go nuts. The Cider House Rules doesn’t include any of the elements I usually enjoy in film, whether it’s explosions, aliens or Nazis, but when all is said is done, it remains a good film worth a rental. Granted, it’s a message film: Abortion is never an easy subject, and setting a pro-choice argument during the medically barbaric 1940s is just trolling for strong reactions, but once the unpleasant first few minutes are past, the film really finds its coming-of-age narrative. (Readers should note my strong pro-choice convictions and adjust their response accordingly.) While Michael Caine won a supporting Oscar for his role, the real glue of the film is Tobey Maguire, who really holds the film together with his patented vacant stare and slight build; he might not act any different than in Pleasantville, but the performance is a good one. Compare with Charlize Theron, whose interpretation is virtually interchangeable with dozens of other young blonde actresses. In any case, the slow pace eventually settles in (weaning out everyone with Attention Deficit Disorder) and the result is a film crafted with a lot of skill, featuring good performances and a message that might not be too subtle, but should properly offend everyone who should be offended by it.

  • Cheong Wong [Double Tap] (2000)

    Cheong Wong [Double Tap] (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2001) Weak action film that doesn’t spark any interest despite a solid helping of gun fetishism. It doesn’t help that protagonist and antagonist pretty much look the same. The shootouts have moments or interest, but the rest simply lies inert. Many blood squibs. At least the film proves that not all Hong Kong bullet ballets are spectacular.

  • Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

    Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, April 2001) I’m all wrong for this type of film, but that shouldn’t stop me from stating that it’s quite enjoyable. No, I don’t have a lot in common with Bridget Jones, a thirtyish Londoner obsessed by her alcohol consumption, smoking, weight and impending spinsterhood, but some of my colleagues do and the film plays those strings like a virtuoso. In any case, the film is executed with all the grace, good-natured charm and technical polish so typical of British-set romantic comedies produced by Americans. Better-than-average script, sympathetic characters, funny set-pieces and a happy ending ensure that no one should feel cheated. You might not want to see it, but if you catch the first five minutes, you’ll be hooked until the end. There are problems, certainly; Renee Zellweger is incapable of looking anything worse than adorable, making her portrait of a plain girl a bit unbelievable. She does turn in one of her best performances yet, along with a solid Colin Firth and the ever-dependable Hugh Grant (who successfully manages to portray a real bastard without really deviating from his usual aw-shucks shtick.) The script is filled with a mind-boggling array of coincidences, unfortunately cheapening the narrative (At its worst, a trip to the convenience store ends up with something akin to “Oh, so you are the barrister of this incredibly important guy whom I’m trying to interview!”) A few unfortunate shortcuts also undermine the ending, which stretches believability a bit too thinly to provide a fully satisfying ending. Still, as far as romantic comedies so, Bridget Jones’s Diary is a fine one. Cheer up whenever your significant other suggests it.

  • Infinity Beach, Jack McDevitt

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon EOS, 2000, 510 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-102005-2

    This is not a simple book to review. The easiest commentaries are raves or trashings, because it’s so much fun to be unequivocally of one opinion that you can just keep on writing until you’ve reached your self-imposed word count. On the other hand, books with both good and bad points require a more careful approach, which often results in a more incisive and satisfying review.

    There is another category of book, however, that’s nearly impossible to review, and it’s the type of book that arouses no interest whatsoever. Forgotten a week after reading, barely remembered when it’s time to make up best-of lists, or even representative bibliographies, these books basically have no existence outside their own covers.

    And Jack McDevitt’s Infinity Beach comes perilously close to being a forgettable book. Much like the author’s body work to date, it contains a few good ideas and a weak execution exacerbated by unneeded padding. Sure, McDevitt’s done some exciting work (The Engines of God), but he’s also responsible for a few stinkers (Eternity’s Road) and many more indifferent novels (A Talent for War, Ancient Shores). His premises are rarely matched by his development, and his characters are, more often that not, strictly perfunctory. But he keeps turning out novels, and given his average level of quality, he’ll stay in the business for a few more years.

    But it’s not novels like Infinity Beach that will help him gain new die-hard fans. In theory, it’s supposed to be a story of “second contact”, in which a murder mystery is solved by a victim’s clone-sister who, in doing so, incidentally comes to reveal the truth about a so-called “failed” contact mission.

    As mentioned previously, this actually sounds like a decent premise. McDevitt’s usual fascination for future historicals (in which his protagonists uncover historical secrets still quite in our own future) is exhibited once again. The dynamics between victim-sister/clone-investigator were promising.

    But the novel starts, after a quasi-meaningless action vignette, with a slow-as-dirt introduction of characters, universe, past events… Our clone protagonist starts investigating, slowly, and -slooowly- discovers various clues that might lead her to uncover the secret. Slowly.

    And the pace only seldom improves, losing itself in meaningless side-trips, irritating subplots and a generally frigid pacing. I eventually got the feeling that McDevitt himself wasn’t too interested in what’s happening and that I shouldn’t feel too guilty if I didn’t care either.

    Yet I’m not ready to call Infinity Beach a bad book. Looking retrospectively on the content of the novel, there seems to be everything there for me to enjoy. So why didn’t it “take”? Why did I found it boring rather than engrossing? Could it be a random fluke, result of subconscious rumblings somehow affecting a book that, at any other time, wouldn’t be so badly considered?

    Alas, I can’t even muster the intention to re-read this book in a year or two. So I’ll compromise and instead state that I will, in any case, try McDevitt’s next. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be one of his good ones!

    Note: The UK edition of the book has been re-titled Slow Lightning. No comments.

  • Boh lei chun [Gorgeous] (1999)

    Boh lei chun [Gorgeous] (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, April 2001) I’m not familiar with pre-Police Story Jackie Chan, but in the meantime I’m quite willing to declare Gorgeous to be the worst Jackie Chan ever. (I was on the Internet within minutes registering my displeasure.) Four very average fight scenes smothered by an awful framing story that’s as inane as Chan’s other films without any of the intentional humor. Granted, Chan at least makes an effort at playing a different character, but it’s not enough to be interesting.

  • Blow (2001)

    Blow (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, April 2001) I believe that it’s unfair to compare a film directly to another, but Blow tries so hard to be another Goodfellas that -just this time- I won’t be able to contain myself. Unfortunately, putting Blow against Scorsese’s 1990 film is a perfect illustration of the differences between an average hack job and a true masterpiece. Blow at first suffers from acute averageness, as there’s really no reason to get interested in the story of George Jung, an American kid who somehow ends up being one of the biggest drug dealers in the history of the United States. Sure, it’s fun for a while as he collects money, cars and a trophy wife, but like a sugar rush, this soon passes to let way to Jung’s downward spiral and a film that ends up hypocritically asking us to pity the poor, poor drug dealer. It’s a repulsive notion, especially when that period where Jung imported “85% of the cocaine that came into the United States” is quickly glossed over with a funny thirty second clip about storing boxes of money, without any thought to the consequences of that traffic. It gets worse, as the onscreen action becomes more and more subjective, with poor George Jung being set up by police, wife and associates in the type of narrative that blames pretty much everyone but himself. The lack of depth of Penelope Cruz’s character will remind you of “psycho ex-girlfriends” stories. Still, the film is adequate, with some entertaining scenes and a good performance by Paul Reubens, who looks a lot like he did in Mystery Men. Of course, Johnny Depp does nothing less than great work in a role that requires him to look real bad. Still, a disappointment, a customary film and a curious attempt to redeem a character that, despite everything, remains a loser. Compare and contrast to Goodfellas‘ “Paul Hill”, a winner even at the end.

  • Beyond The Mat (1999)

    Beyond The Mat (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, April 2001) I’m not a wrestling fan, but it’s not necessary to be one to be amused, disgusted, fascinated and amazed by the wild universe exhibited by Barry W. Blaustein in Beyond The Mat. Blaustein is obviously a die-hard fan, and his film shows it, treating the subject with a brutal honesty but never a mean spirit. Not a WWF/WWE puff-piece nor a naively sophisticated exposé on how wrestling is (newsflash!!) all fake, Beyond The Mat goes past all the false pretence to focus on the people behind the wrestlers. Think it’s fake? You’ll see real stitching and real pain. You’ll see the glitz of the WWF/WWE and the scum of the bottom-feeders. You’ll see a maniac in the ring and a model father out of it. You’ll see three wrestling “archenemies” chatting up a little kid. You’ll see too much of a reunion between maladjusted dad and daughter. You’ll see the various ways a wrestler can go over the hill. Most of all, you’ll see one of the most revealing documentaries of the year, a masterful tour through the grotesque and the pathetic, the awful and the stunning. Blaustein knows how to package his subject, but most of all it’s his love for his subject that gives the film its ultimate edge. Wrestling fans will love it, but average people shouldn’t pass it up. Good stuff.

  • American Psycho (2000)

    American Psycho (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On VHS, April 2001) Both less entertaining and more interesting than expected, American Psycho ultimately wimps out before saying something interesting. As far as performances go, this is entirely Christian Bale’s show as he manages to credibly personify an extreme character. The axe-murder sequence remains the film’s high-point mostly because of his manic portrayal. Even though many might mistake the film as belonging to the slasher genre, it’s considerably more unnerving than your usual teen horror film, both because it’s better-written -with some social commentary- and because it is extremely violent while not seeming too exploitative. The extremely black humor of the film also works to distance it from its more routine brethren. Unfortunately, while the film had some definite potential, it squanders it by an ending that wants to have it both ways without committing. (For instance, it would have been more interesting to make the point that in this environment, even a full-blown confession might not matter.) Alas, threads are left dangling, the film defuses its own bite and the whole point of the film is lost.

  • Sea Change, James Powlik

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dell, 1999, 481 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-440-23508-1

    Hey, an oceanic thriller! No, it’s not JAWS. Tagline: “There’s a new terror under the sea with a mind and a hunger of its own.” No, it’s not JAWS. It opens with a few death, continues with a few more deaths, and features quite a few more deaths before the end comes by. No, it’s not JAWS. Though, like most aquatic monster thrillers, the comparisons are hard to ignore.

    It’s a shame, really; Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film so definitely imprinted itself on the collective unconscious that any novel about a roughly similar situation (danger underwater!) will labor under undue expectations. But then again, it allows us critics to make easy comparisons and skimp out on actual critical content.

    Which is fortunate, given that Sea Change stands up as a particularly average thriller, JAWS comparisons or not.

    You know the drill; at least one person dies in the prologue, in a gruesome manner that can be delightfully interpreted as a supernatural event. Then the protagonist comes in, an oceanographer named Brock Garner. Fortunately, he’s described as being “renegade”, thereby qualifying to be the hero. (When was the last time you read a novel about a professional hero described as “a loyal follower”, “unimaginative” or “strictly average”?) The female sidekick doesn’t come in long after. Ellie Bridges is a doctor, easily embodying the motherly characteristics of any good love interest. (Oh yeah; she’s also a renegade doctor. Good match.)

    But that’s not all! The antagonist is a rich (uh-huh) shallow (yah) media-hungry (familiar, yet?) pseudo-environmentalist (aren’t they all?) magnate who, oh heavens, married Brock’s ex-wife. Don’t worry; she’ll come around to our stalwart hero for some much-needed true lovin’. Plus, the clueless antagonist will eventually make an ambition-driven mistake or two that will effectively seal his fate. It all comes together in the end. Natural disaster plus military conspiracy plus human conflict here and there and pretty soon, you’re talkin’ thrillah!

    Mix in the requisite evil father, capable military units, more gruesome deaths and a countdown to some major havoc, and you get the thriller that you expect. Granted, Sea Change gets better as it advances, even including a few spectacular scenes toward the ending as all means necessary are taken to stop the evil menace. (Which, predictably enough, isn’t completely stopped in the epilogue.)

    There’s a certain journeyman quality to Sea Change in that it does the job, but with no extras. If you’re stuck with the book and want to care about the characters, you will, but they won’t grab you by the throat by themselves. In much the same vein, the various incidents are interesting, but not overly so; for his next novel, Powlik could use some brush-up in convincing dialogues and sustained tension. It’s a novel whose essence is hard to isolate, liquefied as it is in a sea of averageness.

    Which would have been fine if it would have been snappy, but Sea Change isn’t, dragging along for far too long while carefully setting up the mechanics of its plot. At least one subplot (the insensitive father-figure with a secret to hide) could easily have been removed, along with many other sections that don’t really advance anything or give us something new. With thrillers of this sort, we know where we’re going; we don’t need to have our hands held along the way.

    Fortunately, few of the above should apply if all you’re looking for is decent time-wasting entertainment. Powlik hasn’t wowed anyone with Sea Change, but at least he demonstrates his ability to write a baseline thriller. The plentiful technical details are reasonably convincing (be advised that there’s a glossary hidden at the end), the monster hasn’t been seen before and the ending delivers a reasonable amount of bang for the effort invested into it. As far as nautical thrillers go, it’s no, say, Steve Alten’s Meg, but it’ll do.

  • Guilt by Association, Susan R. Sloan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1995, 529 pages, C$6.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60306-6

    From the blurbs reprinted on the first few pages of the book:

    • ”…its climax is a tense courtroom showdown that ends on a genuine surprise” —Seattle Times
    • ”…building to a splendid and ironic surprise”—Los Angeles Times
    • ”…a conclusion that will chill you to the bone”—West Coast Review
    • “What are they smoking on the west coast?”—Christian Sauvé

    As a thriller reader, I want to be entertained. If I can’t be entertained I want to be informed. If I can’t be informed, at least surprise me. And if you, as a thriller writer, can’t do any of these three, you might as well pack your things, stay home and stop writing novels because it’s not worth the time to read your stuff.

    The back cover of Susan R. Sloan’s Guilt by Association promises a good story. Thirty years after being brutally raped, a woman takes revenge upon her aggressor, now running for the White House. Okay, sure, fine, sounds interesting, let’s see it.

    Now, a competent thriller writer would have immediately seen that the story in here is the revenge. Not the rape nor the aftermath of it, but the payback. Three hundred pages, a well-deserved conclusion, end of book and everyone goes home happy.

    But not Sudan R. Sloan. The initial rape takes place upon twenty-eight exploitative pages. Then we’re set for nearly three hundred pages of excruciatingly long setup before our two main characters meet again to kick in the revenge story.

    You see, our heroine isn’t merely raped, but utterly destroyed. Her boyfriend breaks up, her family can’t faced what happened to her, she quits school, she can’t hold a job, etc… She manages to live in a commune during the sixties and not have sex with anyone. (Obviously, that particular trauma will take pages to resolve) Page per page, we get not a thriller, but pretty much a fictional biography detailing what she does year after year in exasperating detail. Not much of this has any relevance whatsoever to the main plotline of the thriller. SKip, skip, skip pages if ever you want to remain sane. Most of the psychosocial insight in these pages is the very same stuff you can get from watching a few Discovery Channel specials on the past few decades.

    During that time, of course, the antagonist has a few kick-the-puppies scenes in which he becomes even more ruthlessly evil.

    When the revenge plot finally gets going, something very curious happens. After decades of obsessive details about our protagonist, the narrative skips over a few crucial hours.

    Now, why would that happen? Don’t think about it. Don’t even pause to consider the question, because otherwise you’ll figure out the conclusion a hundred pages before it comes up. In fact, you don’t even need to pause for it because it’s so blindingly obvious that even the dullest thriller reader will figure it out.

    As I said, if you can’t entertain or inform me…

    The ultimate result is a complete mess, a thriller so undeserving of the title that the marketing department at Warners should be fined. Guilt by Association is a boring novel with nothing new to say, a terrible structure, infuriating failed emotional manipulation, an astonishingly obvious “twist” ending and a series of stupid choices made by the author. I’d burn it in a second if I didn’t want friends to believe me when I describe what may very well be the most pretentious, most boring thriller ever.

    And don’t even get me started on so-called “professional” reviewers who were taken by the plot or surprised by the ending…

  • Halfway Human, Carolyn Ives Gilman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon EOS, 1998, 472 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-79799-2

    I usually try to stay away from novels nominated for the Lamba prize. This award, given each year to “the science-fiction or fantasy work that has most successfully investigated gender issues” usually seeks to reward works dealing with themes and issues about which I couldn’t care less. As they say, message fiction tends to be interesting only when it’s vehiculing your message; as a white heterosexual male, I don’t have a lot to say about gender or gay issues.

    But I nevertheless ended up with Halfway Human in my reading pile, halfway dreading the prospect of yet another boring The Left Hand of Darkness knock-off. Certainly the back cover doesn’t inspire confidence, talking about “Tedla is neither he nor she… an asexual class of ‘blands’… shocking truths hidden inside this sexless, tormented creature.”

    If I hadn’t already paid good money for the book, I most probably would have put it back on the shelf.

    And while that wouldn’t have been a tragedy, it would have been missing out on a decent SF novel. While Halfway Human obviously carries a message, it’s not out to stamp it on everyone’s foreheads. It’s all too easy to be carried away by the storyline and stop trying to decode what’s the real underlying theme.

    Most of the novel takes the form of a first-person narrative in which Tedla, our friendly bland protagonist, tells of his short and so far unhappy life. Colonized by humans and then cut off from galactic civilization for decades, Tedla’s homeworld has -we progressively learn- canalized its explosive population growth in the eugenic selection of males and females, assigning the remainder of the teen population to blandness—a servant class. While overly sentimental and predictably dark, it’s a good story verging on the fascinating.

    The other half of the plotline is concerned with a xenosociologist named Val, who comes into contact with a suicidal Tedla, interviews it -hence the first-person segments- and eventually tries to save it from the authorities who would like nothing so much as to ship Tedla homeside to keep their eugenic practices secret.

    The human society described in Halfway Human is separately fascinating because of its rigid control over information, where copyrights can be a prized heirdom, architectural style can be licensed, information is the only commodity that is worth its transport costs and a researcher has to be rich or employed by a gigantic corporation in order to be able to access the required literature. To myself, obsessed of late by the increasingly dangerous legal precedents in the field of intellectual property, this facet of the novel proved to be a chilling warning and an unexpected delight.

    But the core of the book, make no mistake, is with Tedla and its story. Unlike most Lambda-running fiction, Halfway Human is told in a crisp, direct, accessible style that did much to raise my opinion of the book. Gilman also remains faithful to her characters; no sudden change of heart, unexpected romances or sudden gender-switch in store here. This being said, the ending is a bit of a cheat, though almost any trick is acceptable when a happy ending is concerned.

    In short, Halfway Human is a good SF paperback novel. Not spectacular, a bit too long to be really effective but clear and steadily interesting, Carolyn Ives Gilman could have done worse as a first novel. Now let’s see how her second one will turn out.

  • The Ice Limit, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 2000, 449 pages, C$36.95 hc, ISBN 0-446-52587-1

    This is a novel about a rock. Not just any ordinary rock, mind you: For one thing, this one weighs a few thousand tons. For another, it’s most probably not from around here, being exceptionally dense, of blood-red color and unbreakable by conventional means. It’s also located on Isla Desolacion, a forsaken island in Argentinean territory. For most of these reason, this is an exceptionally valuable rock, and our billionaire-protagonist wants it for his museum. One last detail: That rock has the unfortunate tendency to zap lighting bolts into people.

    Even if you don’t really like Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s thrillers, you’ve got to hand it to them; they know how to come up with an irresistible premise. From the monster-loose-in-the-museum premise of The Relic to the monsters-loose-under-New-York story in Reliquary, they’ve upped the ante with each successive novel. If the expression “hack writers” didn’t have such unpleasant connotation, that’s what we could call them; they write to mass-market specifications, turning out perfectly competent thrillers with adequate characters, fluid writing, good technical details and a structure calculated to deliver steadily more shocking jolts. Hey, it’s a bestselling living.

    As it is, the plot of The Ice Limit is immediately gripping. A meteorite-hunter is hired by a billionaire in order to head an expedition to bring back The Rock to the United States. Given the unusual nature of the object, the novel then introduces one very unusual team, a wonderfully reclusive engineering business (ESS) specialized in huge-scale projects, from volcano manipulation to the re-creation of JFK’s real death. ESS is The Ice Limit‘s real delight, such an intriguing creation that I could easily a series of stories built around that company. But then again, I’ve always been a sucker for engineering fiction.

    In any case, the plan to bring back The Rock quickly sets into motion. A boat is built, then heavily modified and disguised by ILM. a sexy female scientist is introduced. Argentinean officials have to be bribed, except one who vows a terrible revenge. The teams arrives at Isla Desolation.

    More people die. Secrets are uncovered. More people die.

    It’s been said before, but a fundamental difference between techno-thrillers and science-fiction is how the author reacts to change. Science-Fiction usually adopts the attitude that “the genie is out of the bottle” and that we’d better adapt to change because change isn’t going away. Techno-thrillers, on the other hand, often shoo away the upsetting change, burying, destroying, ignoring it in the hope that the day after, everything comes back to normal.

    And, unfortunately, -without going in details-, that’s pretty much what happens in The Ice Limit, which nearly ends up being one of the most depressing thrillers I’ve read in a while. The massive body count and ultimate futility of the exercise brings to mind authors handshaking over an agreement that “some things are not meant to be known by humankind”—and that hardheaded engineers are doomed. This attitude is partially redeemed (saving the book from an awful ending) by a last-minute twist that will be familiar with the weirder speculations of British scientist Fred Hoyle. (How’s that for a literate spoiler? Don’t think too much about it.)

    Fortunately, the rest of the book is pretty good, and compulsively readable. The characters do the job for which they were created, and The Rock ensures a massive presence over the whole story. The engineering firm, as mentioned previously, is a wonderful creation I’d like to see elsewhere. It’s unfortunate that the end sucks off a lot of the novel’s energy, but feel free to skip the last fifty pages and imagine a better ending for yourself. At least that’ll entertain you until Preston and Child deliver their next thriller.

  • Matter’s End, Gregory Benford

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1994, 294 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-56898-1

    Gregory Benford’s novel-length fiction can be distinguished by two characteristics: For one thing, it’s usually packed with scientific details, lengthy explanations, a deep understanding and love of the scientific method. Through books like Cosm and Timescape, Benford has produced some quintessential science-fiction whose realism was only exceeded by masterful writing.

    Which, alas brings us to a second distinguishing characteristic: About half of Benford’s novels are overlong borefests, whose few good ideas are drowned in pretentious writing, overlong plotting and a complete lack of interest. Exhibit A for the prosecution’s case is the “Galactic Center” series, which ably spreads a novel or two’s worth of interest over seven lifeless volumes. Exhibit B is The Stars in Shroud, an admittedly early novel which distinctly has no interest whatsoever.

    Fortunately, Matter’s End is a short story collection, which effectively diminishes any length concern. The first surprise is to be found in the table of content, where 21 stories jostle to be included in 290-odd pages. Discounting the two longest stories, we’re left with 19 stories over less than two hundred pages, an average of less than a dozen pages per story.

    The variety of the style exhibited by Benford is impressive. Beyond the usual past-tense-straight-narrative, there’s a sale pitch (“Freezeframe”), first-person narration (“Mozart on Morphine”), exam questions (“Calibrations and Exercises”), a mission report (“Side Effect”), tips and hints (“Time Guide”), a radio news transcript (“The bigger one”) and one stream-of-consciousness (?) thrown in for good measure (“Slices”).

    The genre of the stories is usually science-fiction, though maybe not as hard as you may think. There’s a smattering of fantasy, some humoristical SF but mostly, some bread-and-butter SF not especially distinguished by hard scientific content. As a collection, it’s easy to get into and easy to continue reading.

    There are a few duds, mind you. Both novelettes are overlong: if “Matter’s End” eventually comes into its own a few pages before the end, “Sleepstory” made me go “Is that it?” Given that this is a collection that spans nearly thirty years of Benford’s career, it’s almost natural that his earliest stories tend to be weaker. “Stand-in” seems particularly pointless, a fate shared with “Nobody lives on Burton Street” and “We could do worse”, though the last two are also stuck in the bad pessimistic late-sixties mindframe. Finally, “Shakers of the Earth” demonstrates an occupational hazard of being an SF writer; Once you’ve seen JURASSIC PARK, it’s hard to be wowed by a 1980 story featuring -gosh!- resurrected dinosaurs. But even Benford acknowledges this last one in his afterword.

    Fortunately, the rest of the collection holds up very well. I can’t understand why “Calibrations and Exercises” hasn’t become an SF short story classic. “Freezeframe” and “Proselytes” exemplify Benford’s best witty and succinct style, by making a strong point and immediately ending the story. “Centigrade 233” is a good exploration of the social role of SF, though don’t think too hard about the title or you’ll end up guessing the end. Those who read science-fiction to find truth about science and scientists should be pleased by the title story and “Mozart on Morphine”. It’s always a pleasure to read material by a professional who knows what he’s doing.

    In this afterword, Benford makes the point that for writers, short stories are fun. And if “fun” has not exactly been one of Benford’s dominant characteristic in his novels, he’s obviously on a looser leash here. The result is a decent anthology of short SF fiction, well worth the read for genre fans, even for those who find the author to be very uneven. So’s this collection, but at least it’s unevenness on a faster scale.

  • The Dragon Never Sleeps, Glen Cook

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Popular library, 1988, 500 pages, C$4.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-445-20349-8

    It’s the sacred duty of every conscientious book reviewer to steer other readers toward books they might otherwise have missed. This duty becomes even worse, attaining messianic proportions, whenever the reviewer has also missed the book when it first come around.

    And, boy oh boy, has everyone missed The Dragon Never Sleeps. Prior to recently reading a great review of it in a magazine (a review of the French translation of the book, no less!), I had never even heard of the novel, and in fact still associated Glen Cook only with that “Black Company” fantasy series.

    Fortunately, the local Ottawa Public Library had a copy of Cook’s The Dragon Never Sleeps on its shelves (along with a few other books, which finally made me realize this was the same Glen Cook of the “Wizard” fantasy/comp.sci. series) so I could comfortably check for myself whether that rave was deserved or not.

    In short; Bring back the book in print right now, it’ll sell thousands.

    Any attempt at a plot resume would be cause for headaches for both reviewer and reader, involving such classic space-operatic props as family clans, galaxy-spanning empires, aliens, space battles, clones and political intrigue. Add a dastardly plan to destroy the galactic social order, gigantic space stations, decantable military personnel, some weird sex and age-old secrets and you’re in intensely familiar territory.

    But it’s all handled so well that you’d swear you’re reading new-millenial SF with its methodical re-use of all possible established conventions, with an extra helping of rational weirdness. The novel hasn’t aged a bit, an iota, a single little particle since 1988. Read it today, and you’ll think of Banks, Alastair Reynolds or Stephen Baxter. It’s quite a remarkable feat.

    Granted, this isn’t an easy novel to digest. The cloned versions of four characters alone almost add up to half the Dramatis Personae, and they’re seldom differentiated. It’s a fun novel to read, but it’s also devastatingly easy to miss a few crucial lines. The narrative is so dense that the information most probably won’t ever be repeated. And yet, unlike some other hard-to-read novels you might have tried, the style is not difficult or complex; it’s the sheer density of plotting that will trip you up.

    The first hundred pages won’t help, as you’re boldly thrown in a brand-new universe that doesn’t have a previous trilogy as a world-building crutch; you’ll have to assimilate all information on the fly, even as complex events are already set into motion. At least you won’t be able to predict what’s going to happen: The body count starts early and rarely eases up. It would be a sacrilege -and an undeserved marketing blurb- to compare The Dragon Never Sleeps to Dune, but… there are similarities.

    It all adds up to a darn good space opera. Vivid space battles are sprinkled throughout the book. Breathtaking betrayals abound. Grand concepts are revealed. Big fun for all, as long as you’re still following what’s happening. Plus, hey, it’s got a trilogy’s worth of material between two covers; you have to like that!

    In short, I liked it a lot, and if you can find the book, I don’t doubt that you’ll enjoy it too. It should be reprinted soon, if Cook’s current popularity -and vocal fan-base- is any indication. A little gem overlooked by most critics upon its release, The Dragon Never Sleeps deserves a good look. Certainly, I plan on re-reading it in a few years, just because I’ve got the feeling I’ve missed out on so much!

  • What Women Want (2000)

    What Women Want (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, March 2001) It’s not easy for an actor to grow old, but Mel Gibson has done so enviably well, enhancing a tough-guy image with considerable willingness to play quirky roles and hard-won charm tempered with age. In short, he’s the perfect lead for What Women Want, a gender-driven comedy about an uber-macho with the sudden power to read women’s minds. Fantasy-lite concept handled with some rough skill, though a promising first half eventually peters out in traditional dramatic arcs, including a few long-foreshadowed life crises. It’s not even a passable script overall, with Marisa Tomei pretty much used as a one-joke character despite the overall creepiness factor. Well, at least it’s good to see her in another big-budget role again. But, overall, What Women Want is pretty much what the audience wants, and if it doesn’t really go anywhere new or fresh, at least it’s reasonably entertaining up until the last fifteen saccharine minutes.