Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Year’s Best SF 12, Ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    EOS, 2007, 484 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 978-0-06-125208-2

    “The theme of the year is catastrophe and how to recover from it” warn editors Hartwell and Cramer in the introduction to their latest Year’s Best SF volume, and they’re not kidding. Of the twenty-six stories assembled here, a good chunk deal with The End… regardless of whether it’s followed by a new beginning or not.

    Apocalyptic fiction isn’t a new subgenre of SF, of course, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the chosen few of this anthology are writing about fresh horrors a privileged knowledge of what it feels to go through a catastrophe. Unlike the writers who wished the Cold War away by describing nuclear Armageddon, every writer represented here has seen the World Trade Centre fall; has waited for SARS to bloom into something bigger; has seen the United States invade another country on thin pretexts; has seen a tsunami wipe out hundred of thousands of people; has mentally scratched New Orleans from their holiday destinations. The first few years of the twenty-first century have been rough on everyone, and this Year’s Best SF is showing the accumulating damage. The goal is no longer to triumph against adversity, but to cope with it.

    In many ways, the opening story of the volume tells you everything you need to know about the anthology: Nancy Kress’ “Nano comes to Clifford Falls” describes the economic dislocation that comes with the arrival of SF’s archetypal nano-technology economy. It’s both a fresh and fascinating shorty story, and a small wonder insofar as it has taken up to 2006 for someone to tackle an issue that’s been obvious to everyone since the first glimmers of nanotech. The writing is crisp, and the story deals with real issues. The end state is unlikely to please everyone, which makes the story that much stronger.

    But it’s far from being the last good story of the volume, and even farther from being the last catastrophe story. I have discussed Cory Doctorow’s “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” in my review of his Overclocked collection, but the story remains the same: As catastrophic events mysteriously (some will say “arbitrarily”) isolate a community of hackers from an outside world that stops responding, it’s up to them to hold everything together… even if they’re not too sure if that’s the right thing to do. I still get a chill out of the last paragraph.

    Other stories in the post-apocalyptic vein include Claude Lalumière similarly improbable “This is the Ice Age”, in which quantum ice ravages Montréal. Michael Flynn’s Hugo-nominated “Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth” hits a distinctly post-9/11 nerve despite being being about something very different: It’s perhaps the clearest example of how, in the wake of September 2001, everyone has become far more adapted at seeing the ramifications of catastrophe. Daryl Gregory makes a welcome returns appearance with “Damascus”, which goes all the way through coping with catastrophe to study those who embrace it. “Expedition, with Recipes” by Joe Haldeman isn’t much of a story, but the conceit fits perfectly with the anthologists’ thesis. On a smaller scale, Ian R. McLeod’s “Taking Good Care of Myself” is about being confronted to one’s death in a very literal way. The more we read into this Year’s Best SF, the more we seem stuck in disaster. Even Robert Reed gets into the spirit of things with “Rwanda”, which looks at the wreckage left in a curious post-invasion future.

    Even the stories that don’t directly feature some kind of apocalypse aren’t a cheery basket of kittens. Heather Linsdley’s “Just do it!” (which gets my vote as one of the volume’s top stories) is pitch-dark social satire with a twist that’s almost too mean to stomach. Superb. Meanwhile, Alastair Reynolds’ detective story “Tiger, Burning” manages to temper a victory of sort with a strong sense of melancholy.

    At some point, one starts to wonder if the apocalypses that lurk through the book aren’t contaminating the rest of the stories. Even the usually jubilant Rudy Rucker seems down this year with a funny story that also happens to deal with ultimate catastrophe. It’s amusing, uplifting and indescribably weird… but it still deals with the end of the world. Again.

    But don’t reach for that straight razor just yet: The last word belongs to Charlie Rosenkrantz’s “Preemption”, a darkly amusing catastrophe tale that seems even funnier give the grimness of the preceding stories. Hartwell and Cramer are seasoned pros at the anthology business, and the placement of that story alone earns em extra points for style.

    But all you truly need to know is that for those who can take the depressing nature of the year’s story, Year’s Best SF 12 is once again a superior best-of anthology. The thematic component seems unusually strident, but that’s almost a bonus feature. What’s no catastrophe, though, is the selection of the stories. Once again, Year’s Best SF trumps the official Hugo-nominated selection, with only a few overlaps.

  • 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer aka Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007)

    4: Rise of the Silver Surfer aka Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2007) To say that 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a better movie than its predecessor Fantastic Four does no one any favour: It’s like praising a casual acquaintance by saying that they’re probably better than Jack the Ripper. Chances are that everyone will feel slighted by the obvious comparison. It’s perhaps more useful to say that if this sequel isn’t as exasperating as its predecessor, it’s still pretty dumb and still not much fun. Fortunately, it does have a certain interest: the painful origins story being a thing of the first film, the Fantastic Four are here presented at the height of their powers, with consequent public attention –though still flying coach. There is, simply put, more joy here than in the first film. They’re also faced with a decent problem in the form of an all-reflective Silver Surfer that goes and pokes holes around the Earth. Some power-switching shtick makes for passable comedy, though the script also misstep badly with an embarrassing “bachelor party” sequence and a pretty complete lack of any chemistry between the too-be-wed couple. Bad dialogue completes the whole, especially when it surrounds snippets of passable writing. (I liked the “triumphant nrrrd” speech, for instance, but it feels clumsily pasted in the middle of a contrived scene.) At least guys will have something to look at, in between the action scenes, Kerry Washington and a bespectacled plastic replica of Jessica Alba. Heck, the film even allows itself an anti-torture PSA when it points out that excessive torture will tarnish the finish of even the best silver surfers. Now that’s quality film-making with a moral centre! Otherwise, well, this sequel spares no effort to raise itself to the level of mere competency with a side-order of silliness. It’ll do for the younger members of the audience, especially given the bloodless nature of the action.

  • Live Free Or Die Hard [Die Hard 4.0] (2007)

    Live Free Or Die Hard [Die Hard 4.0] (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2007) The good news are that the fourth instalment of the Die Hard series is a very enjoyable return to the roots of the good old action film: explosions, dastardly villains, a wisecracking hero, spectacular action set-pieces and things we haven’t yet seen. The not-so-good news are that it falls short of being a good Die Hard film. Over the long run, I suspect that it won’t matter: the two previous Die Hard sequels initially disappointed moviegoers who then grew fonder of them as time went by. At the very least, an older “John McClane” is back, fighting terrorists who are really robbers and trying his damnedest to save family members from consequent harm. The story is a pack of silliness (Hackers! National infrastructure! Turning all traffic lights to green!) with more logical howlers than you can imagine (including a convenient absence of traffic when needed), but at least it gives Bruce Willis something to do and plenty of opportunities to look good with an increasing number of cuts and bruises. Though the villains are a bit wasted (Timothy Olyphant’s villain never projects too much menace, while Maggie Q is wasted as a sidekick who can’t help but go “yah!” as she’s kung-fu fighting) and the direction is too scattered to be truly inspiring, there are a number of really good action sequences here and there. There’s a bit of parkour, a wall-smashing gunfight, at least one flying car, some hot jet-on-truck action and a crumbling symbol of American power. Good stuff, though I’d like a cleaner look for the action than the fashionable CGI-boosted shakycam stuff. More globally, it’s fascinating to see a mainstream American action thriller take on a plot-line that would have been pure science fiction (in concept and execution) barely twenty years ago: our heroes use cell phones, shrug over memories of 9/11, do some social engineering via OnStar and stare intently at webcams even as McClane is derided as “a Timex in a digital world”. It’s too bad that this is a different McClane than the one who starred in the first Die Hard, but I won’t complain: Fast-paced action movies are rare enough that I’ll take what I can get.

    (Second viewing, On DVD, February 2008) I’m shocked: This film actually works better the second time around. Free from the initial impact of silly plotting and logical howlers, this fourth Die Hard installment surprises by how well it understands the mechanics of the character, while the direction is a cut above the jerky style commonly used nowadays. The pacing is steady and the climax delivers on its promise. The bare-bones DVD version still includes a fairly entertaining commentary with Bruce Willis and director Len Wiseman (who redeems himself after the two Underworld movies): it explains a fair bit about the conception and the making of a project that was a long time in the making. I didn’t actually expect this film to hold up to a second viewing, but it does do quite well.

  • 1408 (2007)

    1408 (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, June 2007) To borrow from The Prestige, all horror films have three phases: The setup, filled with unspoken horrors and the promise of upcoming chills; the turn, in which the supernatural becomes apparent and characters are confronted with mounting madness; and the prestige, in which an explanation is offered and a resolution is attained. 1408 does its setup exceptionally well, gets sillier during its turn and falls apart during its prestige. None of this is the fault of anchor John Cusack, present in almost all scenes as a writer who’s forced to confront his past while trapped in a homicidal hotel room. The beginning of the film is a small gem of foreboding, as the nature of room 1408 is explained by an ice-cold Samuel L. Jackson. Cusack himself is pudgier than ever, but looks comfortably back in the charming screen persona he exemplified in the mid to late nineties. But as the hotel room starts to spin its evil tricks, our minds start grasping at an overarching explanation that never quite gels. The phenomenons in the room are chilling but don’t add up to a coherent set of powers and capabilities: just a series of jolts and impossible events. To be entirely fair, though, 1408 is quite good in its minute-by-minute execution: the direction is slick, the pacing is satisfying and the quality of the images couldn’t be better. Even the script does a fine job at stringing one thing after another, including a cute moment near the end that will make savvier film-goers mutter “I really hope it doesn’t end like that”. The true ending is a bit pat, but at least serves the primary purpose of any conclusion. It’s a shame that the pieces don’t all fit together (something that may be blamed on the adaptation of Stephen King’s thin short story) and that we’re left with a curious sentiment of dissatisfaction: as it plays, 1408 is one of the best horror films in recent memory… and it does so within the creative constraints of a PG-13 rating.

  • Secret Justice, James W. Huston

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 2003, 450 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-000838-5

    [Note from your usual reviewer: As I was reading in one of the departure lounges in Chicago’s O’Hare airport, waiting for my flight back to Ottawa, a man sitting next to me finished his paperback novel, nudged me and said “You should read this one”. I couldn’t let that opportunity slip by and asked why: what follows is a transcription of what he told me.]

    The problem with novels there days is that’s they’re just too soft. We’re at war, all right? The camel-heads just want to blast us away and all these fluffy pinko authors can do is wring their hands about how it’s not right to destroy them. I’m with the President on this: if we don’t teach them a lesson, they’ll never learn. It’s just business. Capitalism, baby. In my line of work, we buy companies before they buy us. Kill’em first, that’s what I always say.

    I spend nearly half my time flying around the country, and with the stupid rules about “electronic interference”, I end up reading a lot of books. You wouldn’t catch me dead with romance, but these days it looks like females are writing half the thrillers out there. Me, I want the good stuff. Stuff written by military guys. Those who have been there and can tell it like it is. Huston’s the real deal. He’s been in the Navy. He also became a lawyer and I can’t stand those bastards, but nobody’s perfect.

    I’m not sure what Huston’s written before, but Secret Justice‘s just the kind of books we should force people to read. Starts somewhere out there in the desert, with US troops getting a bunch of terrorists. Not all of them, though: the big guy, the Osama of the gang has been able to slip out and the others won’t tell what’s happened to him. Well, guess what, the hero of the book doesn’t wast his time meowing like those pussies I saw at our new factory yesterday: He grabs one of the terrorists and start dunking his head underwater until he starts blabbing. Five minutes later, wannabee-Osama’s in the bag.

    Of course, the first weak-ass terrorist dies because of some crap torture-related thing, but it doesn’t matter: The hero comes back with wannabee-Osama and everyone’s happy. For a while, everyone’s able to focus on the real problem: The terrorists are about to attack America, and wannabee-Osama knows something. It’s up to the hero to run around the world to stop the problem.

    But when Fox News tells you that the real problem with our country is the liberals, they’re not kidding: The doctors who discovered the dead terorrist starts emailing the euro commies over at Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders to complain about the torture. Pretty soon, the liberals are winning: the hero is accused of murder and he’s stopped from going after the real terrorists. The dumb doctor even pays for a lawyer to defend wannabee-Osama, who suddenly starts saying that he’s not the real kinda-Osama.

    But that’s all right, because the hero gets to go away on missions between breaks in his murder case. He briefs the presidents, romances his girl, fights the terrorists and tells the liberals to go screw themselves: that’s a hero. Now, it gets a bit confusing after that, because wannabee-Osama isn’t the real kinda-Osama and that makes the doctor feel better about his dumb no-torture attitude, but it doesn’t matter: Pretty soon, the hero gets to torture the real kinda-Osama, and gets to stop a big terrorist plot.

    And you know what? That’s the real-world for you. Sometimes, even the good guys have to take a pair of pliers and cut off people’s finger if that’s what’s needed to save the world. The lawyers, the bleeding hearts, the code of justice are just garbage we use to make ourselves feel better. That book knows that, and man I was happy to read a novel written by a real man for once: none of that “oh, we must be sensitive to the enemies, meow, meow, meow” bull. You know, sometime you’ve got to suck it up: Yesterday, I saw grown guys cry after being told their factory was going to be closed and shipped off to India. Hell, if you can’t take it like a man, you don’t deserve to live in America. We’re a country that gets result; screw everything else.

    I’m definitely picking up Huston’s next book. Anyone with the guts to say that he’s pro-torture will get money from guys like me.

  • Black Powder War, Naomi Novik

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 2006, 365 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-48130-5

    After the long trip to China in Throne of Jade, it’s good to see Naomi Novik come back to a more conventional military novel in Black Powder War, the third volley in the Temeraire series. Given that the high concept of the series has been “the Napoleonic War with dragons”, it’s only fair that at least one novel would take place in the trenches of the war itself. If the first volume was a book of discovery rudely interrupted by combat and the second was a voyage to China capped by a bit of palace intrigue, this third volume sends Temeraire and captain Laurence on the Eastern European battlefields.

    It starts as Temeraire and company are enjoying life in China after the events of the latest volume. Suddenly, a courier appears and orders them back home by way of the Ottoman Empire: Three dragon eggs there await transport back to the home islands as quickly as possible. If the voyage to China took place over sea, the trip back will have to go overland, straight toward the eastern front lines of the war.

    Naturally, the trip proves to be far more complicated than simply “bring three eggs back home”. Events in Turkey don’t go as planned, stranding Laurence and crew in Eastern Europe even as Napoleon’s armies are doing well on the battlefield. If the Temeraire series has been amiable so far, circumstances soon spiral into desperation as the British crew is forces to care for the eggs in its custody, forage for food and help their allies as much as they can. Unexpected allies and even more unexpected enemies don’t make things any easier.

    At this point in the series, there’s no doubt about the appeal of Novik’s prose: It’s accessible, it’s gentle, it’s fun to read and makes a good attempt at replicating the flavour of Regency-era narrative without losing the directness of more contemporary writing. Black Power War is no exception, despite the inevitable loss of the novelty effect. In terms of plotting, Novik is starting to allow herself longer dramatic loops than in the first two volumes, and the return appearance of Lien makes for a nice bit of continued tension. The narrative is not always interesting or gripping, but that may be a consequence of the events of the book themselves: No one will be fond of seeing Temeraire and Laurence stuck in the mud in Eastern Europe, so it’s only natural to wish that thing could move a bit more quickly during that time.

    On the other hand, it allows Novik to showcase even more historical details about her chosen time period, and the way she integrates her fantasy elements in that framework. Napoleon himself has a walk-on role in the middle of the narrative, and there are a few intricate descriptions of dragon-boosted military operations.

    Thematically, the series is also developing on a number of social issues. Temeraire is an independent thinker, and the impact of seeing how the Chinese treat their dragons is starting to be felt even as he returns home. I wouldn’t be surprised if dragon emancipation ends up forming a significant portion of the upcoming arc of the series, with consequent social commentary.

    From an external perspective, it’s worth noting that this third volume of the Temeraire series is the last in Del Rey’s initial push for the series. The fourth one has been delivered and is currently making its way through the editorial process, but Black Powder War was the last volume written more or less in isolation, before the series earned widespread acclaim, got optioned by Peter Jackson and earned Novik a spot on the Hugo/Campbell ballot. It will be interesting to see how the feedback loop starts affecting the series from now on.

    One thing is certain: this isn’t a closed trilogy. It’s obvious from the end of the third volume (let alone the special sneak preview of the fourth book bundled at the end) that the Napoleonic wars continue, and that Temeraire has a number of adventures ahead of him. While the series remains a bit light and has not managed to resolve the internal contradiction of being a “Napoleonic war… with dragons!” alternate history, it remains a piece of solid entertainment, and shows little signs of fatigue as it heads toward a fourth instalment.

  • Storyteller, Kate Wilhelm

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Small Beer Press, 2005, 190 pages, US$16.00 tpb, ISBN 1-931520-16-X

    If you’re not familiar with the subculture of Science Fiction writing, it can be difficult to explain the reputation that the Clarion Writers’ Workshop enjoys within the SF community. Clarion was the first big SF writing workshops for neophytes, and still remains (even after its mitosis into Clarion East and Clarion West) one of the finest. For six weeks, a small community of aspiring writers congregates in a campus, living as a group and spending their time either writing short fiction or critiquing the work of their fellow participants. It’s an intense experience: imagine living and breathing genre fiction for six weeks with little pause for anything else. (Now imagine the let-down of a return to normal life, and understand why a web search for “Post-Clarion Stress Syndrome” will net a dozen hits) Nearly every Clarion participant emerges from the experience a much better writer, which testifies about the workshop’s effectiveness.

    Since the beginning of the workshop, dozens of the genre’s best writers have been to Clarion, many of them returning to teach a few years later. The program now benefits from academic sponsorship, widespread recognition and institutional respectability. But it wasn’t always so, and part of Kate Wilhelm’s Storyteller describes how the Clarion workshops developed from humble beginnings and through some rocky years. The other part of Storyteller is a compendium of Wilhelm’s writing advice, distilled from numerous Clarion workshops and her own considerable experience writing in and out of genre fiction.

    The impatient will turn to the penultimate chapter, “Notes and Lessons on Writing”, as a handy summary of the writing advice offered through the book. How and where to begin a story, how to realize characters; how to describe setting; how to develop a plot. Wilhelm explains the distinction between the various forms of stories and takes some time in exploring the means and meaning of living like a writer. It’s simultaneously simple and complex writing advice. Simple, because it can be boiled down to a few pages of self-evident advice. Complex, because these axioms were derived from years of experience, and numerous attempts in finding out what works. We’re left with the results, but the proofs are left to the students.

    Veteran of how-to-write books may not find anything startlingly new here, but it doesn’t matter as much as you think: the basics of writing are universal, and Wilhelm’s voice is entertaining enough that she’s captivating even when explaining the obvious difference between a novel and a short story.

    But there’s also the historical-Clarion side of the book to consider. For some students of the genre, this is the part of Storyteller that makes the book worth its price. Wilhelm and her husband Damien Knight were, for decades, the backbone of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Storyteller is her memoir of life at Clarion, through cohorts of students, evolving teaching methods and variously supportive environments (for a few years, Clarion students were so rowdy that the workshop was never allowed to take place more than once at the same place).

    For fans of the genre, anecdotes about budding writers are what makes Storyteller sparkle. Page 151 alone is crammed with affectionate memories: “Ted Chiang, quiet and mostly silent, who never missed a word or a nuance… Kim Stanley Robinson, already deeply serious, and George Alec Effinger, who never was… Lucius Shepherd, a mobile disaster zone… Robert Crais, as debonair and handsome then as he still is.” (Yes, that Robert Crais went to Clarion.) More interesting are the unnamed participants, those who fell by the wayside and were never nominated for Hugo awards: “the woman who seduced everything that moved, then apologized to the director because she had run out of time before getting to him.” [P.152] (Well, I’m assuming she was never nominated for a Hugo.)

    Those moments, the water-gun fights and concerns about places to eat, the story of “The Red Line of Death” and dormitory troubles, are what sets Storyteller from other books, and possibly why the book earned Wilhelm a Hugo Award in 2006 for best related non-fiction book. It’s a short but perfectly enjoyable read from the fine folks at Small Beer Press, who continue to publish quirky books that may not have much of a chance otherwise. If you can’t make it to Clarion, have a look at this book. It’s decades of writing advice and experience compressed in less than two hundred pages.

  • Foundation’s Triumph, David Brin

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Torch, 1999, 392 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-105639-1

    Necrophilia is a terrible thing, but some people can do anything as long as enough dollars are dangled in front of their eyes. As I write this, the “latest-last-conclusion-we-promise!” of “Frank Herbert”’s Dune series is in stores, where it takes up valuable shelf space alongside a wholly-unneeded sequel to A.E. Van Vogt’s Slan and Spider Robinson’s “collaboration” with Robert A. Heinlein. If there’s any comfort in this sad state of affairs, it’s that these cash-in experiments thankfully fade away in time and there is little better proof of this transience than the “Second Foundation trilogy” that briefly blipped in bookstores at the end of the nineties.

    This time, it’s Isaac Asimov’s corpse that is up for ritual desecration. Oh, hired writers may ward off critical sarcasm with such noble incantations as “authorized by the Estate”, “I, at first, declined the contract” and “We’re the ‘Killer Bs’ of hard SF and none of us are named Kevin J. Anderson”, but the fact remains that nobody wanted another Foundation trilogy more badly than Asimov’s estate. Self-serving rationalizations about “exploring issues left open by Isaac” conveniently leave out the fact that the entire Foundation concept was invented in the 1940s and then patched up (to growing critical dismay) by Asimov himself until his death in the early nineties. If Isaac couldn’t fix it himself, what makes you think that you’d do a better job?

    I lack the patience and innate cruelty to fully review all three books in the series. Oh, I could go on and on about Gregory Benford’s Foundation’s Fear and how it was twice as long as it needed to be, with a dumb subplot about artificial intelligences that seemed cut-and-pasted from another novel. (And that’s saying nothing about another useless monkey-sex subplot. Yeah, you read me right.). I could be even meaner about Greg Bear’s Foundation and Chaos and how it was 100% too long and represented yet another of Bear’s “Bad Bear!” books. But why drive the knife even further when it’s enough to state that David Brin’s Foundation’s Triumph is the least disposable tome of a wholly unnecessary trilogy?

    Sometimes, it’s not enough to say that the story is dull, that the characters are not sympathetic, that the “plot” is not interesting. Sometimes, you have to go all the way up and question the very assumptions that underly a project.

    Yes, there are problems with the Foundation series. Logical problems, moral problems, political problems. As a piece of pulp magazine SF in the forties, it was exceptional. As a historical marker in the history of the genre, it remains essential. But SF has moved on since Asimov’s teenage years, and what should have been left alone wasn’t. First Asimov got the supremely ill-conceived notion of tying together all of his fiction, patching up the holes between his Imperial, Robots and Foundation series with a series of rationalization that became shakier with time. Alas, the buyer’s appeal of the “Foundation” franchise did little to dissuade Asimov from adding to the mess with later novels that became less and less worthwhile.

    But death is no obstacle once scruples can be papered over with lovely green banknotes. Benford, Bear and Brin thought they could continue the story, patch over even more holes and make a few points about the human condition within an increasingly artificial Foundation universe. So they bring in another layer of conspiracies, fancy new socio-technical concepts, a nonsensical plague, artificial personalities, more robots and even alien creatures in an effort to fill in the tiny holes in Hari Seldon’s life left unspecified by Asimov’s work.

    But even if some of the rationalizations are very clever (even Trantor’s population density is explained), trying to patch Foundation’s badly broken model is like putting spoilers and nitro boosters on a Model T Ford: It may look modern at first glance, but the framework isn’t built to accept the add-ons and tears itself apart during the first serious test drive. If the chief appeal of “The Second Foundation Trilogy” is conceptual, so is its biggest failing.

    Alas, the trilogy isn’t really better as genre entertainment. Faithful to their respective reputations, Benford’s book is overlong, Bear’s book is dull and only Brin’s book comes closest to entertainment (although even his amiable writing style is no match for the other writers’ leaden concepts). This is easily some of the weakest work all three authors have ever produced: Little wonder if the trilogy has been practically forgotten less than ten years after publication. Simply put, reading this series is a waste of time, unless you’re fresh off the entire Asimov oeuvre and wouldn’t mind nearly fifteen hundred pages of further aggravation.

    That, in a more rational publishing universe, would be a warning against literary necrophilia. But as the current state of the SF shelves in bookstores indicate, there’s still more than enough money in the SF industry to make hungry authors writer whatever desecrations are authorized by the estates…

  • Eifelheim, Michael Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2006, 320 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-765-30096-6

    Michael Flynn is a very, very smart man. Perhaps too smart for us, in fact.

    One of his early success in the Science-fiction genre was a novella called “Eifelheim”, a 1986 story about two modern scientists deducing an alien visit in Black Plague-era Germany from historical evidence. “Eifelhem” earned a few bravos from Analog readers and went on to be nominated for a Hugo Award. Now, twenty years later, Flynn has turned the novella into a much longer novel.

    A much, much longer novel.

    On one hand, it not possible to just dismiss Eifelheim-the-expanded-story. Flynn has obviously done his research, and the novel’s most distinctive trait is how it really manages to describe life in Dark-Ages rural Germany. Even before the alien’s arrival, Flynn painstakingly describes the true state of society and technology at the time and how the characters relate to each other. This in itself isn’t what you’d expect: Flynn overturns a number of commonly-held beliefs in what the Middle Ages were like, and the result is a rich strain of historical fiction describing a way of life that is far more alien than anything we can imagine on other planets.

    When the aliens land (for them, a sad case of being broken down somewhere in the galactic boondocks), the culture clash is profound, though maybe not as much as you would expect: Flynn’s protagonist, a scholar named Dietrich, is instrumental in smoothing out the problems between the stranded aliens and the superstitious villagers. As the alien work to repair their spaceship, Dietrich maintains the peace even as other powerful human entities start paying attention to what’s happening in the small village… and that’s without counting on the ever-popular black plague.

    Meanwhile, in a “Now” section more or less reprinted from the original novella, a couple of scientists uncover traces of the alien presence through historical records, allowing one of them to make a fundamental breakthrough in theoretical physics.

    I have said that this is a novel from a smart man, but it bears repeating. Looking at the mass of research that has been crammed into Eifelheim, one can’t help but feel overwhelmed. An entirely different alien race, plus historical fiction, plus modern fiction about the inner working of science? Gee, Flynn must be not just be smart, but a bit of a masochist. The details, the details…

    So I do feel like a chump for thinking that the entire novel is a bit unnecessary. Even though the “Now” segments are saddled with an annoying voice-of-God narration that reminded of Flynn’s insufferable The Wreck of the River of Stars, I found them more interesting than the medieval bulk of the book. A sufficiently determined reader could chapter-skip the historical chapters and still get a satisfying story. At times, if you’re not overly fascinated by medieval history, Eifelheim feels like show-off fiction, like an accumulation of trivia designed to make you go “wow!” in amazement.

    It makes up for a curiously fragmented reading experience. I might had had a different reaction had I encountered Eifelheim in the wild, but this has become, almost against everyone’s expectations, a Hugo-nominated novel against much-lauded competition. Comparisons between it and the other nominees are inevitable, and not necessarily flattering: Of the five novels in the running, Eifelheim feels like the slowest, the least accessible and the least fun.

    But I suspect that this is as much a reflection of my own reading tastes (not necessarily partial to historical fiction) than any serious problem with the novel itself. Looking belatedly at the other reviews around the web, I see that many reviewers liked the medieval plot and dismissed the modern subplot. Oh well. I’ve always considered Flynn an uneven writer, capable of the best and the dullest. Eifelheim is no exception.

  • Move Under Ground, Nick Mamatas

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Prime, 2004 (2006 reprint), 158 pages, US$14.95 tpb, ISBN 0-8095-5673-1

    (Also freely available at www.moveunderground.com )

    As I get older/wiser/crustier, I’m making efforts to change my reading habits. Schooled in the typical genre mindset that “plot is king”, I realize that sooner or later, I’ll have to appreciate reading the words themselves. Not every author wants to write according to plot, and the sooner I can accommodate that, the happier a reader I’ll be.

    Move Under Ground is definitely part of my education. It may be a lot of things, but it’s not a novel built to amaze readers through mind-bending plot twists. The high concept here is “Jack Kerouac meets H.P. Lovecraft”, and if you think that plot has anything to do with those two writers, you may want to pay more attention in class next time. What if a burnt-out Kerouac, years after On The Road, journeyed back across America to save the world from an Elder God invasion? Would that be literary horror or ghastly comedy?

    Well, why not both?

    It’s fair to say that most allusions in this book flew way over my head. I don’t worship Kerouac’s On The Road (in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read it), I usually find H.P. Lovercraft unreadable and most of what I know about William S. Burroughs comes from the movie adaptation of Naked Lunch. If copyright included the right to decide what kind of reader should read one’s work, Mamatas would have been justified in instructing vendors to forbid me from buying his book. (Worse yet: Since I purchased the last copy of the book on Prime’s table at L.A.Con IV, you can make a case that a more deserving reader was deprived of Move Under Ground because of my actions. Shame!)

    And yet, despite those handicaps, I still managed to enjoy this novel. Mamatas’ pastiche is, of course, completely wasted on me, but the elliptical fashion in which he tells a pretty standard “Road Novel/Heart of Darkness” story seems fresh and inventive: I’ve never read apocalyptic gunfights between humans and monsters quite like the ones in Move Under Ground. Even not knowing much about the high concept can’t hide some of the coolest elements in Mamatas’ story: As a reader, one of my biggest thrills of the year so far was seeing William S. Burrough barge into a scene with guns in both hands, killing off would-be murderers with a split-second timing that has to be deduced from Kerouac/Mamatas’ matter-of-fact narration.

    In fact, one of the particular pleasures of the book is in how it presents a conventional horror story with a off-beat writing style, looking in directions that are quite unlike what we’d expect from genre horror. Sometimes, it’s disconcerting: action scenes start in the middle of lengthy paragraphs, and are over just as quickly. The narration is, frankly, more interested in other things. Apocalyptic horror scenes are described with staccato minimalism, whereas musings on the American dream and mundane details of physical movement get far more attention. And through it all, Mamatas’ blend of humour and horror hits a note of pure uneasy joy. Even in marrying two clear influences, this is quite unlike any novel I’ve ever read.

    Since I spend a lot of time complaining about the excessive length of many novels these days, I should note that Move Under Ground is exactly the right length for what it is: Any shorter, and the story would be closer to a novella; any longer and the high concept would become tiresome.

    Keeping in mind that I’m almost the wrong sort of public for the novel, my generally satisfied reaction to Move Under Ground should be a good sign that the novel is, in fact, accessible to less-educated minds like mine. It also promises good things for my continuing effort to read for the words more than for the plot. In fact, I’m now tempted to go back and have another look at Kerouac’ On The Road…

  • Spider-Man 3 (2007)

    Spider-Man 3 (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2007) I won’t try to pretend that I disliked the first two Spider-Man films, but it’s fair to say that I haven’t been as impressed with them as most other people have been. Partly, I mourn the Sam Raimi of the Evil Dead trilogy; partly, I can’t stand the lowest-common-denominator approach that has ensured the series’ success. So when Spider-Man 3 comes out and ends up annoying everyone, I’m left muttering “Well, what did you expect?” This being said, there’s no doubt that this third instalment is weaker than the first two ones for obvious reasons: too long, too scattered, too coincidental. Obviously, storytelling standards have fallen when, of all the possible places on Earth, a meteorite carrying an evil symbiont just happens to fall next to Peter Parker as he’s making out in the park. I happen to like the Venom plot thread, but it seems superfluous in a third tome of a trilogy chiefly concerned about the Parker/Harris/Osborne relationship. That it blows up the duration of the film well past its optimal time is just another knock against it. Without Venom, we might have been given a few more scenes fleshing out the Sandman character… although if the alternative is yet another coma-inducing speech by Aunt May, I’ll pass. No, Spider-Man 3 has obviously succumbed to the increasingly common self-importance syndrome of third-parters: the producers’ belief that it can do no wrong and audiences will lap it up any way. They may be right… but that won’t be of much comfort in a few years when hardly anyone will recall such movies with affection.

  • Century Rain, Alastair Reynolds

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Gollancz, 2004, 532 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-575-07691-7

    After a series of grim and lengthy space operas set in the far future, Alastair Reynolds breaks from “the usual” with Century Rain, a novel largely set in an alternate 1950s Paris where the Second World War never happened. Fans of the author shouldn’t worry about the different setting, because not much has actually changed about their man’s prose: the tone isn’t necessarily more cheerful and the novel is once again far longer than it should be. Despite initial expectations, this is routine material from Reynolds.

    At first, we’re allowed some doubt. After all, Century Rain isn’t a part of Reynolds’ best-known “Inhibitors” series. Here, the Earth has been devastated by a nanotech plague, and there’s a serious conflict between two post-humans factions regarding what should happen to the human race. In the first few chapters, archaeologist Verity Auger sees her expedition to the surface turn horribly wrong as one of her teammates is killed. Disgraced, she’s offered a chance to move away from the spotlight for a while: someone powerful at an undisclosed location wants her expert services.

    Gradually, Verity discovers that scientists have found a pre-Nanocaust alternate Earth, and that her expertise is needed to find out what has happened to one of the agents already installed in place. Teaming up with a local detective, she discovers hints that there may be another post-human group at work in alternate Paris, and that the other side may be building a weapon of unknown capabilities. But things are about to escalate. Stuck on another world without access to any advanced technology, how will Verity manage to learn the truth and go back home without bringing back the enemy with her?

    Century Rain plays a long time with a mixture of futuristic action/adventure and alternate universe noir. It does seem perilously close to a conceit at time: dealing with travels to alternate universes, it’s always tempting to ask “Why just one? And why that one?” The richness of the alternate Paris setting is enough to make one guess that Reynolds first set out to play with a certain jazzy detective fiction archetype, and then wrapped up that particular atmosphere in the more familiar SF rationale. Fans of 1950s Paris will be charmed out of their socks; those who aren’t so fond of the city may have to cling to the more generally familiar action/adventure plot featuring killer children and mysterious engineering projects. Century Rain begins and ends in high-tech settings, so don’t think that this is “just” an alternate-universe story.

    Like all of Reynolds’s other novels so far, Century Rain is perfectly adequate Science Fiction marred by a lack of concision. There is little reason for this novel to crack the 500-page mark: a thinner, slimmer, faster edit of the novel would be easier to read and leave a stronger impression. As it is, Century Rain is often spent waiting for something to happen. Waiting for Verity to travel to the alternate Earth. Waiting for Verity and her detective sidekick to agree to collaborate. Waiting for the clues to fall in place. Alas, those part of Century Rain are very familiar: making us wait for their inevitable occurrence just prolongs the reader’s growing exasperation.

    But once everything has been revealed and all the elements are finally in place, Reynolds once again shows why he’s one of the most reliable mid-listers of British Science Fiction. His use of genre elements is fluid, his prose and characters are up to contemporary standards, his post-human political conflicts are interesting and his narrative delivers a satisfying conclusion. Not everyone will be so taken by his alternate Paris, but the novel itself is enjoyable provided one has a lot of time to read through it all.

  • Shrek the Third (2007)

    Shrek the Third (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2007) If this film has any distinctive feature at all, it’s the way it may mark the transition of the Shrek movies into a succession of episodes starring an ever-larger cast of characters. Despite the impressive progress in computer-generated animation and the lessening importance of pop-culture gags, Shrek and the gang are becoming blander and more beholden to the necessities of shareholder interests. While the film is generally harmless, the comic highlights are becoming less memorable. Stretching my memory, I can dimly recall a union of villains and a fairly good life-flashback gag involving Pinocchio, but that’s about it: the rest just blurs into a series of generally pleasant scenes without much bite. Who wants to bet that there will be a Shrek 4, 5, 6…?

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

    Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, May 2007) Oh no: Cast and Crew of the series have finally convinced themselves of their utter importance to world cinema. That’s the only way to explain this flaccid and pretentious third entry in what had begun as a perfectly balanced blend of action, horror, comedy and characterization. Oh, there’s still a solid 90 minutes of blockbuster cinema in here. Unfortunately, it’s drowned in another hour of superfluous material that advances nothing. The first act of the film is particularly annoying as the pace grinds to a halt and everything seems so important. The normally sympathetic characters seem bored, and so are we. Fortunately, things pick up eventually, once past a death-world sequence that has escaped from a particularly pointless art film. Still, Johnny Depp is fun, Naomi Harris is eye-catching, Geoffrey Rush is cool and the third act is a little masterpiece of special effects. There’s a lot of pieces in play (even if they don’t all fit together), and keeping track of them almost demands the drawn-out endings that begin to rival the end of the third Lord Of The Rings movie. I wonder if someone will ever have the guts to re-edit this self-indulgent mess properly.

  • Grandma’s Boy (2006)

    Grandma’s Boy (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, May 2007) Every so often, it’s a treat to find out a little-regarded film that actually manages to deliver a better-than-expected performance. Coming from Adam Sandler’s “Happy Madison” production house, no one really expected nothing from Grandma’s Boy, and indeed it doesn’t deliver much. But it manages to be a decently entertaining stoner comedy, and that’s not too bad considering the material it had to work with. (The film’s comic highlight is a vacuuming scene.) Fratboy comedies can be painful to watch, but this one isn’t too bad as long as the concept of stoned elderly women can manage to get a smile out of you. The look inside the universe of video-game designers is good for a giggle or two, and the pacing of the film leaves little room for boredom. There are better choices out there, but this is still a way above the bottom of the barrel.