Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Tootsie (1982)

    Tootsie (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2005) This classic comedy has both aged well and not so well. On one hand, you can watch it easily enough, and the performances are still as good as they were. (I’m still not sure about the believability of “Dorothy Michaels”, but that’s better left unquestioned). The sense of New York is well-done, and the casting roster is impressive even today. (If an early performance by Bill Murray isn’t enough to make you interested, consider Terri Garr, and seeing a young Geena Davis in her underwear. Woo!) What’s more, even people allergic to fake-identity-plots (like myself) will be forced to admit that the story isn’t nearly as annoying as it could have been. On the other hand, well, the anti-sexism message seems a bit alien nowadays (were people ever so retrograde? Wait; don’t answer that!) and the pacing could use some tightening up. Still, a pleasant film to watch. The bare-bones DVD has no extra features worth writing about.

  • Getting Near the End, Andrew Weiner

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Robert J. Sawyer Books, 2004, 268 pages, C$26.95 hc, ISBN 0-88995-307-4

    In his introduction to this novel, writer/editor Robert J. Sawyer mentions that Andrew Weiner’s “favorite writers are J.G.Ballard, Barry Malzberg, and Philip K. Dick.” As a set of reference, this more or less represents the key to the entire novel that follows. Three paragons of seventies SF slipping toward mainstream nihilism; can you guess where Getting Near the End is going?

    Heck, the title alone nearly says it all. In the decaying wreckage of a collapsing society, mega-star singer Martha Nova is a seer and a guide. Her visions of the future inform her songs, and her songs are taking the world by storm. Getting Near the End begins on The Final Night Of Something, and through flashbacks we come to understand how The End is shaped.

    Adapted from a 1981 short story of the same title, Getting Near the End may take place twenty-three years later (the original story took place, of course, on December 31st 1999), but it doesn’t really add much meat to its original material. The story beats are roughly similar, the characters are essentially the same and the ending is identical down to the final lines. There are a lot more flashbacks explaining the background of the story, but otherwise it’s more or less the same content.

    How you feel about the novel will depend on how you feel about those seventies SF stories that promised doom and gloom for everyone. Getting Near the End does a faithful job at recreating the kind of future that seemed so inevitable thirty years ago. Ballard, Malzberg and Dick indeed: You don’t have to look any further than the title to know that the only suspense here is if this will be The End, or just An End leading to a new beginning. (Even then, would you be surprised to find an ambiguous ending?)

    The above may suggest that I was less than impressed by the book, but that’s not quite the case. Weiner is a fantastic short story writer (have a look at his collections Distant Signals and This is Year Zero for proof) and his clear prose style does much to propel the reader forward even if the story advances only by fits and spurts. If you want the plot, read the short story. If you want the atmosphere and the characters, have a look at the novel. Weiner’s technique is superb, his understated prose works well and if one can quibble about the extended flashbacks, the overall impact of the novel is strong and distinctive. Getting Near the End is, simply put, a pleasure to read despite the depressing content. Readers looking for more of “that seventies groove” will certainly find it here: One can easily imagine this book escaping from 1975 and time-travelling intact to the present.

    Robert J. Sawyer Books (which I constantly want to write as “RJS Books”) was created, in part, to give a chance to novels that may not find favour with today’s corporate-driven mass-market publishers. Getting Near the End is a near-perfect example of that kind of novel: Well-written, but a bit depressing and without a definitive ending. The kind of novel that could be well-received three decades ago at the end of the New Wave movement, but would be a hard sell today. Perhaps best of all is the idea that this publication may cause Weiner to write some more material: He’s been absent from the scene for too long, and it’s been a long time since This is Year Zero.

    Briefly: You will have to haunt used bookstores for a long time before finding copies of Andrew Weiner’s Distant Signals, but the results will be more than worth it. A severely underrated short story writer, Weiner has an amazing ability to come up with one worthwhile story after another. Collections are usually hit-and-miss affairs, but save for Weiner’s earliest story (“Empire of the Sun”, originally published in 1972’s Again, Dangerous Visions!), all of Distant Signals is delicious reading. Weiner writes with a sly sarcastic voice, and his talent doesn’t lie in his ability to generate original ideas (although one story, “The News from D Street”, anticipates the whole MATRIX craze by a dozen years) as much as his skill in telling stories. His prose is a model of clarity and accessibility. It’s hard to pick favourites, though “The Man Who Was Lucky” has undeniable charm and “Fake-Out” manages to go to the logical conclusion of its premise. Also included: “Getting Near the End”, the short story that would later be expanded in a novel of the same name.)

    [January 1999: I have rarely read a short story by Andrew Weiner that I didn’t like, and this statement remains true after This is Year Zero, his second anthology of his short stories. Short (192 pages) but packing 13 stories, this collection is a constant delight. Each story is short, to the point and usually enjoyable even despite the impression that some of them are jokes without punchline (The is Year Zero) or punchlines without jokes (The Alien in the Lake). Weiner obviously has a fascination for the alien, but his aliens are far closer to us (or representations of us) that otherwise. The iconoclastic sense of Weiner is also evident in his perversion of the usual unwritten SF assumptions. An alien is gunned down in matrimonial dispute—and there’s no further repercussions. Humans are conquered by aliens—and stay conquered. A man has to choose between boring, ordinary life and space colonization—and makes the boring choice. Few writer could get away with this kind of constant genre perversion, but Weiner’s prose style is such that is stories are so readable you won’t mind at all. One of my leading choices for the 1999 Aurora awards.]

  • Sen To Chihiro No Kamikakushi [Spirited Away] (2001)

    Sen To Chihiro No Kamikakushi [Spirited Away] (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2005) I doubted that this film would come up to the expectations set by its impeccable reputation, but it did. Maybe ten minutes before it ends, Spirited Away hits a solid 10 on the charm-o-meter and stays there. This is fantasy as it should be: inventive, original, absorbing and ultimately very compelling. There’s some terrific design in there, wonderful character moments (the soot!) and excellent sequences. The heroine is adorable, and so do most of the characters surrounding her. Fantastic stuff; see it as soon as possible. It’ll win over even the most jaded viewer. The DVD contains a good making-of featurette and a number of other slight pieces.

  • Ritânâ [Returner] (2002)

    Ritânâ [Returner] (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2005) Feeling a lot like a mix between The Terminator and E.T., this science-fiction film is not without a good moment or two, but you may be better off watching the trailer rather than the film. The standard “rescue the stranded alien” with the “time-traveller tries to prevent something terrible from happening” shticks aren’t terribly innovative, and the limp execution doesn’t do much to help. The leads are pop-star bland, with only antagonist Goro Kishitani worth noticing. At least the direction offers a number of unusual moments, though those tend to be clustered around the action sequences. Some of the CGI work is interesting, but the trailer will act as a showcase reel far more effectively than the film. The film certainly never knows when to quit, with a third act that stretches away to infinity and beyond. (Fully ten of the last fifteen minutes are completely unnecessary.) The techno soundtrack can’t do much to save the film. Watchable but in no way remarkable. The DVD contains some mildly interesting making-of footage.

  • The Island (2005)

    The Island (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2005) Oh, how Michael Bay teases me so. He knows that I like good Science Fiction. He knows that I like his glossy filmmaking style, even though I wish he’d tone down the pacing of his cuts once in a while. He knows that I love intricate action sequences. The prospect of a movie bringing all of that together had me salivating, but as usual the reality doesn’t come up to the potential of the premise. Part One of The Island is a glossy, stylish study of social control where everything isn’t what it appears to be: a bit flawed, but better than what we usually see in big summer blockbusters. The second part is what we see in big summer blockbuster: a dumb and lengthy chase involving gunfights and explosions. Not bad, but we’ve seen this before, in other Michael Bay movies. The third part is where the movie sputters and dies thanks to silly by-the-numbers plotting, unexplainable developments and an anticlimactic finale. The logical flaws of the film are too numerous to describe, but let’s just say that the security problems alone are worth a seminar. Despite the good eye for details and some initial promise, The Island just stops working after a while, and even the action scenes seem like bad clones of what Bay has done before. Neither Ewan MacGregor nor Scarlett Johansen do much with what they’ve got (Johansen, particularly, seems particularly bland in a role that could have been played by just about anyone): only Steve Buscemi can be relied upon to inject some life in the whole thing. I really wanted to give this film a chance. Unfortunately, it crumbles upon itself without much scrutiny.

    (Second viewing, On DVD, April 2006) There isn’t much to say about the film, because a second viewing pretty much confirms the first one: Good first third, fun middle section, dumb third act. The only thing worth noticing about the DVD edition is Michael Bay’s audio commentary, and how he rationalizes the film’s flat-line performance at the box office. (In short: “We made tons of money internationally! The marketing just sucked in the US! Yes, it was all about the marketing!”) The only time he comes close to admitting that the film isn’t all that good is when he idly muses about the disappointing nature of the last act, and why he would have remade it granted a few more million dollars. (Which, coming after numerous mentions of how the production blew money in the wind, is enough to make even big-budget movie fans wish for more El Mariachi films.) So what else is new? If you’ve seen the film in theatres and feel no particular affection for Bay’s energetic direction, skip the DVD and save yourself a few hours.

  • Fantastic Four (2005)

    Fantastic Four (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2005) Well, that was bland. The nice thing about good superhero movies is that they make it easier to point at the bad ones and say “this is not how it should be done!” And so, Fantastic Four is not how it should be done: By-the-number script, languid pacing and pedestrian special effects. Well, actually the script is closer to “bad” than simply “by-the-numbers” (the Ben Grimm romantic subplot alone is worth a howl), but let’s be generous. As an origin story, it’s too long, and doesn’t contain enough stuff. There are two-and-a-half action sequences in the story (one of which being a disaster created by the Fantastic Fours themselves, in an eerie echo of the much-better The Incredibles) and that, too, is not enough. Casting-wise, Jessica Alba simply doesn’t measure up as “The Invisible Woman”, although her lack of impact as a character supposed to be shy-and-effacing may have more to do with the script than acting talent. The rest of the cast does better, although the main villain is simply yawn-inducing. Perhaps the best sequences of the film are those in which Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) expresses his sheer joy at his new-found abilities; the rest is just dour and featureless. This film won’t even be worth a passing trivia questions five years from now.

  • Relativity, Robert J. Sawyer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    ISFIC Press, 2004, 304 pages, US$25.00 hc, ISBN 0-9759156-0-6

    You may not have heard about ISFIC Press before, but don’t feel bad about it: Robert J. Sawyer’s Relativity is their first title. Following in the footsteps left by the venerable Boston-based NESFA Press, the ISFIC (Illinois Science Fiction in Chicago) fan association has decided to publish anthologies of material from their WindyCon Guests of Honor. Whether this represents another encouraging sign about small-press genre publishing will be a question best left to other pundits; what is certain is that the quality of Relativity promises much for the publisher’s next projects.

    Naturally, Relativity is aimed at fans and collector of Robert J. Sawyer’s work. Few of the material included here is original. Half of the short stories have appeared in Sawyer’s fiction anthology Iterations, and almost all of the non-fiction content is already available on Sawyer’s web site.

    But as even e-book enthusiasts will admit, there is something nice about well-designed paper copies of on-line material. There is something even nicer in bringing together a bunch of material in a carefully-crafted package. I may have already read more than three-quarter of Relativity over the years, but that didn’t stop me from re-reading it almost cover to cover: Sawyer’s prose may sometimes be clunky, but it’s seldom any less than compelling.

    The biggest strength of Relativity compared to Iterations is that it reprints mostly non-fiction and has carefully selected which stories to reprint. (Not all of Sawyer’s short fiction is worth re-reading twice; the man’s a natural novelist and he doesn’t cope well with the constraints of the short form).

    In the fiction category, Relativity deservedly re-prints a number of Sawyer’s best stories, including “Just Like Old Times”, “The Shoulders of Giants”, “The Hand You’re Dealt” and “Star Light, Star Bright”. To those, it adds a number of stories published since Iterations‘ release: “Immortality”, “The Stanley Cup Caper” (Ergh said the critic), “Relativity” and the Hugo-Nominated “Ineluctable.”

    The decision to focus the rest of the book on non-fiction is for the best: Sawyer’s non-fiction work is a model of clear writing and even those who can’t read his fiction without wishing for a red pen will be a lot more enthusiastic about his essays. The real meat of the book comes after the stories, with essays, columns, articles, speeches and a lengthy autobiography. As mentioned before, most (if not all?) of that material is available on Sawyer’s web site. But that doesn’t make it any less interesting.

    For instance, I have heard “The Future is Already Here” once and read it another time (vehemently disagreeing with parts of it both times), but I couldn’t help but read it another time here. Also included in the speeches section are short gems like Sawyer’s 2003 Hugo Awards acceptance speech, a reference-studded speech about AI in SF and an off-the-cuff speech about SF’s relationship with social change. Whoever has seen Sawyer at conventions knows that he’s a capable public speaker, and part of his success depends on his well-written source material.

    Relativity continues with a series of shorter pieces on subjects as diverse as Canadian SF; SF conventions; Judith Merrill; God and SF; why write trilogies; why privacy may not such a good idea; three pieces about the future and two more articles on Margaret Atwood. While many of Sawyer’s references will be familiar to genre readers, those pieces were usually destined to a more general audience, and despite some repetitious content, they’re still well-worth reading.

    The next fifty pages bring together twelve short columns about the craft of writing, columns originally published in On Spec magazine. Here Sawyer reveals a few tricks of the trade in his usual lucid fashion. People interested in the nuts-and-bolts of Sawyer’s technique may learn much here: not just about writing, but also about the way would-be professional authors should act when confronted with the cold realities of the marketplace.

    Relativity ends with a lengthy but highly informative autobiographical essay, as well as a complete bibliography. Another end-piece by Valerie Broege is billed as a “critical essay”, but it’s far more laudatory than critical, not to mention repetitive after the previous 300 pages of material: Sawyer simply does a better job at speaking about himself. Mike Resnick’s introduction is much more interesting. Oddly enough, a crossword completes the book.

    People who already like Sawyer’s work won’t need to be told twice about this book, though its limited availability may mean that they’ll have to wait until the next convention dealer’s room to find a copy, or simply order it on-line. Even those who are skeptical about Sawyer’s short stories may want to give a look to the non-fiction material –although it must be said once again that most of it is available on-line. In the end, Sawyer fans and collectors will know whether they want the book or not: As it stands, it’s a beautiful collection of material, worth reading or re-reading.

  • D-Tox aka Eye See You (2002)

    D-Tox aka Eye See You (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2005) Yup, the thought of seeing Sylvester Stallone in a slasher film is just as bad as what’s up there on the screen. Starts as a boring serial killer cop drama, then becomes even worse as a slasher film where the bodies pile up so quickly you barely have the time to register who’s dying. I’m not kidding: the first few victims are greeted by “What? Who?” before yet another person gets killed. The setting has promise (in the usual “dark and damp” category), but the rest is just tedious. Stallone, surprisingly, seems better than the surrounding material. It all implodes in a blah fashion: the killer is revealed, everyone shrug, no-one wonders why this film was held on the studio’s vaults for three years before making it straight to video. Too bad; the reviews from theatre film critics would have been entertaining to read. The DVD contains some useless extra material, including deleted scenes that are even more wretched than the whole film.

  • Cidade De Deus [City of God] (2002)

    Cidade De Deus [City of God] (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2005) Wow! Dynamic crime drama, straight from one of Brazil’s most dangerous neighbourhood: If you thought inner-city black crime movies had it bad, then nothing will prepare you for the casual fashion crime is portrayed in this film. Kids with guns, shooting others and laughing to tell about it. Any thought of “boring foreign cinema” will quickly evaporate as the director changes styles, plays structural tricks and never loses our attention. Many characters are gracefully handled with minimal confusion: the script is a minor tour de force. This is a fabulous film: maybe not one you’ll care to see twice, but definitely one that deserves to be see once. The DVD contains a fabulous one-hour documentary that shows that the reality is even worse than the fiction.

  • Buffalo Soldiers (2001)

    Buffalo Soldiers (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, July 2005) No wonder the film couldn’t find much of an audience after America’s new-found post-9/11 military crush! This dark satire of a peacetime army, set in 1989 Germany, is pretty vicious in its depiction of military personnel. Drugs, violence, incompetence: everything goes in an environment where nobody cares. Protagonist Joaquin Phoenix has a good turn as the cheerfully amoral protagonist, who will steal whatever he can get his hands upon, acting as an interface between the army and the local criminals. For maybe half an hour, Buffalo Soldiers is irresistible fun; not terribly realistic, but well-directed with a tremendous amount of energy and careful comic touches. Then it starts sliding toward drama and never stops. The story gets darker as the laughs get sparser, culminating in a finale that tries a bit too late to wrap it up in a happy finish. It doesn’t quite work: the third act is a bit of a mess, and the unevenness of tone takes away from the impact of the film. Still, there are good segments here and there, and provided you’re not over-sensitive to a bit of irreverence toward the military, it’s worth a look. The DVD includes some obvious electronic presskit making-of material.

  • Gravity Wells, James Alan Gardner

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    EOS, 2005, 344 pages, C$21.50 tpb, ISBN 0-06-008770-6

    For mid-list writers, simply getting a short story collection published is a small coup: anthologies are notoriously unpopular with mass-market audiences, and most trade publishers look upon them as favours, not money-makers. James Alan Gardner’s satisfaction at placing Gravity Wells with his regular publisher EOS must be considerable. With it, he not only gets a chance to republish a few worthy short stories, but also show a wider stylistic range that is to be found in his novels so far.

    The very model of a modern mid-list SF writer, Gardner has, until now, written half a dozen engaging space adventures, recently making the jump from paperback to hardcover format with Radiant. I have not, to be entirely truthful, read all of his novels, but what little I have (Expendable and Commitment Hour) were… okay. Unremarkable. Maybe a bit boring, if you want me to be excessively negative.

    But part of that lack of verve is due to the imperatives of mass-market fiction. For someone who intends to keep working in the industry, the most prudent course is to stay within the conventions of the genre, avoid stretching the envelope and stick to a prudent style.

    With short stories, most of those restrictions don’t apply. Authors aren’t investing months of effort in one piece than may not sell. Experiments become possible. Gardner-the-novelist is a very different writer than Gardner-the-short-story-author. He’s looser. Funnier. If Gravity Wells does one thing better than anything else, it’s to highlight how daring Gardner can be when he wants to be.

    Just look at the titles: Could you imagine a novel named “Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream”? How about “Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large”? Now imagine the content and the structure of the stories. The Aurora Award-winning “Three Hearings…” for instance, takes the form of three inquisitions dozens of years apart, tracing the evolution of a difference between humans throughout our understanding of science. Ambitious stuff, well-handled with an original approach.

    Other “stories” have similarly slippery relationship with traditional narratives. “Lesser Figures of the Greater Trumps” is closer to a collage of odd descriptions, some more interesting than others. “A Changeable Market in Slaves” tells the same simple thing two dozen times, with hilarious variations –though it may take a second reading to extract its full flavour. “Kent State Descending the Gravity Well: An Analysis of the Observer” is a fascinating examination of a writer (not necessarily Gardner himself) as he struggles with how to fictionalize real-world tragedy. Perhaps my favourite piece of the book, “Sense of Wonder”, discusses unimaginably big concepts through a schoolyard dialogue.

    In Gardner’s experimental style, even traditional narratives can be presented differently. “Shadow Album” tells a story through descriptions of still pictures (good concept, so-so execution). Meanwhile, “The Young Person’s Guide to the Organism” is a first-contact story taking the form of speeches from elder to younger –and sustains that premise for the length of a novella.

    Gardner’s versatility also applies to the genre of the stories. He writes Science Fiction, but does not pretend to be a member of the hard-SF school. Most of Gravity Wells is closer to speculative fiction, some of them crossing over to the fantastic. “The Reckoning of Gifts” is SF clothed in fantasy garbs, but “Withered Gold, the Night, the Day” is straight up fantasy, as is “Reaper”.

    Meanwhile, fans of more traditional SF will also find plenty to like. “The Last Day of the War, With Parrots” is classical Science Fiction, with a straight-up narrative, interesting inventions and a terrific rhythm. “The Children of Crèche” is also the kind of well-handled SF made accessible through clear prose. Finally, “Hardware Scenario G-49” is perhaps the most obviously funny tale in the book, the kind of story that never fails to leave a smile on your face.

    I may not care too much about Fred Gambino’s cover illustration (a surprise, given that I love most of what Gambino has done elsewhere), but the content of the anthology itself is well worth your time. Aside from three of four weaker pieces, Gravity Wells is diverse, entertaining and more original than you’d think. I’m tempted to rate it above what I’ve read of Gardner’s longer fiction.

    Now, if we could just convince EOS and other trade publishers that they should take chances on more short story collections…

  • The Princess Diaries (2001)

    The Princess Diaries (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, sometime around June 2005) I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this film in the mid-noughties, but it doesn’t come up in a search of my archives as of late 2014, so here goes nothing as a placeholder: The Princess Diaries is an amiable Pygmalion-lite comedy of manners in which a ordinary teen discovers that she is the heir of a throne of some sort. The premise isn’t nearly as important as the various gags and moments as our ordinary teenager is socialized to aristocratic standards. The most noteworthy thing about The Princess Diaries is a early star-making performance from Anne Hathaway, with an able supporting turn by Julie Andrews. Otherwise, this pretty much plays out like the Disney film it is. It’s likable without being deep or meaningful, and that’s all it truly needs to be.

  • The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, Ed. Jeff Vandermeer & Mark Roberts

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 2005, 297 pages, C$21.00 tpb, ISBN 0-553-38339-6

    Humour is a subjective thing, and medical humour even more so. My encounters with the health care system have so far been mercifully brief, but I still find myself a hard sell when it comes to humour in a medical… vein. Pain, diseases, death: not funny!

    So imagine the uphill battle when it comes to reading and appreciating The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. As the title suggests, it’s a book of weird medical conditions. What the title doesn’t tell you, however, is that it’s a humorous anthology of fake diseases imagined by a bunch of science-fiction and fantasy writers.

    So don’t be surprised if you happen to read about a disease in which bones migrate outside the body (eventually leaving the invertebrate patient quivering like an old squid) or one where the sufferer’s organs slowly transforms themselves into fruits. Despite the hair-raising farther reaches of real medicine, the contributor to the Guide manage to invent an impressive number of even more extreme conditions.

    Take, for instance, Steve Aylett’s “Download Syndrome”, in which people rely so much on electronic devices for memory that they become empty vessels. Or Brian Stableford’s “Ferrobacterial Accretion Syndrome”, describing how some individuals form metal sculptures within their bodies. (Not to be confused with Jeffrey Thomas’ “Internalized Tattooing Disease”.) Not to mention Jeff Topham’s “Logopetria”, a condition where patients’ words are, um, literally spat out. And who can forget Michael Bishop’s “Biblioartifexism”; the delusion that one has re-composed a classic work of literature?

    Not all entries are so amusing. A number of them aim for horror rather than humour, and if the results can be effective (I’m unaccountably fond of Jeffrey Thomas’ “Extreme Exostosis”, for instance), many of the others simply fall flat. What may seem amusing to a writer may end up looking lame to readers, and so a fair chunk of Thackery lands with a gross thud. But as with any other anthology, you learn to remember the best and forget the rest.

    Some of the book’s most effective moments come as it starts playing subtle tricks on the reader. Pay particular attention to the diseases flagged as “contagious”, as those often indicate a writer in the full grip of the condition he’s describing. I was completely charmed by Rhys Hughes’s “Ebercitas”, but then again who could resist the beauty, even unseen, of Eber M. Soler? (Example!) In a grimmer but no-less hilarious fashion, China Mieville’s “Wormword” does a lot of mileage out of a simple memetic concept. David Langford turn in one of the shortest entries with “Logrolling Ephesus”, but as Langford fans know, the man can do miracles in less than a thousand “words”.

    Thackery also earns top marks for its sumptuous design, consciously modelled on Victorian-era medical textbooks and often implemented hand-in-hand with the content. John Coulthart’s “Paper Pox” and Brian Evenson’s “Worsley’s Supplement” visually demonstrate their afflictions (chilling and amusing readers in the process), whereas the last third of the book does wonders in re-creating snippets of the Guide‘s “previous editions.”

    Maybe a third of the book is not dedicated to the actual description of fake diseases, and that part of the Guide isn’t as successful as the rest. The character of Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead may not be as hilarious as the editors may think he is, and his adventures across the world during the twentieth century are sometimes more tedious than amusing. The “secret history” of the twentieth century as influenced by the Guide is a good concept, but the execution is hit-and-miss.

    But, as I said, humour is subjective, let alone medical humour. The Guide has received lavish praise from critics and readers; who am I to spoil the fun? At the very least, I should acknowledge the considerable amount of effort that went in putting together the guide (the visual design alone is worth a peek in the bookstore), even if the ultimate impact is mixed.

    Wait… perpetual hunger for better books, lack of satisfaction regarding most things, irresistible compulsion to chronicle inner disappointments on “the web”. What if I have a condition?

    Is Dr. Lambshead taking submissions for a second edition?

  • Old Man’s War, John Scalzi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2005, 316 pages, C$33.95 hc, ISBN 0-765-30940-8

    It doesn’t take a long time to become a John Scalzi fan. One look at his on-line blog, “Whatever”, is usually enough to put him on your list of daily diversions. A true writing professional, Scalzi has perfected his on-line voice for maximum impact: It’s clear, strong and immensely entertaining. It’s not much of a surprise, then, to find out that his “first” novel be such a readable piece of work. (“First” novel in a big-publisher sense; a truer first novel, Agent to the Stars, is available on-line and will soon be published by speciality publisher Subterranean Press)

    Old Man’s War is self-consciously a derivation on the kind of military SF best exemplified by Heinlein’s Starship Troopers: a novel whose first half is spent seeing our protagonist through training, and the second in actual combat. The main tweak of this well-worn story, in this case, is that the protagonist of the tale is a 75-year old man. John Perry is widowed, bored and enlisted: what sweetens the pot for him is that the Colonial Marines are ready to rejuvenate anyone willing to sign up for a tour of duty.

    I expected to enjoy Old Man’s War, but I’m still surprised at how quickly and how effectively Scalzi can hook his readers. The prose style is a model of easy reading, and Scalzi’s got a practised eye for the small details, the mini-scenes, the rich dialogue, the background material required to make readers race from one chapter to the next. His protagonist undergoes his “going of age” adventure with believable reactions given his life experiences. John Perry is a tough guy, but not without his soft side: he misses the simple pleasures of matrimony, is properly grateful for what his old body has done for him and can’t let go whenever he think he has seen something important. This is a bookmark-optional book: Don’t be surprised if you end up reading it in a single sitting.

    The military-SF aspect of the story is also handled with plenty of skill. The problem with a lot of industry-standard military SF is that it often seems as if it’s written by soldiers for soldiers. Even well-meaning civilians can have trouble understanding the tactics, the jargon and the common assumptions. Scalzi is not a veteran, even comes from the left side of the political spectrum, but he understand how to treat the subject respectfully. This detachment has a lot to do with the perfect accessibility of his novel for everyone: Even readers unfamiliar with hard-core MilSF will be able to read Old Man’s War without too much trouble. (Naturally, sub-genre devotees will find themselves at home. Through I wonder if the Thaddeus Bender sequence is a bit of red meat thrown to that particular segment of the audience.)

    This being said, the plotting isn’t up to the polish of the prose. Scalzi has an annoying penchant for plotting-by-coincidence, and so Perry benefits from a few unbelievably convenient chance encounters: First with his biggest off-planet fan (netting him some initial advancement), then (twice) with someone familiar to him. Once may not have been so bad, but more than that is a bit too much.

    I also have issues with some of the background coherency of his universe: Some arbitrary restrictions are made necessary by the plot, (no higher-tech on Earth; permanent exile of the Marines) but the rigid enforcement of those rules are inconsistent with how things work in the real world. Scalzi also struggles with his high-tech toys: the level of technology used by the Colonial Marine isn’t evenly distributed, and even his acknowledgement of those inconsistencies (eg; the discussion of why the “Ghost Brigades” don’t make up the bulk of the Marines Corps) seems a bit evasive. Which is a shame, because Scalzi understands the tech and slings the jargon better than many of his peers: His use of SF tropes is consistent with his goal of updating Starship Troopers to today’s tech standards.

    But even with the awful coincidences, even with the iffy parameters of his universe, Old Man’s War remains a delight from beginning to end. I’m not just saying that because it’s a near-certainty that John Scalzi will eventually read this review (sorry for those last two paragraphs, Mr. Scalzi), but because I have rarely seen such a compulsively-readable novel. In terms of pure reading fun, it brings to mind some of the slickest Frederik Pohl novels, or -dare I say it- Heinlein’s Starship Troopers itself. A number of so-called fine writers could take note of the technique. Scalzi is a professional, and when it comes to my entertainment dollars, I’ll bet on the professional over the artist all the time.

  • Accelerando, Charles Stross

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2005, 390 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-441-01284-1

    (Also freely available online at accelerando.org)

    This book should come with warning labels.

    This book could melt your brain (and that would be a good thing.)

    Caution! Content requires some mental assembly.

    Warning: High density of ideas. May explode.

    Danger: This book dissolves outdated assumptions about science-fiction.

    Do not put in contact with people unable to cope with new things.

    This, I’m convinced, will be the defining SF novel of this decade. The closest analogue would be Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix, the unheralded best SF novel of the eighties, the one that blew away a generation of influential readers and writers, the truest shift between SF as it was and SF as it became. Charles Stross’ Accelerando, after five years in the incubator, has finally emerged to sweep away the dregs of old-style Science Fiction and show us how things will be done from now on. This is the first true SF novel of the twenty-first century.

    High praise indeed, but this novel is liable to inflame even the most jaded SF critic. Accelerando is a fix-up of nine short stories (a trilogy of trilogies) charting the evolution of humanity through a twenty-first century marked by a technological singularity, through the eyes of a cat who’s not a cat —and three generations of a dysfunctional family. It’s almost unimaginably big and it does what few SF writers are even willing to do: stare the Singularity in the face and say “bring it on.”

    The first three stories of the book are those of Manfreld Mancx, a genius whose day job is to bring humanity, kicking and screaming, into a turbulent new future. He’s so far ahead of the curve that he is essentially living in the future. The second trilogy of stories sticks close to his daughter, Amber Mancx, as she (and then a copy of her) travels away from Earth as humanity lives through the Singularity. The last three stories follow her son, Sirdhan Mancx, as he confronts the cold reality of a post-Singularity humanity that may be headed toward an existential dead-end.

    As a novel, Accelerando is hardly perfect. Stross’ prose owes more to brute-force hacks than to elegance: His story requires so much bandwidth that stylistic flourishes take too much space. So he dumps information any way he can. The result requires you to pay attention, keep going forward and try not to drown under such a torrent of material.

    Heady, heady stuff. If you’ve read Stross’ fiction before, you may be ready for his onslaught of ideas. Others may give up in frustration as every sentence needs to be uncompressed for understanding. A.E. Van Vogt used to say that real SF ought to throw a new idea every eight hundred words. Improbably, Stross doubles that average. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s got the sheer guts, the insane audacity to imagine his way through the Singularity and come up with post-Singularity issues. (What’s more, he also manages to deliver a neat solution to Drake’s paradox, a solution that presumes that information science, economics and evolutionary biology all boil down to the same thing.)

    To hack a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes: Your mind, once stretched by Accelerando, will never regain its original dimensions. Neither will Science Fiction as a genre. This novel destroys the comfortable futures of old-school SF and redefines the picture we’ve got of the future. I don’t think that SF fans could tolerate a steady diet of novels like Accelerando. But then again, I don’t think that most SF writers could write such novels.

    One further word of praise and warning: This is not a Science Fiction novel to put in mundane hands. In order to make sense of it, you will have to either hold a CS degree, overdose on Wired and Slashdot and/or be a time-traveller. As Rick Kleffel has memorably put it, “This is the kind of science fiction that scares normal people” to which I’d add “and those merely pretending to like Science Fiction as it should be.” It’s hard stuff, and all the more exhilarating for it.

    But what a trip. If this isn’t the SF novel of the decade, I can’t wait to read what will beat it.