Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Que Dieu Bénisse l’Amérique [May God Bless America] (2006)

    Que Dieu Bénisse l’Amérique [May God Bless America] (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2007) What a mess. Take September 11, add a serial killer, add castration, add suburban angst, add pseudo-profound musings on the nature of North-American suburbia and stir. Yeah, you won’t like the result either, especially when, visually, it looks like something you could have shot with a bunch of middle-aged friends in your nearest suburb. Attempted profoundness quickly leads to achieved pretentiousness, and the film seems to implode on itself as all the plot threads are brought together. But don’t give up on that rental just yet: The DVD comes bundled with a short making-of film that is, I believe, the real worthwhile film on the platter. I won’t say any more: You will have to watch it to believe it.

  • OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d’espions (2006)

    OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d’espions (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2007) What a strange, strange concept: Adapt an old French spy thriller to the screen and poke fun at its outdated assumptions. Jean Dujardin is magnificent as “Agent OSS 117”, but it doesn’t take much for his high-wire performance to turn sour if you’re not in the right frame of mind. His old-school French parochialism is either amusing or irritating, and that pretty much speaks for the entire film: it’s a satire, but often a frustrating one as the clueless protagonist can being either charming or infuriating. At least the period recreation is convincing (down to cinematic techniques that call back to the early James Bond era), Aure Atika is gorgeous in her too-short turn as Princess Al Tarouk and a few gags stick in mind far longer than they should. It’s definitely a curiosity, and as such warrants at least a look even if it doesn’t quite work all the time.

  • The Last Colony, John Scalzi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2007, 320 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-7653-1697-4

    At a time when most new writers in the SF&F field are writing fantasy rather than science-fiction, John Scalzi has quickly become a reliable value for top-quality SF. Since his first professionally-published novel in 2005, Scalzi has already produced a remarkable and distinctive body of work: The Last Colony is his fifth novel, and the third in the universe launched by the Hugo-nominated Old Man’s War. All of Scalzi’s novels so far have shown an entertaining blend of competent SF, crystal-clear writing, snappy dialogue and terrific pacing. Scalzi’s gone from hot new talent to reliable pro in a ridiculously short amount of time, and The Last Colony is another strong entry in the list of reasons why Scalzi belongs on your reading list.

    Not simply content in repeating past successes, The Last Colony evolves the “Old Man’s War” universe rather than try to repeat a familiar formula. The first novel attempted a straight-up military SF formula. The second, The Ghost Brigades, meshed special forces heroics with musings on personal identity. This third entry more or less abandons the swords in favour of the ploughshares, as it follows past protagonists John Perry and Jane Sagan while they establish a new colony on Earth’s behalf.

    This is a risky proposition. Readers of the series so far will recall how the galaxy is filled with competing alien races and how most of them wouldn’t mind seeing the humans disappear. It’s a tough Darwinian universe out there, and the humans are not among the most powerful hunters in the neighbourhood. Since colonization is so rigidly controlled by the galactic powers in charge, a new colony is almost an act of aggression. From the onset, it’s not too clear how official this effort is meant to be, or who’s telling the truth to the protagonists.

    Scalzi’s tendency to pencil in details of his universe in previous books here comes handy, as he’s able to extend the reach of his world-building to include savvy diplomatic brinkmanship. Hints and allegations and ominous details finally pay off here, as potentially-silly details from previous volumes (such as the lack of communications between Earth and the colonies) are explained away in a reasonably coherent fashion. It eventually culminates in a joyously bridge-burning conclusion that will radically change the shape of the future books in the series. (As I revise this, Scalzi is reportedly at work on a fourth volume, Zoe’s Tale, due mid-2008.)

    Fortunately, the prose and chapter-to-chapter pacing of the novel are up to the structural success of the novel. Scalzi’s most distinctive writing trademark is a compulsively readable style and The Last Colony is no exception. Despite the less militaristic focus of the story, Scalzi has no trouble pulling in his readers; the mystery surrounding the colony is enough to get the narrative started, and the procedural aspects of colonization are intriguingly described. Science Fiction has often played around with the concept of planetary colonization, but aside from The Legacy of Heorot, I can’t recall such a detailed nuts-and-bolts approach to the first few moments of such an event. It’s surprisingly engaging, and holds out interest just long enough for the third-act betrayals and explosions.

    Scalzi’s ability to pose relatively complex conceptual and ethical issues in accessible language also remains intact. Like few other working SF genre writers, Scalzi is able to combine state-of-the-art speculation with a prose style that can reach much wider audiences than seasoned SF fans. And yet he’s able to do so without dumbing down anything, which is a harder trick than you’d expect.

    Picker readers will probably ask a few questions about the rationale for 18th-century colonization equipment when “wireless communications” is the thing to avoid: the state of today’s mechanical design (especially for third-world environments) is such that better solutions could be used for 2Xth century colonies. But what’s a Science Fiction novel without at least one detail left to pick for argumentative fans?

    What’s unarguable is that Scalzi is already an utterly dependable writer, one who keeps stretching the boundaries of his universe while delivering the same qualities that have attracted readers to his earlier work. Scalzi’s not just a hot new SF writer; he’s a model to follow if SF has any chance of surviving as a cohesive genre category in the twenty-first century.

  • The Mistress Of Spices (2005)

    The Mistress Of Spices (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2007) Faithful readers of these reviews already know that I love Ashwarya Rai like few other actresses, and I really should let that stand as my review of the entire film. She’s gorgeous, she’s the star of the film and frankly, is there any other reason to see it? Well, okay: if ever they perfect smell-o-cinema, this would be the first movie to re-master. There is such an accumulation of details and images about spices that the film practically cries out for a cooking kit bundle. Fans of sumptuous exotic flavours will be able to overlook the lacklustre magical realism romance that runs at the heart of the film and just enjoy the film on a scene-per-scene basis. The rest doesn’t always hold together very well, and the mechanistic nature of the script is a bit too obvious to be completely entrancing, but with a title like The Mistress Of Spices, at least you get both the mistress and the spices.

  • Kung Phooey! (2003)

    Kung Phooey! (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2007) I have a soft spot for earnest low-budget parodies, and Kung Phooey! is a shining example of one. Writer/Director/Actor Darryl Fong does a few nice things with good intentions, a low budget and scattershot comedy: While the film’s editing is too lax to truly punch up the film’s gags, it generally gets better as it goes along, and the film’s puppy-dog charm eventually makes it easier to forgive. Watching the film once won’t be enough: For a greater appreciation of the movie, re-run it with the commentary track to hear Fong talk about the process of making a low-budget film. Yes, it’s cheap and raw and occasionally unfunny and frequently eye-rolling awful. But I like them like that, and once you’re in the proper frame of mind, it’s even curiously enjoyable.

  • The Kingdom (2007)

    The Kingdom (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2007) I like political thrillers and I love action movies, so imagine my anticipation at a movie that promised a mixture of both. The Kingdom certainly gets cracking early with a dynamite opening credit sequence that lays out decades’ worth of American/Saudi history in eye-catching infographics. Then it’s down to the nitty-gritty of a mass-murder investigation as a small team of FBI operatives is sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate an act of terrorism in a Western enclave. Jamie Foxx easily takes control of the film, but he’s ably supported by good performances from Jennifer Garner, Ashraf Barhom and Chris Cooper. As a procedural, it’s a bit dull and linear, but the strangeness of the Saudi environment is enough to keep everything interesting as police work takes a back-seat to politics and cultural differences. It’s an easy sip of a film, one that never requires any prodding to go from one scene to another. Then the last half hour kicks in, and from that point on The Kingdom shifts gears to become one continuous thirty-minutes-long slam-bang action film that rolls from car crashes to shootout to car chase to more shootouts to hand-to-hand combat. It’s exhilarating, well-shot and does a lot to reconcile the film’s geopolitical goals with its willingness to entertain a crowd. What’s missing, unfortunately, is a willingness to go beyond a certain level and truly start scratching at the uncomfortable reality set up in the film’s opening minutes: The Kingdom, as enjoyable as it can be, only skims the surface of what could have been possible with those elements, and smothers its epilogue in an abrupt flood of cheaply-bought sentiment. Too bad. Too damn bad, because for a few moments, this could have been an equal to Syriana with even more kick-ass explosions.

  • In The Valley Of Elah (2007)

    In The Valley Of Elah (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2007) After the collective war-lust that led the United States to invade and pillage Iraq in 2003, the uncomfortable reality of a prolonged quagmire has led a number of Americans to confront Yet Another Generational Sacrifice. It’s no accident if In The Valley Of Elah is written and directed by Canadian-born Paul Haggis, seeing how it tries really hard to be both non-partisan and blatantly political. At first glance, this is a soft-edged procedural thriller about a father’s investigation in the death of his son, recently returned from Iraq. At second glance, it’s a slow-paced character portrait of grieving father and a community in shock. At third glance, it’s a meditation about the price to pay for war. But little of that will be obvious if you allow yourself to be swept into the low-key investigation that forms the film’s backbone. Tommy Lee Jones is at his laconic best as an ex-Military Policeman using his experience to put together his son’s last few moments, with the help of a embittered Charlize Theron as a policewoman in a male-dominated environment. It’s smooth, but ultimately a bit dull: One jolt of action can’t mask the flat cinematography and the lengthy pacing. The end also gets a bit too obvious, though nowhere near as annoyingly so as in Haggis’ previous Crash. It’s a long sit (and as such, won’t please everyone all the time), but it’s got a certain dramatic heft and finds a place in the pack of meditative thrillers to emerge from contemporary Hollywood cinema. It could have been tighter, leaner, better, but it’s already halfway there.

  • Titan, Ben Bova

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2006, 464 pages, C$33.95 hc, ISBN 0-765-30413-9

    Ben Bova is an old man. That, in itself, is not a problem nor anything to be ashamed about. Old age will happen to all of us, and it’s truly bad karma to start pointing it out in other people.

    But I think that it’s entirely reasonable to point our that the assumptions of a generation can put off another. Kids do it all the time, as their newfangled habits mystify their elders. So if I say that Titan is SF written by a grandparent for grandparents, it’s not an insolent remark as much as it’s a description, and maybe even a hint for the marketing department.

    Ben Bova, of course, is one of the Science Fiction genre’s elder statesmen. He edited Analog before I was born, and his bibliography looks endless. If he hasn’t done everything in the field, he’s come close. But reading his fiction is invariably a throwback to the old-school Campbellian streak of SF. Engineer fiction, simply written for a generation fascinated by the Race to the Moon.

    Much as I’d like to trumpet those values, there’s also something fatally dated about them. The stately Apollo program paradigm is a product of its time, and it doesn’t seem particularly relevant to a world where the iterative chaos of the Internet has imposed itself as a metaphor for the modern world.

    This is relevant to Bova’s Titan insofar as this novel feels as if it had been written right after the Voyager 2 flyby of 1978. Aside from a few new scientific details that we didn’t know back then, Titan seems stuck in the seventies, and not even the hip seventies: the reactionary seventies as seen by the conservative nerds who still hadn’t come to grip with feminism.

    Case in point: Titan takes place aboard a colony ship in orbit around Titan, a 10,000-people habitat more or less exiled from Earth. As the novel picks up (it’s part of a series, which may be a bit of an obstacle for readers coming in cold), the colony is thinking about loosening the rigid zero-population-growth rules that have (somehow) been imposed on the entire population. This becomes a major political issue in the elections taking place aboard the ship: As the politicians make their steely-eyed calculations, they simply assume that all the women will vote for repealing the reproductive ban, but all the men will take some convincing. Or, as Bova writes as dialogue for his heroine, “’I don’t see how we can expect the women of this community to give up having babies.’” [P.155] and then, later, to a mostly-female political rally audience, “’Women make up forty-seven percent of the habitat’s population. If we get all the women to sign the petition, we only need two thousand men to sign up.’ That silenced them. Holly could practically hear them thinking; Two thousand men. How are we going to get two thousand men to agree with us?” [P239-240] The novel’s trite answer to that question is the stuff of bad jokes.

    That’s the point where it becomes obvious that Bova hasn’t paid any attention to the real world in the past few decades.

    It’s certainly not the only such detail, though: In the aftermath of a major political debate, there’s this little gem:

    …he walked back into the living room. Elsa was watching Holly Lane’s speech again.

    “Are they rerunning it?” he asked.

    “No, I recorded her speech.” [P.231]

    This dialogue isn’t even relevant today, at a time when YouTube, news media and even candidate sites carry entire streaming videos of debates. The idea of a massive 2095-era colony ship being stuck with a broadcast mass media is dangerously ridiculous, because picking at it can unravels many of the novel’s assumptions, including the idea of a massive colony ship. Better to leave it alone.

    But if we leave that alone, it means that we’ll have to avoid speaking about the female characters obsessed about weight and reproductive issues, or the dumb-as-rock AI paradox that’s been taken straight out of Star Trek episodes. So let’s be nice and say that Bova’s prose is clean and unobtrusive, that his fascination for scientific details will please hard-SF geeks and that he generally knows how to plot. Even if his characters are almost uniformly nice (even the stock fundamentalist villain), even if some AI-POV chapters are entirely superfluous and even if the whole thing isn’t much more than middle-of-the-road SF from a time capsule.

    Still, would you believe that this thing has won a Campbell award?

    Maybe there are more grandparents in the Campbell jury than I thought.

  • The Hunting Party (2007)

    The Hunting Party (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2007) As a pretty sarcastic guy myself, I feel a strong kinship to films that keep pointing out the unconscious absurdity of the world out there. You would think that a sardonic based-on-reality comedy like The Hunting Party (in which a group of journalists goes hunting for a war criminal… and finds him) would appeal, and it does: at its best, writer/director Richard Shepard’s film pulls off a very entertaining mixture of smart-ass narration, dark humour and hard realpolitiks. The characters thrive in senseless situations, and the machine that they set in motion has a well-worn implacability that feels right. By the time the film ends by putting in words what every viewer has been working out for themselves, The Hunting Party feels like the find of cute little hidden film that rewards those who scour the shelves of their local videoclub. But it’s not a complete success, and it’s the very qualities that make the film work that also make it sputter in place. The tonal shifts of the picture are particularly annoying, especially when they don’t work: Having established early on that the film is going to be a comedy, the script never manages to instill any degree of suspense, and it just digs itself in a hole when it tries to do so. The tragic subplot involving the lead character’s history also sticks out as a mismatched heartfelt section in a generally cynical landscape. The parts of the film keep working against each other and the result often feels like missed opportunities to go even deeper in the ridiculousness of the situation. It’s not a complete failure, but it’s frustrating enough as a faint success.

  • The Brave One (2007)

    The Brave One (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2007) Sure, go ahead, say the nicest things about Jodie Foster and how she delicately portrays the trauma that sudden violence can inflict on ordinary lives. When you’ll be done, I will still be laughing about the ridiculously contrived script that serves as an excuse for this film. Casual brutal violence, OK. But the odds of the same characters being involved in a convenience store robbery, in a subway mugging, in a violent pimp/prostitute business, in tracking criminals and hunting them down? This is Death Wish crossed with some of the most coincidence-laden plotting ever imagined. It makes it hard to take the film seriously, as either a serious drama or a crime thriller. At some point, the somber tone of “Foster-the-victim” snaps and leads to “oh, come on, what’s next?” I laughed uncontrollably, then waited impatiently for the film to end. Never mind the syrupy music and the slow fade-outs: This is even less respectable than Shoot’em Up which, at least, didn’t puff itself in importance when it knew it was trash.

  • 3:10 To Yuma (2007)

    3:10 To Yuma (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, September 2007) Oh, hey, it’s that time of the decade again, the brief season when “The western is back!” You keep telling yourself that, John Wayne wannabes. Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy 3:10 To Yuma on its own term, that of a historical drama/thriller that happens to be set in the far-west. The quality of the project starts with two solid lead actors (Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, who’s particularly good as a likable villain), but the script is really what elevates this film over similar recent romps such as American Outlaws: here, the setting becomes a backdrop to a reasonably complex tale of redemption, revenge, duty and honour. Big honking concepts, but they go down easily when wrapped in decent film-making, slick acting and a few thrilling sequences. It all wraps up decently, paying off what could otherwise have been a slightly overlong film. Pulling together character drama and gun-shot entertainment, 3:10 To Yuma is all you’d want in a western. Or any Hollywood film, really.

  • Seeker, Jack McDevitt

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2005, 360 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-441-01329-5

    All right, dear reader, take out your white gloves and put them on: it’s time to give SFWA a little golf clap.

    Why? Well, in a two-year period that saw the publication of superior works of science-fiction such as Peter Watts’ Blindsight, Charles Stross’s Glasshouse and Accelerando, Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin or Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, SFWA has deemed that Jack McDevitt’s Seeker is the best novel of 2005-2006.

    Bravo, SFWA. Well done. (Golf clap)

    But then again, we already know that as an organization, SFWA’s hopeless at -hm- pretty much everything that doesn’t get shoved under the usual “Griefcom-Writer’sBeware-MedicalFund” litany. (As I write this, the organization is doing frantic damage control to minimize the PR disaster that was the indiscriminate “DMCA takedown” of texts on a file-sharing site.) (And as I rewrite this, weeks later, SFWA is still stuck in another entertaining damage-control exercise about presidential candidates. Dumb SFWA, duuumb.) But SFWA particularly sucks at giving out awards. The mental midgets that log-roll each others on the nomination ballot have recently picked such all-time classics as Catherine Asaro’s The Quantum Rose and Joe Haldeman’s Camouflage as somehow being “best novels” of some sort.

    Memo to SFWA members: “Novel of the year” is not the same thing as “most average novel of the year”.

    Without any particular expectation -and reading Jack McDevitt will do wonders to extinguish particular expectations regarding his work- Seeker is not a particularly bad novel. It’s not particularly good, but it’s still a cut above anything I can remember from McDevitt’s post-Engines of God period. Most of the typical McDevitt tropes are there, but they’re acknowledged and even weaved in the theme of the novel.

    But calling it “best novel” is foolish, and doesn’t just reflect badly on the ones giving the awards.

    But let me take a deep breath. I banish the Nebulas from my mind. Happy thoughts. Okay.

    Since this review has already spent far too much time bashing the Nebulas, let’s just talk about Seeker itself. If you’re already familiar with McDevitt’s fiction, you already know what you’re going to get: An adventure tale of far-future archaeology, using stock characters and as few changes from today’s world than are required in order to tell the story. McDevitt’s brand of science-fiction is comfort food for those who grew up reading the mainstream branch of SF and just want to replicate the experience. He’s not interested in genuine speculation, and I find it telling that his far-future characters usually spend their time looking at events in their own history.

    So Seeker becomes an above-average McDevitt novel in acknowledging and integrating this fascination into its thematic thread. As the protagonists track down an artifact from a supposedly-lost spaceship, they too get some time to wonder how and why their civilization has remained stagnant. The answer isn’t too comforting. Props be given to the man, McDevitt can be pretty dark in his ruminations: There’s a limit to the Golden-Age-SF comparisons we can make about his work.

    But I suspect that the novel works best as a Science Fiction procedural adventure, in which a tiny clue comes to reveal yet another tiny clue, which eventually (through a series of risky adventures) unravels an entire mystery. There’s adventure for all: aliens and lost spaceships and despicable antagonists and a plucky narrator to tell it all. Once firmly launched, Seeker is a pleasant read, and McDevitt is an old pro at playing with the usual SF elements. The prose is clean, the characters usually stand out, and if the story could easily be tweaked to a contemporary Tomb-Raider-style thriller, few fans will be put off by the result.

    On the other hand, readers can certainly be disappointed if they’re expecting more than an above-average McDevitt potboiler. There’s little that’s innovative, new, threatening or even exemplary about this novel. Of all the SF novels published in 2005-2006, Seeker doesn’t fit in my recommended Top-10 and I can’t find anything in it that would justify such a distinction. And that brings us back to the whole “Nebula Award” business. There are ways to rationalize it: If the Nebula has become “an award we give to our own members in order to thank them for services rendered to the organization”, then there’s little we can say about SFWA’s decision. But then they shouldn’t be surprised to find out that no one takes their little clubhouse award seriously. Serious readers will go hunting elsewhere for a reliable list of novels that represent the best that Science Fiction has to offer.

    (Since you ask: After a few years in the wilderness, the Hugo Awards are once more relevant, but I think that the best awards in the business are consistently the Locus Awards: Their top-15 long-list, subdivided in SF and fantasy novels, is a reliable guide to what’s worth reading every year.)

  • First Among Sequels, Jasper Fforde

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, 398 pages, C$24.95 tpb, ISBN 978-0-340-75201-2

    What I find most remarkable about Jasper Fforde is the way every one of his novels feels like a never-to-be-topped bravura performance. Given that he’s now written seven of them, that’s a more impressive achievement than you may think. Lesser authors may squeeze trilogies out of thin concepts, but Fforde seems determined to top the Van Vogtian ideal of a new idea every 800 words. A savvy mix of literary references, genre concepts, crystal-clear prose and good clean fun, Fforde’s novels don’t have plots as they have an avalanche of plot complications and conceptual set-pieces. I’m not sure there’s such a thing as “a Fforde fan who has only read one of his books”: Usually, reading one Fforde means collecting them all. His fan-base is rabid, and it’s easy to see why.

    First Among Sequels is the fifth book in the Thursday Next sequence, but it’s not quite a direct sequel. For one thing, it takes place in 2002, fourteen years after the climax of the fourth book. But Thursday Next is living in a universe where five novels have been adapted from her life: four volumes drenched with sex and violence, followed by a fifth “kinder and gentler” tome which sank without a trace. But that’s the least of Thursday’s problems, as she struggles at ACME Carpets, which is really a front for an officially-disbanded SpecOps. But even that is a cover of sorts for Thursday’s continuing activities as a Jurisfiction agent.

    But wait! Thursday’s problems don’t stop there. There’s still a do-nothing teenage son to contend with (especially given how he should have started climbing ChronoGuard’s corporate ladder three years ago), cheese smuggling, a resurgent Goliath corporation, a dangerously stupidity-free government, a ghost with a message, declining readership, a husband suffering from writer’s block, more trouble in the world of fiction (including a sudden death for Sherlock Holmes) and a Jurisfiction partner who is nothing less than the fictionalized representation of Thursday herself.

    The first hundred pages are a bit slower than usual, but that’s partly because they’re dedicated to an updated tour of Thursday’s universe, twelve years later. There’s a lot of stuff to remember, but Fforde does a fine job at holding our burdened minds through a refresher course in how his elaborate hodge-podge of concepts works together. (No, I’m still not convinced that it all fits together. No, I don’t think that’s important either.) Once again, we’re shown SpecOps, Jurisfiction, the Great Library, the Council of Genres, Text Grand Central, the Well of Lost Plots…

    It’s a lot of stuff to juggle, but Fforde does it with aplomb and practised chaos. One of the continued pleasures of the Thursday Next universe is how the crises all seems to take place on different levels at once: At home, at work, elsewhere in Next’s “real world”, in Jurisfiction, across time… Most of those subplots end up being extensive justifications for elaborate set-pieces, but as long as the pages turn (and believe me, they turn quickly), who’s to complain? (As usual, it amuses me that authors count for nothing is Fforde’s grand mythology. This remains, first and foremost, a series for readers.)

    I won’t spoil all of the conceptual gags and set-pieces that pepper the book, but the first two are worth a tease. First is a small passage in which the Thursdays feel what it’s like to be in a passage read by a superreader (“a reader with unprecedented power of comprehension; someone who can pick up every subtle nuance, all the inferred narrative and deeply embedded subtext in one tenth the time of normal readers.” [P.72]), a concept nearly certain to be explored anew in a latter volume. (The nice thing about Fforde’s prose is the way it makes even average readers feel like superreaders.) The second good piece is a “refit” sequence describing how books are regularly maintained and overhauled “every thirty years or a million reading, whichever is soonest.” [P.93], a segment giving a new sense to “critical re-evaluation”. But I’ll remain coy on the two madcap tricks in Chapters 36-37, both of which are worth loud “I can’t believe he’s doing this” laughs.

    It all amount to another smooth and easy success for Fforde, who takes up a universe that seemed tapped-out and gives it another cool spin. There’s plenty of good material here (including bits of choice political satire), and the only bad thing about Fforde’s books is that they end far too soon. One warning, though: this is for those readers already familiar with Thursday Next’s universe. Everyone else should start back at The Eyre Affair.

    What seems clear is that First among Sequels is, fittingly enough, the first of another cycle of Thursday Next novels. Not only are a number of new issues raised and left hanging (including the infamous X-14 cheese), but the book ends on what is nearly a cliffhanger, and ends up being a clear slingshot into the next book. Impatient readers beware: They may want to wait until all of the new Next books are in bookstores before starting to read.

  • Spook Country, William Gibson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 2007, 371 pages, C$32.50 hc, ISBN 978-0-399-15430-0

    By now, saying that William Gibson is writing ever-closer to the present isn’t much of a revelation. Each of his three-book cycles so far have moved closer to the present, and after the roughly-contemporary Pattern Recognition, Spook Country is now gently historical fiction, back in the woolly old days of early 2006. It is also part of the same universe than Pattern Recognition; a third volume is not impossible at this point.

    It’s perhaps more useful to say that Gibson has always wanted to write about a certain type of universe, and that the universe has caught up to him. The “real year” of Gibson may end up being 2002 forever. He is now more comfortable writing about the weirdness of the present, what with its post-911 homeland insecurity, emergent cyberspace and terminally hip designer labels.

    And so from a deck jockey named Case, we end up with a rock star turned journalist, a junkie with Russian/English translation skills and an ex-Cuban freelance intelligence agent. The common thread between all three is a mysterious shipping container making its way around the world’s oceans, with vague rumours concerning its content. iPods containing information are exchanged, non-existent magazines may end up being a front for a private intelligence-gathering operation and “the world’s smallest organized crime family” is up for hire by the highest bidder. Welcome to the winter of 2006. Whatever little science-fictional content left here is something about the virtual space invading the physical world.

    But if Gibson has deserted science-fiction, it’s not true that he’s moved on to thrillers. Much like Pattern Recognition was a thrill-free thriller, Spook Country is a spy story with a shaggy dog ending where the stakes are actually much lower than what they may initially appear. Gibson, we sense, is not interested in thrills, maybe not even interested in plot (if he ever was). Gibson is about feel and texture, atmosphere and the feeling of being bewildered by what surrounds us. It makes him less of a genre writer (though his sensibilities are pretty much those of a genre fan), and more of a hip writer-of-the-now.

    The problem with defining such a niche is that the resulting books leave the vapid impression of a dream: the prose is exceptional, but not a lot happens to those characters. As even one character complains…

    “I though it was going to be terrorism, or crime in some more traditional sense, but it wasn’t. I think that it was actually… A prank. A prank you’d have to be crazy to be able to afford.” [P.351]

    The upside of being a hip writer without much regard to plot is that the books become spoiler-proof: The Gibson audience is winnowing itself to a bunch of readers who want to experience his prose, not be shocked or surprised by a bold new take on the future, or even the present. Spook Country, despite the ominous title, is a descriptive novel of the present by someone who has given up on making sense of it. It’s a profoundly passive book, as all characters are manipulated and re-manipulated by people who may not even be doing anything important.

    There’s a message there about the seductive superficiality of the world and how it can lead one to refuse to engage with any deeper meaning. But in his own review of Spook Country , John Clute has called the book a comedy, and he may be on to something. Not only are the stakes revealed to be ridiculously low, with little if any practical consequences for the characters, you can almost feel Gibson dangle an Important Plot in front of his readers before yanking it away with a “just kidding” smile. Another writer, faced with the same elements, would have been able to plot a thrill-packed action thriller with his eyes closed. But Gibson refuses to go there, refuses to play with the money, enjoy the power of his characters, refuses to delve into the minds of the bored powerful men that lurk off-screen in Spook Country. You would think that anyone couldn’t resist the allure of private intelligence operatives as it takes place in the real world, but that’s exactly what Gibson does with a smirk and a “Please don’t bother me” doorknob sign.

    It’s been a long way since Neuromancer, and there’s no going back for Gibson or his readers. He’s become a Writer of Our Times, and as such has escaped the easy protocols of genre. Reading him today appeals to completely different skills. A few more novels, and he’ll be writing historical novels about the eighties that are going to be indistinguishable from Douglas Copeland’s work.

  • The Darkening Garden, John Clute

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Payseur & Schmidt, 2006, 162 pages, C$40.00 hc, ISBN 978-0-9789114-0-9

    In the world of SF criticism, John Clute is the alpha dog: Few others have been able to re-shape the language by which we’re able to discuss genre fiction. For that matter, few people have their names on two genre-defining encyclopedias and three volumes of collected reviews. Clute has introduced a number of genre-specific critical concepts (“real year”, “thinning”, “polder”, etc.) and established a solid framework through which we can consider genre fiction. His work has become an essential part of how we discuss speculative fiction.

    Having settled the matter of science-fiction and fantasy, Clute has now turned his cool intellect to the issue of horror. The Darkening Garden is the first articulation of this interest. It’s not an “Encyclopedia of Horror”, though that may follow eventually, nor is it a definitive statement on the subject. It’s a bunch of notes in progress, a first attempt at articulating the nature of the genre put out there for discussion. Typically for Clute, some entries are brilliant, some entries are baffling, and most entries are both at the same time.

    It’s also as much an object than it is a book. Published by a small press with a first print run of only 500 signed and numbered copies (I’ve got 190), The Darkening Garden is the kind of cute book that is to be admired as much for its design than for its content. Indeed, each of the thirty entries in this very short lexicon is illustrated, with a variety of artists each showing up once. The outside design is simple: a small, self-effacing black hardcover with a band announcing the title. Inside, the text is laid out with a judicious choice of font and margins, all reinforcing the impression of a small jewel-book carefully set to highlight the content. This is not a mass-market book (it even lacks those ubiquitous bar-codes for easy retail scanning), which is fitting for content that is not for mass consumption either.

    Let’s open the book at a random entry and transcribe just one sentence, shall we? Here it is, from “Strange Stories”: “The examples given are not entirely heterogeneous, for the inner creative bent of most of those who have used the term is toward the writing of tales of estrangement rather than AFFECT HORROR as such.” [P.138] Well, actually, that’s not too bad. Clute has often been derided for the complexity of his language and The Darkening Garden is no exception. This is not a book for easy reading; it’s meant to build arguments, map out new territories and stretch minds in new critical directions.

    The overarching thesis of the book is a model for horror fiction as a whole. It’s an inversion of Clute’s well-established pattern for fantasy: Whereas that goes from WRONGNESS to THINNING to RECOGNITION to RETURN, Horror (argues Clute) goes from SIGHTING to THICKENING to REVEL to AFTERMATH. (With a side order of VASTATION.) This argument forms the the backbone of the book, and what remains from a first read.

    I may lack the critical tools and depth of knowledge required to make sense of it, but at first glance it does seem to make sense. The stereotypical horror film, for instance, signals something wrong with the world during an initial SIGHTING, gets more unnerving as the presence of the supernatural THICKENS, attains a paroxysm of sorts during the REVEL when characters are plunged deep into the new logic of the wrong world, and finally ends with an AFTERMATH where bodies are counted and the evil may or may not return. It’s not a bad model (albeit one would be careful to hammer an entire genre in it), and the best thing about The Darkening Garden is how it offers the theory for evaluation, daring other reviewers to make use of it if it pleases them. (Or criticize it if it makes them even happier.)

    I’m not so sure about the other, more tangential elements of the lexicon. (Did we really need an entry on “Picture books”?) Another of Clute’s developing theories is the sense that genre fiction exists at a particular point in human history, that it only became possible as we started making sense of humanity as a story to be told (or understood? I’m not sure about that myself.) That’s where the lexicon brings in the Holocaust and tremendous vastation. I’ll refrain from judgement, except for noting that Clute is growing older, and that as with many people on the wrong side of fifty, he’s more and more apt to say that some things will not outlive him —such as Science Fiction, said to have died years ago.

    Casual readers won’t get much out of The Darkening Garden except for a headache and the sense of an unfinished argument. But serious students of genre (and there are more than enough hooks here to link Clute’s arguments about horror to SF and fantasy) will enjoy a new theory of horror. Clute fans owe it to themselves to get a copy of this book, but other shouldn’t worry if they let all 500 copies sell out: I’m sure that this material will pop up again, revised and expanded, in some future Clute encyclopedia or another.

    [October 2007: My web server tools detect a vast and cold wind blowing over this site. What could it be? Yes, John Clute sees this review and mentions it on his blog. There are no comments, but my embarassment is considerable. I resist the urge to change the review or replace it with a series of apologies.]