Author: Christian Sauvé

  • The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

    The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2004) While the idea of remaking the classic 1962 film was completely unnecessary, the actual finished film captures the paranoid essence of 2004 like few other have the guts to do: By replacing the anti-Communist material with an anti-corporate message, The Manchurian Candidate knows where to go for paranoid thrills. Throw in some science-fiction gadgets, the Gulf War, War-on-Terror rhetoric and the result is a film that may very well come to represent the unique feel of the Bush II administration. Meryl Streep, Liev Shreiber and -especially- Denzel Washington all deliver when comes to time to portray intense characters. Director Jonathan Demme is ideally suited to give life to this paranoid nightmare, what with his propensity for flat close-ups (even in conversations) and the off-beat way he films even simple scenes. Granted, the plot is often silly, unconvincing and packed with implausible events. But that goes with the territory of a nightmare. Even the eerie sound landscape of the film contributes to the uneasiness. Not an easy film to love nor enjoy, but nevertheless one that sticks in mind.

  • King Arthur (2004)

    King Arthur (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2004) While I’m partial to the concept of presenting “the real story” behind the myths, that kind of stuff isn’t in itself sufficient to sustain my interest in a film. The first half of King Arthur passes in a drowsy daze, as director Antoine Fuqua seems content in simply showing how much mud existed at the time. Fortunately, things pick up (from a pacing standpoint) as soon as Guenevere (Kiera Knightly, an average casting choice at best) is rescued from a damp dungeon. While “realistic”, the film doesn’t do much to acknowledge real science given how hand injuries are easily forgotten, unlikely arrow shots find their targets a mile away and heroism takes precedence over simple physics. Oh well; at least it’s easy to warm to the title character (a fantastic Clive Owen) and his merry band of knights. Some low-level flirtation, along with a gruff Merlin and a shot of a round table, and we’ve got the making of myth. But it’s the action scenes that work better than anything else, from a great little frozen-lake sequence to a rather good final clash between two (or three) armies. Nifty, but they can’t excuse the tepid storytelling nor the bombastic details. It’s a mixed bag, really; better than expected from the lifeless trailers, but still not quite up to the level of quality offered from other recent historical epics.

  • I, Robot (2004)

    I, Robot (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2004) I truly hope that die-hard Isaac Asimov fans blow a fuse while watching this film. No, it’s not even near a adaptation of Asimov’s short stories. This is Hollywood, what do you expect? A faithful but dull collection of vignettes? Please; simply think of the film as iRobot, an average sci-fi action film that happens to have a few cool winks and similarities with Asimov’s work, including the Zeroth Law. As such, it works fairly well: The bright futuristic landscape is delicious and the action scenes can be spectacular. (Robot-to-robot bullet-time combat! Roadway rampages! Chi McBride with a shotgun! Rotating cameras! Sweet!) Sure, the film doesn’t make much real-world sense: The mechanics of the NS-5 roll-out are unbelievably dumb by any business standards, physics are routinely humiliated (advanced machinery isn’t a substitute for F=MA) and the variable scope of the story is frustrating. Throw in some silly stuff like fully-furnished houses being scheduled for destruction scant hours after the death of the owner (huh?), plus some obscenely blatant product placement, and it’s hard to take this very seriously. And yet it works. Will Smith turns in an unexpectedly dramatic role as a policeman with cybernetic issues, bringing along his usual considerable charm. Bridget Moynahan is a good-for-Hollywood Susan Calvin (no actress in Southern California is plain enough to play Asimov’s Calvin) with a believable arc from cold scientist to fluffy action heroine. But frankly, the robots are the star performers of the film: Even as we’re supposed to be too jaded for modern special effects, those in I, Robot still manage to impress. All in all, a satisfying film. But don’t expect much fidelity to the original material. And that’s a good thing.

    (Second viewing, On DVD, March 2005) I’m in the minority on this one, but if you’re looking for an action SF film, you can do much worse than I, Robot. Sure, there are plot holes big enough to accommodate a robotic house-wrecker. But on the flip side, the film is competently directed, has at least one or two levels of subtlety, can rely on a likable lead (Will Smith, scoring another hit as an action hero) and even includes one or two nods toward the original material. Not bad, and hearing SF geeks scream their betrayal is actually part of the film’s attraction. It holds up well to a second viewing. The DVD is a bit thin on the “making-of” side, especially given the fantastic CGI work. The commentary instills some respect for the complexity of the script. Wait; did I just qualify the I, Robot script as being “complex?

  • The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)

    The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2004) No one goes to the movies expecting a cogent treatise of geopolitical power and tips for more efficient warfare. Yet that’s exactly what The Fog Of War is all about; a late-life summation of what ex-Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara learnt during his life and his tenure at the top of the Kennedy/Johnston administration. From World War 2 to the Vietnam War, with a scary detour through the October 1962 Cuban Crisis, McNamara reminisces, summarizes, explains and justifies thirty years of American foreign policy. Good stuff, coming from someone who was heavily involved as it was happening. There is probably another film to be made to show the same events from another viewpoint; through The Fog Of War, we get flashes of McNamara’s reputation, but Errol Morris’ film merely presents his subject’s viewpoint without much by way of counterpoint. Still, the film is fascinating, especially given how it features one single talking head for most of its duration. McNamara is a mesmerizing speaker, and what he has to say would be most appropriate within the pages of a scholarly history book than a film. Military buffs and student of post-WW2 world history will learn a lot from it.

  • The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Neal Pollack

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Perennial, 2002, 205 pages, C$20.95 tpb, ISBN 0-06-000453-3

    I suppose that there’s something to be said about blogs when it comes to self-marketing: Had I not already been under the spell of Neal Pollack’s prose and his pleas to buy his books, it’s unlikely that I would have picked up his stuff at the local remainder sale. Hurrah for shameless self-promotion!

    Now, keep in mind that Neal Pollack is the very definition of shamelessly self-promoting writer. (And I don’t say this as if it’s a bad thing) His latest book, Never Mind the Pollacks, is a rock-and-roll novel telling the story of Neal Pollack, famous rock journalist and confidante to rockstars from Elvis Presley to Kurt Cobain. His first book, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, is a mock collection of snippets from the decades-long career of Neal Pollack, greatest American writer. While Never Mind he Pollacks is best left to those with enough knowledge of rock to appreciate the fine in-jokes, the Anthology is something else.

    For one thing, I suspect that it’s a bit more accessible to everyone. In this book, Neal Pollack’s character is that of a writer as a rock star, a fantastically self-absorbed man’s man whose universe revolves around him. It may be useful to be an avid magazine reader to piece together the pieces of his parodies (I kept flashing back to Sebastian Junger’s Fire pieces myself), but the bombastic quality of Pollack’s alter-ego is amusing enough that even people unaware of, say, Norman Mailer, will laugh along.

    The biggest wonder of the Anthology, surprisingly enough, is that it sustains this simple satiric concept for a full two hundred pages. Pieced together as an anthology of “Pollack”’s forty-year-long journalism career, it’s merely an excuse to explore different themes and subjects as a knuckle-busting, hard-drinking man’s man. “Pollack” has been everywhere from the USSR to Mexico, has written back from countless wars, has seduced hundreds of women (most of whom just have to hear his name before cooing “take me!”), is best buddies with this world’s leading figures (but especially John McCain) and has stopped at least one dastardly plot against the USA. Whew! Just take a look at some of the chapter titles: “I Am Friends With a Working-Class Black Woman”, “The Burden of Internet Celebrity”, “Why Am I So Handsome?”… An interview with his sister is, of course, all about him. Hubris seems too small a word for this oversize personality.

    (The “real” Neal Pollack, should you be spoilsport enough to ask, is in his thirties and is only beginning to take the literary world by storm. If he exists at all. But the real danger in reviewing Pollack is in either trying to be as funny as him, or doubt nothing.)

    In some ways, this is reminiscent of Mark Leyner’s Et tu, Babe?, another delicious piece of humour writing in which the author was left free to push the limits of literary self-disillusion to insane levels. While Leyner’s book was funnier (c’mon; visceral tattoos?), Pollack’s Anthology holds better as a unit. As a parody of those other “anthologies of literature”, it’s pitch-perfect… from the ancillary material (chronology, family tree, study guide…) to the tapestry of the star protagonist’s imagined career. Faked photos included.

    From what I can gather, the original hardcover version of the Anthology, as published by McSweeney’s, was a superb design parody of this type of book. (Head over to Amazon, and “look inside” the hardcover for a few extra laughs) While the Harper Perennial edition isn’t quite as respectable-looking, it does contain a third more material, and even brings up “Pollack”’s career to the Post-WTC era. It also includes Jack Shafer’s New York Times Book Review piece on the Anthology, which says everything I wanted to say about it, and better. (Bastard.)

    I’m always a sucker for satire, and this one is better than most. While the book didn’t make me laugh out loud constantly, I had a hard time wiping a constant smirk off my face; The only reason not to read it in a single sitting is running out of time. (Hey Neal; you can use this as a blurb: “There aren’t enough hours in a day for Neal Pollack.”) Witty, well-executed and liable to make you look at literary celebrities in a whole new light, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature is well-worth a look. Even if Neal Pollack’s ceaseless stream of self-promotion hasn’t yet reached you.

  • The Corporation (2003)

    The Corporation (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2004) The real revelation here is not how corporations are amoral entities whose ethical concerns are non-existent in light of shareholder profits; we knew that, and several of the examples used by the filmmakers to demonstrate their thesis are also quite widely known. No, the real pleasure and interest of The Corporation is in how captivating one can weave talking heads, dramatizations, stock footage and editorial cinematography in one captivating package. It’s nearly two and a half hours long, but it’s all good and fascinating from the beginning to the end. Interviews from an impressive variety of guests (from a Fraser institute representative to Michael Moore, Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky) are cleverly integrated in a strong structure. Eerie narration (echoing a “future viewpoint” reminiscent of The Animatrix‘s “Second Renaissance”) and original computer-generated sequences provide the framework of the piece, which -like many recent documentaries- doesn’t even try to provide a balanced viewpoint. This is a thesis, not an attempt at a definitive study. One thing for sure; this is brainy entertainment, the kind of intellectual material that is surprising to see in theatres. No wonder if it’s a film adaptation of Joel Bakan’s eponymous non-fiction book. A few of the stories told here are well-worth pursuing, including the tale of an attempted 1933 coup to overthrow… the American government (Search for “Smedley Butler” for more details). More modern examples of corporate malfeasance are even worse, from attempts to privatize rainwater, to modern-day advertising, to the ruling stating that televised news don’t necessarily have to be truthful. Despite occasional missteps (such as the pretty portrait of anti-globalization forces), it all adds up to a convincing argument, one that is sure to become even more important over the next few years as the divide between civil rights and corporate profits will become even more obvious.

  • The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

    The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2004) I wasn’t a fan of the first film (dull, unremarkable and not quite as sophisticated as it thought it was), but this sequel is a bit better. Stepping off the event of the first film with nary a regard for the plot of Robert Ludlum’s eponymous novel, The Bourne Supremacy reprises the elements that made the success of the first film (a competent but remorseful assassin, a gritty car chase and European locations) and reheats them once more. While the story is generally more enjoyable the second time around (with some impressively close ties to the content of the first film), the direction has taken a major step backward: I don’t think that there’s a perfectly still shot in the entire film, what with director Paul Greengrass’s constant use of unsteadied hand-held cameras. The result is highly annoying, and quickly becomes a confusing mess as soon as the action starts. Otherwise, well, there are a few unexplained plot shortcuts (how did he obtain those cell phone numbers?) and a few lengths here and there. A solid but generally tepid thriller.

  • 13 Going On 30 (2004)

    13 Going On 30 (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, July 2004) Surprisingly enough, this film avoids to be as cringe-inducing as the premise and trailers initially suggested. A large part of this achievement rests on the shoulders of Jennifer Garner, nearly perfect as a 13-year-old who wakes-up as her 30-year-old self. Her enthusiasm for the material and bouncy delivery does a lot to overcome the obviousness of the material. The first fifteen minutes (the obligatory “age 13” prologue) aren’t particularly interesting and for a moment, it looks as if the film is headed straight to the dustbin. Fortunately, things get a little better afterwards, with plenty of amusing material and heart-felt romance to liven up everything. Things take a turn for the worse by the end, as the screenplay draws itself in a corner and has to the resort to the worst possible ending in order to salvage a happy ending. Sadly, in doing so, it negates a good portion of the film and, most annoyingly, allows everyone to ignore the consequences of their actions. Eeew. But what else to expect from this kind of film? Coincidences, continuity errors and stupid movie tricks (you know; the kind of stuff no one ever does in real life) abound, showing a production laziness that further heightens the impression that this isn’t something to care about.

  • The Shores of Tomorrow (Chronicles of Solace #3), Roger MacBride Allen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 2003, 493 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-58365-4

    It’s not uncommon for third volumes of trilogies to make up for lacklustre middle tomes. Heck, it’s not unknown for conclusions alone to save entire series. But what’s not as common is for trilogies to dissolve as blandly as the Chronicles of Solace does in The Shores of Tomorrow.

    Actually, allow me to rephrase that: There is nothing strictly wrong with the way The Shores of Tomorrow wraps up the material first explored in The Depths of Time and The Ocean of Years. Nothing at all; the story of Solace is decently concluded, there’s a happy ending, characters get what they deserve and we finally see the logical implications of the series’ pet concepts.

    But what could have been done in fifty pages was stretched out to nearly ten times that. Worse: beyond the obvious waste of time, this lack of concision ends up harming other areas of the trilogy.

    If you can muster up the courage to go read my reviews of the trilogy’s first two volumes, it’s obvious that even from the first book, the series had serious pacing problems. Developments that could have been shown in a few lines took entire chapters to unfold, with preciously few marginal gains as far as pure entertainment was concerned. This tendency reaches an apex of sorts in The Shores of Tomorrow, especially when you consider the NovaSpot ignition sequence, a tense plot point that ends up spread over 90 pages of fluff.

    It gets worse when you consider the useless plot threads that are carelessly thrown in the mix. Despite the “Chronicles of Solace” designation for the entire series, there’s little doubt that the real story told here is the one of Anton Koffield and his quest to uncover and then understand Oskar DeSilvo. All else is sideshow, which becomes increasingly intrusive as the third book unfolds and the action is indefinitely delayed. Book One had its share of sideshows, and they make a return here; Any competent editor would have cut the “Elber Malloon” scenes, so peripheral are they to the book’s main story. But no; they’re all there along with even more filler. I buy trilogies with the assumption that they contain enough material for three books; here, it becomes obvious, after the fact, that the Chronicles of Solace is a two-book, maybe even a single book’s worth of intrigue.

    I can understand a deliberate and careful pacing when it’s leading up to something worthwhile, or when it’s sustained to enhance suspense. But there’s no real reason to delay anything in this story, especially given its race-against-the-clock quality as a failing world is at stake.

    But this slow-poke pacing has another effect that may be even more disastrous: It allows the reader to think about the story as it goes along, and even start to out-think the writer. When Oskar DeSilvo outlines his grand unified theory of terraforming, cultural stagnation and technological development, we’ve been waiting for it so long that it comes off as obvious and maybe even trite. The “solution” to the terraforming crisis was implicit at the end of volume one, and the characters were just too blind to see it. Allen stretches his central concept so much that he nearly snaps it. The whole “Chronological Patrol” concept, already iffy at first glance, suffers a lot from the extended story treatment; I doubt that it would have been as unconvincing in a single zippy 400-page novel.

    The other thing that bothered me about the trilogy’s intellectual climax is that it acknowledges humanity’s thirst for knowledge and innovation, and then immediately says that it can be delayed indefinitely. Not bloody likely, and that reflects badly on the series. Again; I doubt that I would have been so severe in the context of a short story or a single novel, but trilogies demand a higher degree of scrutiny.

    Take scissors, start cutting, end with a 500-page singleton and maybe the Chronicles of Solace would be worth a recommendation. As it stands now, there’s far too much build-up for too little pay-off. There are a few good ideas, the second volume has nifty material and the ending is suitably optimistic, but frankly, you could read three better single novels for the time and money you’d otherwise spend on this series. It’s no wonder if the last two volumes didn’t even get a hardcover edition.

  • Spin State, Chris Moriarty

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 2003, 485 pages, C$17.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-38213-6

    For me, one of Science Fiction’s more endearing qualities is its capacity to imagine neat futures where most of today’s less interesting problems are neatly solved away. Distances are erased, material needs are satisfied and reason takes over as a dominant conflict-solving mechanism. Humans are, at last, left to work on the most interesting problems –and half the fun is in figuring out which ones those can be.

    Such an interesting future is not in the cards for the protagonists of Chris Moriarty’s Spin State, a 2003 Philip K. Dick award-nominated first novel by a brand-new author who’s also seriously vying for the 2004 Campbell award. Once again, scarcity rears its ugly head, and millions suffer for lack of something: “Coal. Oil. Uranium. Water. This is not the first time humanity has depended on a nonrenewable resource.” [P.153] In this case, the nonrenewable resource is Bose-Einstein condensates, a substance that allows faster-than-light communication and teleportation. There’s one catch, though: Bose-Einstein condensates doesn’t occur in nature save from inside a coal mine on a backwater world called Compson’s World.

    As luck has it, that’s where protagonist Catherine Li comes from. But despite her best efforts at staying away, a series of unfortunate events lead her back home as the lead investigator in the mysterious death of a top-ranking scientist. As you can expect, complications rapidly accumulate: The scientist shares the same DNA as the protagonist, Compson’s World is on the edge of rebellion and Bose-Einstein condensates are a major source of friction between the UN-led Earth and the breakaway Syndicates. As is the norm with SF thrillers, the murder case quickly morphs into a nexus of major forces. Throw in a few AIs, genetic discrimination, twisted allegiances and long-buried secrets and it will take more than enhanced reflexes and superior combat abilities for Li to get out of the situation relatively intact.

    In some ways, Spin State is a solid SF thriller in the noirish vein. In others, it’s an attempt to integrate a few good ideas. It’s a typical first novel, filled with promises and yet not completely successful.

    There’s not a lot that’s wrong with the novel, mind you: A lot of the initial ideas are intriguing and introduced with skill. Li is adequately twisted: as a super-agent for the UN, she’s not terribly beautiful, remains wracked with neuroses, can’t trust a soul and has a quasi-omnipotent (yet completely untrustworthy) AI as a best friend. Far from the slick superhero of so much SF, Catherine Li works quite well as a real protagonist.

    But I kept waiting for Spin State to become more than something average, and that never happened. It’s far too long, for one thing: Cut at least a hundred pages of the interminable investigation (which doesn’t really pay off when the real story starts moving) and we’ll start talking again. Other annoyances are there; the contrived excuse to set a Science Fiction novel in a coal mine, coupled with unconvincing “evil leper mutant” discrimination yadda-yadda. Let’s move on, shall we? One of the book’s last big revelations is blindingly obvious hundreds of pages before, as soon as coral is mentioned. Though the book flaunts itself as hard-SF and includes pages of bibliographical references on quantum physics, not a lot of explicit science makes its way in the novel itself.

    (It doesn’t help that, by sheer coincidence, Spin State follows on the heels of Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, a superior novel that just happens to touch upon some of the same subjects in a far more energetic fashion.)

    All told, it’s hard to read the novel with anything approaching enthusiasm. I trudged on out of duty and obligation, awaiting the magic spark that would ignite everything. Oh, I don’t begrudge the money I spent on the novel, or the time it took me to read it… but it’s not making me overly anxious to rush out and get Moriarty’s next book. One thing that SF can’t solve is scarcity of time and money… especially when it comes to reading more SF, some unpleasant choices must be made.

    (One final note; I’m a bit dismayed at the carefully gender-neutral jacket blurb and author biography. Yes, a trip to Chris Moriarty’s official web site will reveal Moriarty’s gender. But surely we know better than to assume that hard-SF readers will avoid works by a woman writer? Why the deception?)

  • The Ocean of Years (Chronicles of Solace #2), Roger MacBride Allen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 2002, 441 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-58364-6

    It is true that publishers are in the business of making money, not telling the truth. Still, you have to wonder at the relationship between the two when marketing ploys backfire. When, for instance, books like Roger MacBride Allen’s The Depths of Time come out and the only reference to it as the first book of a trilogy is buried, by inference, in the author’s note. Readers (and reviewers) charge through the novel only to find an ending that doesn’t solve much. And then Bantam Spectra wonders why sales tank.

    Unfortunately, sequel The Ocean of Years suffered from the stupidity of the original book’s marketing: Whereas the first volume was available in trade paperback format, this one was relegated to a cheapo mass-market paperback debut edition. As consolation, the follow-up book is more forthright about what it is, as can be read on the title page: “Second book of The Chronicles of Solace.”

    When we’d last left series protagonist Anton Koffield, he had just found out why he was marooned 128 years in a future not his own: A devilish plot by mastermind Oskar DeSilvo to prevent him from telling a secret too soon. But a lot of things happen in 128 years, and so Koffield also happened to come across nagging clues leading him to the current hideout of DeSilvo. As The Depths of Time ended, we were left with one certitude: Koffield was going to solve the puzzle, track down DeSilvo and ask him a few good questions.

    So it shouldn’t be a surprise if he does exactly that in the sequel. Travelling with a band of characters with as much interest in DeSilvo’s answers, Koffield makes his way to the Solar System of year 5341. Then their group splits up in search of clues, sending emissaries to Earth itself and the Grand Library in orbit around Neptune.

    One of the book’s highlight happens then, as three characters make their way through the gargantuan Permanent Physical Collection, a mega-library to end all libraries. So big that they have to hike in it, making their way from own human-livable reading room to another (the books are kept in a pure nitrogen atmosphere to ensure their preservation) to find out the real state of the physical terraforming collection as opposed to the one in the digital archives. Library freaks are sure to enjoy this passage, much like another latter one in a forbidden museum. MacBride Allen surely knows how to exploit environments that should be dear to anyone likely to be reading this trilogy.

    Secrets, archives, knowledge and patient clue-hunting form the backbone of this second volume. Save for a desperate what-are-they-going-to-do-now sequence in chapters 18-20, and a tiny act of physical violence at the very end of the book, there isn’t much conventional action in The Ocean of Years. It’s all exploration, searching, deduction and cogitation. Old-school science-fiction by any yardstick, this is the kind of comfortable genre novel that would be familiar for any pre-New Wave SF reader in the Asimov vein. There is nothing beyond a PG rating in this trilogy so far.

    Alas, the pacing is just about what you’d expect from brainy novels that take place in libraries. Just like in the first volume, the first hundred pages don’t mean much. Just like in the first volume, we spend a lot of time going from one place to another. Just like in the first volume, the characters think a lot before they ever act. It’s not a bad thing per se (it certainly creates an atmosphere, maintains the suspense and heighten the action whenever there is some) but there’s no telling what a more succinct version of the same events might have gained. The prose is compelling enough that it doesn’t matter a whole lot if it’s 400 pages rather than 200, but if the difference would have been a single 600-pages tome rather than a full 1200-pages trilogy, well, I know where my loyalties lies.

    Still, don’t think that I’m giving anything less than a good rating to this book and the series as it stands at the end of the second volume. There’s a lot of well-developed ideas here, a bunch of sympathetic characters, crystal-clear prose and a great sense of discovery as we peel away the layers of this imagined universe. Stay tuned for the final review of this trilogy.

  • Double Whammy, Carl Hiaasen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1987, 320 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-35276-4

    Over the years, I never had the luck to actually sit down and read one of Carl Hiaasen’s novels despite the good things heard about them. That changed when Double Whammy landed in my reading stack. If it’s any indication of what Hiaasen is capable, I just may have found a new favourite author.

    In the mystery genre, Hiaasen is often mentioned as being part of the “Florida school”, along with such writers as Lawrence Shames, Dave Berry and James W. Hall: Apart from the Sunshine State as a common setting, all of these writers also share a highly atypical sense of humour, especially when you compare it to the usual dour brand of crime fiction. I’m always a sucker for silly laughs, so it was only a matter of time before I got to Hiaasen’s stuff.

    Suffice to say that Double Whammy is an interesting introduction. Would you expect, for instance, a thrilling laugh-filled novel about bass fishing? It starts when R.J. Decker, a Miami-based private detective (also an ex-newspaper photographer, also an ex-husband, also an ex-convict), is hired to catch a bass tournament cheater in flagrante delicto. Soon enough, clues then bodies accumulate and it’s hard for Decker to deny that he’s stuck in a situation that goes way beyond getting the biggest fish.

    The laughs are obviously Double Whammy‘s biggest attraction. Hiaasen’s sarcastic eye for details does wonders at satirizing redneck America and the dangerous silliness that seems to permeate Florida. His improbable characters at generously fleshed-out: even the bit players all have a distinguishing trait or two. The narrative often takes tangents to describe an aspect of Floridian life or another, with smile-stretching results.

    But Hiaasen’s less overt accomplishment is to manage a delicate balance between tragedy and comedy without renouncing the funny stuff. There is a lot of truly nasty material in this novel, and a lesser writer may have been unable to reconcile the two. Beyond the murder and maiming of sympathetic characters, Double Whammy makes sure to remain in the domain of unlikely reality, rather than plunge ahead into a straight-out comedic vein. (Read Dave Berry’s stuff for that… not that there’s anything wrong with a pure comedy) Beyond the laughter, there is an array of serious issues brought forth in the novel, from environmental concerns to the easy media manipulation of crowds. But here too, the message doesn’t overshadow the plot as Hiaasen moves his pieces too quickly to dwell on any single element.

    Indeed, Double Whammy holds its own in the plot department against thicker and more serious novels. Anything you think you can depend upon at the novel’s beginning is overturned sooner or later. The protagonist is revealed to be someone with a bottomless reservoir of issues. Characters switch allegiance. Twists abound. Revelations are made. Readers are thrilled.

    All of that would be for naught if it wasn’t for Hiaasen’s impeccable style. So-called “humorous” crime fiction is not an easy thing to write and several writers have only managed a marginal success trying to do so (Joseph Wambaugh, I’m looking at you). Here, fortunately, we’re in good hands: The prose is straightforward and the scenes fly by. The quick-paced resolution ties everything together. Truly excellent beach reading, should you be so inclined.

    In short, a wonderful introduction to the Hiaasen oeuvre, and one that is likely to keep me coming back for more. Given my existing predilection for Shames and Barry, I just have to wonder –what is it they put in Florida’s water supply…?

  • Separation of Power, Vince Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 2001, 436 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-04734-5

    After the trashing I gave to Flynn’s previous The Third Option, you would think that I’d stay away from any of his other books, let alone a direct sequel. But hope springs eternal, some authors can be forgiven the occasional awful novel and it’s entirely possible to succumb at a used book sale where everything is cheap, cheap, cheap.

    So, onward with Separation of Power, which picks up moments after the conclusion of The Third Option. Once again, villains are running rampant over Washington and flawless hero Mitch Rapp is hunting them down. His attempts to find the real culprits of the previous book’s events soon take him to Italy (along with his civilian fiancée), where he’ll have to deal with a beautiful yet deadly assassin straight out of Central Casting. Meanwhile, brainy Irene Kennedy has been nominated to become the director of the CIA, drawing out plenty of political enemies, and Saddam is hiding nuclear weapons under an hospital in downtown Baghdad. Separation of Power isn’t quite a three-ring circus, but it’s scattered enough to make anyone feel like it is.

    I should probably tone down my sarcastic tone right away, though, because even though Separation or Power breaks no new ground and is unlikely to be celebrated by anyone but the author’s most ardent fans, it’s still much better than The Third Option.

    Oh, the annoyances picked up in the previous volume are still there: If there’s one genre that should just avoid series, it’s thrillers: Part of the fun of reading a suspense novel is in wondering how far the author will push it. Will presidents be killed, cities destroyed, countries devastated? Or will everyone live to sell another novel? When The Third Option ended with a pat “to be continued” promise, I surely wasn’t the only one to ask for my money back. At least Separation of Power offers a conclusion of sorts, even if it’s rushed in the last few pages.

    Alas, Flynn is still padding his books with useless material. Had Separation of Power been half of its length, I wouldn’t be so picky. (Heck, had The Third Option and Separation of Power been one single 400-pages novel, I might have given it a passing recommendation) But when Flynn piles useless scenes one after another right when the plot should get underway, it’s hard to be forgiving. It all reaches an exasperating apogee in the latter half of the novel, as we take a trip through pure soap-opera romantic theatrics, reading pages after pages of mopping even as we know that it’s profoundly silly. Someone needs an editor, and quickly!

    Fortunately, there is some good material buried under the morass of indifferent passages. Two good action scenes come late in the novel, saving it from total lack of interest. Plot-wise, it’s obvious that Flynn loves complications without understanding how they could all relate together: The connections between the three plot lines are tenuous if not ridiculous (see how Mitch Rapp gets to participate in all three for no good reason whatsoever!), even as they sheer kinetic force of the conclusion creates interest whether we want it or not.

    (I should probably make a note of this as being Yet Another Pre-9/11 Anti-Saddam Novel. In retrospect, there’s plenty of material in 1990-2001 American thrillers to show the widespread blood thirst that America had for Saddam Hussein’s regime. Canny social psychologists will undoubtedly mutter something about how the Bush II regime was able to tap into those unconscious feelings to obtain popular support for an unjustified invasion. But I digress severely.)

    All told, Separation of Power marks a slight step up for Flynn. It’s still average in almost all aspects, but at least it’s not actively bad, nor as dull as The Third Option. But we’re still far away from the promise shown in either of his first two novels: Before he started churning out those formula products, Vince Flynn had the spark of a real thriller author. Let’s just hope that he’ll regain it someday soon.

  • Singularity Sky, Charles Stross

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2003, 313 pages, C$36.00 hc, ISBN 0-441-01072-5

    These reviews are often written to share my joy at coming across fine examples of genre fiction. Dull books I ignore and bad books I warn about, but it’s the good ones that keep me going month after month. While I won’t try to pretend that Singularity Sky is a classic for the ages, it’s a damn good example of what modern SF should be, and a fine way to spend some quality reading time.

    It starts with phones falling from the sky in what looks like a pre-industrial world. No, it’s not a Nokia stunt: These freebies from heaven are the first signal of an alien invasion. Answer the phone and you’ll be asked to entertain the mind at the other end of the line. In return, your wishes can be granted, with an emphasis on materialistic possessions. Within days, the tranquil bucolic existence of that particular planet is shattered through centuries worth of future shock all hitting at once. Imagine going from horses to nanotechnology in a single day for a taste of the trauma.

    There are much bigger forces at play here, though. The assaulted planet is part of an Russian-styled empire that isn’t too thrilled by the sudden technological spike. So, completely misunderstanding the nature of the invasion, they answer with an attack force and a plan to futz around causality through judicious time-travel.

    But wait! It gets better, because in Stross’ imagined post-singularity universe, the Eschaton has become a force for causal enforcement. Twiddle with time too much and you’ll wake up to your sun going supernova. So Earth itself has put special agents in place to enforce compliance before the Eschaton does… and that’s where protagonists Rachel Mansour and Martin Springfield come in, two agents with hidden agendas. Expect the usual boy-meets-girl stuff (well done) and graft on to this plot the traditional complications.

    Obviously, plotting isn’t the main attraction here, not when we’ve got a vigorously imagined future to kick around. One of Singularity Sky‘s most satisfying aspect is how it reconciles once more the space opera genre with the increasingly probable eventuality of a singularity. By focusing on the left-behinds, by showing different levels of technology interacting with one another, Stross creates tension from above (the threat from the Eschaton) and manages to fit all the good old space battles of golden-age SF with what we now suspect from the universe. It’s canny world-building, and one of the most obvious proofs that Stross is a hard-core SF writer with an easy familiarity with the genre. He certainly can talk the talk, what with the easy sprinkling of technological jargon, future technologies and nifty ideas. (As an added attraction, I’m not sure that the novel is even intelligible to anyone who doesn’t know already a lot about science-fiction) He’s from the Internet generation and it shows, through the novel’s ideological message and the various in-jokes hidden here and there throughout the novel. Make no mistake: this is a deeply amusing book, filled with well-placed silliness (MP-3 missiles?) and compulsively readable despite an impressive density of ideas.

    Still, some of the plot points weaken the overall impact of the novel. Viewed from afar, the novel is a shaggy dog story that, despite the amusing plot developments, ends pretty much exactly as could be deduced from the first fifty pages. It’s also filled with tangents of dubious interest, the worst of which has to be the “Felix” plot thread and the gratuitous space combat scenes. Parricidal elements of the ending stretch plausibility, even in the context of a light-hearted science-fiction story.

    Not that I’m seriously complaining: Anyone who has read more than a few of these reviews already knows that for me, fun trumps structure six days of the week. And so Singularity Sky easily finds a spot on my short list of the year’s best novels. It’s vivid, imaginative, fresh and dynamic. It deftly mixes science and politics. It’s one of the best examples of twenty-first century science-fiction. It reaffirms my growing admiration for Stross’ work and tells me that not all is lost for the genre.

    In fact, I’m so jazzed-up about Singularity Sky that I’m looking forward to the sequel (Iron Sunrise, due Any Time Now) with some trepidation. And that, for someone who doesn’t usually like the whole idea of sequels, is really saying something.

  • All Tomorrow’s Parties, William Gibson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 1999, 277 pages, C$34.99 hc, ISBN 0-399-14579-6

    Few first novels have been as successful as William Gibson’s Neuromancer, which hit the science-fiction scene twenty years ago already. It wasn’t just a dynamite book; it coalesced the then-nascent cyberpunk movement and was later co-opted by the mainstream (from Billy Idol to the Wachowski Brothers) as the new face of futurism. Gibson’s subsequent career couldn’t be anything but a let-down. While avoiding spectacular failure, his latter works have been steadily less ambitious from a strictly-extrapolative standpoint. Subsequent novels, while exceedingly well-written, elicited as many shrugs than bravos.

    With All Tomorrow’s Parties, Gibson concludes the “Bridge” trilogy launched by Virtual Light in 1994 and loosely continued in 1996’s Idoru. Characters from both books are back, and so is their universe, with a special place for a Golden Gate Bridge converted in a bohemian paradise. Fans of Gibson’s elliptic storytelling know better than to expect a tidy conclusion. But for all of its flaws, All Tomorrow’s Parties does contain a plot of sorts, and Gibson’s strongest narrative thread since Mona Lisa Overdrive, the resolution of his first trilogy.

    (There are in fact many similitudes between both All Tomorrow’s Parties and my memories of Mona Lisa Overdrive, from the Really Important Object carried by the protagonists, to similar “siege” situations to Gibson’s usual shtick of describing important scenes from a drug-afflicted viewpoint. Remember kids: it ain’t plagiarism if you’re stealing from yourself!)

    It’s not a particularly strong plot, but at least it gives the impression of forward movement. All is set in motion when Idoru‘s data wizard Laney contacts Virtual Light‘s Ryder to be his hands on the ground at what he thinks will be ground zero for a new revolution in human affairs: San Francisco. Before long, old characters meet again, killers are on the loose, human destiny is subtly altered and the street once again demonstrates new uses for high technology.

    It’s all handled competently. I’m not sure if it’s me mellowing since I read Idoru back in 1997, but All Tomorrow’s Parties seemed more accessible, more interesting and more enjoyable than its prequel. Here, we’re back at the guns-and-perils roots of cyberpunk: if all else fails, constant danger to the protagonists can at least sustain basic readability.

    But plotting and intrigue are the wrong reasons to read a William Gibson novel. As usual, his writing is a cut above the rest of what’s to be found elsewhere in the genre: He has an uncanny knack at finding the first description, at seamlessly integrating future artifacts in normal situation and in depicting the banal ways new technologies can be used and abused.

    Sadly, elements of his usual vision are starting to be tiresome. The whole cyber-grunge aesthetic movement has played itself out since Neuromancer and there’s scarcely anything interesting any more in following the homeless set as they set out to confront the next step in human history. Gibson’s novel have seldom featured normal character with whom to sympathize, and All Tomorrow’s Parties is no exception. It often hovers around deja-vu, or even quasi-parody. If it had featured another author’s name on the cover, I’m not sure I’d be so kind.

    Still, it’s a step up from Idoru and a better science-fiction novel than most of what was published in 1999. As millennial SF, it may even be emblematic. But now that we’re in the century described by Gibson, maybe it’s time to start thinking about something else. Gibson may be able to coast forever on Neuromancer‘s reputation… but that’s no reason for him to do so.