Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Dreaming in Smoke, Tricia Sullivan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1998, 401 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-57703-4

    As most semanticians point out, words are not “just” words. They are linked to specific emotional content in our memories. “fresh red apple” has a different feel than “structured organizational content” or somesuch. Some words possess deeper associations than others; “Beauty”, “Songs”, “Love” all play on another register than “Fear”, “Honour”, “Orders”. (These last three words are taken straight from three successive Tom Clancy novels. The former are from fantasy novels.)

    It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Point of Impact is a substantially different book than -say- Bimboes of the Death Sun. Marketing directors have obviously realized this long ago, and so it’s not a conceptual breakthrough to go from there to a more general theory of book selection: If the title sounds good, buy it.

    Dreaming in Smoke might be Tricia Sullivan’s third novel, but it was my first exposure to this new SF author. It wasn’t the title that grabbed me, but the intriguing cover illustration, which depicts a very SF-looking metallic structure above a frail sail-driven boat floating over a golden sea, surrounded by clouds of green-tinged vapour.

    This is human colony T’nane. By some quirk of history, this inhospitable planet has been selected as a suitable place to send colonists. Temperatures are high, the air isn’t breathable… Worse: the planet (or, at least the parts we visit) seems to be a vast ocean almost always on the verge of ebullition.

    Placed nearby a volcanic area lies the first planetary base, controlled by an AI named Ganesh. There is no human life on T’nane without Ganesh: the survival of the colonists depend on precise environmental controls, and that’s where the AI comes in.

    Meanwhile, research is ongoing to find ways to cope with the harsh environment. Scientific research occasionally takes a different form, as scientists use a dream-like state to sort between intuitive hypotheses. (Maybe Tricia Sullivan has read once too many the account of the discovery of benzene) That’s where Kalypso Deed comes in: she’s a “shotgun”, a more detached observer who directs the creative energies of a dreaming scientist toward more productive ends.

    Kalypso is also something of an underachiever. Despite her genetic potential, she has consistently failed to attaint the expectations of her elders. She doesn’t understand the maths that her scientists are using; that will be her salvation. Because bad things happen, and they do early on; fifty pages in the novel, Kalypso’s routine “shotgun” shift goes wrong and the AI crashes, carrying most of the station’s life support with it. As the elders try to blame someone, Kalypso is quickly dragged in over her capacities… or is she?

    Dreaming in Smoke could have either been (based on the title) an incredibly boring novel in the “Beauty, songs, love” tradition or (based on the synopsis) a pretty spiffy novel of adventure against a background of a crazy AI and a hostile environment. Unfortunately, title and blurb clash and the novel has too much hard scientific content and attitude to be dismissed easily, but drags on far too often to be considered enjoyable. Over a hundred pages could have been slashed, easily. The Dream motif doesn’t help, as many metaphoric scenes just end up being senseless and confusing. It would have been helpful to tighten the action around the Kalypso/Azamat (hAZArdous MATerial?) axis and clean up the prose.

    As it stands, Dreaming in Smoke is a thoroughly average SF novel that doesn’t really deserve either condemnation or commendation. Sadly, there is so much better stuff out there than the only reason to pick up this novel would be to discover Tricia Sullivan. Which isn’t a bad reason, mind you: for one thing, she’s able to overcome push-button titles.

  • Traces, Stephen Baxter

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 1998, 359 pages, C$37.50 hc, ISBN 0-00-225427-1

    I’ll admit it right away: For a hard-SF student, I’ve been negligent in my recommended readings. I skipped over Benford, forgot Forward and simply didn’t pick up Clement. But I’m catching up on Stephen Baxter. I really liked The Time Ships and thought of no better way to follow up than to borrow the British edition of his latest collection, Traces, at the local library.

    I’ve discussed elsewhere my preference for collections over novels for unfamiliar authors, so there’s no need to go over it in length again here. Briefly put; a short story collection like Traces gives a better idea of the author’s scope and versatility than one single long-form story.

    So what can one deduce of Baxter’s interests, strengths and weaknesses from Traces? A fascination for history probably; alternate history certainly. A competence with the hard sciences. An impatience with overdetailed characterization. A melancholy for the now scaled-back dreams of the early space age. A respect for the elders of SF like Wells, Verne, Clarke…

    But by far the best thing about Baxter is that he’s fully aware that “short” is half a successful short story. In 360 pages, Baxter packs in 21 stories; no fifty-page novellas here, no interminable seed novel.

    Perhaps the most regrettable thing about Traces is that despite being composed of easily categorizable stories, there is no attempt at organization. David Brin’s collection Otherness did this with some success; maybe Baxter could have done the same, redistributing his comments about stories around these categories instead of lumping them into one single afterword.

    There could be an “Alternate Histories” section, with pieces like “No Longer Touch the Earth” (where Aristotle’s concept of a celestial orrery proves to be true… and unnoticed until Amundsen and Scott) and “Brigantia Angels” (where the British invent the plane in 1895).

    A more specialized section could be dedicated to “Alternate Space Programs”, led by “Moon Six” (an astronaut on the moon is carried in several alternate realities where space exploration is at different stages of development) and followed by “Mittelwelt” (Germany wins WWI and is able to launch a space program), “A Journey to the King Planet” (England discovers antimatter and jump-starts a space program during Queen Victoria’s reign) and “Pilgrim 7” (a Mercury-program astronaut orbiting the Earth is carried away to a more peaceful alternate reality shortly after the Cuba crisis goes nuclear)

    There could always be a section called “I learned from the masters”, where Baxter could prove that he’s able to write stories like Wells (“Columbiad”, where Jules Verne’s classic From the Earth to the Moon is fact), Clarke (“Traces”, a big-scale remix of “The Star”), Niven (“Something for Nothing”, which has significant similarities with Niven’s “The Hole Man”) and golden-age planetary-exploration adventures (“In the Manner of Tree”, with requisite gruff starship captain and mysterious natives)

    Traces is not a flawless anthology, sinning sometime by tediousness (please forgive me if I admit to skipping large parts of both “Downstream” and “The Blood of Angels”) and pointlessness (“George and the Comet”’s point is undiscernible, “Inherit the Earth” simply falls flat.) But the remainder is pretty good, and certainly worth considering in paperback at your next trip to the local SF store.

    Any author that can claim to rewrite Superman and actually do a good job (“Good News”) as well as write a rousing story about a dead classical poet (Lord Byron in “Darkness”) deserves at least a modicum of attention. Traces might just be the best way to get acquainted with Stephen Baxter.

  • La Vita è Bella [Life Is Beautiful] (1997)

    La Vita è Bella [Life Is Beautiful] (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1999) has a brilliant premise, but unfortunately couldn’t do it justice without bringing along a series of significant flaws. The first of these is the division of the movie in two very different halves. The first is a romantic comedy that sets up the protagonist as a clever innocent that has no other defense against the world than humour; the second is a dark comedy that shows him, eight years later, as trying to protect his son from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by masquerading the camp as a game. Despite the jokes and the funny faces, the overall structure is nevertheless definitely tragic and that’s why the effect is split. Also grating is the movie’s reliance on shameless coincidences and often sophomoric humour. Still, don’t get the impression that this movie isn’t worth it; some sequences approach perfection -like the translation scene- and something must be said about Roberto Benigni’s unflappable charm. Making this movie took courage, and the result is impressive despite its flaws.

  • The Number of the Beast, Robert A. Heinlein

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Fawcett, 1980, 511 pages, C$4.75 mmpb, ISBN 0-449-14476-3

    Given this new millennium, some particularly silly person will undoubtedly try to poll Science-Fiction fans to try to find out was the foremost SF writer of the twentieth century. I say “silly”, because the contest is over even before it begins; the honour logically goes to Robert A. Heinlein.

    Say what you want, gnash your teeth, moan loudly or run away screaming; Robert A. Heinlein is the defining SF writer of the twentieth century. He has shaped the genre to his liking, inspired more writers than anyone else, provoked more arguments and debates than any other and influenced more people than most politicians. He’s not only the author of the hippie manifesto Stranger in a Strange Land, but also the militarist fantasy Starship Troopers and the libertarian classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

    Notice, however, that these novels were all written in the first two-third of Heinlein’s career. In the seventies, the author was severely affected by poor health and his post-1970 novels were marked by a severe lack of editorial revision, increasing authorial indulgence and a detestable tendency to praise a small group of fictional characters very much like Heinlein at the expense of everything else.

    The Number of the Beast is widely known as one of Heinlein’s worst books and an interminable exercise in solipsism. Given that it’s one of the very few Heinlein novels I still hadn’t read, I was curious to see for myself what the fuss was about.

    After reading the novel, I’m still unsure whether the book was a satire or not. A straight plot summary of the book will not do: what would any serious SF reader think of “two couples of geniuses are chased by aliens and forced to depart through space and time aboard their specially-modified car”? Right…

    It’s apparent from the start that this is a novel that will defy conventional assessment. When hitherto-unknown characters marry in the first thirty pages, when all four protagonists have multiple doctorates and when alternate universes are defined by SF stories, it quickly becomes apparent that anyone applying rational literary standards will quickly regret it.

    Which is essentially saying that anyone expecting a conventionally entertaining novel won’t like The Number of the Beast. Critics are right when they say that the four protagonists in The Number of the Beast are all Heinlein in disguise. It’s not enough to be ready to wackiness; it’s almost a prerequisite to be very familiar with all of Heinlein’s corpus up to 1980 to be comfortable with the discussions in this novel.

    But is it enjoyable? It depends which part of the novel you read. The opening 150 pages have some plot, and are carried through mainly on Heinlein’s sheer narrative verve and great character introductions. The protagonists are so ridiculously ultra-competent that we’re reading in part to see which one will top the other with some other outrageously exotic skill.

    But the 350 remaining pages are, despite the lively prose, often an exercise in tediousness. Interminable, useless technical descriptions are wrapped around some more (not unenjoyable) Heinleinisms. The impression is one of a writer who’s lost his outline. Even the spirited Envoi does nothing to reconcile ourselves with a novel that’s two-third empty.

    That’s the conventional way of enjoying The Number of the Beast… but I’m not sure the unconventional way is open to anyone save the late Robert A. Heinlein himself.

  • A Simple Plan (1998)

    A Simple Plan (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1999) This succeeds where Very Bad Things crashed miserably; telling a tale of increasing grimness with the appropriate tone. Three men find four million dollars in the woods; for this price, what wouldn’t they do to keep the secret? Whereas Very Bad Things tried to fashion a hip comedy out of a gruesome series of murders, A Simple Plan plays it more maturely. (Ironically, A Simple Plan‘s director is Sam –Army Of Darkness– Raimi, never before known for his restraint) The result is nothing short of a very good film, emotionally gripping yet non-manipulative and superbly concluded. Great acting across the board. Perhaps a bit suspicious around the edges (what about Hank’s wife’s abrupt attitude reversal or the unlikely hypothesis that just happens to be right?) and longuish at times, A Simple Plan is easily one of the best films of 1998 for those with the will to stomach a dark tale about human greed. At least it won’t try to make you laugh.

  • Payback (1999)

    Payback (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1999) This film will probably be misunderstood by a bunch of so-called critics and tremendously enjoyed by those who actually get the intent of the film. Not-coincidentally co-written and wonderfully directed by L.A. Confidential‘s Brian Hegeland, Payback is an homage to the whole era of pulpish hard-boiled noir stories. In this case, however, the protagonist is not a Private Investigator, but a tough robber double-crossed by his wife and partner. He wants his money back; the movie’s plot is as simple as that. The lengths with which the protagonist will go to get back his due are what holds our interest. Cool acting by Mel Gibson, a hilarious presence by Lucy Liu as a dominatrix, a crunchy soundtrack and good direction make this movie an enormously enjoyable treat for fans of the genre.

  • Office Space (1999)

    Office Space (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, February 1999) The cartoon strip Dilbert has enjoyed a long and successful run during the past few years by satirizing the hitherto-ignored daily frustrations of office work. Office Space covers more or less the same ground but, unfortunately, has more than three small boxes in which to delivers its punchlines. The first half of the movie is hilarious as characters, environment and small set-pieces are delivered without attention to story development, and the jokes are funny. Anyone with even the slightest experience with white-collar jobs will laugh along heartily. It’s in the second half that the movie discovers it has to have a plot, and fulfilling this obligation takes away a lot of the movie’s previous care-free fun. Still, it’s more than worth it for its target audience: Some bits are wonderfully directed, most characters are very well sketched and the whole is very enjoyable. Better still; see it with a group of colleagues.

    (Second viewing, On DVD, March 2002) White-collar workers of the world, unite and go fetch this little film! Writer/director Mike Judge pokes fun at the meaningless work in which so many of us are stuck and delivers a solid, unpretentious 90-minutes comedy that will leave you smiling. Not many laughs the second time around, but it doesn’t matter a lot when the characters are so sympathetic. The second-half lull is more obvious the second time around, though. Sadly, the DVD doesn’t contain any extras worth mentioning.

    (Third viewing, on DVD, October 2009): I hadn’t seen this in a while, and another viewing leaves me both happy and set straight. Sure, this workplace comedy has survived pretty well its first decade: the technology may have changed, but the issues tackled here are more or less the same, and the humour of the film remains applicable to most office contexts. On the other hand, the cult status of the film among IT and office workers may have skewed perceptions a bit: The film is considerably gentler and less steadily hilarious than I recalled it. It’s an ensemble piece, and an atmospheric one: There are moments in the film that glide from one amusing moment to another without necessarily going for the cheap gag. As a result, any compendium of best quotes from the movie doesn’t exactly reflect its genial, easygoing flow (albeit occasionally broken by hardcore rap.) Still, it’s a charming comedy, much closer in tone to director Mike Judge’s subsequent Extract than anyone is likely to remember.

  • Maximum Risk (1996)

    Maximum Risk (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 1999) This film perpetrates the most fatal error that an action movie can make: It’s boring. Okay, so you can’t expect much from a Jean-Claude van Damme picture but still, this one is unusually lifeless. The curiously uninspired direction (by Hong Kong legend Ringo Lam) is partly to blame, but as usual the script is the weakest part of the whole. Maximum Risk picks up during its third act (excluding that forgettable meat-locker scene) but can’t make up for the lackluster first 90 minutes.

  • Immortality, Dr. Ben Bova

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1998, 283 pages, C$31.00 hc, ISBN 0-380-97518-1

    Immortality has been a staple of Science-Fiction for as long as the genre has existed, from at least Greek mythology onward. Most of the time, Immortality was presented either as a goal for mad scientists (“With this ingredient, I shall live forever and enslave the world!”) or, perhaps more ominously, as a curse bestowed on an unlucky few.

    Eventually, given SF’s own tendency to pervert its own assumptions, more balanced work have emerged. Increasingly realistic biomedical advances in the real world have helped to steer fiction away from the “mad immortals” cliches. The SF of the nineties has seen a renewed interest in the concept. Kim Stanley Robinson made it one of the keystones of his grandiose “Mars” trilogy, even though some will argue that it was a mean to develop the story with the same characters, not an end in itself. More recently, James L. Halperin vulgarized the subject in 1998’s quasi-mainstream novel The First Immortal.

    Ben Bova’s Immortality, despite Bova’s solid reputation as a Science Fiction author, is a non-fiction work. It explores the avenues by which medicine may reverse aging, the consequences of such a scientific triumph and the desirability of immortality.

    Doctor-Bova-the-scientist has meticulously distanced himself from Ben-Bova-the-SF-writer in Immortality. Indeed, his “Other books by Ben Bova” blurb lists only non-fiction works and even then it’s staggering to see that he has written more non-fiction books that most writers will write novels in their lifetimes. But Bova has carried to science writing the same limpidity of thought and writing that has earned him his legions of SF fans.

    Immortality is an unusually accessible work about a subject that is unusually complex. It’s no coincidence if it take more than a hundred pages to get at immortality itself: Bova has to carry the reader through elementary chemistry and biology before really tackling immortality. Fortunately, it’s a much more pleasant read than the prospect of “a hundred pages of basic sciences” might imply. Side-bars, personal anecdotes, catchy headers and other techniques make Immortality a model of good scientific vulgarization. As might be expected, Bova’s research is meticulous. At the end of the book’s first part, we can’t be anything but convinced that immortality is just around the corner. The scientific evidence so far is overwhelming.

    As stunning as is this conclusion, it’s the second part of the book that will fascinate. Here, Bova explores his previous assumption by looking at the social repercussions of Immortality. He reasonably intuits that not everyone will welcome this revolution with equal fervour. He also posits “what-if?” scenarios based on the costs of immortality treatments, availability and continued medical research on the subject. Alas, this part is over much too quickly; if the book has a weakness, it’s that this examination of social impacts could have been expanded. Bova makes simplistic assumptions that will give ammunition to overcritical readers.

    But no matter. After finishing Immortality, it’s difficult to disagree with Bova’s assertion that death will eventually become, not obsolete, but far less implacable than today. It’s a breath of fresh air in a marketplace of end-of-the-world predictions.

    Perhaps the most impressive thing about Immortality is not the prediction of immortality -after all, it’s been a common fantasy for a while now-, but the fact that this prediction is detailed, quite reasonably, in a popular science book. Even long after first reading the last lines of the book, they will resonate as strongly as before:

    The first immortals are already living among us. You might be one of them.

  • Jerry Maguire (1996)

    Jerry Maguire (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 1999) I’m still not too sure of what to think about this film even a few days after seeing it for the first time. I get the impression of a darn good sports comedy (complete with outrageous odds, game-turning events and triumphant finish) mixed with a puzzling “realistic” romance (with less-than-honorable intentions but still a triumphant finish.) In the end, however, the uneven mix-and-match and the sometime creaky attempts at mature love story takes a second step to the movie’s biggest strength: the acting. Tom Cruise is even better than his usual good standards as a sports agent with a budding moral streak (However, -dare I ask-, is it reasonable that he would get fired for a passionate memo? Don’t think so…) but he almost disappears behind the hyper-energetic performance of Cuba Gooding Junior, who eclipses his other roles as something of a sissy-boy (see Outbreak, As Good As It Gets and What Dreams May Come) by playing an ultra-confident football player. Rene Zellweger is breath-taking while still remaining comfortably adorable; heck, even the kid is fun to watch! The script is okay and the direction is rather good. The result, as one colleague suggested, is a movie with everything for everyone: Romance for the girls and football for the guys.

  • The Cable Guy (1996)

    The Cable Guy (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 1999) This film was critically disliked when it first came out and it’s not hard to see why: the script tries to do two things (have a wacky Jim Carrey movie and tell a tale of a psychopath) at the same time and fails at both. Despite good direction by Ben Stiller (yes, that actor Ben Stiller), great usage of a good soundtrack and some clever asides, the movie suffers from its dichotomic script and a less-than-impressive conclusion. Give a medal to Carrey because he’s one of the few actors that had a chance to pull this role adequately, but take the screenwriter to the firing squad.

  • Bio-Dome (1996)

    Bio-Dome (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 1999) This serves magnificently well as a reminder that some movies are made to be seen on television. It’s free, so you can’t feel ripped off. It has commercial breaks, so you can take reading breaks. It can’t be fast-forwarded, so you’re stuck seeing all of the movie in more-or-less linear time. Bio-Dome (starring the ungreat Pauly Shore) is easily one of the stupidest comedies I’ve seen (waaay stupider than Dumb & Dumber, for instance) and also easily one of the less funny. Granted, the French translation takes away half the jokes and drowns the rest in the too-loud rock soundtrack, but there are things that aren’t affected by inept translation and the development of the good basic premise (two losers lock themselves up in a scientific experiment) is one. Bio-Dome is actually so bad that it starts being sporadically watcheable despite itself about half an hour in the movie. There are occasional flashes of good comedy (the unlocked door, for instance) but nothing that really makes it worthwhile.

  • Lethal Exposure, Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1998, 290 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-00536-5

    One can say a lot of not-so-complimentary things about Kevin J. Anderson. He’s one of the bestselling SF authors of the nineties, but -most will hasten to add-, he’s done so on the shoulders of some pretty powerful institutions: Anderson wrote or co-wrote at least a dozen novels in the Star Wars and X-Files universe… Lately, he’s been shamelessly exploiting the church of Scientology by writing a novel in “collaboration” with the late L. Ron Hubbard. A prolific writer, Anderson also has time for a substantial body of more original work.

    He collects collaborators like others collect cars and the quality of the work often has a direct link with the other writer. With Doug Beason, Anderson writes very-hard-science techno-thrillers, from DIE-HARD clone (the rather good Ignition) to post-apocalyptic drama (Ill Wind) to, finally, a series of novel starring Craig Kriedent, high-tech FBI agent.

    The formula is simple: Imagine a FBI agent specialized in high-tech crimes. Give him two competent sidekicks, one ex-squeeze and an ambiguous girlfriend. Make them resolve murders in high-tech locations. Pack in as many scientific details as the average hard-SF fan will tolerate. Add some more action, near-future technology and write up everything in a limpid style that’s impossible to resist.

    I wasn’t too fond of the first Kriedent novel (Virtual Destruction), mostly for the usage of gratuitous pathos and less-clever-than-they-thought plotting. The second book (Fallout) was closer to techno-thriller than to crime fiction, and had the benefit of better action scenes as well as a very memorable finale. Lethal Exposure tops both by combining the best elements of the first two books.

    In the opening pages of Lethal Exposure, a scientist working after-hours at Chicago’s Fermilab particle accelerator is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. He calmly diagnoses himself as a living corpse and turns himself in. His physician is Trish LeCroix, Craig Kriedent’s ex-girlfriend. She calls him up, convinced that it was no accident. Kriedent quickly arrives on the scene, and then the action really starts.

    This time around, the mystery elements are combined with action sequences to produce a mystery/thriller hybrid. Since we’re comfortable with the main characters, the authors are allowed to spend some time developing secondary players and allowing their protagonists to react more naturally. Technically, Lethal Exposure is better-paced than its predecessors, balancing the action with just enough mystery. The ending is surprisingly emotional, though one loose end is still dangling by the end of the novel.

    Inevitably, some will feel disappointed at some of the shortcuts taken by the authors. The romantic triangle is given scant attention and the murder attempts are as unbelievable as a direct Chicago-New Delhi Concord flight. (Refuelling? Continental United States supersonic overflight? Demand? Facilities?)

    But no matter; for an open-ended series novel, Lethal Exposure is a darn good read. It’s the best of the Kriedent so far, and the last pages give plenty of openings for a series of sequels. Of course, it remains to be seen if Beason and Anderson want to continue, (contrarily to the previous two books, there is no mention of a follow-up book) but if they can keep the same level of quality than with Lethal Exposure, fans are sure to follow.

  • Red Ink, Greg Dinallo

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1994, 341 pages, C$28.50 hc, ISBN 0-671-73313-3

    My, have times changed.

    Fifteen years ago, nobody would have considered Russia a country in crisis. They were pointing nuclear missiles at most North American cities, and that was enough to stop most people from thinking objectively about a country that was struggling under a rigid bureaucracy, an inefficient economy and backward technological progress. Author Greg Dinallo himself, in 1988, penned a novel titled Rocket’s Red Glare which featured a dastardly Russia plan stemming from the Cuba crisis.

    Of course, nobody could have a clear picture of the true state of the Ex-USSR given that nothing was really well-known about the country. No open media, no independent accounting, no glassnost.

    Of course, we all know the major beats of the subsequent story; Chernobyl, the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, the 1991 coup in Moscow, the division of the USSR into independent countries… The true picture of the communist aftermath is finally clear and it’s not pretty. Now, Dinallo is looking at Russia again… and my have times changed.

    Red Ink‘s protagonist Nikolai Katkov isn’t particularly sad to be rid of the old regime. An ex-gulag prisoner, Katkov is a freelance investigative reporter. He sees the new Russia through jaded eyes. As with most noir novels, Katkov is also down on his luck. By mid-novel, he’ll be stripped of most of what he hold dear.

    Of course, it starts off innocently with a banal murder. Except that the victim is a high-banking government officer. Except that the victim was investigating high-stakes financial transactions. Except that he might or might not have been killed by a professional. Except that the trail points to the Russian mafiya. Except that Katkov’s article is rewritten and published under another byline. Except that Katkov is nearly gunned down…

    The only thing missing is a love interest, and she quickly arrives as the sultry Gabriella Scotto, U.S. Treasury Special Agent. What is going on? Is her investigation tied into the murder?

    Red Ink is, all things considered, an adequate thriller with enough quirks to make it interesting. The first-person narration is suitably cynical to add spice to the narrative, though this particularity fades as the novel goes on. The relation between Katkov and Scotto is handled maturely, with a flair that’s lacking in most Hollywood-inspired thrillers. Characterisation is strong, the writing is clear and -at least initially- compulsively readable. There are a few memorable scenes and the conclusion is far more interesting than could have been expected.

    The first third of Red Ink is unfortunately much more fascinating than the remainder of the novel, promising more than what Dinallo eventually delivers. As Katkov travels to a more familiar environment (from our perspective), the book loses some of its charm, even if Katkov’s fish-out-of-water condition provides amusement. Simply put, Red Ink remains good, but isn’t special in its latter half.

    Dinallo has always been an unconventional thriller writer, bringing sometimes uncomfortable elements in his fiction but usually building interesting payoffs. Red Ink is the best of his books yet, and Dinallo owes some of this success to the careful research he’s done about the Russia of the nineties. Red Ink is a good choice for an entertaining read… and proves that even if Russia has changed, it still offers considerable potential for all of those poor cold-war writers.

    My, have times changed!

  • The Sneaker Book, Tom Vanderbilt

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    The New Press, 1998, 177 pages, C$19.95 hc, ISBN 1-56584-406-8

    My troubles with footwear began a few years ago, as my favourite model was discontinued. Through high school and most of college, I bought pair after pair of Reebok Pro Volley Mesh. After some experimentation, this had proven to be the most comfortable, most versatile, relatively sober design. I really liked these shoes.

    But, inevitably, the soles of my old pair cracked, it began to snow, my favourite model wasn’t available any more and I eventually found myself in the market for new shoes. A few trips to specialty footwear stores were unforgettable experiences: The shoes there bore no relation to what I really wanted to wear: I was looking for something relatively modest, not too flashy and as close as possible to the streamlined shape of the Reebok Pro Volley shoe.

    What I discovered was an assortment of globulous, multicolored, fanciful shapes that looked more like Jim-Burns-drawn futuristic weapons turned upside down than footwear. I retreated to the nearest general-interest megastore and came out with a pair of white Nike Air.

    I hated those shoes. Lightweight and featureless, okay, but two weeks after buying them, one of them began to squeak. You can imagine the infernal sound in a deserted corridor: Clop, squeak, clop, squeak, clop, squeak… I toughed it as long as I could (one year; my self-imposed shoe replacement delay) and went back to Reebok sneakers.

    I consider myself a sane customer, but that, by any standard, was demented. No sneaker nowadays lasts more than a year, and it’s impossible to find a good model since they keep changing year after year!

    The Sneaker Book finally put some sense in the mania that is the Sneakers industry. Design changes every quarter; squalid production conditions, obscenely-paid celebrity endorsements, nauseatingly pervasive marketing, shameless commercialisation of an image over function… there is a lot of material there for a scathing denunciation, and this is what Tom Vanderbilt delivers.

    He takes us from design to sales, intelligently pointing out the crazier parts of the industry without necessarily being arrogant or spiteful about it. The result is book that reads well, and can be consulted easily. (There is a good index at the end.)

    The design of the book, however, is less successful. In an effort to appear hip and modern, the designers have shot themselves in the foot (har-har) in matter of readability. Some sidebar excerpt from other works are run consecutively on several pages, running alongside the main text; the effect is to force the reader to either read one and go back, or to try to follow both threads simultaneously. The good idea of illustrating each page with a sneaker is undermined by the lack of identification of each shoe, and the repetition of several similar images.

    Nevertheless, The Sneaker Book is an excellent work. It takes a product that most of us take for granted, and deconstruct it in such a way that we’re never going to think of sneakers in quite the same way again. It’s a precious document chronicling not only sneakers-as-footwear, but as a chilling materialization of some of the late twentieth century’s worst traits: Rampant commercialism, sports as entertainment, ghetto formalization, third-world exploitation, women inequity, image-as-substance…

    Whatever you might choose to see in The Sneaker Book, it certainly made me look at my footwear often. The “Made in China” tag in all of my shoes never seemed more ominous. Who should care about my petty complaints of squeaking, changing models and lack of durability when I’m really the living incarnation of the first-world nations stepping on the product of the less fortunate members of the human race?