Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Dogma (1999)

    Dogma (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1999) As a good little (lapsed) catholic boy, I got a kick out of this film, maybe more than it actually deserves from an objective point of view. Kevin Smith’s script oscillates between the sharply clever and the drawn-out obvious, but gets the job done. The casting is spectacular, though unequal: even though I generally worship Salma Hayek, she wasn’t the best choice for Serendipity. Steadily funny, with an irreverent questioning streak, Dogma is actually respectful to both theist and atheist crowds, encouraging everyone to question their beliefs… and that’s respectable enough for any film.

  • Daylight (1996)

    Daylight (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1999) Yet again, Sylvester Stallone plays the role of a supremely competent man with a past trauma suddenly thrown into a dangerous situation. Unfortunately, this is no Cliffhanger and though Daylight is an adequately competent disaster film, it’s nothing special. The traditional cast of diverse characters populate the script, none being especially interesting. (Well, none beyond the millionaire adventurer, who’s killed too early) The initial tunnel disaster is impressive from a visual effects point of view, but the rest of the film is rather more pedestrian. You won’t believe some of the Stupid Mistakes made by the screenwriter.

  • Bound (1996)

    Bound (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1999) A triumphant revision of noir thrillers, with the assorted background of mafia, greed, smouldering sexual tension and pervasive gritty atmosphere. This is the Wachowski Brothers’ first feature (their second would be The Matrix) and it already shows the mixture of mesmerizing direction, borrowed influences and comic-book plotting that made their follow-up features so successful. This is a film that isn’t really complex, but looks so damn polished that it’s impossible to avoid being favorably impressed. Cool scenes, cooler visuals, focused script and femmes fatales (Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon! Woo-hoo!)… I don’t need much more to recommend this one.

  • The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper, 1997, 301 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-101351-X

    Humans are not aquatic creatures. Even though our lineage most probably goes back to an H2O-saturated environment at some point, we’re the product of a few million years of straight land-based evolution. We are, in our current form, ridiculously ill-equipped to cope with water in large quantities.

    Maybe that why so much good literature has been about the sea. Melville’s Moby Dick, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea, etc… As comfortable landlubbers, we often forget how fundamentally inhospitable the ocean can be. Now here comes Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm to remind us of it once again.

    In October 1991, a combination of factors along the northeastern Atlantic coast all contributed to the creation of “a perfect storm” —a storm that could not have been worse. Caught in the middle of it: The Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat with a crew of six men. They never made it back to port. The Perfect Storm is, in part, the story of their demise.

    Not a cheery premise for a documentary, nor an easy one. How can we know what happened aboard a boat which disappeared at sea? Junger confronts the question in the introduction by stating up-front that he’s using descriptions of similar events to describe the fate of the Andrea Gail, that he resisted the impulsion to make up quotes, that he interviewed friends and relatives to get an idea of the men’s last days on shore. And, by and large, the book plays fair to this ideal, neither inventing or dramatizing facts. The narrative is filled with “it might have been the case”, “did these men…?”, “in similar cases” and other carefully-modulated modifiers. It doesn’t matter: The book creates a convincing aura of authenticity.

    Junger also sidesteps the question by adding other elements than the disappearance of the Andrea Gail to The Perfect Storm. We get to see the end of a yacht cruise, hair-raising rescues by National Guardsman and other dramatic events that happened during the storm of 1991. This broad focus helps maintain the interest in he book long after the Andrea Gail has gone under.

    As for the quality of the book itself… well, it’s obvious from the start that The Perfect Storm will be a superior read. Honest human interest bolsters technical details about the fishing industry and the result is both highly informative and compulsively readable. Junger not only did his research, but presents it in a way that’s almost unequalled. Few books attain the level of intense fascination created by Junger. The result is a memorable work of documentary fiction.

    A movie script has been adapted from The Perfect Storm, and is -as of this writing- undergoing the final stages of the primary shooting. It remains to be seen if the film will be able to translate Junger’s carefully researched facts and documentary vulgarization to the big screen. Initial gut reaction would seem to indicate otherwise and this, coupled to the anti-dramatic structure and the unhappy finale, might not presage well for the finished product. Still…

    The potential appeal for the book itself, in the meantime, is enormous. Non-fiction fans will find a book far better-written than the norm in genre. Docu-fiction fans will be fascinated by the accessible technical details and the meticulous research. Your basic reader, finally, will read the book in a single seating, grip the armrest of his comfy chair and change his mind about how he thinks we humans master the sea.

  • Being John Malkovich (1999)

    Being John Malkovich (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1999) This might be one of the most original film of the year, but that in no way implies that it’s a supremely entertaining one. It’s always a personal wonder that from time to time, film critics will be bowled over by “originality”, as if that excused everything. You’ve got to wonder about frames of reference. I’ve read far too many SF and Fantasy tales that were far weirder that Being John Malkovich, so allow me to be unimpressed at how “startlingly fresh” it seems. I didn’t like the characters, I didn’t like the easy “explanation”, I didn’t like pedestrian direction and I didn’t like the “oh-it’s-a” monkey either. I did like a few sight gags (eg; the 7.5th floor, Malkovich being Malkovich) and Malkovich’s performance, but beyond that… why don’t you grab a modern fantasy anthology and start reading?

  • The Bachelor (1999)

    The Bachelor (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1999) An exploration of marriage relatively more successful than Forces Of Nature, but not by much. As a comedy, it has a few scattered chuckles, but nothing much beyond the striking visual gags of a man being chased by a thousand women in bridal outfits. (the production costs, my, the production costs!) As a romance, it’s bland; we never ever doubt that the two leads are going to end together, and the structure of the film does not allow for that down-low moment where everything seems irrevocably lost. Renée Zellweger is cuter than ever and James Cromwell is suitably sympathetic as a pastor.

  • Anaconda (1997)

    Anaconda (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 1999) As far as pure B-movie adventures go, you really can’t find better than Anaconda. Directed with some skill and scripted according to the most basic standards of the genre, this film knows exactly what it is, and makes no apologies for it. Jennifer Lopez has never looked so good (spending most of her considerable screen time sweaty in a tight shirt) and John Voight redefines over-the-top villainy. Some special effects look fake, making a shocking contrast with the remainder of the CGI-intensive visuel effects. A great unassuming video choice.

  • Abre Los Ojos [Open Your Eyes] (1997)

    Abre Los Ojos [Open Your Eyes] (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, November 1999) Where did this movie come from? How is it we didn’t hear more of it? A quasi-hallucinatory mixture of genres finally ending in pure science-fiction, Open Your Eyes is the kind of reality-bending film that Hollywood often aims for but never quite achieves. While longish in the beginning, and not always consistent, this is a film to hunt for at you local video store. To say more would be to spoil the film.

  • Virus Ground Zero, Ed Regis

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1996, 244 pages, C$31.00 hc, ISBN 0-671-55361-5

    In 1995, a book titled The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, caused a stir among the American public. A dramatic non-fiction account of Ebola outbreaks in Africa and in a Washington DC suburb, it was propelled to the top of the bestseller lists by a combination of good writing, great reviews and an uncanny sense of timing: A few weeks after its initial release, another Ebola outbreak in Zaire made headlines and bolstered sales of the book.

    Virus Ground Zero is, in many ways, a follow-up to The Hot Zone. It describes in detail the 1995 African outbreak. It draws an unofficial history of the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the world’s foremost anti-viral agency. It also aims to puncture the myth of “the coming plague”, fostered in part by books like The Hot Zone. The result is a triumph of anecdotic storytelling, but a dismal structural failure.

    The framework of Virus Ground Zero is provided by the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, Zaire. Regis meticulously -but entertainingly- describes the evolution of the outbreak from the initial cases to the ceremonial end of the emergency. It’s a naturally gripping tale, with the detective-like work of tracking down the origin of the virus and the culture clash between American experts and third-world Zaire. Additionally, this being the nineties, the epidemic naturally becomes a media event, and the most blackly amusing parts of the book describe how the media presence in Kikwit was more numerous than the CDC virus experts, and far more obnoxious.

    Regis adds to this report an unofficial (read; not always laudatory) history of the Center for Disease Control. Born out of the need to control Malaria in the United States in the 1940s, the CDC quickly grew outside its first assigned bounds to take on more and more duties outside malaria control or even disease control. By the nineties, the CDC had become a massive bureaucracy where only a tenth of all resources were directly assigned to infectious diseases. But the CDC can at least boasts of some significant successes: In the seventies, their efforts managed to erase smallpox, one of humankind’s oldest enemies, from the face of the Earth. This story, and many others, are interwoven in the book.

    And there lies the most significant weakness of Virus Ground Zero; a lack of organization. From the beginning, Kikwit crisis and CDC history are alternately covered, without clear chapter distinctions or indications. It’s as if Regis flits from subject to subject as he likes it, ignoring chronology and often leaving “cliffhangers” at the end of each snippet, which won’t be answered until much later in the book. Such a structure is fine for novels, but for a serious nonfiction scientific vulgarization, it’s a fatal mistake. Even worse; there is no index. You can’t reasonably use Virus Ground Zero as a reference book because there’s no way of quickly locating an element. How these types of blatant omission still make it in today’s publishing industry are left as a perverse exercise to the reader.

    The real shame of Virus Ground Zero is that Regis is, basically, a rather good vulgarizer. His writing style is clear and witty. He selects good anecdotes and presents them in a way that make a point clear. He isn’t afraid to criticize when it’s appropriate. His explanations are clear and to the point. His central thesis -based on his examination of the non-event that was the Kikwit outbreak- that there’s no such thing as “a coming plague” is carefully documented and does seem reasonable.

    But presentation is often as important as content, and so Virus Ground Zero fails on factors external to the content. There would be several easy way to “fix” the book, from a simple index to a complete chronological re-organization of the book, but the current product is a nightmare of structure, a bunch of good stories impossible to consult efficiently.

  • Earth Made of Glass, John Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 416 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-55161-3

    Long-time John Barnes readers already know that he’s fascinated by the fate of societies. His first few novels were all hard-SF extrapolations of societies radically different from our own. A Million Open Doors was especially interesting, a tale of a carefree, artistic young man abruptly transferred into a repressive pragmatic theocracy. It many ways, it’s Barnes most enjoyable novel, with its carefully paced action, clean writing and upbeat finale.

    Earth Made of Glass is an indirect sequel to A Million Open Doors. It takes place twelve years later and stars the two protagonists of the previous volume, but doesn’t really depend on the first book for full comprehension. Girault and Margaret have become special agents for the central government of the Thousand Cultures human civilization. Their job is to ensure that the integration of new cultures in the intersystem teleporter network is done without incident.

    Briand is their biggest challenge yet: An inhospitable planet at the exception of a few secluded areas, it is host to two cultures who absolutely can’t tolerate each other. Girault and Margaret must not only find a way to eradicate this common hate and bring Briand in the Thousand Cultures, but also work on the problems that have begun to plague their marriage… guess what will be the most difficult task?

    On the bright side, Earth Made of Glass vividly illustrates Barnes’ biggest strengths; clear writing, sustained plotting, a wealth of fun details and solid characters. Even better is his fascination with social dynamics; SF seems to be Barnes’ device to explore human politics and the result is sufficiently different from most SF to ensure interest. The ideas are there and they’re worth listening to.

    On the other hand, this novel is less successful than its prequel for several reasons. While the societies explored here are complex and detailed, the wealth of minutiae often threatens to overwhelm the narration. Then there’s the fact that most Western readers won’t care a whit about either the Tamil or Maya societies—maybe that’s the intention, but it certainly doesn’t pack as much punch as a good ol’ Medievalist civilisation. (what about a non-literary society, too?)

    That that’s nothing compared to how the characters behave. For someone as finely trained in the arts of artistic subtlety, Girault lets far too many clues pass him by. (Even distracted readers will pick up on elements of the conclusion long before the narrator) For someone as pragmatic and level-headed as Margaret, her behavioral motives appear awfully thin. As a matter of fact, everyone‘s motives don’t quite ring true, from Margaret to Girault, Ix and Auvaiyar… a lot as if Barnes just moved pieces across a board without covering up his efforts. It’s not always fun to see likable character acting stupidly; by the end of the book, you’ll be ready to want to slap around most of the characters for being such idiots.

    Then there’s the bittersweet finale, when Barnes reverts to his early pessimism. The point might be valid, but it doesn’t help that it’s such a downer; what about the idea of structural balance?

    Fortunately (or not), this volume is rife with setups for (at least) a third volume chronicling Girault’s adventures. While Earth Made of Glass proves to be a often-frustrating mixed-bag of good ideas and bad choices, it remains sufficiently interesting to please old fans and whip up anticipation for further books. This reviewer can’t wait to see Girault teach the finer points of courtisanship to representatives of alien civilisations…

  • The Third Twin, Ken Follett

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pan, 1996 (1997 reprint), 632 pages, C$12.00 mmpb, ISBN 0-330-34837-X

    Even though not yet at the year 2000, a science-fictional year if there was one, several commentators have already started mourning science-fiction as a literary genre.

    Their reasons are varied. Robert J. Sawyer, Spider Robinson and Norman Spinrad are all on record as saying that commercial pressures are garroting the SF publishing houses, who then become forced to fall back on base-level sci-fi to survive and ignore the groundbreaking material. Robert Silverberg is also on record as saying that media-SF is killing “true science-fiction”. Thomas M. Disch has even written a Hugo-winning book, The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of about how SF risks disappearing in a world increasingly SF-like because brought in existence by people who read SF.

    This last reason might be the most valid of all. The last few years have really driven home -in a literal sense- the fact that technological progress Changes Things. The Internet has gone, in five years, from academic curiosity to mass-market phenomenon, along with all the social changes (email etiquette, IRC addiction, porn distribution, bombmaking instruction acquisition, MP3 piracy, etc…) it entails. Science changes human nature is the motto of SF. Well, duh! answers the Millennial Society, already weaned from birth in a SFictional brew.

    So, society Knows SF in a holistic sense. Then, one might ask, why do we need SF if we’re already familiar with its teachings? If SF is getting mainstream, then the mainstream is getting more SF.

    The last decade has seen the strengthening of a publishing category once before associated with the names of Clancy and Crichton: The Techno-thriller. Though possessing most of the ingredients of the Thriller (an ordinary man; a beautiful heroine; dangerous enemies; a breathless chase against time to save the world!) these novels are based upon scientific facts often more solid and more developed than your average SF novel. The military techno-thriller, in particular, is often more didactic than hard-SF, commonly pausing for a few pages in order to describe the finest operating details of a weapon system.

    Ken Follett’s The Third Twin is a great case in point. It cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a Science-Fiction novel. It simply adheres too well to the “thriller” category to fit anywhere else. And yet, its central premise is a seventies experiment in cloning which produced at least three identical individuals.

    As a thriller, it’s very well-done. The writing is fast-paced and easily graspable by even the most distraught of airplanes passengers. The protagonists are suitably sympathetic, adequately developed and worth cheering for. The often-preposterous plot goes for maximum dramatic impact, often at the expense of credibility. The legal and medical details are obviously distilled from careful research, but in a way to avoid overwhelming the layreader. The Third Twin is a whole lot of mostly clean fun, and can be read in a flash despite the thickness of the pages.

    As SF, there not much substance to the text; assume that clones exists, and here’s a pulse-pounding adventure to go with it. As with most thrillers, consequences and implications of the scientific breakthrough are eschewed in favor of the narrative flow. The Third Twin is fun, but it’s kind of an escape-the-bus-commute fun, not the mind-expanding wondrous fun usually associated with Science-Fiction.

    And therein lies part of the answer SF must learn in order to survive in a world it has created. No one will be offended, or even mildly disturbed by The Third Twin. No one will look up to the stars after reading this book and say “this is where I want to go.” No one will start picking on the various plot holes. Because it’s a thriller and only aims to thrill, and even if it does so competently, it stops there.

    But SF has to be more than that.

  • Tesseracts 8, Ed. John Clute and Candas Jane Dorsey

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tesseracts, 1999, 312 pages, C$9.95 tpb, ISBN 1-895836-61-1

    The Tesseracts series is now a flagship of Canadian Science-Fiction literature. Originally conceived as a one-shot Canadian SF anthology by Judith Merill, is has mutated into an annual series of original anthologies with a different team of editors each successive year. Even allowing for the different editorship, the series tends to keep an even character, perhaps allowing for the fact that the roster of contributors is composed of either the same names, or newcomers to the publishing field.

    The last few volumes of the series have seen a stabilisation in the physical presentation of the books, which has varied from regular, unremarkable paperback (Tesseracts 3) to high-quality paperback with unreadable content (Tesseracts 5) to, finally, trade paperbacks with good interior presentation (Tesseracts 7). Tesseracts 8 finally improves the interior layout to an optimal form.

    As a mild Canadian SF nationalist, I can’t help but be enthusiastic about the Tesseracts series. It’s a wonderful showcase for Canadian authors in both languages (French stories are translated) and the more markets there are, the best it is for everyone, especially readers.

    And yet… As a very basic reader (“me want SF stories, no pretty words”), the content of most Tesseracts anthologies usually leave me wishing for something else. Not only do Tesseract editors often express a preference for longer stories, but they also usually select a disproportionate amount of virtually unreadable material. Not unreadable in the sense of ill-conceived, badly-written trash, but in the sense of obscure experimental texts that are either incomprehensible or yawningly boring.

    Tesseracts 7 and Tesseracts 8 also fall prey to this unfortunate tendency, with the result that I often found myself skimming through a story in order to get to the next. Which is why I couldn’t find enough to say about either one of the books individually, hence this joint review.

    The oddest, yet most enjoyable entry in Tesseracts 7 is M.A.C. Farrant’s “Altered statements” fragments, which are inserted throughout the book. As a long-time fan of Adbusters magazine (for which Farrant is a contributor), these social satires were weirdly spot-on and worth the short read. Other good but odd tales in this volume include the Twilight-Zoneish “The Slow” (by the ever-dependable Andrew Weiner,) and Carl Sieber’s unexplainably fun “The Innocents”.

    Tesseracts 8 starts out with a bang: “Strategic Dog Patterning” is military SF against a background of decaying humanity and ascending caninity. The anthology ends off with another strong story with David Nickle’s “Extispicy”, a pretty good contemporary dark fantasy.

    “Moscow”, by Jan-Lars Jensen, (Tesseracts 7) reads like something straight out of a Bruce Sterling anthology: a good short story of modern SF. Pretty much like Karl Schroeder’s “The Dragon of Pripyat”, (Tesseracts 8) another post-cyberpunk romp through radioactive Russia.

    Michael Skeet’s “Shelf Life” opens Tesseracts 7 with a suitably unsettling note of distorted identity, a theme that reappears often in this anthology series. Tesseracts 8 also contains an inordinate amount of water-related stories, often back-to-back-to-back.

    Other standout stories include “Oh won’t you wear my teddybear” (Judy McCrosky), “The Solomon Cheats” (Allan Weiss) and Scott Ellis’ “System Crash” in Tesseracts 7. “Umprey’s Head” (Daniel Sernine), Sally McBride’s “Speaking Sea” and Cory Doctorow’s “Home Again, Home Again” are also good choices from Tesseracts 8.

    Overall, I was disappointed with the sum of both anthologies, though I would give an edge to Tesseracts 7 for readability value. Then again, John “obfuscation-master” Clute and Candas Jane “likes experiments” Dorsey edited volume 8, so next year should be better…

  • Saucer Wisdom, Rudy Rucker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1999, 287 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86884-7

    Frederik Pohl likes to say that “the future isn’t what it used to be,” but that’s only partially true. The imagined futures of Science-Fiction and Futurism have remained constant (if different) upon the years. We all expect a world more or less like our own, with a few extra-terrestrial outposts, better cars and happiness for all.

    Radically different concepts sometime intrude in the collective imagination (like nanotechnology), but these are usually co-opted into the mainstream future. Reading futurology journals is a singularly boring experience, as there’s nothing radically new. Even SF’s wildest futures are usually constructed by the author to bring home a philosophical point, or simply to tell a good story.

    Rudy Rucker’s Saucer Wisdom is many things, but it’s certainly not conventional. For one thing, it posits a future radically different from your usual run-of-the-mill projection. For another, it’s a non-fiction essay presented in fictional format. A “firmly controlled, intelligent hallucination” says Bruce Sterling in his introduction to the book.

    Judge for yourself: The book purports to be the result of Rudy Rucker’s encounters with a man named Frank Shook. Shook has reportedly found a way to contract extraterrestrials, who take him away on trip to humanity’s future. Shook takes notes, makes drawings (included) and gives them to Rucker in order to flesh them out in a narrative.

    The result is some far-out speculation wrapped in an entertaining UFO-nut wrapping, as Rucker has to deal with the temperamental Frank Shook and his acquaintances. Notes on the future of communication, bio-technology, femtotechnology and transhumanity make up the bones of the book, while the meat is Rucker’s rocky relations with his “witness.”

    The result isn’t perfect, but it works more often that it doesn’t. Rucker’s envisioned future -full of genetically-engineered things, invasive biotechnology and discorporal humanity- is a great deal more edgy that futurism’s most usual predictions, and his approach here is pitch-perfect for the type of barely-serious extrapolation he’s doing. Similarly, a science-fiction novel loaded with these gadgets wouldn’t be credible, and by couching his speculations in simili-reality, Rucker knows how to present them.

    This being said, the mock-confession narrative has its moments of annoyance. Your reviewer has never been a UFO-nut, and so exploiting this trend -even by saying that it’s complete nonsense- wasn’t as effective as Rucker intended. Most of the time, the obviously-amateurish drawings are also superfluous, though they bring to mind Stanislaw Lem’s Star Diaries… a perfect match to Saucer Wisdom in more than the illustrations.

    Despite the unpleasant nature of the speculation (come on; how many of you could envision a future of wet, crawling, semi-intelligent animals scattered around your house without thinking at least a small “eeew”?), Rucker presents a radically different future, and that’s enough to keep up fascinated. He also understands the dynamics of innovation, and so his future is constantly changing: One individual makes an innovation, which is perfected by business rivals, distributed as shareware, popularised in derivative products which then spawn further innovations…

    As far as predictive books go, this one isn’t the most pleasant or the easiest to digest, but it’s certainly one of the most original. Cheers to Rucker for wrapping up his ideas is such a package. The future isn’t what it used to be, but you can get an idea of what it might become with Saucer Wisdom.

  • Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998 (1999 reprint), 372 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-56662-9

    This is a weird book, and this will be a weird review.

    For the biggest element of Darwinia -its biggest surprise, its biggest flaw, its biggest virtue- is structural. Just mentioning its existence is in itself a spoiler. For Darwinia is book that start out being one story, and then ends up being a totally different story.

    As the book begins, something dreadful happens to Europe. The old continent is… replaced by something straight out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel; a strange land roughly similar from a geological point of view, but with a completely different ecology. Of course, all previous traces of humanity have disappeared.

    Eight years later, a young photographer named Guiford Law embarks for the old/new continent of Darwinia. After leaving his wife and child in the brand-new settlement of New London, the expedition of which he is part go deep in the mainland, where they’ll find—

    Well, they don’t find anything as much as something find them, but that distinction is moot given that this is the moment where the book changes gears on the reader and a whole new paradigm is imposed on us.

    It’s not exactly that the new paradigm does not work, because it does (and it does work better than the promise shown by the first half of the book), but rather because it is insufficiently integrated with the rest of the book. Darwinia‘s first 140 pages is a drawn-out narrative detailing Guilford’s expedition. The rest of the book is much more free-ranging, skipping across years and events in a blink and presenting a fragmented view of the story that doesn’t mesh with the slow-paced beginning.

    Then, of course, the story moves in a direction that is both interesting, yet ill-suited to Wilson’s writing style. He is too pondered, too atmospheric to deal with a The Stand type of story. He can’t build a good-versus-evil epic with vignettes. While the latter part of the novel shows promise and delivers satisfaction, the mind boggles at what another author would have been able to do with Wilson’s premise.

    (A few readers will recognize that Darwinia’s latter part seems to have been inspired by Frank Tippler’s The Physics of Immortality, though much better handled that some other recent similarly-themed SF like Pohl’s Eschcaton trilogy. It’s also no small wonder if Darwinia also shares significant similarities with his own Hugo-nominated story “Divided by Infinity”, recently published in Starlight 2.)

    The result, as the introduction to this review makes clear, is very weird; the kind of novel critics like to give A- for effort and C for execution. Darwinia is an interesting half-success, for it shows how difficult it is to build a successful novel. It’s not enough to have a good ideas (or, in this case, two good ideas), and a few good characters. It’s not enough to be able to write well. It’s not enough to be able to put your characters though difficult times. You also have to do it consistently for a whole 300-pages book, and that takes some work. That’s something that few people will notice when it’s done well, but that everyone will criticize if it’s not entirely successful.