Book Review

  • The Business, Iain Banks

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Abacus, 1999, 472 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-349-11244-4

    My previous reading experiences at the hands of Iain (M.) Banks have been of the hit-and-miss variety: For every decently entertaining The Algebraist, there’s been a pointless Inversions. As a writer, Banks enjoys an excellent reputation, but it takes a special kind of reader to appreciate his various stylistic tricks. Invariably, discussing his books is more interesting that actually reading them.

    The Business is the first “Iain Banks” novel I’ve read. The author, aware of the divide between mainstream and genre SF fiction, has long encouraged the thin pretence of dual careers by having the SF stuff published with the M initial. The Business, taking place in modern times, has no need for the squids-in-space M.

    But don’t assume that Banks’ SF-molded mind is too far away from the genre. The Business is written with an outlook on, well, business that will immediately feel familiar to the geekerati. It takes place in our world, with a few “what if?”s carefully placed here and there to make things interesting.

    Consider, for instance, the titular Business, a gigantic, secretive holding company whose lineage predates the Vatican. As the novel begins, The Business (never named, always designated as such) is ready to close the deal on one of its most ambitious project so far: The wholesale acquisition of an entire country in order to gain a seat at the United Nations. The woman on the case is Kate Telman, a high-level executive whose final investigation eventually reveals something a bit more disturbing to the Business’ interests.

    You would expect, of course, The Business to be evil in the way most fictional corporations are evil. But as Kate explains (perhaps disingenuously), a corporation doesn’t survive more than two thousand years by being pure evil. In fact, her company seems unusually enlightened in these days of corporate malfeasance: The Business has learnt, often at great cost, that it has to be accountable in every respect: Its financial books are open internally, and its promotion mechanism is said to be democratic. (Though how that works with promises of advancement made to Kate isn’t all that clear) The “buy a country” project isn’t particularly welcome by some of her colleagues, who see it as a toy more than a serious endeavour. All told, The Business seems fairly benign; fans of conspiracy theories won’t find much more in this novel than a lovely put-down of their worst instincts. [P.116-117]

    In fact, The Business is as unremarkable for what it doesn’t contain than what it does. Fans of conventional thrillers or over-plotted potboilers may be surprised to find out that for a mystery novel (sort of), The Business is surprisingly sedate: There are few gunfights or car chases in this unconventional novel where a Ferrari is used primarily as an over-revving hand trap.

    But what The Business has in abundance is SF-tinged bits and pieces. Hints abound that the world of The Business is not quite ours: while this doesn’t take the novel into the alternate-history sub-genre, it reinforces the notion that Banks’ protagonist is looking at her universe with a geek viewpoint. (None too surprisingly, it’s a portrait of the world that feels a lot more plausible than the one espoused in other conventional thrillers.) Kate studies technological advances and tries to fit The Business’s business in that uncertain future. Every ten pages, there’s a neat idea or a cool concept. Eventually, one learns to forget about the plot (or lack thereof) and simply enjoy the slide-show of inventive stuff.

    Best of all is the limpid prose, which places no barriers between the reader and the author. The Business‘s deceptively simple style is a testament to Banks’ technical abilities, enthralling through background material and a plot that doesn’t kick in until quite late in the book. A subtle humour runs through the entire novel, dovetailing with the strange and wondrous details, such as the entirely explainable teeth-extraction incident that opens the book.

    As for me, it’s as if I had discovered Banks and re-discovered his initialled counterpart, in a mode reminiscent of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and other geek-friendly mainstream literature. The Business may be a bit slight compared to Banks’ other books, but it work well and leaves a pleasant memory.

  • No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Chronicles Books, 2004, 176 pages, C$20.95 tpb, ISBN 0-8118-4505-2

    For the past four years, I’ve been happily setting my Novembers aside to write a novel in thirty days. Yup, it’s a bit insane, but that’s the whole point of the National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo): Taking thirty days of one’s life and saying “to heck with everything else; I’m writing a novel”. I may not be perfectly sane, but neither am I alone: Over forty thousand people now participate in Nanowrimo, churning out thousands of words for the sheer fun of writing something. In 2005, over 714 million words were written by Nanowrimo participants, the equivalent of a small library.

    In some ways, those words are all the fault of a guy named Chris Baty, a San Francisco-area freelance writer who, in 1999, came up with the thirty-days novel concept. Nanowrimo went on-line in 2000: By 2002, it became an international phenomenon. But no good deed can escape the attention of a tie-in non-fiction book, and so No Plot? No Problem! is Baty’s portable guide to writing a novel in thirty days, a distillation of inspiration, tips and anecdotes from Nanowrimo participants in 50,000 words —not-so-coincidentally, the suggested word-count goal for a Nanowrimo novel.

    Chances are good that you’ll never read a Nanowrimo novel, but that’s not the point: For most Nanowrimo participants, the whole exercise is about finally fulfilling that “one day, I’ll write a novel” life objective. Different participants will approach the exercise differently, of course: Some will simply start writing fan-fiction and see where their whims take them. Others (like, ahem, your reviewer) will spend eleven months planning ahead, thinking about themes, stuffing characters, structuring a plot on a gigantic sheet of paper, writing an outline and doing research in preparation for thirty days of pedal-to-the-metal writing. Any approach is fine by the Nanowrimo rules, which are surprisingly lenient on all but one crucial aspect: At least fifty thousand words in thirty days.

    As you can guess, Nanowrimo is a mixture of silly seriousness and serious silliness —an approach that is well represented by Baty’s prose style in No Plot? No Problem! As Baty explains, the serious part of Nanowrimo is committing to a tough fixed schedule. Once you’re writing, though, anything goes: You can be as silly as you want to be because what you’re writing is not really meant for immediate public consumption; it’s perfectly acceptable to rush through difficult parts and fix the problems in post-production. The hectic schedule of Nanowrimo is such that it doesn’t allow time for doubt, indecision or self-consciousness: The inner editor gets locked in a box for the duration of the exercise. Editing is only suggested later, much later.

    While the “official” Nanowrimo offers tremendous moral support from like-minded people, No Plot? No Problem! is meant to allow anyone, regardless of month, to participate in the madness. Through inspiring passages and a bit of cheeky irreverence, Baty makes an unpretentious mentor in matters of speed-writing. The basics of Nanowrimo are not very complicated, so the book’s biggest asset is in its inspiring passages as it reassures the reader that the goal is within reach of everyone with sufficient willpower.

    Past Nanowrimo participants already know that Baty is an amusing writer, and the tone of his regular emails to the Nanowrimo crowd survives intact to the printed page. Clear, direct, often laugh-out-loud funny, No Plot? No Problem! perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the exercise. Obviously, this is a book that will first appeal to wannabe writers and baffle everyone else. That’s fine. In fact, I’d be worried if regular people went nuts over the entire thing: Novel-writing, after all, still carries a mystique that No Plot? No Problem! Does much to puncture. Shh; don’t tell anyone.

    Reading the book is enough to give you a jolt of good old literary determination: Having it at your side as you prepare for Nanowrimo is heartily recommended. It’s almost impossible to read parts of it and not grit your teeth is steely determination: Bring on those thirty days! We’ve got a novel to write! Boy, I can’t wait until next year! (In the meantime, though, I’ve got a novel to edit…)

  • From Hell, Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Eddie Campbell Comics, 1999, 572 pages, US$35.00 tpb, ISBN 0-9585783-4-6

    In the world of sequential art, From Hell is a classic for a reason: As a thick 550+ pages paperback, it represents what many artists and critics envision when they speak of “graphic novels”. Exquisitely well researched, created over a number of years, tackling a difficult subject with skill, From Hell also achieved considerable success by just about any standard. It sold well, immediately earned a permanent place on most lists of essential graphic novels and was even adapted in a film released in late 2001. The film wasn’t particularly good, but that’s the way it goes with just about any adaptation. It’s far better to focus on the graphics novel itself.

    Writer Alan Moore spent years learning all he could find on the subject of “Jack the Ripper”, the infamous serial killer who terrorized London’s seedy Whitechapel area in 1888. Consciously picking a royal conspiracy theory as a dramatic framework on which to hang a number of historical details, Moore produced a massive story that tackles a lot more than simply Jack the Ripper. Elements of mysticism, secret societies, psychological drama and police work all infuse From Hell with a vitality that has ensured its success. You can’t read it and avoid being stunned by the result, which is every bit as complex -in its own way- as a meaty prose novel.

    From Hell starts leisurely and ends just as slowly, eschewing typical dramatic structure in order to delve more fully in the tapestry of 1888-era London. The main character, so to speak, is royal doctor William Gull, a man whose visions of a greater future dovetail nicely with an assassination edict delivered by Queen Victoria. From Hell is as much a psychological study of the life of a man than it’s a thriller about a serial killer.

    The attention to detail is astonishing, a fact best appreciated when perusing Moore’s voluminous Appendix 1: “Annotations to the Chapters”. Nearly every page of From Hell is accompanied with notes on sources, reference and suppositions. (The best way to read those notes is to glance at them periodically as you make your way through the novel.) This thirst for precision is carried over to Eddie Campbell’s black-and-white line illustrations, whose deceptively draft-like nature hide a tremendous amount of period detail. I’m not a far of that particular style of artwork (it can be difficult, at times, to distinguish characters or even to appreciate the amount of effort put into the drawings), but the art’s rough quality can be a relief considering the novel’s frank depiction of violence and sexual activities: From Hell is a graphic novel in all senses of the expression.

    Moore never pretends to offer “the” solution to he Ripper murders: He’s quite up-front, in the Appendices, in stating that he just picked the theory that offered the most dramatic interest. One of the book’s best passage is Appendix 2: “Dance of the Gull Catchers”, an illustrated essay in which Moore describes the various theories that have emerged over the years about Jack the Ripper, and the particular mania that afflicts all Ripperologists –including Moore himself. In twenty-four short pages, Moore reflects on the nature of murder, the appeal of Rippermania and how the “gull-catchers” are condemned in digging a pit from which nothing will ever emerge.

    As for the novel itself, well, it’s a masterpiece. While the art isn’t particularly impressive or innovative (the entire layout remains rigidly faithful to a classic nine-by-nine comics grid), it creates an impression of doom that’s hard to shake away. What’s more remarkable is how it deals with complex and difficult subjects in a way that seldom feels exploitative –and this despite an entire twenty-four pages murder sequence that may be too gruesome for many readers.

    In the end, it’s the quality of the writing that makes the whole thing stand together. Don’t pre-judge the novel based on the film, which is so hilariously mis-adapted that it could be a warning for all writers signing away their derivative rights. From Hell isn’t particularly pleasant, but it’s deeply impressive. Not simply worth a look as “a graphic novel”, few will dispute its place as an authentic piece of criminal literature. Bookstores should have it shelved alongside Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

  • The Last Jihad, Joel C. Rosenberg

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 2003, 335 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-765-34643-5

    Regular readers of these reviews have already figured out my centre-left politics. Not that it’s any surprise: I’m a French-Canadian, after all. What they may not know is that I was a moderate right-winger for a good part of my teenage years, seduced by techno-thrillers and alternate-universe military fiction in which the US invaded whoever it wanted. All good fun… until the real world caught up with the fiction and delivered a disturbing techno-thriller starring a sub-par president.

    In many ways, though, this initial love of military thriller hasn’t completely left me. My bookshelves have all of Clancy’s novels in hardcover, along with quasi-complete runs of Stephen Coonts, Dale Brown, Larry Bond, Harold Coyle and others. I’m always interested in new military thrillers, even if the past ten years have been somewhat disappointing in that sub-genre.

    The Last Jihad first popped up in the supercharged atmosphere of early 2003, appearing in hardcover as bombs were raining on Baghdad. A quick paperback edition followed scarcely six “Mission Accomplished!” months later, stamped with the “New York Times Bestseller” label and laudatory quotes by such right-wing luminaries as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Oliver North.

    The reason for the excitement was simple: The Last Jihad begins with an attack on the President of the United States, an attack that is eventually tracked back to Iraq. I’m not spoiling much (the book has sequels, after all) if I say that it ends with a nuclear flash over Baghdad. As a ripped-from-the-headline marketing coup, the gang at Forge books (the thriller imprint of SF/Fantasy publisher Tor) knew that they had a winner on their hands and milked it as they should. It helped that Rosenberg is supremely well-connected in right-wing talk radio and religious circles.

    The left-wing’s reaction was predictable. A number of scathing reviews followed, including the much-quoted Washington Post review which -after a few mild compliments- stated that “[Rosenberg’s] writing, however, is harder to forgive, for it is an act of terrorism on the reader’s brain.” Ouch!

    But, hey, I report; I decide: The surprise is that the first half of The Last Jihad isn’t bad at all when put alongside other books of the genre. The attack on the president is vividly described, and the crisis management that follows the attack feels appropriate, especially in the shadow of 2001-09-11. While the writing is a bit clumsy and the characters are taken straight from the right wing’s pantheon of heroes (the tough president; the successful businessman; the shadowy operative that kills; the woman that shoots), it moves at a rapid clip and has the advantage of a comforting earnestness. The technical details are convincing despite a few gaffes (“Canadian president Jean Luc”?? [P.74]). Rosenberg even indulges in a fake-out death that makes no sense but made me laugh for its unabashed manipulation. Even the incidental jabs at Carter and Clinton (coupled with a hilarious passage about the success of Bush’s presidency) are amusing in the avowed ideological context of the novel. (Playing with rigged dice is fine if you know how they’re rigged.)

    Unfortunately, things turn sour in the second half of the book, and not for the reasons you may think: Simply put, the novel runs out of steam and plausibility. As our super-businessman protagonist magically turns into a top-notch special operative, he gets trapped into a firefight that seems to go on for a hundred pages. Romance also rears its head —never a good sign in a thriller. Pages of uninteresting minutiae overwhelm the book’s momentum, eventually leading to the jaw-dropping sadism of the finale. (Pop quiz: You have identified a ballistic missile launch site in the middle of a city. Do you destroy the launch site with a precision guided missile, or do you nuke the entire city?) Some religious content makes its way into the narrative. Everyone who tries to stop the final US jihad against Iraq is arrested, shut up or converted. The Drudge Report makes an amusing cameo on page 252-253.

    By that time, though, my amusement with the novel had noticeably paled. Even with only three years’ worth of hindsight in Iraq’s true military capabilities, The Last Jihad is hilariously paranoid. While my soft spot for thrillers carried me through the first half of the book with ease, the story’s own limpness couldn’t do much to sustain this early initial impression. All told, I’m not likely to keep reading the latter books in the series. (Apparently, neither are Forge’s editors given how the third book, now featuring explicitly religious content, was published by a speciality Christian publisher.)

  • The Tin Man, Dale Brown

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1998, 429 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-58000-0

    I haven’t been kind to Dale Brown’s previous few novels (no less an authority than on-line store mostlyfiction.com linked to my last review as “Christian Sauve’s (brutal) review of Fatal Terrain”), but don’t mistake my lack of enthusiasm as anything but disappointment: if Brown’s first novels remain cornerstones of the technothriller genre (especially Day of the Cheetah and Silver Tower), what’s stopping him from writing another scorcher?

    While The Tin Man is ultimately not much of a success, it clearly shows that there’s hope for Brown’s career. It moves away from Brown’s usual aerospace plots, tackles other issues than “there are no problems that a well-equipped B-52 won’t solve” and even spends more time closer to the characters than has been the case over his last five books.

    But there’s one big problem with The Tin Man, and his name is Patrick McLanahan. McLanahan, of course, is Brown’s favourite protagonist since Flight of the Old Dog. Brown seemingly can’t let go of his imaginary universe, even when the discrepancies between it and our world are getting too big to ignore. Smarter writers would see the constraints of series fiction, start from scratch, build other novels around other characters and ultimately let things run their course. But whereas Brown has tried singletons before (Hammerheads and Chains of Command), he has never been able to resist the latter impulse to fold them back into the McLanahan series at the earliest opportunity, regardless of internal coherency. (Let’s not even talk about the Taylor/Clinton/Martindale presidencies mash) With The Tin Man, Brown had another ideal opportunity to start afresh. But… no.

    McLanahan started life as an air force navigator, evolving -over time- into an all-purpose action hero. This trajectory finds its ultimate expression in The Tin Man as McLanahan, seeking to avenge his rookie policeman brother, asks a few favours from a genius-grade friend and gets a high-tech armour fit to take on a small army of terrorist. (“He’s an air force officer! He’s a nerdy engineer! Together –THEY FIGHT CRIME!” would go the TV spots.)

    The “Tin Man” armour is certainly a neat gadget, despite blatantly ignoring every law of physics you can think about. Its wearer can absorb gunshots, manipulate heavy weaponry and kick really high. Armour-clad McLanahan goes on a rampage and soon finds himself battling terrorists and policemen, finding out that vigilante justice isn’t as much fun as DEATH WISH promised. Brown has never let a real-world detail stop him from writing fabulous action scenes, and so The Tin Man at least delivers a few good thrills along the way.

    The Tin Man is better-structured than any of Brown’s novels since before Storming Heaven and integrates a number of good technical details about Sacramento’s police milieu. Brown hasn’t lasted this long in the techno-thriller genre without learning how to deliver a copious amount of detail, and so the technical aspects of the novel are relatively pleasant to read: Should Brown decide to abandon the military genre, he’s clearly got a future in police procedural thrillers.

    The character details are also better than in Brown’s last few novels. The relationship between McLanahan and his younger brother is compelling, even if it’s in a plotting-101 fashion. It’s also good to see uber-nerd Jon Masters get a featured role in this novel: He’s easily my favourite character from the Brown oeuvre, and his budding romantic relationship is heartening despite lacking in subtlety.

    But even my attachment to Jon Masters can’t displace the feeling that if The Tin Man has most of the right elements in the right place, it loses points for some silly on-the-nose plotting, plausibility-stretching sequences and (cue familiar refrain) sticking McLanahan where he doesn’t belong. It would have been much better as a standalone singleton, especially given how this is the first time (and maybe even the last time) McLanahan has even mentioned his younger brother. Oh well; at least it’s better than Fatal Terrain. Battle Born, which apparently brings McLanahan back in a cockpit, is up next.

    [June 2008: An anonymous but disappointed Dale Brown fan sends along:

    dale browns tin man doesn’t seem so outlandish 10 years later maybe he did something called research those 10 years ago into future weapons systems. every toy in his books is at least under study and or development and feasible sometime down the road they break no laws of physics so maybe you guys need to do some research into a subject called physics

    Reprinted without comments regarding Dale Brown fans.]

  • The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, John Scalzi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Rough Guide, 2005, 325 pages, C$21.99 tpb, ISBN 1-84353-520-3

    There has been a number of books about science-fiction films over the years, but few of them are as enjoyable as John Scalzi’s The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies. Beyond a simple overview of the field, Scalzi’s guide manages to find a clever balance between fact, personal quirks and consensus opinion. The result is a reference book that will inform neophytes and please long-time fans; no mean feat considering the nature of the field.

    The good people at Rough Guide have done their homework: The book covers an outline of the field’s history, a canon of essential films, a series of “icons” (notable people, characters, places) and a bunch of related information. In addition to the fifty essential film of the canon, The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies briefly reviews 250 other SF films: It’s hard to think of another movie that ought to have been included. (Well, maybe not that hard: EQUILIBRIUM should have been mentioned. But seriously, how would you manage to fit an entire genre in no more than 325 pages?)

    The meat of the book are, of course, the fifty films selected as canon. Most of the expected classics are here (STAR WARS, 2001, BLADE RUNNER, THE MATRIX, TERMINATOR 2, etc), alongside some more daring choices (BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, ALPHAVILLE, 28 DAYS LATER). Some choices will generate some controversy (THE INCREDIBLES?) but the list is, overall, quite solid for a historical overview. If the list, read cold, can seem bizarre, it’s hard to disagree after reading the full write-up of those films: Scalzi does a fine job at explaining why those particular films were selected and why influence often trumps quality or success.

    But the canon isn’t the only worthwhile part of the book. More than half of this Rough Guide is spent discussing the historical origins of SF (including a short but good history of the written field), the icons of the genre (including actors, directors, characters and landmarks), an overview of SF cinema around the world and a quick look at television SF. All put together, it does give a good overview of the field for whoever would want to know more.

    But the Rough Guide will also interest core genre geeks: Scalzi is a knowledgeable cinephile (his credentials include a decade-long stint as a movie critic) and a confirmed member of the SF community: He can discuss the field like the best of them, and so for genre geeks the book is like sitting down with a fellow fan who’s seen pretty much everything. What’s also noteworthy is that while Scalzi isn’t afraid to hold some strong opinions, most of his outlook on the genre will match the collective opinion of well-read fans. (Dissing STAR WARS is a hard sell at the office, but it’s almost de rigueur at a Science Fiction convention ) Unlike, say, C.J. Henderson’s Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, there is no significant re-evaluation of the field in here: knowledgeable fans will, despite a few hasty generalizations due to lack of space, feel comfortable in handing over this guide to neophytes.

    Alas, The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies was roughly shoved through production, and the unacceptable number of small silly mistakes shows how quickly the book was produced. Beyond the simple typos (“Fishbourne”, etc), there are a number of other slight errors (Seaquest DSV was retitled and lasted a second season; AMERICA’S SWEETHEART was released in 2001) that mar the otherwise reasonably exact content of the book. Hopefully all will be corrected in the second edition.

    Any discussion of Scalzi’s work would be incomplete without acknowledging the accessibility of his prose. Scalzi’s writing has been forged by years of journalism and blogging: His prose is crisp, crystal-clear and immediately enjoyable. Grab the book in bookstores, start reading a page at random and see how long it takes you to stop.

    All in all, Scalzi’s Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies does what it set out to do. The material can be thin, but the selection is appropriate, the sidebars are satisfying and it’s hard to find significant fault in the book’s overall stance toward SF cinema. Given how it’s a quarter of Rough Guide’s slate of genre cinema guides, I’m awfully tempted to rush out and get the three other books.

  • Eyes of the Calculor, Sean McMullen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2001, 589 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-765-34512-9

    There’s a good reason why I try to read volumes of a trilogy one after another: Wait more than a month between volumes and the characters fade away: It’s possible to spending more time catching up than actually enjoying the latest instalment. Due to a variety of factors (including temporary blindness), I ended up waiting seven months between the second and third tomes of Sean McMullen’s “Greatwinter Trilogy”, and the gap did nothing to improve my experience of the series.

    Eyes of the Calculor begins soon after The Miocene Arrow, but returns to Australica after the extended North American trip of the second volume. The atmosphere is correspondingly closer to the first Souls in the Great Machine, although with the inclusion of a few American characters. The final instalment begins as The Call, which had enslaved humans for generations, is shut down. (Given that this was one of the lamest elements of the series, its absence is not missed.) Freed from the constraints of the Call, humanity starts spreading once more, leaving the Aviads without natural protection…

    Readers of the first two volumes of the trilogy already suspect what is to follow: Romantic high adventure in a neo-medieval setting, with plenty of romantic heroism and triumphant moments. And indeed, Eyes of the Calculor more or less delivers the good. McMullen is clearly having a lot of fun here, and it’s a treat to see him get back to a familiar setting, bringing along a trio of strong female characters, a return to Rochester’s Great Library, another look at cool ideas such as the human-powered calcul(at)or and the consequences of the first two volumes.

    It’s very familiar and, in fact, perhaps too familiar. The number of new ideas here falls almost to zero as McMullen continues to play along with known elements and very hastily brings everything to a conclusion of sorts. There is a sense that this is a comfort novel: a last hurrah, but not a significant step forward. Even the characters are eerily familiar, through no coincidence. McMullen takes a number of risks, most notably by making a heel out of one of the second volume’s heroes, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that this isn’t all that new, especially given the originality of the first and, to a lesser extent, the second volume. Not everything works out: As in the first volume, there are a number of suspicious betrayals, and the material about the Gentheist is never as interesting as it could have been.

    Thankfully, McMullen has grown as an author and so the writing in Eyes of the Calculor is noticeably smoother than in the previous volumes. Tonal shifts are less jarring; dialogue is snappier; scenes are tighter. Perhaps too tight, as it’s not uncommon to read along and suddenly have to back-track, abruptly suspicious that Something Important has just happened in a very short amount of prose. There is still an unpolished quality to McMullen’s prose that keeps his fiction from achieving its full potential. The first hundred pages of this novel, for instance, take an awful lot of time to cohere in a compelling whole. (It certainly didn’t help, to echo what was written above, that I paused for so long between the second and third novel.)

    But when it does, when McMullen hits his groove, the novel truly works. Despite the nasty edge to some of McMullen’s imagined world (he never lets you forget that these are much less enlightened times, or that commoners are cannon fodder), he has a knack for unbelievably strong-willed characters, compelling adventure and triumphant moments. His characters alone, in all of their lusty vitality, are a pleasure to follow. This is high adventure in a good classical vein; too bad it has to work in fits and starts.

    Overall, the Greatwinter Trilogy of which this is the conclusion has more good moments than bad, but there’s no escaping the sense that the memory of the trilogy will end up being better than the actually messy reality of its prose. It didn’t need to be so long, nor so scatter-shot: an author with a bit more structural ruthlessness could have made a classic series out of those elements; as it stands, it’ll have to settle for something akin to mere goodness. Which, mind you, is still quite respectable.

    [December 2025: Twenty years! For twenty years I had mistakenly titled this review “Eyes of the Calculator!”  Why didn’t anyone tell me…?]

  • Incompetence, Rob Grant

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Gollancz, 2003, 291 pages, C$24.95 tpb, ISBN 0-575-07533-3

    Welcome to a nightmare: A near future United States of Europe where one can’t be fired from any job for reason of age, race, creed… or incompetence. In a place where everything becomes unreliable and approximative, protagonist “Harry Salt” is a detective surrounded by incompetence. There’s just one very very important exception to this level of incompetence: The very competent killer who’s leaving a track of bodies from Rome to Eastern Europe by way of Paris.

    This is not, of course, a serious novel. Rob Grant is an ex-member of the “Red Dwarf” comedy troupe, and this stand-alone novel reflects a delicious sense of humour that owes much to Sheckley and Adams. Runaway bureaucracies may be bad enough, but you’ve got real problems when the rot of inefficiency trickles down to even the most average janitor.

    Harry Salt’s life is not easy: He’s lucky when his plane lands at the right airport (baggage is another matter) or when his hotel room contains both a bed and a sink. Renting a car can be a lengthy adventure, especially when even the anti-theft device has been stolen. Salt’s U.S.E. may be a few years in the future (complete with automated cars and traffic signalization that can make it impossible to leave Paris), but the comic jabs are straight out of today’s anxieties.

    Stylistically, Incompetence riffs off the usual first-person tough-guy narration. “Harry Salt” (no real name provided) is one tough hombre, and he never lets you forget it. Grant overuses hyperbole as if he feared their criminalization, but it fits with the tall-tale tone of the average PI narration. Like most comedies, this isn’t a book that will take you a lot of time to read.

    It’s a measure of the novel’s lack of seriousness that the plot is nothing but an excuse on which to hang comic vignettes. See Harry pursue devious criminal; see Harry argue with service personnel; see Harry run for the train. It’s pretty good except when it runs too long, and unfortunately the novel does have a tendency to overstay its welcome, especially toward the end. Some of the comic vignettes work (I was particularly charmed by Captain Zuccho, a policeman with rather serious anger management problems) but many simply run too long: The entire train sequence is a perfect example of a one-note joke dragged on for twenty pages. It doesn’t get much better over the course of the drawn-out conclusion, which tones down the humour and add in useless details.

    Not that this is the only thing wrong about the conclusion, in which the novel’s light-hearted tone somehow ends up swapped with a pretty serious conspiracy theory involving competitive geopolitics. Readers will frown at the conclusion and wonder where that came from. But perhaps it’s not such a surprise considering a story featuring an overly competent murderer: Incompetence can be funny if it’s not happening to you; murder is rarely funny even in the abstract.

    Still, Incompetence is a laugh for most of its duration, and that’s not bad by itself. Humorous SF is still a fairly rare phenomenon, and this novel is a clue as to why: Short and yet too long, amusing and yet a bit too serious by the end, structured around individual vignettes that aren’t always coherently strung together. The level of individual incompetence exhibited in the novel would quickly bring civilization to a halt, to say nothing of preventing underground prison hellscrapers… but it’s not a good idea to question the coherence of an absurd humour novel.

    Pleasant but not exactly unforgettable, Incompetence will fit the bill if you’re looking for a few laughs and an undemanding read. The prose has its pleasures, and so do some of the individual sequences. Otherwise, well, it’s a lot like your average sitcom: A good way to spend time, but nothing worth considering the next day.

  • The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Three Rivers Press, 2003, 256 pages, C$19.95 tpb, ISBN 1-4000-4962-8

    Now that’s a curio. The title really tells you everything you need to know: This is a guide, and it’s all about surviving a zombie uprising. Hilariously patterned after a survivalist manual, Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide grabs a concept and runs far, far away with it.

    The first part of the book sets the (un)dead-serious tone: Zombies are a real scientific phenomenon, explains Brooks as he details the current state of “scientific knowledge” about the condition. The zombies of this guide are similar to the usual movie canon, with a number of important differences not limited to the demands of a two-hour-long running time. The most important of them is the zombies’ durability: We are made privy to a number of incidents in which zombies successfully traveled underwater, or even thawed after several years spent encased in ice. Brrr!

    Product of a “Solanum” viral infection, zombie outbreaks present their set of particular dangers and opportunities. Preparedness is key to survival: Properly-informed citizen can mount an effective resistance, whereas those poor fools caught unprepared might as well settle right now for a fate worse than death.

    Brooks never breaks a smile as he goes through scenarios, weapons, tactics and survival strategies. Though billed as “humour”, the the book acquires its own credibility after a while, and people reading through the “living in an undead world” chapter may want to put down the book, look through the window, take a deep breath and repeat to themselves “This is fiction! Humour! Not real! I don’t have to prepare for a zombie invasion!”

    The book is soberly presented in a no-nonsense design, often punctuated by simple line drawings. The writing is crisp, to the point and almost too believable at time. Despite the number of contradictions inherent to the concept (for a virus “not yet fully understood”, the fictional Solanum virus seems unusually well-researched), The Zombie Survival Guide creates its own off-kilter reality in which zombie plagues are not exactly unknown.

    This impression gets even stranger in the last part of the book, in which Brooks digs through history to present a series of vignettes detailing the evolution of Solanum infections throughout humankind. There are a number of highly effective passages in here, meshing relatively well with known history and even establishing a Cold War secret history of sorts. SF and Fantasy readers will read this section as a confirmation of Brook’s success in creating his own parallel zombie-friendly reality. Beyond a simple humour book, The Zombie Survival Guide often slips into a horror universe of its own.

    It also offers a non-movie look at the zombie creatures, which is precious given how Brooks wastes few words in taking the concept of the zombie to its logical extreme. Indestructible creatures can last a long time, travel underwater and survive unlikely traumas before rotting away or (preferably) being shot in the head by a prepared citizen. This type of long-term deep extrapolation would be unworkable in a movie context. Here, Brooks spends a lot of time pondering “What if?” and the chapter on living in world where zombies have effectively taken over (for at least a generation) is a fairly original piece of work.

    All told, you may want to buy The Zombie Survival Guide as a gag gift, but you will end up reading it with a deepening sense of deliciously realistic dread. A book of that title might have just been a collection of stupid tricks learnt from zombie movies, but Brooks has spent a lot more time creating his own work of fiction. Not bad at all.

    [December 2009: The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks is a graphic novel re-telling many of the historical vignettes collected in the last part of The Zombie Survival Guide.  Ibraim Roberson’s busily detailed artwork is in luscious grayscale, and if the stories tend to repeat themselves as variations on the old bite-bite-fight, there’s enough menace in the various introductions and conclusions to make it all seem unsettling.  At less than 150 pages, it’s not a big book, and is best aimed at those who already liked The Zombie Survival Guide at lot.  But after three zombie books in a row, Brooks could definitely try something else.]

  • Life of Pi, Yann Martel

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Vintage Canada, 2002, 368 pages, C$21.00 tpb, ISBN 0-676-97377-9

    (Read in French as L’histoire de Pi, translated by Nicole and Émile Martel)

    As a convinced genre reader, I look at general literature with deep suspicion: In a mirror image of all mainstream readers convinced that there is nothing of interest in genre fiction, I frown at literary fiction and ask if something can be worthwhile if it’s not genre fiction.

    While even a cursory explanation of Life of Pi suggests that it’s not exactly mainstream literature, it has won the 2002 Man Booker prize and, as such, pretty much represented the literary establishment for a solid year. It sold briskly, earned critical accolades and was read by mass audiences. Not bad for a book written in English by a French-Canadian author.

    It is, nominally, a story of survival about a shipwrecked boy stuck on a lifeboat with scant supplies and a full-sized tiger. It’s hailed by the over-narrator (who’s not the boy, at least not always) as a story fit to give you faith in God’s existence. It’s a story of meshing cultures, careful observation and improbable coincidences. A second level of reading is even suggested late in the book.

    But here’s the kicker: You can read it as a fantasy or as a thriller. Yann Martel has fashioned an ingenious cross-genre story with wide appeal for very different groups of readers. The opening note, written as from the author, imperceptibly takes us from reality to fiction, setting up the level of fantasy that soon becomes essential to the book. Nearly a hundred pages of somewhat realistic fiction follow, as protagonist Piscine (“Pool”, in French) describes his early childhood experiences, halfway between his father’s zoo and his town’s religious establishment. Careful details pepper the narrative with an astonishing accessibility, setting up Pi’s character and the offbeat quality of his life. Numerous digressions about zoology and religion add interest to the book.

    Then catastrophe strikes and Pi finds himself shipwrecked on a lifeboat with numerous animal companions —including an adult tiger. By this time in the story, we know (though Pi’s education) that tigers are truly dangerous animals: spending five seconds on a tiny lifeboat with one seems impossible, let alone entire days. But that’s what happens, as the other animals are “removed” and Pi learns how to survive. Early on, it’s mentioned how he’ll spend more than half a year drifting on the ocean. Will Pi manage to keep the tiger away? Will he have enough food to last? What happens once thing start breaking down?

    Through a careful accumulation of credible details, Martel will make you believe in the reality of Pi’s unreal situation. Through a techno-thrillerish density of technical details and a clever number of observations, Pi’s struggles are credibly described. The result is a gripping section that scarcely lets the reader pause for a break.

    As the months at sea slowly pass, the reality of the situation slowly gives way to fantasy. It eventually leads to a lengthy dream-like passage in which the normal rules of reality take a leave of absence. A mysterious island is discovered, a terrible discovery is made and an escape ensues; what it all meant will be left to students struggling with their essays about the book.

    It concludes with a twist, as an alternate explanation is quickly delivered. But as even the characters remark, the tiger is the better story. And so it goes.

    I’m not terribly interested in delving deep in my critic’s brain to find out if I truly liked Life of Pi (hey, it’s been a long month), but even if my appreciation of the book is partially rooted in my surprise at how interesting a Man Booker winner could be, that’s more than good enough. Even if the adventure story is misdirection and metaphor for a far more awful true story, see if I care: I got my entertainment out of the book, and it doesn’t bother me if it’s a superficial way to read an award-winning mainstream book. Life of Pi is written to allow several interpretations, but even my fellow literalists will come away pleased by the story as it is presented on the page. The cover blurb by the San Diego Union Tribune ends up as an eerily appropriate exit line: This story may not make you believe in God, but it may make you believe in literature.

  • Les Rivières pourpres, Jean-Christophe Grangé

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Albin Michel, 1998, 405 pages, C$29.95 tpb, ISBN 2-226-09331-1

    (Available in English as either Blood-Red Rivers or The Crimson Rivers)

    I wish I could tease you by saying that Jean-Christophe Grangé’s Les Rivières Pourpres is one of the best French thrillers I have ever read and that it’s forever out of the Anglo-Saxon literary sphere. Fortunately for you, the book is available in English as either Blood-Red Rivers (the original title) or The Crimson Rivers as the movie tie-in edition.

    Additionally, most English-speaking cinephiles probably remember the 2000 French movie starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel as two policemen investigating what turns out to be related cases. But as it so often happens, the novel and the movie don’t necessarily agree.

    For one thing, the characters are very different. In the film, Inspecteur Pierre Niémans, played by Jean Reno, is a grizzled but basically competent policeman, riffing off Reno’s quasi-patented screen personae to good effect. The novel version is a lot darker: in the dynamite opening chapter, Niémans severely beats a homicidal hooligan after a soccer riot, leading to a messy internal investigation that drives him out of Paris and into a tragic character arc that finds resonance in the novel’s conclusion. Things aren’t much better for his partner, as Arab-French policeman “Karim Abdouf” suddenly becomes “Max Kerkerian”, under the handsome Gallic traits of Vincent Cassel. Exit the entire beur back-story of a young troubled youth becoming policeman for fear of becoming a criminal. Exit the dreadlocks. Exit, indeed, most of the character’s distinctiveness, replaced by a cool “I don’t like fascists” one-liner to stoke the film’s memorable skinhead-beating.

    Oh well.

    I suppose you won’t be surprised to find out that the movie ends up on a far more optimistic note, won’t you? The book, after all, doesn’t leave much room for a sequel…

    But never mind that. Finding a translated copy of the book in North America will be challenging enough; too bad you won’t be able to experience the book in its original form: If Les Rivières Pourpres does something exceedingly well, it’s to present a French-language thriller that is initially as gripping as its American equivalents. French authors can do mysteries with the best of them. Thrillers, on the other hand, require a different discipline. French authors have a hard time recreating the urgency, the electric charge of a well-plotted suspense. Les Rivières Pourpres is an exception.

    From the beginning, there is a fluidity to the writing, a hardness to the dialogue that makes Les Rivières Pourpres a pleasure to sink into. Grangé writes well, but he doesn’t leaden his prose with useless words; the story moves along at a brisk clip, and the very particular atmosphere of the book (set deep in France’s rural Alps) has a unique quality that immediately distinguish this thriller from countless others. Grangé isn’t afraid of gore, and a number of scenes are simply dreadful in a delightful fashion.

    Alas, I’m not so fond of the book’s latter half, which pretty much reflected my disenchantment with the movie’s second half: The ominous rumblings of a gigantic conspiracy turn out to be bottom-basement eugenics that never reach the promises of the book’s initial mystery. As with many other thrillers, The Secret so murderously well-protected doesn’t seem all that important after the fabulous set-up. At least the movie had the sense to end on an action sequence; no such luck here in a rushed finale that settles things far too easily.

    Despite Bruce Sterling’s wry admonition that “there’s a quality in a good translation that you can never capture with the original”, I’m not sure that even the best possible translation of Les Rivière Pourpres could recapture the sheer fun of an original French-Language thriller that has nothing to envy from les Américans. (Chances are that the English translation will be read as “just another thriller.”) It’s both a comfortable quality and a mildly refreshing treat; even with the lacklustre conclusion, Les Rivières Pourpres is a darn good read, and that often all that’s necessary. If you can’t get the book, why not have a look at the film?

  • Unvanquished: A UN-US saga, Boutros Boutros-Ghali

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Random House, 1999, 368 pages, C$28.00 tpb, ISBN 0-812-99204-0

    (Read in French as Mes Années à la maison de verre , translated by Simone Dreyfus)

    2003 was, all things considered, perhaps the worst year on record for relations between the United Nations and the United States. (Of course, some will say it was also the worst year for relations between the US and the rest of the world.) Even the most geopolitically unaware citizen couldn’t miss the headlines: UN withdraws inspectors from Baghdad. Bush ignores UN Security Council. US invades Iraq. The US, secure in its position as the world’s sole remaining superpower, felt justified in ignoring, even belittling the UN whenever it didn’t agree with the wishes of the White House, even as a majority of Americans we in favour of UN approval. But then again, the Bush administration was never too keen on diplomatic relations where it didn’t get to dictate the results.

    UN-bashing is hardly a new thing, though, nor is it an invention of the Bush II administration. Given W’s rotten record on just about everything, it’s hard to remember that the Clinton administration also played a number of dirty tricks on the UN, ignoring and dismissing it whenever it served its purposes. In Unvanquished , former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali recounts his five years spent at the helm of the organization between 1992 and 1996, and how the United States did their best to undermine him and his work. Those tensions would eventually lead to the American veto of a second mandate… and a revealing memoir that pulls few punches.

    Unvanquished thus doubles as a meaty high-level description of the state of the world circa 1992-1996, a turbulent period stuck between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the War on Terror. For the UN it’s a period characterized by more ambitious peacekeeping missions and a stronger emphasis on international cooperation on development and environmental issues. Boutros-Ghali’s strong influence as a committed internationalist and a defender of the third-world is not a coincidence to these new roles for the UN.

    As a straight geopolitical treatise, there’s little doubt that Unvanquished can be boring, maybe even a bit redundant. It’s as a biography that it shines most brightly. How does one man feel after taking the helm of such an organization? What does he think when he talks to heads of state, when he visits war zones? Boutros-Ghali emerges from his autobiography as a uniquely sympathetic individual, a man at the helm of an organization constantly threatened by the selfish political ambition of people destined for the dustbin of history. US diplomat Madeleine Albright is particularly singled out as a hypocrite; Clinton himself doesn’t shine too brightly from Boutros-Ghali’s perspective. Ironically, then-humbler US diplomat John Bolton (whose 2005 nomination as US ambassador to the UN would create a firestorm of controversy, to say nothing of his scorched-earth tenure) has an amusing cameo with a fairly sympathetic quote. Canadian Prime Ministers also make one-line appearances: Mulroney is criticized; Chrétien is not.

    It adds up to a slightly overlong book, but one that contains a surprising number of small nuggets. It’s a must-read for whoever wants to understand the nature of the UN-US antagonism (including the US’s perennial refusal to pay its financial contribution to the organization), and it’s a surprisingly enjoyable primer on high-level diplomacy. Boutros-Ghali is an effective narrator, and his vision of the UN as a global mediator is a ray of optimism.

    The French-Language edition of Unvanquished is closer to a revised second edition of the text than a simple translation: Fluently francophone, Boutros-Ghali revised the translation and used the opportunity to revise and clarify some material. The result flows well, within the caveats described above, and proves once more why French has long remained the language of high-level diplomacy.

    Reading the book from a perspective five years removed ends up telling us more about the events of the book than a 1999 read would have. As a convinced internationalist (hey, I’m Canadian), Unvanquished does little to disprove the notion that the UN is a relevant body that will only grow stronger. Even latter events tend to support the notion; even the deep wounds left by the madcap rush to invade Iraq have done little to diminish the UN’s reputation outside the United States. Even as I write this, historians are grumbling about Bush being the worst president in a long while, even as the UN seems to be accommodating Bolton’s fiery ambassadorship. In four years, do you want to be who’s going to be left standing? UN-vanquished? Don’t bet on it.

  • Emergency Deep, Michael DiMercurio

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Onyx, 2004, 464 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-41166-8

    (Read in French as Alerte: Plongée Immédiate, translated by Dominique Chapuis)

    One of the most frustrating aspect of military techno-thrillers is how often authors working in the genre will write series even when it doesn’t make sense. The problem can be tracked back to Tom Clancy, whose Jack Ryan found himself embroiled in a series of high-stakes adventures in one book after another. This makes sense when, say, your series is about events that have no impact on the shape of the world. (Which serves to explain the popularity of detective series) But wars, even when they’re imaginary, have a way of messing up geopolitical reality, and authors should at least take that in account, or abandon their fictional world once it has diverged too far away from reality. Seeing Harold Coyle trash Egypt, Iran, Mexico, Columbia and then try to merge it with real-world development (and then desperately “reset” the series in God’s Children) is almost too sad for words. Inevitably, the author ends up cheating by trying to exploit their reader’s attachment to characters while ignoring the lasting consequences of their actions. Even by the lowered literary standards of military fiction, this isn’t playing fair.

    All of this to say that poor Michael DiMercurio found himself stuck with his “Michael Pacino” series after Terminal Run. By then, the fictional world he’d set up was so divorced from current reality that his series was closer to Science Fiction than to current-day military relevance. This divergent universe had kept him shielded, somewhat, from the uncomfortable realities of post-Russia submarine warfare: In a real world where submarines were tools for superpowers and there remained only one superpower, how to justify submersed thriller without resorting to highly improbable scenarios like Joe Buff’s series, or feeble-minded absurdities like Patrick Robinson’s novels? The Pacino sequence offered ever-imaginary enemies to fight against. Alas, sales were down (even for an author who, at the best of times, didn’t escape the military fiction mid-list) for a series so hermetic than only fans of the previous volumes felt welcome. Hence the perils or continuing a techno-thriller series past its expiration date.

    So DiMercurio resets the clock and starts a new series with Emergency Deep, starring a new protagonist named Peter Voronado. The setting is recognizably closer to our own “War on Terror” universe, with threats coming from an unholy alliance between old-school Russian capabilities and new-style terrorist ideology. As the CIA gets wind of a plot to attack Israel, they inexplicably come up with a plan not to destroy the danger, but to infiltrate a spy in the enemy’s rank.

    This spy is Peter Voronado, champ submarine captain beached ashore by an extraordinary health problem. The first third of Emergency Deep is spent bringing together the elements of the plot, thanks to two lengthy prologues, one of which has no business in this novel in its current form. But DiMercurio is a military fiction writer; efficient writing is not his style, and so the novel takes an awful lot of time revving up to cruise speed. By the time Voronado finally reaches his covert position, a certain lassitude has already settled over the novel, a slight annoyance that only gets worse.

    As with many of his veteran colleagues, DiMercurio writes what he knows, but forgets how many details just aren’t useful to the vast majority of his well-meaning civilian readers. Emergency Deep quickly falls in the familiar trap of too many acronyms and not enough energy. Further problems develop along with a pair of unlikely romances, a few plotting issues and a clear lack of tension. The result is one solidly average military thriller that stretches a bit outside the usual confines of a submarine thriller, but not enough to be particularly memorable.

    One can’t fault DiMercurio for finding a way to ally Cold War equipment with concerns about terrorism, or for spending a lot of time “off the boat”, so to speak, in order to explore new directions. But Emergency Deep doesn’t do much with those elements, and fails at attracting new readers. It’s a good step in the right direction while remaining comfort food for his usual audience. But it’s unlikely to make him new fans, or even revitalize the moribund submarine thriller genre. Emergency Deep is slated to be the start of a new series of books; DiMercurio may want to re-think that plan.

  • Contacting Aliens, David Brin & Kevin Lenagh

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 2002, 191 pages, C$22.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37796-5

    Few Science Fiction universe are as entertaining as David Brin’s “Uplift” series. On one level, it’s a standard galactic-civilizations setting, with plenty of alien races, big ideas, neat gadgets and an inspiring niche for humanity. It’s space opera at its finest, without much relevance to the future as it could be, but compulsively delightful for five of the six books in the series. (I still doze off at the memory of Brightness Reef). Brin is a natural storyteller: his mixture of humour, action and against-all-odds bravado is the stuff of classic SF adventures.

    The one bit of background innovation that makes it different from other series is a twist on environmentalist concerns: The galaxy out there, we finally discover once we start poking around the stars, is one big potpourri of related species. An essential part of the series is “Uplift”, the lengthy process by which one species brings another to sentience and full-fledged galactic participation. Every species has been uplifted by another… except, curiously enough, humans. In the series, humans have managed to uplift a number of species (dolphins and chimps, at first) while seemingly being patron-less. You can imagine how well the aliens are taking the news, and which kind of upset this causes in well-mannered galactic society.

    Contacting Aliens is, to steal the sub-title, “an illustrated guide to David Brin’s Uplift Universe”, designed as if it was a manual distributed to future agent of humanity as they travel across the galaxy. Galactic history and institutions are sketched, followed by a lengthy bestiary of alien species. Most of those description are accompanied with amusing ink drawings from Kevin Lenagh. The guide is roughly arranged in galactic “family lines”, which prove more related than at first glance. As befitting its billing as a “field guide”, the descriptions are written as coming from Earth’s intelligence agencies, with plenty of tantalizing details, vague suppositions and unanswered questions that agents may want to pursue.

    Fans of Brin’s universe will be thrilled at the wealth of details contained in Contacting Aliens. The Uplift universe is vast, dangerous and fun: If this book does one thing very well, it’s to keep up in the same amusing vein as the novels, balancing Brin’s optimistic humour with a thrilling setting that could still launch a series of adventures. (In fact, the book contains two mini-pieces of fiction that raise even more questions about the nature of the Uplift universe.)

    While the cover sports a spiffy colour illustration by Jim Burns, the guide itself is illustrated by Kevin Lenagh’s simpler black-and-white ink drawings. While Lenagh does an excellent job at portraying Brin’s wilder inventions, the artwork can often err on the rushed and silly end of things. Some of the human figures are unconvincing and the poses often feel unnatural. But I’m being too harsh, perhaps in comparison with Burns’ work: The guide would be much poorer without Lenagh’s artwork, and the sense of fun from Brin’s writing comes across clearly in the illustrations.

    If you’re not already a fan of Brin’s series, Contacting Aliens won’t be as interesting as it should be. Gamers used to reading role-playing source-books will find much familiar ground here (indeed, the book ends on a mention of the Uplift GURPS supplement), but the audience is definitely those readers looking for a little bit more Uplift material after the conclusion of 1998’s Heaven’s Reach. It shows the way to more stories in the Uplift universe and it’s certainly a treat for fans.

    [January 2006: Via email, Kevin Lenagh adds that he contributed a substantial amount of text in addition to the illustration. He also clarifies that the book suffered from a number of unfortunate production issues, making the end result somewhat less impressive that he had hoped for. Have a look at lenaghalienfactory.com for better examples of his art, including color versions of some illustrations in Contacting Aliens.]

  • Buffalo Soldiers, Robert O’Connor

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Vintage, 1992, 324 pages, C$21.00 tpb, ISBN 0-679-74203-4

    Comparing film adaptations to their source novels is a source of quasi-endless fascination, especially if you make the trip from the derived to the original work. The movie leaves you with images, structure and a smattering of good moments. Reading the book deepens the experience, and sometimes even takes you in a different story. Interestingly enough, more obscure source material (as in “I didn’t know this was adapted from a novel!”) usually reveal more interesting differences than celebrated media blockbusters of the Harry-Potter kind: It’s easy for a studio executive to mess around with lesser-known material without a fan base, but Warner Brother studios would be burned down to the ground by the kids if they even tried to mess around with the original. (“We can’t do that, sir! The kids will kill us! Won’t you think of the children? THE HORRIBLE CHILDREN?!”)

    Approaching novels after seeing the film isn’t just a mere exercise in frivolity and facilitated reading: Storytellers should learn how a story gets adapted from one work to another, which details need to be dropped, which changes are necessary to get the audience’s sympathy and so on. Even so-called “hard-edged” movies like FIGHT CLUB are nowhere near as nasty as their literary progenitors.

    And so it goes with BUFFALO SOLDIERS, a little-seen film with an interesting history. Billed as a satire about America’s Army at the close of the Cold War, BUFFALO SOLDIERS deals with an amoral anti-hero who manages to turn his stint in German barracks into a profit-making venture on the back of Uncle Sam’s supply lines. Drug-dealing, senseless deaths, inter-service conflict and racial tensions all play a large part in a film that brings to mind many other dark military comedies. Alas, this movie was premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 10th, 2001. The perceived profitability of cynical portraits of soldiers fell to the ground the very next day, sending the film back on the studio shelves, and then (much later) to a limited theatrical reserve and an even softer video release.

    Too bad, because if the film loses steam in its second half, it’s a serviceable little black comedy with an appealing anti-hero and some neat direction in its first half. It’s dark, but not unbearably so. It doesn’t portray the army favourably, but neither is it an all-out attack on the institution.

    The novel is something else.

    For one thing, protagonist Ray Elwood isn’t simply the clever petty-thief fixer of the film’s Joaquin Phoenix. In the novel, we’re quick to understand that this miserable heroin junkie is skating on a thin ice of brutal enforcement, cheap thrills, overwhelming greed and careful power-playing. Movie Elwood is a decent, if somewhat amoral chap. Novel Elwood is holding together solely because of fear and smack: Nearly everyone he knows would knife him in the back if they could.

    The rest of the novel runs in pretty much the same vein. The events are more similar to the novel that you’d expect (Elwood sees his position threatened by a new authoritarian Master Sergeant, so he seduces his rival’s daughter and sets up an epic drug deal as his last hurrah in the underground business. Then things go wrong.), but the tone is a lot darker. Some changes are significant, yet meaningless (Ray’s new girlfriend is an amputee in the novel, but the film’s Anna Paquin didn’t need the handicap one bit to fit the character), while others are small but important (the novel is set in, at the latest, the early eighties while the movie takes place in 1989. This is significant given how, historically, the US military had unbelievable morale problems in the seventies, gradually clawing its way back up to a far better all-volunteer fighting force. The harsh environment described in either version of Buffalo Soldiers makes sense close to the seventies, but increasingly less so after then.) And then there’s the ending, which was drastically altered from the novel to the film… and I’ll let you guess which one is happier.

    And yet, even as a written-word purist, I can’t really fault screenwriter Eric Weiss for softening up the story for the big screen. It’s not a revelation if I say that different mediums have different tolerances for excess: I can think of many scenes that work on the page and would be insupportable if captured on cinema. Junkie-Elwood is a fine novel narrator (except that he speaks in “you”), but he wouldn’t earn more than five minute’s sympathy on screen. The rough stuff that follows is interesting on the page, but would be stomach-churning if seen. The film is fine, and so is the novel: fast-paced, decently-written, sharply-detailed and cynical enough to make anyone think twice about enlisting. See the film, then read the book!