Book Review

  • The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 2002, 658 pages, C$38.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-10920-0

    The rarest novels are those that ultimately make you doubt that they were, in fact, written by a single human. The Years of Rice and Salt is a bit like that; a story so big, so ambitious and so convincing it’s hard to imagine one single person coming up with all of this stuff. It’s not a terribly entertaining novel, but it’s a very impressive one.

    It starts with a a very big bang: In the fourteenth century of the Christian Calendar, an Arab expedition in Europe finds the continent empty of human life. The Black Plague has passed, and instead of killing one in three, it has felled more than 99% of the population. In one stoke, Christianity has become a historical curiosity, leaving the planet to other civilizations.

    It’s an ambitious conceit, and Robinson finds a way to tell us what happens for the next centuries without necessarily abandoning his protagonists. Through reincarnation, our two main characters, K. (Kyu, Katima, Kheim, Khalid, etc.) and B. (Bold, Bistami, Butterfly, Bahram, etc.) witness the gradual evolution of this new world, so totally unlike ours. Though they seldom remember their previous incarnations, K and B keep the same personalities: K is aggressive, adventurous and driven whereas B is cautious, quiet and fatalistic. Other minor characters (from A. to Z, one could say) also pop up here and there again and again; a character guide might be necessary to keep up with all their incarnations.

    But through the story of K and B, Robinson also tells the story of civilization, each advance propelled by Ks, but shored up and integrated by Bs. The alternate universe in The Years of Rice and Salt isn’t necessarily better or worse than ours, being peopled with humans just as ours is. But the sweep of this imagined history is awe-inspiring. From alternate technological developments to a decades-long World War to a very different “North America”, Robinson delivers such a staggering achievement that readers might blink once or twice before the magnitude of the effort.

    The recognition of such ambition does a lot to compensate for some of the weaker parts of the book. Not every section is equally compelling, and so it is that such sections as “The Alchemist” (a beautifully-written segment about the alternate birth of modern science thanks to a charlatan turned scientist) and “Nsara” (Feminism triumphant) are far more interesting than the rest of the book. Robinson really gets cooking whenever he can marry sweeping historical currents to personal struggles. Alas, whole sections of the book seem perfunctory at best. We’ll read them in order to get to the next part.

    There is a similarity between this novel and Robinson’s own Mars Trilogy, mostly in terms of political argumentation (which is not as vigorous here, mind you) and historical sweep. In terms of writing, however, The Years of Rice and Salt is uneven, sometimes deliberately so: Parts of the books are written in different styles, with occasional digressions by the narrator, side notes, poetry excerpts and other superficial differences.

    Students and scholars will probably analyze this novel to death over the next few years; sympathies and best wishes on those working on their essays! Certainly, this novel contains enough material to keep everyone busy: the mix of religious, political, scientific and historical material is provocative. Even Robinson’s closing argument on the ever-progressing nature of the human race just happened to mesh with this reviewer’s musings. At a time (in this particular universe) where Islam and Christianity are looking for ways to understand each other, this can only help.

    Stuffed with interesting ideas and one of the most ambitious premises in a while, The Years of Rice and Salt might not be as immediately compelling as Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, but it certainly contains enough material to reward patient readers. Subsequent reads might even help unlock some of the book’s deeper themes. It’s such a big book that it’s hard to believe that one author could write it at all. Even if that writer happens to be Kim Stanley Robinson.

  • ClearWater, Bill Buchanan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 2000, 475 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-17364-X

    There is something about technothrillers—their disregard for literary values, their techno-fetishism and their infallible sense of right and wrong—that simply makes me comfortable. Some people read romance to reassure their world-view; I reach for techno-thrillers. It’s not a political thing (as a Canadian, most of my American readers will easily lump me in the “liberal” end of the spectrum) but it is definitely an ideological preference: I like technology, I’m fascinated by political/military matters and from time to time, I wish that the world wasn’t as messy as it actually is.

    So to me, even very average technothrillers like Bill Buchanan’s ClearWater possess a value that, say, average romance novels won’t. While other readers may slog through this novel without much enthusiasm, I’m quite willing to forgo traditional dramatic values if Buchanan’s willing to pack in one more cool gadget.

    Certainly, there isn’t anything wrong with ClearWater‘s premise: In the near future (the novel takes place in 2008) the US has developed a way to track submarines around the globe, wherever they may be. (Well, as long as they’re no deeper than a hundred meters, which is standard operating depths for most submarines anyway) The impacts of this innovation are far-reaching and highly unsettling for smaller countries without defence for this technology. One of them reacts, and hijacks an American submarine with the intention of using its offensive capabilities to attack targets around the Pacific Rim. Naturally enough, this causes everyone to race against the clock…

    Let’s make it very clear from the onset that there isn’t much in terms of characterisation here. There’s an evil antagonist, a few protagonists and most of the time, their characterisation is dictated by the demands of their moral alignment and their job. It’s a telling thing when the back-cover jacket blurb doesn’t even mention a character’s name… As with many thrillers of the genre, humans are pieces to move on the game-board, not characters worth exploring in their own right. In fact, whenever Buchanan attempts to deal with human emotions, he either doesn’t succeed, turns to cynical clichés or abandons his efforts well before they can succeed.

    What’s eventually more frustrating is the plot. While the first half is well-handled, things begin to disintegrate in the second, as the ClearWater technology turns to be somewhat extraneous to the plot (you can remove it and, yes, the novel suffers a bit, but not that much), the hijacking of the submarine turns out to have a tenuous relation to something else, some long-awaited payoffs are glossed over and the ending doesn’t conclude anything as much as it winds down to a stop, leaving a considerable amount of loose ends still untied. (Or dismissed with a casual “but that’s another story”) I’m not sure if Buchanan sort of lost interest in his own story (heck, he even skips over a whole ground war!) or if it was something he’d planned all along, but ClearWater‘s resolution is one of the most unsatisfying I’ve read recently.

    I could also quibble about the lack of dramatic focus around clearly-identified protagonists, an unpleasant scene about women in submarines (maybe realistic, but I didn’t care for it) and the relative incapacity of the “good guys” to do anything. (Indeed, save for a few occasions, it looks that most of the “lucky breaks” come from mishaps, mistakes and sheer luck rather than their actions.)

    No matter: While I wasn’t much impressed by ClearWater (no cool scenes, tell-not-show and a definite lack of dramatic tension are my main problems), I’m not terribly disappointed either. It’s got one or two good ideas, and that -plus the genre comfort factor- makes it a worthwhile read. You may have a very different take on the subject, though…

  • Dianetics, L.Ron Hubbard

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bridge, 1950 (1987 revision), 628 pages, C$6.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-88404-279-0

    This is how Dianetics begins:

    Important Note: In reading this book, be very certain you never go past a word you do not understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood. [P.viii, bold in text]

    Okay, so how about the following reasons: A person may give up because the writing style is so redundant that even clear language wouldn’t help. A person might give up because the author himself doesn’t have a clue what he’s writing about. A person might give up because the writing style is juvenile despite (or even because) a pretentious vocabulary. A person might give up because they realize that what they’re reading is total garbage.

    I haven’t been shy, elsewhere, in dismissing Scientology as a sham and a cult based on nonsense. The information is available elsewhere for your own edification. But even then, I wanted to give a chance to “The Book” that started it all, Dianetics, in the hope that I may be wrong.

    Turns out I didn’t have the slightest clue how much crap is at the foundation of Scientology.

    Readers with the internal fortitude to read the entirety of Dianetics will go through three stages. The first is bewilderment, as they’ll try to wrestle with L. Ron Hubbard’s embarrassing writing style. The opening “Important Note” is only a mere warning against the awful prose in which this piece of trash is written. Seemingly written for none-too-bright teenagers, Dianetics is nevertheless sprinkled with pretentious vocabulary that’s as ridiculous as it’s unnecessary. The book contains hundreds of footnotes referring to definitions, but when you see footnotes like “11. craven: cowardly.” [P.205] or “21. harlot: a prostitute” [P.323], it’s obvious that Elron’s just playing at sounding smart. The writing style is even worse; nonsensical phrases are written as if they meant something and then immediately followed by patronizing passages that assume that the audience is a bunch of morons.

    Bafflement leaves place to amusement, and it’s not uncommon to encounter passages so insane that they can only elicit laughter. (Merely take the straight-faced citation of Shakespeare as a scientist [P.173] as a particularly incongruous passage) It turns out that according to Dianetics, all can be explained by trauma-induced “engrams”, harmful mental patterns that can be formed even inside the womb. (Allow me to cite once more: “The engram is not a memory; it is a cellular trace of recording impinged deeply into the very structure of the body itself” [P.140, italics in text]) The mind is a computer, and knowing how to debug engrams can set you free. Sounds iffy? It’s even worse in the book: “An engram received from Father beating Mother which says “Take thay! Take it, I tell you. You’ve got to take it!” means that our patient has possibly had tendencies as a kleptomaniac.” [P.281] Hubbard’s tirades against psychologists, hypnotists and “Juniors” are especially amusing, especially when you realise that Dianetics is a brain-damaged take-off on Freudian psychiatry, and the so-called treatment nothing more than a form of ill-guided hypnosis.

    But as you go along, amusement will eventually turn to fierce loathing. Hubbard’s view that homosexuality is an illness “extremely dangerous to society” [P.140] is disturbing, nearly as much as his warped vision of society. According to him, it seems that all husbands beat their wives regularly, adultery is widespread (especially for pregnant women), “attempted abortion is very common” [P.211] and women generally do their best to screw up their own children.

    Would you trust this man? The real shock of the book comes as you realize that, yes; people actually fall for that stuff. Even without knowing about the ludicrous “Operating Thetan” garbage of higher-level Scientology, people fell for Dianetics, maybe taken by the false impression that Elron was discussing “touchy matters” in a repressive age.

    In some ways, Dianetics reminded me a little of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, by the way a thick book can convince a lot of people. Where the comparison fails for me is that it insults Rand’s followers: While Objectivists might be selfish and rude, Scientologists are just plain nuts. There’s no real contest which group I’d rather hang with, given the unpleasant choice.

    I may be restating the obvious, but Dianetics is one of the most odious books I have had the misfortune to read. Horribly written, devoid of any basis in reality as we know it and an affront to both intelligence and good taste, Dianetics is a masterpiece of crackpot literature. Stay far, far away from this book. Unless you want to double-check what I’m writing, in which case you will quickly realize that the above review barely understates the true insanity of Dianetics. Have fun…

  • Iterations, Robert J. Sawyer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Quarry Press, 2002, 303 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 1-55082-295-0

    Whenever possible, I try to preface reviews of authors I’ve met with a short but pointed disclaimer. In this case, the disclaimer might be more necessary than usual. I know Robert J. Sawyer, I’ve interviewed him, and I’ve met him at local conventions and SF bookstores. Chances are that he even remembers me, which sorts of ruins the whole author/reader chasm that’s one of the underlying assumptions of my reviews.

    Do understand that while I can recognize several annoying deficiencies in Sawyer’s work, I really do -generally- like what he writes. Despite the repeated themes and characters, mechanistic writing techniques and occasional cookie-cutter plotting, Sawyer strikes me as a professional’s professional, a career-minded writer who happens to understand and love the genre like few others. I could quibble endlessly about the repetitive and unoriginal nature of some of his books, but keep in mind that I’d do so even as I own most of his books in first edition, usually in hardcover.

    Buying Iterations, his first short story collection, was a must. But enjoying it, well, that was another matter. Some writers are best suited to short story lengths. Others thrive in the extra space allowed in a novel. Sawyer definitely falls in the second category, and Iterations demonstrates it.

    The principal problem is Sawyer’s quasi-mechanical approach to writing. In a novel, this works well given that the characters, ideas and overall narrative drive can sustain our attention even though the writing doesn’t. At the very least, one can say that the writing doesn’t interfere with our reading. But things don’t work like that in a short story, where the strings of mechanical writing are too obvious. While I wasn’t overly bothered by this, I’m usually tone-deaf to this kind of stylistic issues, and yet I noticed it in the course of the book.

    Okay, this being out of the way, on to the blow-by-blow account: The book begins with the strong “The Hand You’re Dealt”, a formulaic but interesting murder-mystery set against a libertarian background. Sawyer loves mysteries and you can feel the fun he’s having doing a hybrid story. Other standout stories in the volume include the title-story “Iteration” (despite a horrid “I Wish” plot device), the whimsical “Lost in the Mail”, “Just Like Old Times”, and the closing story “On The Shoulders of Giants”. I could “but…” most of these stories, but they’re the best the volume has to offer.

    There are more “eh?” stories whose point seems too lame to discuss. “The Peking Man” reads as the first chapter of a longer novel; all setup, no resolution. “The Blue Planet” is one of the most useless short stories I’ve ever read, even on a second read. It might have been best-written with an explicitly humorous story, but Sawyer’s track record as a writer of droll stories isn’t particularly better: “The Contest” will have you looking for a punchline, and that’s an impression shared by a few of the other stories in the volume, as readers collectively ask “Is that it?” There are quite a few duds here; not disasters, but stories that never build up to something interesting. “Where the Heart Is” strikes me as a perfect example of a short story about three times as long as it should be, a story driven mostly by the obvious authorial manipulation of a protagonist who should know better.

    Again, please remember that all of the above comments are coming from a tone-deaf Hard-SF fan who does actually like Sawyer’s fiction. I’m so certain that your mileage will vary that I actually hesitate to recommend the book to you even though I found it, overall, worth my while.

    Sawyer writes on page 156 that “since 1992, I haven’t written any short fiction without a specific commission; I just don’t seem to find the time for short work otherwise.” You may infer what you want from that statement, but I think that it illuminates the rest of the book.

  • Ten Thousand Bullets: The Cinematic Journey of John Woo, Christopher Heard

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Lone Eagle, 2000, 269 pages, US$15.95 tpb, ISBN 1-58065-021-X

    Even though the cumulative effect of some of his movies is often disappointing (WINDTALKERS, anyone?), I really do like John Woo’s work as a director. His eye for action choreography is unmatched, and even when he’s hampered by practical constraints, his visual style stands tall above the work of most of his colleagues. It’s no accident if I happen to consider films like HARD-BOILED and FACE/OFF to be minor classics.

    So, obviously, a book like Ten Thousand Bullets would be naturally interesting. While I know a fair bit about Woo’s work since the late eighties, the earlier part of his life isn’t commonly discussed in the media, and it seemed to me that this biography could shed some light on that part of his life. Fortunately, it delivers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much more.

    Ten Thousand Bullets is, logically enough, arranged in chronological order. Starting at his birth in 1946 and ending in pre-production for MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 in 1999, this biography details most of the thirty-odd films of Woo’s career, with a particular attention to the eight last action films that followed his 1987 breakthrough A BETTER TOMORROW. More information is offered as the book goes along, for reasons that will become clear in a moment.

    I noticed that Ten Thousand Bullets was written by Christopher Heard only after I had bought the book. I don’t think that this would have influenced my decision had I known beforehand, but the name still rang alarm bells: Heard is the author of Dreaming Aloud, a biography about James Cameron that I’d read some time ago. Though I did like the book, I was concerned, at the time, about the derivative nature of Heard’s work, a book that read as if it had been cribbed from a few magazine articles, along with multi-page summaries of Cameron’s films. Would it be the same thing with Ten Thousand Bullets?

    Well, not quite as bad, but pretty much, yes. On a technical level, Ten Thousand Bullets is workmanlike, presenting basic information in a suitably accessible style without panache or great insight. If you want a quick biographical sketch of Woo’s life, this is the book for you, a highlight reel of his career along with very basic biographical information. As a work discussing Woo’s motifs, motivations and work methods, though, it’s a recipe for disappointment. While material like Woo’s Catholicism is briefly mentioned, it’s not referenced in the index nor discussed in any meaningful length.

    True, Ten Thousand Bullets seems to rely on more sources than Dreaming Aloud (wow, count’em: six books and seven articles), but once again, Heard seems to be writing from second-hand sources. Woo’s life is narrated, but we seldom get a glimpse into the reasons why it’s happening this way. Coverage of his work seems to increase in proportion to the number of material published in the United States. Save from an interview with Chow Yun-Fat (heavily featured as “Appendix A”, even though the link with Woo isn’t integral), there isn’t much of a sense that Heard wrote much more than a collage of previously-published works, minor interviews and personal impressions. As such, it’s a pretty good read, but it may be more appropriate to beginners and casual Woo fans rather than his aficionados. There remains a place on the marketplace for a book delving deeper in Woo’ life and passions. For the rest, well, there are plenty of web sites.

    This being said, I’m still not too disappointed by the book: It’s a fast read, it does a basic job at describing the life and work of John Woo and it brings together information from many sources in one convenient package that fits comfortably on my reference shelf. It’s a bit of a bother that it stops short of Woo’s biggest hit MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2, but -hey- that’s the problem with paper books. On the other hand, maybe it’s a relief that Heard’s breathless narrative stopped short of his latest two American films. Seeing how he bends himself out of shape trying to compliment HARD TARGET, it would have been embarrassing to see him try to praise WINDTALKERS on anything but a purely visual level…

  • Lady Be Good, Susan Elizabeth Phillips

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1999, 372 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-79448-9

    Faithful readers of these reviews may be excused if they’d rather skip over to the next one. For what I’m about to do will be seen by many as a betrayal of my usual techno-scientific reading standards. A hidden side of my personality will be revealed! Multitudes will be shocked! For I am about to review a romance novel! And, darn it, a romance novel that I liked!

    Lady Be Good came to me in a serendipitous way not dissimilar to how hero and heroine usually meet in romance novels: I was walking down a country road at the end of a rainy day when I saw a book abandoned in a ditch, its pages curled by the moisture. I kept walking, but my bibliophile instincts ultimately took over. I felt an irresistible impulsion to pick up this poor lonely paperback, rescue it from an ignoble, humid end and give it a good home. Dried and flattened, it found a place on my bookshelves.

    Contrarily to what you may expect from the bulk of reviews on this site (SF, thrillers, scientific non-fiction, etc.), I don’t particularly dislike romantic fiction. True, I prefer other genres, but well-written (non-formula) romantic fiction can be a lot of fun if the author knows what she’s doing.

    And Susan Elizabeth Phillips is an author who knows what she’s doing. It doesn’t take a lot of time for Lady Be Good to announce its colors. A Texan golf superstar is pressured into acting as an escort to a prim English lady visiting the area. She assumes he’s a gigolo, hardly suspecting he’s a multimillionaire with attitude problems (hence his temporary suspension from the sport). But then again, little does he know that she’s deliberately trying to acquire a reputation as a bad girl in order to shock some folks back home… This naturally enough, is only the first of many misunderstandings that drive the plot in a typically shticky, but enjoyable fashion.

    Much as Science-fiction fans really dislike it whenever an outsider broadly confuses the genre with Star Trek, romance readers hate it when outsiders lump all romance with the basic Harlequin series. Well-written romance is much more than that, and Lady Be Good is an illustration why. The quality of the dialogues alone is enough to raise this novel a notch above most romantic fiction: It’s sharp, occasionally literate and crackles with intelligence. Characterization is also very well-handled, with enough quirks and convincing traits to endear us to the whole cast.

    As with many other contemporary romances, the love scenes are handled with a candid frankness that can easily compare to some pornographic fiction. There’s something hot for everyone here: One subplot’s denouement even takes the form of a spanking scene!

    Ultimately, though, this is the kind of novel to read for comfort value, for a little escape in a reality where good is rewarded, evil is punished, love leads exceptional people to wild impulsive decisions, everyone has devastatingly effective wit and everything ends really well. This is a romantic comedy of the purest order, so if there’s something that’s not quite right, just wait a few more pages and order will be restored.

    Frankly, I enjoyed it. Life’s too short for me to devote much reading time to romance, but I’m not averse to a few good fun reads from time to time. Good romantic fiction makes you smile and cheer for its characters, which is a pretty good deal compared to a lot of dour “harder” fiction out there. My knowledge of the genre isn’t sufficient to be able to say with confidence that, hey, Lady Be Good may be a shining example of contemporary romance, but I still think it’s a pretty nifty read.

  • Dead Hand, Harold Coyle

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 2001, 358 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-57539-3

    In a way, it’s a shame that I only began to write full-length reviews in 1996. By that time, I had already read most of the military thrillers available on the market, and jotting down my impressions could have formed an instructive critical evaluation of that genre, while describing the early evolution of the top authors in the field.

    Take Harold Coyle, for instance: He began his career in 1987 with Team Yankee, a story about a NATO/Warsaw pact World War 3 fought in Germany. (In an interesting exercise, Coyle merely borrowed the conflict’s plot from Sir John Hacket’s The Third World War and inserted his characters in the middle of the ground battles.) He would then go on to write exceptional war novels about military engagements in the Gulf (1989’s Sword Point) and Northern Africa (1990’s Bright Star). I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about 1992’s follow-up Trial By Fire, which took place in a Mexico gripped by a second revolution Mexico, or 1994’s Code of Honor, which dealt with a chaotic peacekeeping action in Columbia. On the other hand, I thought that 1993’s The Ten Thousand was one of the best war novels of the nineties.

    After that, well, Coyle started writing about the American civil war, and I can’t say that this is an event of much interest to me at this moment. So I waited until he came back to a more modern setting. Dead Hand is actually his second contemporary novel in a while, after God’s Children, which is apparently unavailable these days. But no matter; I was quite happy to read Coyle again after a lengthy hiatus.

    Alas, it wouldn’t be a happy reunion.

    The problem certainly isn’t with the premise, one of the neatest concepts I’d seen recently: “When an unforeseen asteroid strikes Siberia with the force of a thousand Hiroshimas, it triggers Dead Hand, the ultimate defence mechanism developed by the Soviets at the height of the Cold War… [Russian] ultra-nationalists are willing to use it as blackmail… a NATO special operations unit is dropped into Siberia, racing against time before a global holocaust is unleashed” [back cover]

    Wow! Asteroids, nukes and special forces? What can go wrong with these three elements? Well, plenty-especially when the writing’s barely adequate. There are flashes of the old Harold Coyle whenever technical matters are discussed, whenever the action really kicks up and whenever he extols the brotherhood of soldiers.

    But if it wasn’t for the name on the cover, I would never had guessed that this is from the same storyteller who knocked my socks off years ago. Dead Hand, as a novel, progresses by spurts and jerks: it never flows as a harmonious whole. In what surely feels like an attempt to dash off a novel too quickly, we get vignettes and snapshots of people doing something, but never a good story that advances naturally. This is fine when Coyle’s still putting all his pieces on the table, but it becomes increasingly frustrating as the narrative progresses.

    The writing itself is also a source of frustration. There are essentially no distinct characters worth discussing: All special forces men talk alike, feel alike and don’t generally act like people we’d cheer for. They do stuff; we read, but never out of any interest for the people, but just for the plot which itself becomes less and less urgent as it advances. It gets worse whenever Coyle steps on his soapbox and starts pontificating about soldiers, their place in society and the age-old traditions of warriors. While I normally enjoy such things, they feel awkwardly tacked-on here.

    In the end, Dead Hand feels like a wasted occasion. Coyle even mishandles the asteroid impact with a scene that should feel tragic but isn’t (maybe because the people involved are such idiots). I even thought I saw technical mistakes, but then again it’s been a while since I was conversant in military acronyms.

    Still, it doesn’t change that I’m very disappointed in Dead Hand. Though I still believe that Coyle is capable of writing great books, this is exactly the type of novel that should act as a warning sign, and surely represents a career low for the author. Tune in sometime in the future for another review confirming or disproving this trend.

  • Angelmass, Timothy Zahn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2001, 430 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-87828-1

    I suppose it’s an unfortunate coincidence that I ended up reading Angelmass at a time where I was busy thinking about the current state of SF.

    What happened is that I was writing a paper on Terror in Hard-SF (yes, I’m that weird) when I noticed SF’s distinct lack of interest in the singularity, the irresistible acceleration of technological change and its impact on society. This ended up meshing well with John Clute’s concept of “First SF” and how he argues that most science-fiction nowadays has become a shared fantasy, based on outdated assumptions and shared clichés. He (and I, up to a certain point where I’m unable to articulate clearly) argues that in an increasingly Science-Fictional world, SF is increasingly looking backward, afraid of true change and what it may mean to us. It’s not a new notion (it’s been embraced by a few people, and even I have previously written about it other contexts), but it hit me again full-force in late September 2002.

    Alas, I happened to be reading Angelmass at the time. Let me say outright that Angelmass is a lovely book, with undeniable qualities that I’ll describe in a moment. Don’t go around quoting this review (as if) like a pan of the book, because I actually liked quite a bit.

    But sadly, Angelmass is yet another example of the type of current science-fiction that merely treads water in the river of change, not quite swimming backward, but not doing much in a progressive direction either.

    Okay, a word about the plot: Angelmass is by and large the story of two people: The first, Jereko Kostas, is a young scientist drafted by his empire’s intelligence service to infiltrate a research facility in another solar system. The second is one “Chandris Lalasha”, a gifted young female con-artist with uncanny skills and a very good reason to run away from her previous residence. Both Jereko and Chandris eventually end up on Seraph, a planet with a unique form of government based on the use of “angels”-harnessed subatomic particles with the power to make everyone within their field of influence entirely truthful and honest. Each working from their end, they will eventually join forces and discover a rather unpleasant truth about the angels…

    Angelmass is a perfect example of current commercial pure-SF; a decent read that is unarguably science-fiction and a worthwhile product by a real working professional. Timothy Zahn’s been in the business for a few years, and he knows how to deliver a polished product: Angelmass is progressively compelling and his prose delivers the story simply, with an adequate lack of panache. Special notice must be made of the characters, which are defined with an impressive amount of skill and sympathy. They are our gateway to the story, and they are indeed very good reasons to keep on reading. I particularly liked the portrait of the scientist-spy forced to keep on doing interesting research while simultaneously spying on his colleagues; Zahn’s portrait of scientific investigation is interesting enough, and entirely appropriate in a true science-fiction novel.

    There’s not a lot to dislike about Angelmass, in fact. The beginning is a bit slow, and the ending sort of diffuses itself rather than keep building steadily toward the climax. (It’s a good ending, but the lead-up is weaker and longer than it warranted.) The conclusion sort of argues in favour of the bottled genie, which generally annoys me for a whole lot of reasons: How about a synthetic way to re-establish balance?

    But in matters of making SF a newly-relevant genre for today’s world, this isn’t it. Angelmass isn’t meant to innovate or present a new vision of the future: It plays heavily on our pre-existing SF constructions: Planetary networks, galactic empires, space ships, etc… All very comfortable, all very classical. Nothing new, nothing big enough to stretch your mind. But maybe I can recommend Zahn’s novel as a solid SF adventure, with true SF content and plenty of good characters, if only for readers not as obsessed about a new mission for Science-Fiction as I was when I was reading Angelmass. Heck, give me a few more months and I might even rave about the book…

  • Creature Tech, Doug TenNapel

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Top Shelf, 2002, 208 pages, C$23.99 tpb, ISBN 1-891830-34-1

    Damn, this is a cool book.

    If you’re a geek like me, just think of what you think is cool. How about giant space eels? Well, okay, me neither. But how about a shotgun-wielding giant mantis? A young superstar Nobel-prize-winning protagonist? A government warehouse stuffed with dangerous alien technology? Demons? The Shroud of Turin? SDI Lasers? Possessed hellcats? Giant fights, musings on the nature of faith and a non-sappy romance? All of that and more is in Creature Tech, one of the most unique books you’re likely to read this year.

    It stars one Dr. Michael Ong, a hip prodigy scientist drafted by the American government to study the contents of some 750-odd crates of alien technology accumulated over the years. Forced to move back to his native small town of Turlock (where he has to deal with his estranged father, an old high-school classmate and the redneck locals), he is soon forced to deal with an immeasurably more dangerous situation: A freak lab accident frees a murderous monster, and by the end of the first fight, Ong is saddled with a parasitic alien life-form with some very curious properties. He’ll need all the help he can get, given that he has also unleashed a ghost with grandiose world-domination plan, demonic help and the Shroud of Turin, an artefact with complete regenerative powers.

    Whew! We haven’t even covered the first quarter of the book! All of that and then some is available to you in almost 200 pages. (The book isn’t paginated, which make it a bit difficult to refer to specific passages when commenting the story) Believe me, this is a comic book worth your money-

    -what? Oh, yes: Creature Tech is a graphic novel, a standalone comic book. But petty genre-distinctions be damned; this is one of the coolest things I’ve experienced in a while, books, movies or comics put together. In fact, it’s not an accident if Creature Tech reads a lot like a film (for better or worse, depending on your outlook) with a classical monster-movie structure; interviews with the author have revealed that this was a story first written as a script and then adapted to comic-book format when it became obvious that this wasn’t going to be made. (But what is hot is hot, and so the latest rumours have it that Creature Tech‘s been optioned by Hollywood. Go figure.)

    No matter, though; as in all media, what counts isn’t as much originality of structure as much as it’s the skill of the execution, and here is where this book truly delivers. Laugh-out-loud-funny dialogues alternate with occasional moments of deep poignancy and even some musings on the nature of faith and rationality. The art isn’t as crisp as I would have liked it to be, but I think it’s got plenty of personality, especially with the moody black-and-white compositions (fabulously enough, scenes that take place at night are inked white-on-black; nice!). Creature Tech fires on all cylinders and delivers pretty much everything you’d want from a story. Thrills! Chills! Romance! Comedy! Run and get it already: This is cool stuff! Don’t fret about the cost: If Creature Tech appeals to you as much as it did to me, you’ll end up re-reading it several times anyway.

    As for your reviewer, well, Creature Tech also represents an interesting departure of sorts. After years of reading Internet luminaries like Scott McCloud et al. boldly proclaim that the Internet will broaden the market for comic books by introducing “fringe” readers (like me, I suppose) to worthwhile books by global word-of-mouth, it finally happened to me. An article about Creature Tech by Aint-it-Cool’s trusted “Professor Moriarty” made me aware of Creature Tech‘s existence. I assumed that the book would remain unavailable up here in frosty Ottawa, but was happily proven wrong by a fortuitous visit to the neighbourhood comic book shop.

    But regardless of how the book ended in my hands, I just want to thank Doug TenNapel for producing such a cool story. Somehow, I wanted to read such a book for a long time, and there it is!

  • Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Paradox Press, 2000, 231 pages, C$31.00 tpb, ISBN 1-56389-695-8

    Panel 1: The reviewer is sitting in front of the computer, but he’s reading Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics rather than type at the keyboard.

    Panel 2: Same. The wall clock goes tic-tic-tic-tic…

    Panel 3: The Reviewer looks at the reader and quickly snaps the book shut. “Oh, excuse me. I was jotting down references when I just started re-reading everything again.”

    Panel 4: Angle on the book’s cover, showing a hex-armed caricature of McCloud handling comic book iconography. “This is such a fascinating book that it’s hard to resist the temptation.”

    Panel 5: Close-up on the reviewer’s face, his big angular glasses dominating most of his face. His hair’s much shorter than McCloud, and he does sport kind of an unkempt beard. “It seems a little bit amazing that I’ve managed to review books on a monthly basis for six years without mentioning Scott McCloud’s work at least once.”

    Panel 6: A younger Reviewer at the University of Ottawa’s Library, enthralled by McCloud’s Understanding Comics: “I first read McCloud’s first book in 1995, thanks to the good people at the University of Ottawa Library.”

    Panel 7: Short collage of Understanding Comics’ iconography, from the “Sequential art” drawing, pictorial vocabulary pyramid, scene transition chart and, of course, McCloud’s simplified alter-ego: “Published in 1993, Understanding Comics became an instant classic. Its influence was deeply felt in areas far removed from simple comics, as it explored the meaning of art, iconography and all sort of neat things.”

    Panel 8: The Reviewerat a Coles cash register, circa-1995, plunking down some cash for a copy of Understanding Comics: “I liked it some much, I went out and bought a copy. I end up re-reading portions of it every year or so.”

    Panel 9: Back on the Reviewer at his computer: “Unfortunately, though I may be sympathetic to the field, I’m not plugged into the comic book grapevine. I hadn’t even heard about a sequel until recently.”

    Panel 10: The Reviewer at the local Silver Snail comic book shop, Creature Tech in hand, pulling a copy of Reinventing Comics off the shelf with a big grin in his face: “Naturally, I took care of that as soon as I could.”

    Panel 11: Reinventing Comics partially obscured by the shadow of a well-lit Understanding Comics: “McCloud’s first book was so successful that any follow-up act will suffer from any comparison.”

    Panel 12: The reviewer duct-tapes the joint in the middle of an arrow branded with both books’ cover: “But it’s less of a sequel than an expansion on the themes defined in the first volume.”

    Panel 13: The Reviewer at a lectern, clenched fist raised (grasping a crumpled X-HUMANS comic book), a huge FIGHT THE STATUS-QUO poster behind him: “While Understanding Comics was an explanation, Reinventing Comics is a call to arms.”

    Panel 13: Overweight man-on-the-street muttering “that Superpeople stuff…”: “Now that we know what comics are and what they can be, it’s time to make them what they ought to be.”

    Panel 14: A diagram showing McCloud’s “Twelve Revolutions” [P.23]: “To this end, McCloud defines twelve ways to make comics evolves toward increased maturity. While some of them are familiar-”

    Panel 15: A university professor showing a comic book to a classroom of students: “-Like comics as literature, art, worthy of public and academic attention,-”

    Panel 16: McCloud’s dollar-shaped “Industry Monster” [P.71]: “-others are more technical, like a discussion of creators’ rights and the re-invention of the industry.”

    Panel 17: A picture of a randomly-selected crowd in a park: “McCloud also highlights comics’ essential need for diversity of gender, race, status or genre.”

    Panel 18: Pixellized low-resolution images of comic books surrounding a fuzzy web of computing devices: “He concludes the book on the three digital revolutions that will soon affect comics, from form to production to delivery.”

    Panel 19: Reinventing Comics‘s cover is shown, the right half heavily pixellized: “In fact, this book spends almost half of its length on the digital revolution.”

    Panel 20: A shiny Understanding Comics is placed besides a scruffy-looking Reinventing Comics: “Explicitly written in 2000, McCloud’s follow-up dates itself rather quickly whenever discussing technical issues.”

    Panel 21: Both books are enclosed in a protective glass. A security guard says “First Editions! Buy your own!”: “But then again, McCloud’s discussion of the issues is mostly theoretical, avoiding specific products and projecting far in the future. It’ll endure, don’t worry.”

    Panel 22: McCloud’s “tree of justification” [p.48]: “Especially when parts of it are so good, like his discussion of the roots of art-”

    Panel 23: The Reviewer standing in his local Comic Book Shoppe “-or his lucid explanation of the comics business circa 2000, which stands true for other publishing industries as well.”

    Panel 24: The Reviewer weights, Blind-Justice-like, both books in his hand: “While Understanding Comics is a work of brilliance, Reinventing Comics is merely very good.”

    Panel 25: The Reviewer stands in the middle of four intermingling groups of people: badly-dressed geeks with glasses, lugubrious young people with berets, overweight fan-boys and professorial middle-aged intellectuals. “Like its predecessor, its impact won’t be limited to the comics field, but will spill over in arts, academia and technical circles.”

    Panel 26: The Reviewer steps in the local Chapters bookstore: “But there’s one area where it’s far more effective, and it’s in convincing readers that everyone can contribute something to the next comics revolution.”

    Panel 27: The Reviewer picks up a book at the Graphic Novels section. Prominently displayed are copies of Ghost World, Watchmen, Sam & Max, Transmetropolitan, Doonesbury and -why not?- Small Favors: “I mean, I know my comic book classics, but is it enough?”

    Panel 28: The Reviewer, his find in hand, walks past a Comic Books section overstuffed with X-People, X-Stuff, X-Super, X-Steroids, X-13, X-Crement, X-Asperating and other muscle-bound titles: “I’ve got friends with forty-bucks-a-week habits at the comic book shop, but are they truly comic book fans, or just addicted to super heroic power fantasies?”

    Panel 29: The Reviewer is stuck waiting in line at the check-out counter: “Is this one of these cases where if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem?”

    Panel 30: The Revi
    ewer hands a copy of Maus to the cashier, specifying “Gift-wrapping, please!”: “If so, I’d like to help.”

  • Deadly Décisions, Kathy Reichs

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 2000, 368 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-02836-7

    Sigh.

    Another year, another Kathy Reichs novel.

    Even before opening the book, I knew what to expect. Cue a premise stolen from Québec’s newspapers. Cue Temperance Brenner, champ forensic pathologist, suckiest character judge ever. Cue one of her relatives conjured out of thin air, visiting Montréal just in time to get killed, brainwashed, kidnapped or otherwise hurt by Brennan’s latest cause du jour. Cue plot “twists” that are blindingly obvious to everyone but Brennan, self-imposed gratuitously dangerous situations, silly coincidences and implausible links between characters and the case.

    Sigh. Onward.

    After riffing off the sordid “Temple de l’ordre solaire” sect case that so dominated Québec news for a while in Death du Jour, Reichs here takes on the biker gang wars that ripped through the province in the late nineties. It is, granted, a solid premise: In real-life, the gang wars left behind dozens of dead bikers, taking with them a few innocent victims that happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong moment. (Indeed, most Quebec criminal statistics include a little asterisk during the late nineties specifically excluding biker-related violent deaths)

    From the first few pages, it’s obvious that Reichs is once again liberally borrowing from headlines: The first few pages describe how a little girl is brought in for autopsy, an unfortunate victim of a misguided shooting. The novel even explicitly refer to the famous real-life 1995 Fontaine murder, in which a young boy had died as he was bicycling near a car that had been wired to explode on ignition. [P.28]

    That’s the first of Reich’s many, many tics that pop up in this novel. This time, it’s her nephew who comes up north for a visit, arriving just in time to be befriended by the bad guys and dragged to the finale’s bloody shootout. Oh well. There’s also a “plot twist” involving a biker mole that anyone with half a brain can see coming as soon as the mole is ominously introduced. There are awful coincidences in which parts of a victim are to be found not only in Montréal -the series’ main location- but also in North Carolina, from where -surprise!- Brennan just happens to be.

    I wouldn’t mind if that only happened once in a while. But this is Reich’s third novel, and the silly coincidences involving members of her family and/or North Carolina are already becoming a regular occurrence. And I still haven’t mentioned the usual stooopid scene in which Brennan does something completely moronic (and out of character) in order to advance the plot. (In this case, she jogs to a biker bar.)

    After my kvetching, you’d be justified in asking why I keep reading her darn novels even as they evidently annoy me so much. The answer is, of course, that Brennan’s stuff all takes place in Montréal against a predominantly French-Canadian background. Whether her usual shtick drives me nuts or not is mitigated by seeing a major mystery series taking place in my backyard, so to speak. In Deadly Décisions, I was occasionally able to picture exactly where Brennan was, based on my visits at these places. This outsider’s view on Québec is one of the main draw of the series for me, despite everything else.

    It helps, of course, that for all her faults, Reichs writes books with a definite narrative drive. However easy and cheap some of her plot shortcuts may be, there is a real desire to read forward late in the night. That, by itself, is more important than densely plotted novels about which I couldn’t care less. Plus, the technical details are a lot of fun for Hard-SF/techno-thriller fans like me. Am I waiting for Reich’s next novel? Well, of course I am.

    Sigh.

  • The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being a Model, Roshumba Williams & Anne Marie O’Connor

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Alpha, 1999, 391 pages, C$25.95 tpb, ISBN 0-02-863190-0

    I think that I know what you’re thinking: “Why has he read a book about becoming a model?”

    Hey, my mind works in mysterious ways, and it doesn’t take much more than a three-dollar book promising to reveal all secrets of the modeling field to interest me. I know next to nothing about that particular profession, but I can’t resist the attraction of random arcane knowledge. So I grabbed the book. And read it. And will now review it. You can send your complaints to our service department.

    At least I’ll admit that that I’m not the target audience for this material. This Guide is very explicitly written for teenage girls. It’s hard to ignore questions like “Are you old enough to A>Cross the street, B>Baby-sit, C>Drive, or D> Get your ears pierced?” [Front Inset] as a potential clue to the desired market for this book. Heck, before reading the book, I didn’t even have any idea who was Roshumba Williams!

    It turns out that she’s a relatively well-known black supermodel with an extensive portfolio of work. If we’re to believe the cover blurb, her years of experience in the field have given her the depth of knowledge required to explain the industry to interested young girls. Indeed, that’s what this Guide does: It introduces the business in general terms, then describe how a model can make it to the top, stay there and diversify her interests (financial, artistic and otherwise) in preparation for her modeling post-career.

    This is a book meant, like many of the other Guides I’ve read, to be bought by a beginner, re-read by a rising star and re-written by a seasoned pro. In passing, Williams gives a surprisingly complete view of the fashion industry, from the slang to the potential pitfalls, war anecdotes and unexpected rewards.

    It’s not as if she pulls any punches. She’s brutally honest in what it takes to be a model (work, work, work and, oh, don’t apply if you’re less than 5’8”), how it’s not easy money and which kind of predators cluster around models. There’s a chapter on substance abuse, excessive shopping, eating disorders and parasitic boyfriends. Fittingly enough for the target audience, there’s even a chapter that provides advice for parents!

    For chumps like me with no previous knowledge of the fashion biz, Williams’ discussion of the seven modeling types, the details of a model shoot, the classification of “fashion markets” (Ottawa definitely isn’t!) and the mechanics of runaway modeling are fascinating beyond belief. I would have appreciated many more pictures, but I guess there’s probably a whole bunch of licensing issues involved in illustrating her subject matter. Still, as a guy I can only bitch about the fact that she spends pages discussing supermodels without once showing us what they look like.

    With these kind of “celebrity” books, it’s always a risky thing to try to guess how much of the book she really wrote, and which part was put together by “the second writer”, in this case Anne Marie O’Connor. Not matter here, though; Whether Williams wrote most of it on her photo-shoot high chair or O’Connor re-wrote substantial portions of it in her overstuffed office, the whole Guide is infused with Williams’ personality and certainly feels as if she wrote most of it. There are a few exceptions (some material on agencies feels as if it’s adapted from a magazine article), but as someone with closer affective ties to writers than to supermodels, I’d like to congratulate Anne Marie O’Connor on, presumably, a job well done.

    Keep in mind, though, that even if I may feel informed and satisfied by the book, I lack the knowledge required to put a stamp of approval on the content of the book; I’ll leave those reviews to pros of the field. But I certainly feel as if I learned a lot from the Guide, and intend to refer to it once in a while, assuming that I’ll eventually need urgent fashion reference information.

    I’m just having a hard time picturing my visitors’ reaction to seeing that book on my reference shelves, though…

  • Men With Brooms, Diane Baker Mason

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    McArthur & Co., 2002, 314 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 1-55278-263-8

    Winter 2002 was a good season for Canadian sports. After two major Olympic successes in hockey, curling was consecrated as a hip sport with the release of a major motion picture about the sport. MEN WITH BROOMS was a Canadian attempt at churning out a romantic sports comedy in the Hollywood mould, though with a purely Canadian flavour.

    But for such a nationalistic endeavour, the marketing techniques were blatantly stolen from the Americans: Catchy movie trailer, media saturation techniques through interviews, TV spots, triumphant articles on “the new Canadian cinema”, cross-media soundtrack promotion and, heavens, a paperback novelization of the script.

    As an object, it’s definitely a curio: It’s amusing to hold in one’s hand such a quirky object, an attempt at combining crass materialism with literary respect. Indeed, the very physical incarnation of the book is strange; printed on whiter paper than usual, in a slightly wider and sturdier format than most paperbacks, Men With Brooms is something new for the Canadian publishing industry.

    But enough about the object. The narrative inside is compelling enough. Surprise, it’s about loners trying to regain the affection and respect of others through competitive rock-sliding. Fans of curling who loved the film will go nuts for this novelization, given that it sports such one-liners as “To encourage the rock, which no doubt would have preferred to be left alone enjoying being a rock, men with brooms run in strong of the wildly spinning and possibly nauseous rock, sweeping… like deranged housewives.” [P.1-2] If there’s an area where both book and film excel, it’s in cheerleading for the sport. (As for describing curling matches, well, the film version is far more exciting. But then again, that comment applies to almost any sport, at the possible exception of chess.) The other area where both succeed well is in some shameless flag-waving: It would be a touch too presumptuous to credit Men With Brooms with resurgent nationalism, but most Canadians will, in fact, feel great about their country after reading such a distinctly nationalist novel.

    Diane Baker Mason does a great job, not only at faithfully adapting the screenplay, but in adding several details, character traits and even whole scenes to pad out the screenplay and explain the action. Whether some of those scenes were written but later cut from the film or a product of the author’s skill is something we’ll find out on the upcoming DVD, but in the meantime they do a great job at clarifying the action, deepening the characters or simply adding to the story. Stuckmore’s trip back to Long Bay and “Joanne”’s back-story are the most obvious additions, but small details here and there add up to a nice adaptation.

    The passage to prose also seems to even out some of the film’s most incongruous tone shifts. Film is a tricky medium, and a director never quite knows what he’s going to end up with. Scenes that should be funny aren’t, and a sad scene sandwiched between two comedy sequences can have an effect on an entire section of the film. Here, though, the consistent voice of the author smoothes some of the rougher edges in a more harmonious whole.

    All of the above doesn’t even mention how much fun it is to read this novel. Men With Brooms is the kind of book, movie tie-in or not, that’s just wonderful to enjoy. Best read besides the fireplace on a cold, cold Canadian Winter night, it’s hard to say something disparaging about this novelization, even considering usual prejudices against commercialism and marketing. Time will tell if Men With Brooms finds a place as an enjoyable work of Canadian goodness, but as for this reviewer, it already is.

  • Floating Dragon, Peter Straub

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1982, 595 pages, C$3.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-06285-6

    You know, I’m really glad I’ve read Peter Straub and Stephen King’s The Talisman before Floating Dragon. They’re not related at all, but this way I can reasonably expect that these two writers know and like each other. Which means that Straub presumably wasn’t too annoyed when King re-used Floating Dragon‘s plot in every fourth book he’s ever written.

    I jest, but as Freud once said, there are no jokes: Floating Dragon recounts how a sleepy north-eastern town is destroyed by supernatural forces beyond its control, save for a band of heroes who can defeat the menace. You may recall the same bare outline from King’s It, or Needful Things or Tommyknockers or… Granted, it’s a broad premise, yet all too often during Sleeping Dragon, you’d swear you were reading a Stephen King novel. That, I suppose, is a good thing.

    Floating Dragon begins with a very human-made terror. In an experimental bio-warfare laboratory, a virus accidentally escapes, the winds carrying it all the way down to sleepy little Hampstead, New York. Its effects are ill-known, but widely predicted by scientists to be catastrophic. At the same time, an old supernatural monster comes back to the very same town. And it’s even worse than a genetically-engineered plague…

    I was, all things considered, quite taken with the first half of Floating Dragon. This pure intersection of natural and supernatural horror isn’t something I can recall seeing in such a context (usually it’s the supernatural that causes the natural to go nuts, such as thunderstorms underscoring a dramatic finale and such) and for a while, it looks as if Straub is going to give equal billing to both disasters.

    For instance, our little virus critters slowly transform people into “leakers”, who slowly decompose from within. One of Floating Dragon‘s best creep scenes comes as one of the first victims deliquesces after a particularly hard blow: “In ten minutes Leo Friedgood was an arrangement of wet clothes, shiny bone and a damp spaghetti of bandages in a pool of slime.” [P.342] Yummy!

    But there’s more: Floating Dragon‘s first half is a small masterpiece in setting up an overwhelming atmosphere of dread. Straub is really, really good at creating effective omens and setting up little spoilerish passages such as “He died on the bathroom floor the next day, and his remains were not discovered until September. By that time, all his neighbours were dead too, though not of the flu.” [P.148] Royce Giffen’s mini-vignette [P. 184-191] is particularly creepy, perhaps even more so than what the explanation turns out to be.

    Straub’s writing in Floating Dragon is a touch less accessible than King’s usual prose (it’s certainly less focused), but perhaps more technically sophisticated. A few scenes are told in flashback from different perspectives, which strikes me as an interesting (though maybe not original) technique. Then again, Straub manages to pack a whole town’s worth of characters -several dozen speaking parts at least- in less than 600 pages, which requires some effort.

    For a while at least, Floating Dragon manages to be an effective piece of horror fiction. But then the last hundred pages or so degenerate in a phantasmagorical quest against evil (the kind of hallucinogenic prose seemingly written in a haze of illegal chemicals), that we’ve seen far too many times before, and usually in only a fraction of those hundred pages. The man-made virus threat never amounts to anything more than a cause for “leakers”, flu and clinical depression, leaving all the mayhem up to the supernatural force. There’s not much interplay between the two, which is cause for a slight disappointment. The trite epilogue and the lack of resolution for some subplots are also a bit of a downer.

    In the end, Floating Dragon remains a good read, but the lacklustre ending really does spoil a book that, until then, remained quite good. There’s no denying that the sort of small-town horror depicted here has been done over and over again since, but I think that Peter Straub’s book does manage to retain some if not most of its strengths even twenty years later.

  • The Big U, Neal Stephenson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Perennial, 1984 (2001 reprint), 308 pages, C$20.95 tpb, ISBN 0-380-81603-2

    Neal Stephenson vaulted to the top of the SF best-seller list with 1992’s Snow Crash, (a book that became a surrogate bible for many cyber-heads even as the Internet took off) but this first success wasn’t his first book. That honor would belong to 1984’s The Big U, which quickly became a collector’s item as geeks of all stripes started hunting it down in used bookstores and rummage sales. For a while, copies of the book fetched three-figure prices in online auctions. Stephenson was reportedly disenchanted with the book, but even less happy with the price-gouging and so allowed the book to be reprinted following the boffo mainstream success of his Cryptonomicon in 1999.

    After reading the book, it’s hard to understand Stephenson’s reluctance to acknowledge The Big U: Even if it’s nowhere as polished, sophisticated or impressive as Cryptonomicon, it still ranks highly above most of what I’ve read recently.

    It takes place on the pseudo-fictional “American Megaversity” campus, an entirely artificial structure called “the Monoplex” composed by a series of eight massive towers arranged around a central campus building. As an institution of higher learning, it can only disappoint 30-year-old junior Casimir Radon: students seem to be far more interested in drunken partying than good grades and there’s more anarchic violence on-campus than anywhere else in the city.

    Typical? Maybe, but Stephenson stomps the pedal to the metal and never lets go. American Megaversity students use so little of their brain capacity that they eventually devolve to a state where the halves of their brain stop forming a unified whole. Those morons quite literally start hearing “voices in their heads”. It wouldn’t be so bad, but alas the campus is also overrun by radioactive rats, fanatical D&D players, anarchists, illegal kitten pushers, religious nuts, foreign revolutionaries and a physics student building a mass-driver railgun. That’s in addition to the usual bunch of campus neurotics. Very Bad Things are about to happen and our narrator is in the middle of it all. Unlike many campus novels, this one is quite literally about how university can kill you if you allow it to.

    But even then, The Big U is one of those books that will make you laugh out loud repeatedly, a delight of gonzo writing style than you’ll have a hard time abandoning whatever the circumstances. Even though my own campus experience was nowhere as bad as the one described here, I only wish I could have read that novel at the time; maybe it would have made everything more amusing. The novel certainly plays well with my own liking for high-concept satire, tech-infused plotting and a dense prose style. The increasing bursts of violence may upset some (there are certainly a few disturbing passages in here) but fit increasingly well with the rising chaos of the book. Too many novels step back from the abyss just before we have the chance to have some fun, but The Big U jumps in it with glee and Jolt-fuelled abandon. The Big U is Hell on Campus. You’ve been warned.

    In the end, my only quibble with the book is that when the dust has settled at the end of the story, we have the outline of a conclusion, but scarcely any resolution about the relationships between the characters. Stephenson makes his characters so sympathetic that the bare-bones conclusion is a let-down.

    So what are you waiting for? Find The Big U right now, especially if you’re a college-age fan of Stephenson’s other works. Despite the original 1984 publication date, you’ll find that the book hasn’t aged much, and still is one of the best read you’ll find even this year. While we’re anxiously waiting for his next book (Quicksilver, due 2003), this will do.