Book Review

  • Cold Fear, Rick Mofina

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pinnacle, 2001, 476 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-7860-1266-8

    (Necessary disclaimer: Please adjust review according to my known bias toward A> Authors I have met and B> Authors who live in the Ottawa area.)

    In his first novel, If Angels Fall, Rick Mofina proved he could take a familiar story and tell it well enough to warrant compulsive reading. In Cold Fear, he tries something more original and succeeds despite a plot that takes a while before truly beginning.

    It starts, trivially enough, with a family quarrel deep in Glacier National Park. The little girl of the family is frightened enough to run away from the camp site and gets lost. Her disappearance is signaled to authorities, park-wide searching begins and the police is called in to investigate the parent. It seems that in situations like these, it’s not impossible that the parents of the “lost” children are, in fact, responsible for their disappearances.

    Already, we can see two recurring themes from Mofina’s first book; children in danger and perfectly comprehensible misunderstandings between parties involved. If Angels Fall depicted the hunt for a child kidnapper and honestly highlighted tensions between the police and the media. This time around, there the third party represented by the parents, and of course the little girl. As the omniscient reader, we’re privy to the truth, but our characters are not, and Mofina milks a lot of tension between the inevitable clashes between these naturally opposed parties.

    It gets worse (or better, for us readers) when the true plot of the novel emerges in the latter half, introducing yet another party, a criminal presence whose shadow looms large on the proceedings even more than a quarter-century after an horrific event. Stuff happens in a delightfully chaotic way and very soon everyone converges toward a dramatic climax that feels quite contrived, but satisfying nonetheless.

    For fans of If Angels Fall, Cold Fear does stand alone given that the two protagonists of the first book are here reduced to glorified cameos. Even then, alas, there are quite a few spoilers for the previous novel in the brief time both characters are present… so you might avoid this book anyway if you plan on reading Mofina’s first novel anytime soon. One returning protagonist at least has the glamorous role of setting in motion the media circus that comes to dominate the last third of the novel. I was particularly impressed by Chapter Fifty-Seven, which succinctly describes how an exclusive scoop can dominate a nation’s thoughtspace in a few hours. It’s a great piece of writing by an author who knows these things.

    While the rest of the novel is not as spectacular, the prose is no slouch as far as interest is concerned; you can easily zip through Mofina’s book, compelled by the steadily engrossing plotting, good characters and the easy prose. This is crime fiction in its most readable state.

    In short, there isn’t much to complain about Rick Mofina’s Cold Fear. The child-in-peril is a good hook to interest readers, and the rest of the novel propels itself forward with great ease. It’s a assured piece of fiction by a writer who seems more than capable of holding his own in the crowded crime fiction category. I’m not an entirely unbiased reader when in comes to Rick Mofina, but why don’t you check out one of his books at the local library?

  • Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content From Presentation, Owen Briggs, Steven Champeon, Eric Costello & Matt Patterson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Glasshaus, 2002, 289 pages, C$54.99 tpb, ISBN 1-904151-04-3

    Friends and family have known for a long time that I’m not a completely normal person, but even they started to worry when I started raving about how much fun it was to read a technical CSS manual. Granted, in the past few weeks I’ve become more and more prone to irrational bursts of excitement for highly technical books in the field of web design, but even I have to admit at being disturbed by realizing that I was actually curling up with a CSS handbook as “fun reading.”

    The CSS handbook in question was Glasshaus’s Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content From Presentation, a sober-looking reference book about the emerging standard of, yes, Cascading Style Sheets.

    From the onset, any web reference book must justify its existence, moreso than any other type of technical book; given the web, wouldn’t it be more responsible to publish the stuff in HTML rather than kill trees for it? Don’t we already have far too much paper in our offices?

    The first and foremost reason justifying paper web books is that people do expect to buy books, even as they have come to regard HTML content as something that should be free. For authors, that alone makes it worthwhile to write a book or two; the thought that some faithful web readers (such as myself, I suppose) might plunk down a few bucks to read real physical words must be very tempting. I suppose that posterity might have something to do with it too.

    But beyond these considerations, one must admit that there is indeed a place for paper documentation even in the most cyber-connected of fields. It’s still not a terribly pleasant thing to read long narratives on screen, it can be a pain to switch between multiple windows on-screen and it’s simply not practical to bring a computer to read, say, on the bus. Or on the couch. Or in the bathroom.

    So CSS: SCFP is optimized in function of what would best fit on paper. It provides ample contextual information to instruct us in the not-so-subtle reasons why web content should be separated from its presentation as well as the historical and technological reasons driving this innovation. As narrative, it’s a joy to read in paper format, at our leisure. The author make a reasonable case for re-thinking the way we conceive web pages, and this change of perspective alone -stemming from the proper use of CSS- will enrich and enhance any web developer’s subsequent projects.

    This is followed by a series of entertaining and informative tutorials that you can either read along, or practice at your computer. This is an efficient way to train, as there is a clear difference between paper-theory and electronic-practice. The “Boxes, boxes, boxes” chapter itself might actually be worth the price of the book for all CSS-developers that are serious about doing table-less design.

    The third section might also prove to be invaluable, as it gives some hard-won advice on how to deal with outdated browsers. This section might be the most immediately useful, but I think that it will also be the one that will be most quickly made obsolete. Web-things changing so quickly, it’s also the least relevant part of the book even as it hits the streets. One can even feel the size restrictions imposed by the editor as the authors refer us to web sites for more updated information.

    Still, CSS: SCFP is a great book for web design professionals looking for more in-depth information. I don’t think there’s anything in here that can’t be found on-line somewhere, but the tutorials are unusually clear and grouped together in one handy package. The first contextual part of the book is inspirational enough to warrant frequent re-reads. As a tree-killing object, this book makes its existence worthwhile.

    In fact, I’d be so bold as to suggest that so far, CSS: SCFP is the only essential paper CSS reference you need. It’s a book designed with some thought, containing all the information that deserves to be printed on paper. Sure, fine, it doesn’t contain a complete listing of all CSS-2 properties, but frankly you might as well bookmark the W3C specs and use that as a reference tool. This book contains context, invaluable tutorials and enough handy hints to deserve a place on your physical bookmarks shelf.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, writing about this book has made me want to read all over again.

  • Falling Stars, Michael J. Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2001, 492 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-56184-8

    It took four volumes, more than two thousand pages and five years of waiting, but Flynn’s Firestar saga is finally complete. A long, often boring but ultimately satisfying saga, Flynn’s series now forms the unified whole it’s supposed to be. It was about time he completed it too, given the slide of the first volume’s 1999-2000 segment in alternate history.

    I wasn’t personally too fond of Flynn’s series of book. I thought the first volume, Firestar (1996), was a long, depressing and ultimately meaningless near-future piece. I was much kinder on the second book, 1998’s Rogue Star, which finally started using all the pieces set up in the first volume to build something interesting. The fact that the story started diverging from its hard-SF all-cards-on-table origins to something affected by an unpredictable curveball was also quite intriguing (though in retrospect it makes perfect sense.) Things were back to full disappointment with Lodestar (2000), a slimmer volume that nevertheless felt interminable given its irrelevant nature. Much time and reader goodwill was wasted by the useless side-trip of the third volume, which eventually proves to be useless as the fourth volume concludes.

    A large part of Falling Stars‘s appeal is that this is sold as the final volume of the series. At last, the complex relationships between the hundred-odd characters of the series come to fruition, with heroic sacrifices, long-awaited reunions and the passing of the torch to a new generation. Several of the unpleasant characters introduced in previous volumes finally turn out to be not so bad after all, earning a redemption of sort. After sitting though endless hundred pages of setups, we finally get the pay-offs.

    I may be slightly more sarcastic than I deserve to be; the Firestar series’ tone is firmly realistic, with a careful attention given to the nuts and bolts of complex space endeavors. Describing the intricate details and weaving the character’s evolving relationships takes time, but the overall impression is vastly more believable than the usual SF tale. It’s sad, then, to find out that some shortcuts used by Flynn in the first volume (such as having a good bunch of his important characters attend the same high school) come back to haunt and dog his realism. Why spend pages describing financial back-room dealings if the oh-so-diversely-exceptional protagonists can just kick back and chat about high-school while saving the world?

    Even then, I think that the Firestar series represents a significant step forward for Michael Flynn as a writer. He’s no literary superstar, and indeed the stop-and-go-and-stop pacing of his series proves that he has a lot to learn about structure, but it’s a fair assessment that thanks to this saga, his stature as a hard-SF writer has grown enormously. Now that he’s gotten this didactic 2000+ pages story out there, maybe he’ll feel more comfortable in attempting something snappier as his next effort. (Naturally, the dangling ends left at the end of the fourth volume -yes, there are more than a few-, imply that Flynn might discreetly slip in a fifth volume while we’re not looking.)

    Alas, we now come to the essential question any reviewer has to answer at the end of a series; is it worth reading? Clearly, I’m happy to be done with the series myself. I’d still hesitate, however, to recommend the four books to a neophyte reader. There’s simply too much dead time in the first and third volume to be fully worth it. The series does work as sort of a multi-decade “family” saga, so if you like that particular genre, you might get more enjoyment out of the series than I did. If you’re pressed for time, you might start reading the second book, the epilogue of the third, the last and still get most of what you need to know. Maybe, one day, a competent editor will cut whatever needs to be cut and produce a satisfying duology. Until then, you’ll have to be a Flynn aficionado, a near-future hard-SF nut or an unusually indulgent reader to plunge head-first in this series.

  • The Hook, Donald E. Westlake

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Mysterious Press, 2000, 280 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-89296-588-6

    If there’s one field that writers know pretty well, it’s publishing. No surprise there: It’s their job, really. But knowing it well doesn’t mean liking it… From time to time, it’s not uncommon to see a few authors turn their vengeful pens toward New York and have a little fun. Like screenwriters scorned by Hollywood, bitter authors can be quite mean when they allow themselves to be (pure passive-aggressive build-up, methinks) and the results can be spectacular.

    Okay, okay, so “spectacular” isn’t the first word to come to mind whenever one thinks about Donald E. Westlake’s quiet and nasty tale The Hook. But in its own way, it’s a savage parody-through-extremes of problems facing authors today and how two sufficiently desperate writers might be pushed to wholly unsuitable acts in order to escape them.

    The hook -or initial appeal of this novel- is in telling how a chance encounter between two old friends results in a curious bargain. One is a best-selling writer with an impregnable writer’s block. The other is an inspired writer who doesn’t sell. Their mutual problems naturally suggest an acceptable solution. But there’s only one detail; the soon-to-be-ghostwriter must murder the bestselling author’s soon-to-be-ex-wife.

    I know, I know; I didn’t find it any more credible than you do. But I believe that every writer must be given some indulgence when it comes to an initial setup and so I let it go. This being said, it didn’t help that the wife of the would-be murdered essentially says “oh, that’s nice” and agrees with her husband’s intentions.

    The actual crime, when it happens, is brutal and swift, as unexpected as it is fatal. Maybe the most shocking thing, though, is how well the murderer recovers afterward, easily rationalizing it and pocketing the check.

    Indeed, the whole novel does seem to whistle back from the abyss and settle down in a far more pedestrian narrative about publishing, ghostwriting and life in New York. The most affected character comes to be the best-selling writer, who has more and more difficulty dealing with his false new success even as his writer’s block worsens. The Hook is blackly comic in its insider’s view of late-nineties publishing, where the computers can kill an author’s career through simple pre-order calculations and where pseudonyms are the only way out of a vicious circle.

    You might be forgiven for almost forgetting about the crime; but at least one of our characters doesn’t, and that leads us directly to a conclusion that doesn’t reveal its true viciousness until the very last line.

    At first, I had serious misgivings about that ending: “Aww, that sucks, that’s mean, that’s just not right, why’d you do that”, etc. But the more I thought about it, the more I found myself accepting, and then grinning at the appropriateness of it. The Hook isn’t, as much as we might be lulled into it, a fun little inside joke on writers. At heart (at its dark, beating, diseased heart…), The Hook remains a dark crime story, and you might even argue that the entire second half is meant to lull you into a false sense of security. It actually works better as, um, a hooking conclusion than if the entire novel had been a parade of ever-gruesome serial murders.

    It’s a short book, too short to be worthwhile in hardcover but well worth the (short) reading time on the beach. The Hook‘s take on the realities of modern writing and publishing is depressing, but darkly amusing and pretext to some really good insider’s dirt on the mechanics of the industry. Avid readers (is there a mystery genre fan who isn’t an avid reader?) will gobble it up.

    If all else fails, consider the cover illustration of the book, a stack of books by Donald E. Westlake all titled The Hook. It gets funnier, of course, when you know that Donald E. Westlake is no stranger to multiple pseudonyms himself…

  • Stranger Than Fiction: A book of literary lists, Aubrey Dillon Malone

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Contemporary Books, 2000, 314 pages, C$23.95 hc, ISBN 0-8092-9904-6

    Writers are a strange breed.

    Even accounting for the usual diversity of characters, temperaments and manias distributed more-or-less evenly across the human bell curve, writers have long been considered among the most eccentric specimen of our species. Part of this reputation is due to the demands of the job: not many entirely sane people can sit down and string words together for months in order to produce a text of respectable length. Most authors are not mad, but most of them are abnormal.

    But then again, like modern-day bloggers, writers have long been in a privileged position to chronicle their own eccentricities and those of their other writer acquaintances. Other professions such as, say, tailors, might have been collectively just as bizarre, but haven’t had the chance to accumulate a written pedigree for hundreds of years.

    In any case, Aubrey Dillon Malone’s Stranger Than Fiction will quickly convince you, if that remained to be done, that writers are indeed a strange caste. This little-known quasi-novelty book is a collection of thematic lists about writers and their habits, from “Five writers involved in tragic accidents” to “Five writers who were vegetarians”. It doesn’t stop there, of course: “Fifteen writers who were spies”, “Thirty authors’ famous last words”, “Ten writers put to death by the state”, “Five writers’ phobias”, “Ten Shakespearian insults”, the all-time classic “Ten writers who went insane” and much, much more…

    Writer/journalist Malone has done an admirable, often hilarious job at compiling some of these lists. Often ribald -if not downright obscene-, Stranger Than Fiction pulls no punches and digs deep in literature’s dirty closets. There is trivia here for everyone, and enough quotable material to make you a certifiable bore at your next office party. It’s not a unique book (as I write this, I’m midway through Robert Hendrickson’s similar collection The Woodsworth Book of Literary Anecdotes, though Stranger Than Fiction was far more entertaining than Hendrickson’s uneven collection.) but it’s a good one, with something like 300 lists in one handy paperback-sized hardcover.

    My main quibble stems from ignorance: I’m a child of the sci-fi ghetto and so my grasp of classical literature isn’t as good as it should be. I was rather embarrassed to learn things I should have known about a few very-well-known writers. Still, it’s a fair criticism to remark that Stranger Than Fiction is concentrated mostly on the “respectable” English canon, with often perfunctory attention to other literatures. As a confirmed SF buff, I can proudly claim that our writers are as interesting as the mainstream ones. Yet Robert A. Heinlein and Philip K. Dick are conspicuously absent, while Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke share a paltry three mentions. (On the other hand, have I mentioned the great index-by-authors? Yep; you can use this book as reference!)

    Stranger Than Fiction is, in many ways, a tribute to the quirkiness of writers, those magnificent madmen (and madwomen too!) without whom our shelves would be so much poorer. It’s a crash-course in English literature, an amusing entertainment, a great source of anecdotes and a pretty nifty discussion piece by itself. It would make a great gift for any avid reader in your neighborhood.

  • The Angel of Darkness, Caleb Carr

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ballantine, 1997, 752 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-42763-7

    For an author, one danger in writing a distinctive best-seller is to try to do the same thing again without innovation. Caleb Carr’s first novel, The Alienist, was a crime thriller set in late nineteenth century New York, featuring a bunch of characters doing their damnedest to catch a serial killer using revolutionary methods who just happen to be similar to the ones used today. In The Angel of Darkness, the surviving characters of the first novel are back once more to track down another killer using quasi-anachronistic methods.

    But don’t be scared away; not only are there significant differences between this novel and the first one, The Angel of Darkness is so much fun that everyone who liked The Alienist will want to take a look at the sequel.

    The biggest change in tone is that the narrator of this follow-up isn’t the cultivated journalist John Moore, but the reformed street urchin Stevie Taggert. It’s an odd choice, but a logical one given Stevie’s role is the follow-up. Stevie might not be as cynical or polished, but he’s in the middle of the story, which isn’t the case with Moore this time.

    Here, the team is hot on the trail of a child kidnapper who is eventually revealed to be a far more sinister figure. The quest takes our heroes upstate, away from Manhattan and deep in rural country where the rules are completely different. Along the way, they will also have to face some courtroom drama, some late large-scale brawling and a few new characters.

    What remains is Carr’s impeccable flair for recreating the atmosphere of the time and presumably exact historical references. The prose style is polished but unusually readable; even though the book clocks in at an impressive 750+ pages, it’s good enough that you won’t mind the occasional lengths and the lopsided drama which peaks well before the conclusion. The constant references (by way of narrator’s hindsight) to terrible events about to happen are simultaneously annoying, ominous and charming.

    The genius of The Alienist was to bring modern procedural police methods to one of the earliest possible times when it was possible to conceive and use such things, making it both a genre novel and a genre commentary. The same also applies to the second novel, as our protagonists use controversial profiling techniques and new detection techniques. Even The Alienist‘s occasional usage of historical cameos is also repeated, most notably with the inspired presence of a famous historical character as a courtroom antagonist. There’s a lot of intellectual material to digest, from sexual roles a century ago to a bit of international politics.

    The villain alone is a piece of work, a complex character whose multiple facets are fiendishly effective against our protagonists. Though one feels as if a touch too much life-history has been packed in only a few years, there’s no denying that the antagonist is more interesting than the garden-variety serial killer who starred in The Alienist.

    There’s too much familiarity with the characters exhibited here to suggest that The Angel of Darkness is a book that stands alone without the benefits of having read the prequel. But as much as The Alienist is a recommended read, The Angel of Darkness also ranks as more than a worthwhile follow-up. It’s difficult to think of a satisfied fan of the first volume who’d dislike this one.

  • Winning the Loser’s Game (Third Edition), Charles D. Ellis

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    McGraw-Hill, 1997, 142 pages, US$24.95 hc, ISBN 0-07-022010-7

    I have long been fascinated by money, and mot merely for the obvious reasons. In a world where money has been standardized as a universal exchange medium, economics are rivaling in importance with political science and sociology as a way to understand why society behaves the way it does. Where does money come from? Where does it go? Where does it accumulate? Can it be seen as a fluid or maybe even a force? How do you even begin to understand the complexities of money flow?

    Then again, as with every good citizen/consumer of our oh-so-wonderful capitalistic societies, understanding how to make money ranks only slightly below how to eat and obey traffic laws. There’s enough ranting about early retirement to make it imperative to learn how to accumulate enough money to -ironically enough- not work for the rest of your life.

    Charles D. Ellis’ Winning the Loser’s Game is a splendid investment manual, a reasoned treatise that may make almost too much sense for everyone. It’s a small book, but every single page is worth its weight in greenbacks. You don’t need to be a genius to understand this book, and the advice it provides seems appropriate for everyone. I can’t know whether it’s the ultimate investment theory, but at the moment it’s just perfect for my own level of financial savvy.

    Ellis starts by explaining the realities of modern investment. It’s not a domain where a genius can simply outperform everyone: it’s a field where thousands of equally-capable professionals are all second-guessing each other. (The metaphor here is amateur’s sport (where one tends to be scored against through luck or incompetence) versus professional sports (where players will score points, often deliberately exploiting opponent’s mistakes). Over the long run, everyone will do equally well, except for obvious mistakes. In this context, time-investing (buying low, selling high such as in commodities trading) won’t work, and neither will any scheme trying to “beat the market”. The only way is to stay in the game long enough and to avoid obvious mistakes such as panic-selling or impulsive trading.

    Winning the Loser’s Game appeals to me because it’s the ultimate antithesis of those doubtful make-money-fast “magic recipes”. It tells you to invest and forget. It explains to you through statistics why stocks aren’t such a bad idea in the long run. It drills in the notion that risk is, well, risk: higher margins to gain, higher chances to lose. It busts a few myths and teaches you the counter-intuitive logic of investing. It’s reasonable, makes as many warnings as recommendations and it written in a limpid style. Let me repeat that: A limpid style. I’ve seldom encountered a most compulsively-readable financial treatise.

    Naturally, one could make a case that in preaching faith in the overarching system and promoting long-term stock investments, Winning the Loser’s Game is a self-fulfilling instrument of capitalist thinking. If everyone followed the advice of the book, everyone would be a winner. Well, yeah. Duh.

    But Winning the Loser’s Game isn’t the soulless capitalistic textbook you might expect. Ellis spends some time discussing the significant disadvantages of leaving too much money to your children, and heavily promotes the virtues of philanthropy. It also helps that Ellis regards unethical business practices as anathema to good investment; even anti-business activists might have a hard time disagreeing with this book, if they would stoop so low as to read it.

    As for me, well, reading Winning the Loser’s Game is like attending a lecture from an advanced economics course. I’m left with nearly as many questions as before, but they’re -I think- entirely more sophisticated questions. I intend to keep the book handy and refer to it once my mortgage is paid and I get into the “Loser’s Game” myself. Hey, I’m still a third of a century away from retirement; I can take the long view he’s espousing.

  • Bug Park, James P. Hogan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 1997, 405 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-87874-3

    There is something comfortingly pleasant about reading a novel by a professional SF writer. The most reliable of them know enough about satisfying the readers that even the most hackneyed premise can be brought to life with mildly interesting characters and sustained plotting.

    There’s not much that’s innovative about James P. Hogan’s Bug Park. In fact, you might even call it retrograde: After reading so much about nanotechnology, going “back” to insect-sized micro-technology doesn’t seem to be all that exciting.

    And yet… micro-technology is easier to conceptualize that nanotech. You can at least imagine some direct interaction between humans and machinery at those scales. The visual kick in seeing micro-machines meddling around with insects is also suitably cinematic, enough to excite even mildly jaded readers.

    Mix the promise of such technology with teenage protagonists and you have the making of a rather interesting SF novel for teen audiences. Even though obviously aimed at teens, Bug Park was published by Baen exactly as one of their more mainstream novel. Still, at the heart of the book lies a teen’s novel.

    It features kids as protagonists, rich bored teenagers with advanced skills in micro-robotics, which is probably linked to their parent’s business interest in such things. But no matter; When Kevin and Taki get to work on something, those teen hackers can do anything. While their interest in micro-robotics is initially driven towards a “Bug Park”, their capabilities will become handy when they discover a plot afoot to kill Kevin’ father and take over his company.

    As you might expect, most of Bug Park is a series of adventures in which our teenage protagonists get to use cutting-edge big-sized machines in order to foil evil plans. It works well, as a matter of fact: Thanks to Hogan’s lean prose, there aren’t any problem sin picturing the micro antics, from fancy spying to intricate sabotage… without forgetting epic half-inch fights. Hogan manages to transform backyards into battlegrounds! It doesn’t take much to imagine this as a film, somewhere between SPY KIDS, JURASSIC PARK and HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS. Except with better special effect.

    Hogan’s science is reasonably exact, though readers who know about his penchant for weird science will smile knowingly at his short diatribe against the “establishment science’s” theory of relativity. Fortunately, he stops there and leaves his usual pseudo-scientific rants for other novels.

    There isn’t much that’s spectacular in Bug Park, but even then the book works adequately well for readers of all ages. Teen might like it a bit more given the lead characters, but the rest is a serviceable fun SF adventure. Give it a try if you want to; it’s not essential, but it passes the time.

  • Taking Your Talent to the Web, Jeffrey Zeldman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    New Rider, 2001, 426 pages, C$59.95 tpb, ISBN 0-7356-1073-2

    Zeldman. Jeffrey Zeldman. Mis-ter Zeldman… which should be said with a slight French accent: Mys-tère Zeldman, for it’s not clear how someone with so much personality was allowed to write a technical book about web design.

    Most of the time, a technical book review will focus on the nuts and bolts of the content, the accuracy of the advice and the freshness of the details. But Taking Your Talents to the Web suggests a different approach. Whereas most technical books are dryer than a sunny Arizona day, Zeldman’s book is infused with so much personality that reviewing the authors seems as valid as reviewing the content of the book.

    Naturally, I’m biased in this regard. Through his evangelism at www.webstandards.org, his editorship of the weekly e-zine www.alistapart.com and his blog at www.zeldman.com, Jeffrey Zeldman has been a guru of sorts for me as a web designer. His tireless push towards web standards meshed with my own preferences, and if I can blame a single person for my increasing professionalism in terms of XHTML design, Zeldman would be it. Reading the book came after my worship of the guy, not the other way around. This being said, I’d defy any professional web-person not to be impressed by Taking Your Talent to the Web.

    It’s also different from the usual technical manual in terms of target audience: Zeldman is a designer first and foremost, and an XHTML maven second. (Or maybe third; his strong writing skills might make him a writer first.) Taking Your Talent To The Web is, as the subtitle says, “A Manual for the Transitioning Designer”. In other words, the target audience for this book already knows design; what they won’t know as much is the web. This makes for an interesting reading experience; the readership of the book is decidedly technical, but in a non-computer-related domain. The angle of attack is slightly askew, and for a computer-technical person with deficient designing skills such as myself, this makes for an interesting reading experience. Zeldman is writing for a smart audience, but they may not know exactly what XHTML geeks already know.

    Zeldman’s overview of the origins of the web is wonderful (“Chapter 4: How This Web Thing Got Started”), as are his considerations on the nature of being in the web design business (“Chapter 7: Riding the Project Life Cycle”). Taking Your Talents To the Web isn’t quite so compelling when it delves into acutely specific technical details (“Chapter 12, Beyond Text/Pictures”), but I doubt that by then, most readers will stop reading.

    The reason is simple: Zeldman may very well be the funniest technical writer ever to write about web design. Fireworks of wit and humor pepper every page of Taking Your Talent to the Web, from headers to body text itself. I found myself reading this manual concurrently with one of Dave Barry’s anthologies and finding scant difference between the two styles. Don’t think Zeldman skimps on the technical accuracy, though; it’s just that he’s funny in addition of being implacably correct.

    This sense of fun is also reflected in the advice told by Zeldman. I’ve had my fill of technical manuals telling me that usability is factor number one, and it took a pro designer to point out a simple truth: All web sites do not have to sell something. They don’t all have to provide information. They can be entertaining, or expressive, or simply baffling and there is nothing wrong with that. No one is forcing you to make your personal web site user-friendly. It’s all right to be non-linear if that’s what you want. It’s a stupid revelation, really, but in a field where usability guru Jakob Nielson is worshipped by many, including your reviewer, it’s useful to take some time and realize that not all of us are designing for Fortune-500 companies. It’s not forbidden to have fun.

    It helps, of course, that Zeldman himself looks as if he’s having a lot of fun doing what he does. Furthermore, he keeps preaching -through all the fun- rigorous web design methods, from useful divisions of responsibility to adequate use of bandwidth and validated XHTML coding. Hm, an author who’s technically adept and constantly fun… Trust Zeldman. Zeldman is your friend. I’m not sure if I can make this book any more attractive to you, so why don’t you go out and rush get a copy, already?

    (For a preview, extra info and more plain good fun, don’t forget the book’s wonderful web site, at www.zeldman.com/talent.htm )

  • Sewer, Gas & Electric, Matt Ruff

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 1997, 560 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60642-1

    I staggered in my local SF bookstore and painstakingly made my way to the counter. “Booktender!” I rasped, knocking on the counter. “Give me an antidote to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged!” “Coming up, chief!” he said, sliding a copy of Matt Ruff’s Sewer, Gas & Electric on the counter.

    It may be slightly insulting to write about Sewer, Gas and Electric as merely an answer to Rand’s work. But in these days where hundreds of SF books are published per year, everyone needs a hook to attract readers, and Ruff’s second novel does, among other things, offer a compelling counter-point to Ayn Rand’s most celebrated novel.

    It doesn’t stop there, of course. While a holographic projection of Rand (stuck in a hurricane lamp, no less) accompanies one of our heroines throughout her adventures, Sewer, Gas and Electric is a full-course weird trip through a future wacky enough to be believable, starring a variety of fantastical characters and quirky concepts. Fans of Neal Stephenson, Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon, take note; giant sewer critters duel for attention with grandiose conspiracy theories in a delicious writing style that’s worth the price of the book by itself.

    It’s impossible to reduce Sewer, Gas & Electric to a simple plot description, but that’s just how the book is written. There’s an industrialist named Harry Gant, building a mile-high tower in the middle of New York. There’s an oversized shark—named Meisterbrau- loose in the sewers of the city. There’s an environmental terrorist defying rampant industrialism aboard his polka-dotted yellow submarine. There’s an American Civil War veteran running around. There are black servants called “Negroes”, and no one is offended because the whole black population was wiped out years before by a sudden epidemic. (Is this a “funny background detail”? Don’t bet on it.) There’s what’s probably the funniest submarine battle ever written. There’s a rather more aggressive Queen Elizabeth II. There’s a lot of stuff in these 560 pages.

    Make no mistake; it will take you some time to make your way through Sewer, Gas & Electric, if only because this is one of those novels where you’ll want to slow down in order to savor the prose and the weirdness. Ruff isn’t a professional hack content to churn out a novel per year to pay the rent; he’s a real honest-to-goodness author and as far as readers are concerned, this means jolly good fun. A conversation with two possible meanings is one of the comic highlights of the year as far as I’m concerned. (“A thousand ironic… convictions.” See P.306-307, but beware spoilers!) Oh, oh, and don’t forget the “Mr. Science” segment!

    It does get less amusing after a while, though. As the plot mechanics (yes there is a plot) get rolling and more serious issues are tackled, the laugh quotient diminishes a lot. The ending isn’t as jolly as you might want, though it remains light throughout.

    It’s hard to overstate the joy of reading Sewer, Gas & Electric. It’s the kind of fun novel you don’t see much and treasure forever after. You can make comparisons with Snow Crash or David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, but this novel is its own animal in the weird-future subgenre.

    What about Ayn Rand, though? Well, she’s a feisty character all right; as one character comments even before encountering her, “Rand’s a total loon—but a fun loon” [P.261]. The novel will be highly pleasant to everyone who was amused by Rand’s works: Not only does Chapter 12 feature a terrific plot summary of Atlas Shrugged, but later on, one of the characters neatly eviscerates Rand’s philosophy in what might best be described as a no-holds barred philosophical argument spectacular.

    Naturally, Gas, Sewr & Electric is a lot more fun if you’ve read Atlas Shrugged. But don’t think it’s in any way a requirement; Ruff’s novel stands on its own as a fun novel. I can’t recommend it any strongly.

  • If Angels Fall, Rick Mofina

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pinnacle, 2000, 477 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-7860-1061-4

    (Necessary Disclaimer: I met Rick Mofina at the local mall, where he was holding a signing session for his three books. Half an hour later, I had discovered that Mofina was a local author and left with three autographed books. Adjust the following review accounting for my favorable bias in favor of Canadian/Ontarian/Local authors. Oh, and visit www.rickmofina.com, willya?)

    It can be difficult, in this age of jaded readers, for a new writer to distinguish himself from every other storyteller on the market. Dozen of crime thrillers are published every month; how can they stand out?

    Sometime, just doing the job well can be enough. Rick Mofina’s first novel, If Angels Fall, is in some way a novel we’ve seen many times before, with a deranged antagonist, kids in peril, a burnt-out hero whose involvement eventually becomes very personal and an ace policeman who’s seen far too many of these cases… but in its own fashion, If Angels Fall is a fine thriller with just enough distinctiveness to make it a worthwhile read.

    It certainly grabs you by the throat right at the beginning, as we’re witness to the sudden kidnapping of a young girl from her unsuspecting father. Crime is one thing; crime against children is another. You don’t need to be a parent to be involved. Manipulative or not, this draws us straight in the novel as we try to figure out what is happening, and as we empathize with the grieving parents. We also identify with the kids, as Mofina draws us into their mind-set in a fashion that is not predictably patronizing.

    In short order, we’re introduced to the two protagonists of If Angels Fall: One is Walter Sydowski, a veteran policeman whose cynical behavior has been made impregnable by years of police work. The other is the far more interesting Tom Reed, a journalist who has to live, every day, with a fatal mistake. This division of hero-duties is one of the things to like about If Angels Fall, as the protagonist doesn’t have to be an omnipotent superhero to be at all places at all time. Sydowski handles the police viewpoint; Reed the media aspect. The two rarely mesh well together.

    As a matter of fact, the journalistic angle brought up by Reed is the one of the main selling points of the novel: While crime thrillers all too often consider the media as annoying gadflies (or even worse; bunglers with ghastly consequences), this insider’s look at journalism is original enough to be compelling. As both the media and the police investigation converge on the main suspect, this makes things more interesting than usual. As a journalist, Mofina’s familiarity with the newsroom shows and illuminates an original section of the novel.

    What’s less original is that eventually, Reed’s involvement in the case becomes very personal. This loved-ones-as-victims crime-thriller shtick is something that’s been driving me nuts for a while now, but I can still get over it, and it’s not as if Reed’s conflict with the murderer isn’t completely organic to the story. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the crucial elements of the plot and doesn’t feel overly tacked-on: Reed has tremendous personal issues to solve, and the involvement of his family only makes a bad situation even worse.

    Considered as a whole, If Angels Fall works quite well. The writing is fluid and limpid. The plot converges to a tense resolution. The characters are depicted with an adequate amount of vividness. There’s a lot to like here for genre readers. While Mofina’s first novel doesn’t redefine the genre, it doesn’t need to: what it needed to do is to prove that Mofina can handle a genre novel with aplomb, and that is obvious by the time the story ends. On to his next book, then.

  • Branch Point, Mona Clee

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1996, 310 pages, C$6.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-00291-9

    As a literary genre, Science-Fiction nowadays is large enough to accommodate a vide range of views on certain subjects. Nuclear weapons, for instance, have been used in a variety of ways by different authors. From the nuke-happy rhetoric of the most extreme military-SF to the wide-eyed horror of the post-apocalyptic segment, there’s been a divergent attitude about the current nec plus ultra in sudden energetic release. Most SF writers have accepted nuclear weaponry as a necessary evil or even as a useful dramatic tool from time to time.

    Mona Clee’s first novel, Branch Point is definitely not ambivalent about nuclear weaponry. The hook of the novel is how an intrepid group of time-travelers painstakingly avert one nuclear war after another. The anti-nuke discourse is strong and strident, up to a point -as we’ll see- that it harms the novel’s overall credibility.

    Branch Point is set up with a minimum of fuss and believability. We are to believe that by 1962, the US government was able to build a secret facility in California named “The Bunker”, designed to protect the best and the brightest of American scientists. The facility is activated when the October Crisis goes nuclear. A hundred years later, the dying facility has perfected time-travel (uh-huh) and is about to send three teenagers to avert the war. All three happen to be half-American, half-Russian, which is weakly justified (Visiting Soviet scientists were in The Bunker when the missiles flew, and they were far more interested in procreation than their nerdy American counterparts) but rather handy when, later, the teenagers will have to go to Russia.

    Within a few dozen pages, the October crisis is avoided. But it’s not the end of the adventure for our three protagonists: years later, four preeminent American politicians are assassinated and missiles fly again. As it turns out, our protagonists have “three more tries” by which to avoid nuclear war, and they’ll avoid that one too, bringing history closer to the one we’re familiar with.

    But the cycle starts anew as the 1990 Soviet putsch (in our timeline) diverges in yet another nuclear war, which our protagonists mop up once again. The universe of Branch Point then diverges in “our” future. Naturally, missiles will fly again in the early 2020s, and this time our heroine must use her last chance to avoid nuclear war ever again…

    Her solution is rather curious, which is to say that she travels back to a time where Russians could have colonized California, and manipulates them in doing so. It’s an interesting conceit (suggested in the first two pages of the novel, so don’t worry about me spoiling the novel) and interestingly executed.

    What I didn’t like as much is the way Clee goes out of her way to suggest that nuclear weapons will forever be banned in her “final” future. Physics go a certain way, and it seems highly doubtful that alternate sciences will not re-create nuclear weapons ever again. In this light, a lot of Branch Point seems highly convoluted. (And let’s not speak of the parts of the novel which are convoluted, such as seeing an old flame of the protagonist pop up at exactly the right moment.) Knee-jerk condemnation of nuclear weapons isn’t nearly as credible or interesting as coming to grip with a responsible usage of them… short of global thermonuclear war, naturally.

    Rabid Republicans might also howl at the hero-worship representation of both John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton as minor characters in Branch Point. Baby-boomers are liable to be impressed. Others, like me, are more likely to be amused.

    But even despite these problems, big and small, Branch Point remains an interesting novel, more in terms of execution, ideological standpoint and historical Easter Eggs than in terms of overall plot. Certainly, it’s a bit more memorable than other time-travel thrillers, and maybe even a bit more desperate. How much of Clee’s own pet likes and dislikes show through this novel? I’m sure some enterprising thesis author will try to find out at one point.

  • The Modular Man, Roger MacBride Allen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1992, 306 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-29559-4

    There are no surer ways to inflame a crowd of Science-Fiction geeks than to try to define the “mission” of the genre. Some will argue that there is none; others will use this as a tangent to discussing the definition of SF; others will simply sneak away for more snacks.

    As with many other experienced SF geeks, I tend to be amongst the group that slinks away for more food. Not only because I’m a hungry fellow or because the debate tends to be invariably circular, but mostly because I’ve made my peace a long time ago with what SF should be. And that, constant reader, would be a literature of ideas.

    Of course, SF should be well-written, packed with vibrant characters and constant entertainment. But that’s not the point. You can walk into any mall bookstore, head for the general fiction section and pick non-genre novels that do all that. But what other literature can seriously examine the human impacts of technological change? Which other literature always starts with “What if?” (Well, okay, Fantasy is the other one) Where else can you read accessible book-length dramatization of future issues that will soon preoccupy us? In Science-Fiction. Purely and simply.

    Certainly, the good old school of SF understood this: A standard template for an Analog magazine story was to find a scientific issue, derive a consequent problem with the power of affecting human lives, discuss the issue and then offer a solution to the problem. Hundreds, thousands of stories have been written to that specification. Some were good, some not-so-good, but most of them were unabashed SF.

    It’s in this techno-problematic tradition that we must place Roger MacBride Allen’s The Modular Man. There isn’t much of a plot (dying scientist downloads self in machine, political interests try to convict the robot, courtroom drama ensues), but the novel certainly features a thorough examination of the upcoming blur between humans and cyborgs, along with euthanasia, immortality, wealth hoarding and other such philosophical trifles.

    Fortunately, The Modular Man is explicit in what it tries to do. Fourth in the short-lived “The Next Wave” didactic SF series (published in the early nineties by Bantam Spectra), the book comes packaged with an after-word on “Intelligent Robots” written by none other than Isaac Asimov. It’s a good piece, though the novel naturally offers most of the same ideas in a more entertaining (albeit longer) fashion.

    What MacBride Allen sets up in his narrative is nothing else but an excuse to explore the legal nuts-and-bolt issues that might one day surround the artificial enhancements of humans. The Modular Man isn’t set particularly far in the future, and the writing style of the novel is much closer to legal thrillers than to more stereotypical SF. There’s certainly a lot of reasonable-sounding realism throughout the book, even though there may be too many issues to untangle simultaneously. But that’s what happens when all of your subplots relate to your central theme.

    As fiction, The Modular Man isn’t much of a show-stopper. The characters are serviceable, but their places in the narrative are clearly delimited. (And yet… and yet… you’d be surprised at how moving some passages of the book are.) The plotting all leads up to the predictable Big Courtroom Victory, though there are a few twists here and there. The writing style is brisk and businesslike.

    But as idea-fiction, The Modular Man is nearly exemplary. Ever chapter raises and interesting question or two, and even offers sort of a proposed solution, or at least a path worth exploring. There’s a definite pleasure in peeking in the future in that fashion; barring significant progress in nanotech, the increased reliance on artificial body parts is inevitable… and so will be the legal issues surrounding extended life-spans, artificial minds, non-humanoid bodies and such. So why don’t to get a conceptual head-start on everyone else and start studying tomorrow’s headlines now?

  • The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Sunken Ships and Treasures, Stephen Johnson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Alpha, 2000, 452 pages, C$24.95 tpb, ISBN 0-02-863231-1

    I really do like the “for Dummies” and the “Complete Idiot’s” series of non-fiction books. Despite their title, they usually offer a clever introduction to a variety of subjects. A glance at their catalog is usually good for a giggle or two (Elvis for Dummies?!), but the truth is that there are few other better ways to get a quick primer on a given subject than to settle down with one of their books. The Guide to Sunken Ships and Treasures is a primer on the exotic -but compelling!- field of, well, sunken treasures. This Guide offers a general primer on shipwrecks, underwater exploration, treasure-hunting and a few related subjects like pirates, nautical lore and salvage law. Most of the book is dedicated to a series of short primers on famous shipwrecks, from the antiquity to the cold war.

    There are certainly a lot of good stories in this Guide. The most fascinating section of the book are undoubtedly parts 3 to 5, which describe the event leading up to fifteen famous shipwrecks, from the 1622 Spanish treasure fleet to the USS Scorpion, without forgetting such famous names as the Bounty, Lusitania, Andréa Doria and the unavoidable Titanic. Even if you think you know a lot about some of these stories (like many of us are likely to do after seeing TITANIC), there’s a lot of interesting information presented in an accessible fashion. Furthermore, each of those fifteen chapters also highlights when and how the shipwrecks were later found and salvaged by modern treasure-hunters. It usually makes for fascinating reading, especially if you absorb it in small doses, one shipwreck per evening.

    Alas, the rest of the book isn’t as tightly focused. The first section of the guide, for instance, hops left and right, constantly repeating information on various subjects without a clear outline and a steady progression from one point to another. It really starts to grate after a few chapters, as the author sometimes refers to past pages, and just as often breathlessly re-introduces the same concept yet another time. The book’s overall organization is a murky mess: Part 6, which follows the “famous shipwreck” section, is about pirates and modern treasure-hunters; it’s unclear why it had to be segregated to the back of the book when it fits more naturally with a general introduction to the subject.

    This lack of organization is most visible at the page-per-page level of the book. The sidebars, which fit so naturally well in other Complete Idiot’s Guide books, here seem excerpted almost verbatim from the main body of the text. The Complete Idiot’s Guide series also ends its chapters with a brief recap of the chapter’s most essential points. Not so here, where “The Least you Need to Know” endbar goes fishing for the most trivial points of the chapters and passes them along like essential facts. I stopped reading them half-way through.

    All of the above leads me to wonder if Stephen Johnson’s manuscript was maybe written on spec as a stand-alone book, only to be retro-fitted later as part of the Complete Idiot’s Guide series. It would explain many of the highly annoying flaws of the book, especially when compared to the overall pleasant flow of the text. (The other reasonable explanation is that Johnson, a newspaper journalist, isn’t completely at-ease when structuring a longer work).

    It’s a shame, really, when considering the intrinsic interest of such an unusual and fascinating subject. The movie TITANIC did a lot to revive interest in shipwrecks (let’s not fool ourselves; it probably sparked the writing of this book too), but it’s not the only wreck out there and there is a lot more to learn about the field than simply deep-water submarines expeditions. Pick up this Guide to Sunken Ships and Treasures to learn more… but prepare for some frustration along the way.

  • Triangle of Death, Michael Levine & Laura Kavanau

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dell, 1996, 490 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-440-22367-9

    Much as most of the angry black hip-hop music is bought by white suburban kids, I’d be willing to bet that most of the military fiction out there is bought by comfortable suburban professionals like yours truly. As a law-abiding white-collar citizen, there’s an undeniable vicarious thrill in reading about fictional exploits of manly heroes who have sworn to defend our contemporary way of life by all means necessary.

    Triangle of Death is a military adventure in the same vein than the Rogue Warrior books supposedly co-written by ex-supersoldier Richard Marcinko. Flavorful first-person narration “by the author”, believable authenticity, disregard for non-operative authority and movie-like heroics are the norm here. Like the Rogue Warrior series, Triangle of Death seems almost custom-made to show us civilians how we really have no clue about the sacrifices needed to protect our freedom.

    Certainly, Michael Levine has traveled the same rough professional road than Marcinko: Both have served their country for a quarter-century (Marcinko as a SEAL, Levin as an undercover operative for the DEA), got shafted by their superiors, left the service in disgust, wrote best-selling non-fiction (Marcinko’s Rogue Warrior and Levine’s Deep Cover) and then turned not only to the conspiracy fringe, but also to fiction-writing. As of this writing, though, Marcinko seems to be the only one of the two who still regularly publishes fiction.

    As a novel, Triangle of Death is good tasty fun. The novel grabs you by the throat early on and rarely lets up as we follow the protagonist/narrator “Michael Levine” through a deep unauthorized undercover mission to rid the world of a potent new sex drug that could do no less than shake up civilization as we know it. The no-nonsense prose is filled with macho posturing, fascinating “authentic” details, a roller-coaster series of events and an overall sense of, yes, fun.

    It’s a hugely enjoyable read, especially as Levine battles impossible odds, hops around the world, gambles big, contacts friends in high places, spouts some Asian philosophy, undergoes specialized training and eventually pieces together a conspiracy involving the US government. Breathlessly exciting stuff, told in a spot-on style.

    You can read Triangle of Death as a straight-ahead novel and like it a lot. If you liked the first few volumes of Marcinko’s series (before noticing that it repeated itself), this novel is the closest thing to it. As a thriller, it’s more engaging than most of its brethrens and its aura of authenticity is only too rare.

    But there’s also a second level of entertainment that kicks in late in the novel, as the “Levine” protagonist announces his intention to publish a novel about the events of the story, hence blurring the line in between fiction and reality. That’s when readers with some time to lose might want to boot up their computers and do some serious research on Levine and his career.

    It’s fascinating stuff, especially given that it takes us to the fringes of the conspiracy-nut memesphere. We can find traces of Levine’s radio show, dedicated at exposing the government’s incompetence and corruption. From there, we find links to documents alleging massive conflicts of interest in between the government’s official “war on drugs” and the realpolitiks of international trade and policing work. Governmental interference in police works? Say it isn’t so!

    That particular brand of paranoia doesn’t serve too far-fetched or unbelievable, which makes the truth-or-fiction game even more fascinating. Triangle of Death thus becomes a veiled introduction at some serious thinking about the war on drugs, even from the point of view of someone who abhors criminals and addictive substances like Levine. What’s true and what isn’t? Maybe truth is once again stranger than fiction…