Book Review

  • Bright Star, Robert Louis Stevenson III

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1998, 287 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-17301-1

    Before proceeding any further, let’s clear something up right away: Yes, this Robert Louis Stevenson is a descendant of Treasure Island‘s Robert Louis Stevenson. Reading Bright Star, it’s hard to avoid thinking that if Stevenson I was alive today, he’d write techno-thrillers. But then again, maybe Herman Melville would be writing military fiction set on an aircraft carrier, so who knows?

    Bright Star is an unabashed sea adventure, mixing high-tech gadgets, military operations, political intrigue and a dash of romance. It’s not really successful, but at least it’s short and to the point, which is somewhat of a rarity in today’s bloated thriller market.

    It starts promisingly enough, as a revolutionary high-energy orbital weapon system is demonstrated to the American military. They want it in orbit as soon as possible, but they better be patient, given that the shuttle transporting the satellite is quickly hijacked and sent to the bottom of the ocean. A rescue mission is unsuccessful in retrieving the weapon, so soon enough the hunt is on to retrieve the missing weapon.

    Technically sophisticated readers may arch their eyebrows at the above plot summary, with good reason: landing a shuttle in the ocean, from orbit, would seem to be an entirely inefficient strategy if the goal is to retrieve even parts of the shuttle intact. (There’s a reason why landing gear exist, and another that passenger aircrafts pretty much never survive an attempted sea landing; at even waterskiing speeds, water becomes roughly equivalent to a brick wall!) Furthermore, the hijacking of a sophisticated weapon is useless unless the weapon is backed by a sufficient architecture, which either implies terrorists (ridiculous) or a foreign power, which logically leads to a de facto declaration of war.

    The least we can say is that Bright Star isn’t really big on plausibility. It gets worse and worse throughout the novel, as our deep-diving protagonist is thrown from one contrived situation to another in which he’ll have to use his best diving skills to save the fate of the world! Bright Star is a lot like those cheap TV series where the protagonists are in a position to use their special capabilities over and over again (to quote the Simpsons, “We now return to Nightboat: the Crime-Solving Boat. Every week there’s a canal. Or an inlet. Or a fjord.” [“Maggie Makes Three”]) Here, everything eventually revolves around diving. When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail…

    I can normally forgive a lot of implausibility if I can believe in the rest of the novel, but that’s not the case here: The protagonists are macho, unbelievable, needlessly tortured and constantly horny. I’m not sure which worldview Stevenson is espousing, but the attitude of his male characters towards women was more creepy than endearing. The rest of their psychology doesn’t fare much better. Many of them die with scarcely a twinge of sympathy from us.

    Overall, that’s pretty much how I also feel about the whole novel. While there are intriguing elements here and there, the one-solution-fits-all plotting, the sinister characters and the indifferent prose all combine to produce a curiously flat techno-thriller. Bright Star isn’t particularly well-written; there are several interesting scenes that fail to take fire even as they should, because everything is described without panache or precision.

    Too bad, really.

    (I should probably note that Bright Star is a sequel of sort to Stevenson’s previous Torchlight, which I haven’t read. The wealth of back-story referred to in this second volume is voluminous enough to suggest that Bright Star might be improved by reading the first tome.)

  • Manifold: Origin, Stephen Baxter

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 2002, 441 pages, C$40.00 hc, ISBN 0-345-43079-4

    As an avid reader with a limited book-buying budget, I have come to hate inconsistent authors. Greg Bear, for instance; capable of turning out fantastic novels (Moving Mars) and then waste our time with boring crap (Dinosaur Summer). Up until now, Stephen Baxter had proven to be a dependable author, writing book after book of solid hard-SF, often with deficient characters but never without a good lot of interesting ideas.

    What makes Manifold: Origin so frustrating isn’t so much the conviction that Baxter is now an unreliable author as how it’s such a let-down from the first two volumes of the Manifold trilogy. Even as “thematic trilogies” go, this third volume is a bust.

    A quick reminder: With his Manifold trilogy, Baxter set out to examine the question of sentience in the universe, re-using a cast of similar characters in alternate universes. The first volume, Manifold: Time, posited that humans were alone and showed how they set out to solve the problem. In Manifold: Space, the universe was filled with intelligent life and most of it was hostile to each other. In Manifold Origin, the scope is limited to humans. All kinds of humans.

    As the novel begins, our common protagonist Reid Malenfant and his long-suffering wife Emma are flying over Africa. Stuff happens, a mysterious red moon appears, they eject from their plane and a giant vacuum cleaner scoops up Emma as Reid parachutes back to Earth. As with the previous Manifold novels, this is the beginning of Malenfant’s quest to set up an impossible space mission, in this case send a rescue shuttle to the red moon in order to rescue his wife.

    At least a hundred pages of filler pass until Malenfant manages to lift off. Once the rescue shuttle lands (with predictably catastrophic consequences), both Malenfants are stuck on the red moon, where they’ll discover that it’s a device traveling in between universes to cross-pollinate the various branches of humanity. It’s an interesting concept. Unfortunately, you have no idea how dull and unpleasant is the execution.

    The surface of the Red Moon isn’t a fun or peaceful place: Various sub-species of humanity cohabit there, most of them barely above pre-historical social levels. There is a considerable amount of cannibalism, inter-species warfare, senseless deaths and unpleasant mating rituals. Oh, and slavery too. I have accused Baxter of being grim before, but I really had no real grasp of how depressing he really could be. It gets worse, naturally. The end of the novel is as pointless as British SF authors can make’em, which is to say very.

    My main objection to Manifold: Origin is that it’s nowhere near as densely imagined as Baxter’s previous books. Good ideas are far and few in-between, and the whole novel constantly feels padded. Most of the non-homo-sapiens viewpoints can safely be skipped without any loss of comprehension. The whole mission-preparation segment is overindulgent, stopping the action just as we needed to speed up the plot. Even worse, the ending kills off most of the cast, doesn’t solve any problem, barely presents a lame explanation and leaves whatever remaining characters in an unbearable hell.

    The only good news are that given the loose relationship between the three volumes of the Manifold trilogy, you can read the first two and skip out entirely on the third without any harm. At the very least, don’t rush off and buy the hardcover like I did; you’ll be sorry.

    As far as I’m concerned, though, Baxter gets taken off not only my hardcover list, but off my buy list altogether. I’m sure he’ll get over it some day.

  • Storming Heaven, Kyle Mills

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper, 1998, 499 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-101251-3

    Looking at genres, from time to time, I despair: Is it possible to do something new or innovative any more? A standard thriller features a lone protagonist who loses everything by fighting a vast conspiracy. Betrayals, unlikely allies and multiple murders usually complete the picture. In this familiar context, is it possible to create something interesting?

    Well, yes. Any sufficiently-capable author can still work wonders with even the most overused plot. It all depends on good characters, interesting twists and good writing. Kyle Mills’ Storming Heaven doesn’t deviate a lot from the usual thriller plot, but the execution of the premise makes it all seem fresh, somehow.

    It starts with a murder, obviously. This time, a suburban millionaire couple is found dead in their home. Their teenage daughter is missing. FBI agent Mark Beamon (suitably renegade enough to serve as our protagonist) suspects something is up. His investigation eventually uncovers disturbing links between the young girl and a vast new religion with links to a telecommunication empire and a few paramilitary operatives.

    Scientology, anyone? Not quite. Clearly, some parallels exist: The Kneissians do pillory their opponent through lawsuits, have an ongoing feud with the German government and operate according to a series of “levels” similar to the real-world sect, but Mills take the concept much farther. The Church of Kneiss is actually closer to Scientology++, if you want: Mills imagines a new religion that consciously uses the latest techniques in marketing and social manipulation to set up a brand-new system of belief. Without the “limiting factor” [P.236] of outdated dogma that holds back established religions.

    Every jaded reader should be paying attention at this moment; while real-world governments are too ponderous to engage in conspiracies and businesses are too subject to market fluctuation to be menacing, religion is something else. When its influence comes crashing down on our protagonist, there isn’t much he can do to stop them. It’s a formidable opponent, and our hero has to use his wits to extricate himself from an impossible situation.

    Fortunately, this is yet another area where Kyle Mills distinguishes himself. We’ve seen countless smart renegade cops before, but few of them are as believable as Mark Beamon. He repeatedly demonstrates his intelligence without inexplicable leaps of logic or hand-waving. Storming Heaven‘s good characterization doesn’t stop there; the novel is filled with memorable supporting characters that resonate even weeks after finishing the novel. The young heroine herself is one of the most sympathetic kid-in-distress in recent memory, as she even gets a chance to shine her wits later in the novel.

    Somehow, everything else seems sweeter when good characters are at the core. Even though the plot mechanics may seem familiar, they work much better when we care about the humans they affect. Beamon’s descent in obscurity is stronger, and so is his inevitable triumph.

    A strong, unconventional, too neat conclusion ties everything together with an effective resolution that doesn’t dredge up the mano-a-mano cliché, and takes the time to deliver a few scenes of pure payback pleasure.

    Well-written and well-executed, Storming Heaven is a shining thriller that can restore your faith in the tired old conspiracy genre. Strong characters remain at the core of the narrative, making this novel more than your run-of-the-mill escapist entertainment. The religious sub-themes are deftly handled and may make you think hard for a moment or two. Mills vaults in the ranks of promising thriller writers. More, please!

  • The Ultimate Rush, Joe Quirk

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 1998, 374 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-312-96902-3

    If I’m forced to mention only one element that can transform an average thriller into a good one, it would be speed. Pacing, rhythm; call it how you want, but a novel that moves can be forgiven many things that would otherwise sour a book that just doesn’t go anywhere.

    The Ultimate Rush begins with a solid, exhilarating demonstration of speed, as our protagonist battles the treacherous streets of San Francisco to make a delivery… on rollerblades. Heroic maneuvers, near-death experiences, fast hip lingo and limpid writing make this intro one of the best since, ironically enough, the similar opening of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

    The rest of the novel eventually slows down, but in a few subsequent pages, we’re introduced to a protagonist who seems to embody coolness. Pierced narrator Chet Griffin isn’t only a blader, but he’s also an ex-hacker and a punk rock groupie with an unwholesome fascination for a lesbian friend of his. His new job as an elite courier, however, soon -very soon!- sends him rolling straight to various underworld elements, who quickly become highly unpleasant when they suspect him of peeking in the packages…

    As a novel, The Ultimate Rush initially lives up to its title. The novel alternates between terrific chase sequences and hilarious slice-of-life scenes; it’s very difficult not to like Chet and his merry band of friends. When, in mid-book, love strikes and we’re treated to a gratuitous sex scene (“Do me like a straight girl!”, etc. [P.206]), well, it’s like seeing two old deserving friends finally getting together. Quirk has a knack for describing memorable characters, and our attachment to them goes a long way to make us like the book.

    Quirk can’t resist being cooler than thou, though, and sometimes bites off more than he can chew. Yes, his taste in music is cool and impeccable (bands and album names are casually dropped to show off) but while I’m no authority on rollerblading, his hacking sequences are a bit off. They reprise, albeit with some skill, the usual cliché that gifted people can break in anywhere with only a few hours’ worth of work. Fortunately, there’s some hand-waving and not a little help from various virtual friends, but still… At least this gives form to one of the coolest deep-hacking scenes since Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. (On the other hand, well, everyone will easily guess the real identity of the cyber-antagonist chapters before it’s finally breathlessly revealed to us.) Realistic, accurate and carefully researched? Er, no.

    Technical quibbles aside, though, what really harms the book is a steady lessening of tension in the last hundred pages. The ending, which packages a shootout between various groups, should be thrilling but comes across as perfunctory and routine. The book also gets grimmer as it concludes, which somewhat contradicts the novel’s earlier carefree attitude.

    Fortunately, it ends up on a high note. Or nearly does; I’d recommend stopping at the penultimate chapter rather than the last unless, as the chapter title indicates, “you want a sequel”. It’s a huge downer, pointless and depressing, the kind of thing that’s best left as the first chapter of the sequel.

    But again, if you can ignore that pesky problem, The Ultimate Rush is a wild ride, a breakneck thriller with great sympathetic characters, crackling narration and a devastating sense of cool. If every other suspense novel you read seems flat and plodding, try this one. Zzzoom!

  • 8.4, Peter Hernon

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Jove, 1999, 460 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-515-12713-2

    Devastating earthquakes in North America. Only in California, you say? Not necessarily: The New Madrid Seismic Zone has fascinated geologists for years, especially given the documented evidence of a massive series of quakes in that area in 1811 and 1812. According to some, the new Madrid fault will shake again soon. If it does, it’s going to move along most of the American Midwest from Ohio to Mississippi, with catastrophic results…

    The New Madrid fault is starting to interest disaster novelists too, as demonstrate thrillers like Walter Jon Williams’s The Rift, Michael Reisig’s The New Madrid Run and Peter Hernon’s 8.4. I’ll cover Williams’ mammoth novel eventually, but if you have to pick and choose between one of the three, Hernon’s thriller is a perfectly serviceable illustration of the devastating potential of an earthquake in America’s heartland.

    As you might expect from countless disaster stories, 8.4 follows a familiar template of ever-increasing danger, up to the worst disaster —narrowly averted by an audacious last-minute operation. The protagonists are, of course, maverick earthquake specialists whose alarm cries are not taken seriously until the very last moment. It also helps that one of the heroes has been seriously traumatized by an earthquake before: This time… it’s personal!

    I barely jest. 8.4 has many fine qualities, but plotting originality isn’t one of them. In many ways, it doesn’t really matter. Despite its newfound attraction for novelists, the New Madrid Fault is new enough that simply showing the effects of a massive series of quakes in the American Midwest can be satisfying enough without resorting to sophisticated narrative techniques. In short, when the special effects are sufficiently spectacular, the characters and story can take a back seat.

    It’s a good thing, then, that 8.4 features some awe-inspiring scenes. Early quakes send the content of a graveyard bubbling to the surface. Major cities are trashed. Civil unrest requires the intervention of the army. A dam bursts open. A nuclear device is used. It’s all deliriously thrilling in the best tradition of disaster stories. (No relation with actual plausibility is implied or required.)

    Even so, 8.4‘s level of suggested realism is impressively convincing. Not only do the characters talk the talk (often ridiculously so!), but Hernon thoughtfully integrates a few technical diagrams to help the lectures along and provide some graphical conceptualization. Exposition? Heck, we’re talking about a World Fair’s worth of exposition. Geology buffs will lap it up, as will techno-thriller fans used to multiple paragraphs of technical details. (That is, unless they find major mistakes I couldn’t guess at)

    Given the above, it’s no surprise if so few characters actually come to life during the course of the novel. Some subplots are superfluous, especially when they don’t involve spectacular sights. We’re supposed to care about a major betrayal late in the book, but at most, the only effect is a nod of acknowledgement from the reader at the expected kink in the plot.

    It takes a special kind of reader to appreciate 8.4, mostly the same type of reader which worships hard science-fiction and authentic military thrillers. The indifferent characters definitely hurt the novel, but not as much as you might expect given the awe-inspiring disasters and the interesting details. Peter Hernon delivers a credible description of an upcoming New Madrid earthquake, but if you want a fully satisfying piece of fiction, well, that remains to be read.

  • The Deadly Frost, Terrence Moan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ballantine, 1979, 342 pages, C$4.00 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-28947-1

    At first, I didn’t intend to review this book.

    Understand that I do not write full-length reviews for every single book I read. Not only would this be prodigiously time-consuming (I’m having enough trouble as it is keeping up with my reviews backlog), but I have convinced myself a long time ago that not every book contains enough material to warrant critical discussion. I’d rather read fifty pages of a good book than to waste my time writing about how dull was another one. Average books are usually those who fall on the wayside: neither good enough to recommend nor bad enough to tear apart, those mid-list works are almost instantly forgettable.

    The Deadly Frost would be one of those average novels. The premise is intriguing enough, at least for catastrophe fetishists like myself; in an alternate future not-too-far-removed from 1979, a gigantic Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tanker suffers a catastrophic accident right in the middle of New York Harbour, unleashing a cloud of cryogenized methane. As soon as the winds pick up, the gas cloud will make its was to Brooklyn and Manhattan, where it will instantly freeze solid everything it encounters. Oh, and any spark will detonate the entire cloud. Eight million lives are at stake. The Brooklyn beaches are packed. Rush hour is about to begin. Welcome to frozen toxic catastrophe.

    I have great admiration for writers who can pull off this type of disaster-building tension, where every option is gradually made impossible, and disaster seems inevitable whatever happens next. In this case, Moan efficiently sets up his situation and gradually shrinks the box in which his protagonists are placed. Structure-wise, it reads a lot like a Hollywood blockbuster, with just enough death and destruction before the invariably triumphant finish. There is a ghoulishly enjoyable death-and-destruction vignette in chapter 20 involving the World Trade Center “Windows on the World” restaurant.

    This being said, it’s not a classic novel. For some reason, I was completely uninterested in the fate of any of the “average” characters caught in the disaster. I always wanted to go back to the president, the mayor, the engineer working at actually doing something about the problem. For this reason, the novel suffers a considerable lull in its second half before picking up again near the end. Even those active characters aren’t much more developed than their usual disaster-novel counterparts. In short, The Deadly Frost isn’t a particularly noteworthy novel once you’ve discarded the rather original premise.

    It’s one thing for me, as a lowly book reviewer, to say such a thing. It’s quite another to find out that the rest of the English-speaking world seems to have collectively forgotten the novel.

    I often do web searches on novels and authors, especially when they date a bit. I was stunned to find out that doing an Amazon search for “deadly frost” turned up one result, an out-of-print mention of the book as being written by “terence moan” [sic]. Even a Google search for “Terrence Moan” “deadly frost” turned up a measly two results. Moan himself seems to have become a real-estate developer in the Harlem area of New York City.

    So I set out to write this review, as a more substantial notice that yes, Terrence Moan’s The Deadly Frost did indeed exist and that despite its faults, it wasn’t a bad novel.

    As a reader, book-lover, collector and occasional librarian-groupie, I find the thought of a forgotten book to be infinitely disturbing; an affront to the natural order of human thought. New York City being fictionally transformed in a ball of toxic fire doesn’t creep me out nearly as much as the thought that a book once released by a major publisher might simply disappear from our collective memory, not even twenty-five years later.

    Now that would be a catastrophe.

  • T2: Infiltrator, S.M.Stirling

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 2001, 389 pages, C$37.95 hc, ISBN 0-380-97791-5

    I was in a bookstore, looking at the pile of remaindered books and felt torn between two futures, determined by me buying the book or not.

    On one hand, I loathe media-derived SF. It’s hard enough to find good original SF that authors who slum at playing by another person’s rules probably don’t fully deserve the title of “science-fiction author”. If you’re going to be restrained by a defined universe, why don’t you simply write contemporary fiction? The very intent of SF is to make us play with interesting new possibilities, not to dive once again in a tired old conventions.

    On the other hand, I really do hold the TERMINATOR film franchise in high regard. James Cameron’s time-travel thrillers might not be overly original, but they were certainly a great pair of filmed SF tales, not to mention a pair of excellent action movies. Any “officially approved” novel, especially when written by a “real” SF author like S.M. Stirling, would be a welcome thing.

    So I picked up T2: Infiltrator. Maybe, in some alternate universe, this space is occupied by the review of a soul-stirring modern classic, a masterpiece of deep personal resonance and disquieting social implications. Maybe, in that parallel universe, not picking up a book has led me to a fateful encounter with a stunning red-headed physicist/supermodel…

    But in this universe, you’re stuck with my bitter review of S.M. Stirling’s cash-grabbing T2: Infiltrator. And, oh boy, are you going to regret it.

    Nah, I’m kidding.

    Truth is, T2: Infiltrator isn’t that bad a novel. Stirling is too professional a writer to let a bad book slip under his watch, and if I’m not particularly impressed by Infiltrator, I’m not completely dismissing it either.

    On the other hand, well, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about it.

    T2: Infiltrator picks up nearly ten years after the events of JUDGEMENT DAY: Sarah Connor and her son John are living in South America, having successfully established new identities. They think they’re safe, both from Skynet and from the US government, who have branded them both as terrorists for their attack on Cyberdyne.

    But they’re wrong on both counts. Not only does the US government pick up their trail (a hideous coincidence makes it so that the “original human model” for the T-8000 is their new neighbor; he just happens to be an ex-special forces operative), but Skynet, after much mumbo-jumbo, sends another agent to track down and destroy John Connor. This time, Skynet has sent back a specially-trained human agent who, it hopes, will blend in a little bit better and be able to perform her mission. As if it wasn’t enough, Cyberdyne is back on-line (thanks to off-site backups and the remnants of an arm found in the foundry at the end of the second film) and Miles Dyson’s brother is an FBI agent who has sworn to track down his sibling’s killers.

    It’s not a particularly promising premise. Not only does it retread the first two films (once again, Sarah and John must elude killers, yadda-yadda), but it does so with far too much of a wink; inserting the “human” T-8000 is almost a wee bit too contrived, probably to help readers imagine Arnold S. in the story.

    But the execution does little to improve on the premise. The book is very wordy; a fatal flaw when taking off from a visual source. Re-reading William Wisher’s novelisation of T2, I was struck at the breakneck pace at which it flowed; in comparison, Infiltrator is like molasses, even during its action scenes.

    Even worse; by the end of the book, it’s obvious that this is a first volume of a series that might be very, very long. A considerable number of loose ends are left untied and ripe for sequels. Oh joy. The worst is that I probably won’t be able to help myself, and will read them anyway. Unless a future version of myself can somehow come back and warn me against them, naturally.

  • The Confederation Handbook, Peter F. Hamilton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 2000, 282 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-61027-5

    As a big fan of Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy, I was naturally curious about the “companion guide” to the series, a handbook bringing together in one handy volume all the considerable background information that served as source material for his 3000+ pages opus.

    My first impression was that this would be a fan-gouging rip-off, an impression scarcely dispelled by the cheap trichrome cover recycling graphic elements from previous book covers. The slim volume should have warned me, but no, nooo, I had to buy the darn thing.

    After reading it all, I won’t ask for a refund… but I’m still not totally happy about the end result.

    It’s not as if it’s not exactly what it purports to be; a handbook describing the universe in which the Night’s Dawn trilogy takes place. Successive sections examine the political environment (Adamist and Edenist cultures), hardware (starship and weapons), players (confederation members; Sol, Ombey, Tranquility, New California and the other planets/asteroids/habitats on which the series takes place) and alien races. There is also a dramatis personae (with a few details) and a timeline of event from here to then, though the last two can also be found in the trilogy books themselves.

    The first, and most discouraging conclusion formed after reading the Confederation Handbook is that there isn’t much in here that isn’t mentioned somewhere in the books. It’s presented in an organized fashion, of course, but there aren’t any startling revelations here for those who have read the series. (The story of Edenism is already well-described in the short story collection A Second Chance at Eden)

    I was also disappointed by the patchy organization of the book. Oh, it’s not as if everything isn’t at its place, but I would have preferred numbered headers (eg; 3.1.1.1: Earth Government), especially in Section 3 where the multiple levels of information are occasionally confusing. There are also patches where information provided for one entity isn’t provided for another (or is simple glossed over quickly), reflecting the amount of information available in the novels themselves.

    Faced with this, we can justifiably ask who is the audience for that book. Role-Playing Games enthusiasts will certainly enjoy having all that world-building information coherently organized, as would universe-building writers looking for inspiration.

    To Hamilton’s credit, the Handbook doesn’t contain many spoilers, making it a useful reference book for anyone reading the series. (Whatever spoilers there are are concentrated in the latter xenoc and characters section, and seemed clearly identified; avoid reading the detailed dramatic personae and the post-2611 information!)

    One thing in which the Confederation Handbook excels, though, is in evoking comfy memories of the original trilogy. Seeing all the background information squeezed in one coherent whole clearly illustrates the richness of Hamilton’s universe, as well as the dramatic possibilities so entertainingly exploited throughout the trilogy. If I hadn’t already read the trilogy, I’d be sold on doing so by now.

    Ultimately, though, the Confederation Handbook is a strange object, halfway between curio, resource and cash-grab. If you think this is a type of book that would appeal to you, by all means go make your local SF bookstore owner happy. If you have the slightest doubt that you’d be better off borrowing it from the bookstore, though, steer clear and follow your instinct. It’s not bad or disappointing, but it’s quite redundant.

  • Manifold: Space, Stephen Baxter

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 2001, 452 pages, C$36.00 hc, ISBN 0-345-43077-8

    The possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence has fascinated science-fiction writers even since H.G. Wells’ novels, and probably even before then. Certainly, when considering current scientific knowledge, there is nothing particularly surprising in that what happened once on Earth may certainly happen elsewhere. Combine that to the multiplicity of planets in the Milky Way alone, and the probability of extra-terrestrial intelligence becomes not merely conjecture, but quasi-certitude.

    There is one problem, though; even though we have looked hard for any trace of extra-terrestrial life, the vexing reality is that we have been unable to see, from our limited perspective, any trace of ET intelligence. No unambiguous visual sign. No radio signals. No markers on Earth or on the moon. Nothing. Given the galaxy’s numerous planets and lengthy life-span, any civilization breaking through should be able to conquer the galaxy in a matter of millennia. Why aren’t we seeing anything of the sort?

    This question (the Fermi paradox, from Enrico Fermi’s famous axiom “Where are they? If they existed, they would be here.”) has fascinated many, but Stephen Baxter has devoted an entire trilogy at trying to figure out plausible reasons why we might not be seeing anyone else at the moment. We should use the word “trilogy” loosely, though, as the Manifold series re-uses the same protagonist (Reid Malenfant) and some recurring characters in wholly different universes where even the nature of reality might be different.

    In Manifold: Time, Baxter showed a universe where humanity was alone, and the steps they took in order to correct in situation. In Manifold: Space, there are aliens everywhere. And they’re not really friendly.

    To some degree, Baxter’s logical train of thought brings him to the same conclusions than Greg Bear (The Forge of God) and Charles Pellegrino (The Killing Star, etc.): Natural competition for resources, the awesome powers of extra-solar civilizations and plain simple fear all lead to a winner-takes-all mentality. To put it bluntly, whoever wipes out everyone else will win.

    Manifold: Space comes from the British tradition of SF, and it’s far from being a cheery book. Speaking as a colonial, the Brits know a thing or two about losing an empire, and this melancholy permeates Space like a stain. As Malenfant’s travels take him further and further is the far-future, we get a long-scope view of human evolution, with all its foibles Humanity either destroys itself or is wiped out by external forces a few times in this novel, and the effect isn’t a lot of fun. Interestingly enough, we get a better appreciation for the awesome power of time in this novel rather than in Manifold: Time.

    If you want to continue comparing this novel to its predecessor, the resemblances are interesting: Both novels are obvious work of ideas, not characters: Malenfant is borderline-unlikable, and the other characters are cyphers more than anything else. Both books also share a curious structure in which the biggest punches are to be found at the middle, and not the end of the narrative, which gradually loses power as it advances and diverts itself in meaningless side-shows.

    But the novel’s impact stands out, mostly as a boffo twelve-pack of hard-SF Big Ideas. Anyone with an interest in the Fermi Paradox will love Baxter’s speculations, even though it’s hard to get away from other SF authors’ thinking on the subject. Manifold: Space could have used some extra trimming (the whole natural-nuclear-reactor subplot plot branch struck me as a let-down), but I don’t think that any hard-SF fan will seriously regret reading the whole book. It’s decent high-powered idea-driven speculative fiction and a decent companion volume to Manifold: Time. Good stuff for hard-SF enthusiasts.

  • Atlas Shrugged (35th anniversary edition), Ayn Rand

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Signet, 1957 (1992 reprint), 1057 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-17192-6

    I know that, no matter what, I won’t be satisfied with this review.

    Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is bigger than most of the books I usually review. Not merely in a purely physical sense, but also in terms of ideas, reputation and social significance. It champions unusual ideas in a vigorous fashion. It has been credited with the creation of a cult/philosophy. It’s been hailed by various commentators either as a masterpiece or pure trash. Some call it their favorite book. Others think it’s simply obnoxious. You can find endless debates (some of theme quite ridiculously profound) everywhere on the world wide web. (noblesoul.com/orc/ is a great place to start. That they link to this review only adds to my own good opinion of the site.)

    Trying to fit my own feelings about the book in 650 words, when considering the rich decade-old debate already surrounding the book, is somewhat intimidating. But I’ll give it a good try.

    Atlas Shrugged starts as hard-core industrial fiction detailing the tribulations of a railroad company. All is not well in that world, though, as lassitude and plain apathy seems to corrupt society from within. Our heroine Dagny Taggart does her best to succeed, but she ultimately comes to realize that someone, behind the scenes, is doing his best to stop the motor of the world. “Who is John Galt?” indeed.

    It doesn’t take a long time to figure out that Atlas Shrugged is not only science-fiction (it is!), but that it takes place in an alternate pocket universe with scant relation to ours. The curiously Soviet industrial feel of the book, with its pronounced brushed-steel aesthetics, is a dead giveaway. So are the ridiculously convoluted relationships between the thirty or so characters populating the book. Yes, Atlas Shrugged is one of those imagined worlds where everyone knows each other. (This becomes very handy whenever Rand gets around to postulating her main conceit, which depends on a few dozen people around the country.) The psychology of any of the characters is also incompatible with our reality, from the impossibly virtuous protagonists to the cackling villains. The antagonists of Atlas Shrugged are so impossibly evil and idiotic that you can only wonder at how they’re supposed to form an effective force. Rand stacks the deck a wee bit too much in her favor to make an impact. It just ends up being laughable.

    And frankly, once I started giggling at Atlas Shrugged, it proved very difficult to stop. Strip the empress of her clothes, and Rand becomes a humorist. Brain-damaged characters spouting contrived slogans in a made-up universe; funny! Chapter VII “This is John Galt Speaking”, a fifty-page monologue clumsily stuck in the narrative; hilarious! The conviction by which Rand’s protagonists are so certain of what they’re doing; riotous!

    As you may gather, I wasn’t completely convinced by Rand’s philosophy, or even her narrative. It surprised me somewhat; as someone routinely accused of having too much faith in other people’s rationality, I should be a prime candidate for Rand’s “Objectivist” philosophy.

    Instead, it strikes me as a dubious “rational” justification for acting like a selfish child. Calling other people “leeches” isn’t much of an argument. Superficially, Objectivism looks like an excuse for doing whatever you want without regard to other people. And that’s just, well, irrational. Some college students might love it, though…

    Still, I don’t regret reading Atlas Shrugged. It is sort of an imposed event for serious readers, a good philosophy primer (if only on why you don’t agree) and an interesting book any way you look at it. Even despite the infamous monologue and the insufferable lengths, it was rather pleasant to read, and certainly managed to hold my attention. But then again, I did giggle a lot: “‘Who are you?’ screamed some terror-blinded voice. / ‘Ragnar Danneskjöld!’ “

    • Price of the paperback: .50c at a garage sale.
    • Time to read the book: Two weeks.
    • Being amused by Objectivism: Priceless!

  • 1632, Eric Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 2000, 597 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-31972-8

    (read as an e-book, freely available from www.baen.com)

    I have always been, still am and will forever remain a paper-book geek.

    Still, there’s always some room for experimentation. When I got to test a Palm Pilot for the office, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to do a reality-check on the whole e-book concept. What can I say; I was skeptical. In order to ensure validity between this experiment and my usual reading regimen, I went to a well-known publisher (Baen) and downloaded the freely-available electronic version of one of their books. No sir, no vanity-press e-book amateur drivel for me!

    Thus equipped, I started reading on the tiny 150×150 screen of my Palm Pilot… and it proved to be a reading experience more or less undistinguishable from the paper page thing. Sometimes even better; the Palm Mobipocket Reader software has its faults, but the instant-bookmark setup is a boon, and so is the backlit screen. Not to mention that a Palm Pilot can be, with some slight contortions, be read with only one hand, which is difficult to do with a paperback without breaking the spine of it. Works for me.

    What about the novel itself, then?

    It appears that I was lucky with my selection: Eric Flint’s 1632 is a terrific adventure book, an SF update of those Robinsonade stories I gleefully read throughout my teenage years.

    Flint barely tries to justify his setup: thanks to an alien “time shard”, the West Virginia town of Grantville (mostly populated with hardy coal miners) is transported back to 17th-century Germany, smack in the middle of belligerent empires during the Thirty Years’ War. After a few moments of astonishment, the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America chooses the side of good old-fashioned American freedom and justice. A machine-gun-powered Second American Revolution gets underway… in the heart of Europe.

    As a non-American, it’s a bit difficult not to smile at such “America Über Alles” stories, but if my American readers can forgive the smirk, the truth is that 1632 remains one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read lately. (Naturally, the fact that I read it “on a break” from the middle of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged may have helped.) Flint is a gifted novelist, and the cast of characters he assembles for 1632 is well-worth cheering for. Mine workers, teachers, teenagers and farmers unite to show barbarians a lesson, and frankly, our time couldn’t send better representatives to the renaissance than a bunch of blue-collar workers. Once the initial confusion evaporates, Grantville has to figure out how to survive gracefully in a world without modern conveniences. Meanwhile, forces amass to attack the town, romance buds and a government is formed. It’s all quite fascinating, and a lot of fun whenever contemporary gadgets are unleashed on woefully ill-equipped armies. Flint isn’t a stupid writer, and the aura of realism that emanates from the accumulation of details goes a long way towards forgiving the rather easy premise.

    The writing style is brisk and limpid: Flint has an eye for good scenes and sympathetic characters. The only limp passages take place whenever we get away from the Americans for some insipid court intrigue. The rest is all gravy. I found myself reading passages of the book away from my daily bus commute, which is where I had told myself I’d read 1632.

    …and that brings us back to the e-book experience. After 1632, I have no doubt that the concept is viable from the reader’s point of view. I would have enjoyed the novel on paper or on-screen, and so reading it on the Palm Pilot made no difference. I’m not so convinced, however, that the e-book is a viable business model. A few days after finishing 1632, I eventually made my way to the local SF bookstore and bought a copy for my library, an act which may be seen as both damning and praising the whole e-book concept. In the end, I may remain firmly committed to dead-tree bricks but I won’t give out that skeptical frown anymore whenever I hear someone rant about electronic books.

  • Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    New Riders, 2000, 195 pages, C$52.95 tpb, ISBN 0-7897-2310-7

    Good web design is a blend of science, art and experience that isn’t properly appreciated by most people, including many web designers themselves. Not only do web sites have to look good and use technology effectively, they also have to serve some of the most bug-ridden hardware ever conceived: humans.

    Web design is merely the latest offshoot of usability, a field with a long and illustrious history. Ever since someone has mass-marketed something for others, human/machine interaction, ergonomics, interface conception and pleasant design have found an essential place in industry. The challenge of the web is that now everyone with a text editor and an image-manipulation program has to care about usability. But whereas car manufacturer wouldn’t dream of releasing a car without expensive input from ergonomics specialists, companies often unaccountably entrust their financial future to HTML weenies without an inkling of interest in human factors.

    Web-usability guru Jakob Nielsen has made a name for himself by becoming an expert at pointing out other people’s web boo-boos. His best-known book, Designing Web Usability is well-worth its cover price for any serious webmaster. But he’s not the only guru in cybertown, and that’s why Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think! is definitely worth a look.

    From the deliberately provocative title onward, Krug’s book is refreshingly breezy. Light, funny and to the point, Don’t Make Me Think! is, as the sub-title indicates, a non-nonsense primer. Written by a professional for a wide audience, Think! is neither too technical nor too abstract, striking a balance between all the different parties -and requirements- involved in building a good web site. The top-level view of web design is also a refreshing change after once too many nuts-and-bolts HTML reference guides.

    It’s a short book (under 200 pages!), but don’t be fooled by the size: Every page counts and Krug practices his own precepts (“Happy talk must die”, “Omit -needless- words”, etc.) with ruthless efficiency. Don’t Make me Think! is cleverly illustrated and the book’s layout is exemplary in a technical field where embarrassing mistakes have been committed in the past. (Again, refer to Nielsen’s book) This is a book written and designed in such a way that you’ll rush through an initial read, but re-read again and again in order to refresh your memory.

    Krug’s main bugaboos are worth repeating; Don’t make users think (guide their eyes, guide their minds and eventually they will discover the rest for themselves), be succinct (cut every word that doesn’t deserve to be there), include good navigation (often simply offering multiple ways of getting to what they want) and test-test-test! (Even cheap user testing -explained here- is better than no testing at all)

    There is a lot for everyone in Don’t Make me Think!, from the technician to the CEO. Usability testing won’t be of interest to the techy-in-a-cubicle, but the how-users-think should be sufficient to avoid the worst mistakes. As if to assuage guilt, Krug gently uses real-world examples in how good designs can be improved even further.

    Combining great advice with a compulsively-readable writing style, Don’t Make Me Think! ranks up there with Nielsen’s Designing Web Usability as one of the few dead-paper resources worth owning by pro web designers. Read it once, and then keep it close.

  • The Art & Science of Web Design, Jeffrey Veen

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    New Riders, 2001, 259 pages, C$67.95 tpb, ISBN 0-7897-2370-0

    As a technical professional with a deep interest in web design, I was pleased, over the last year, to see the emergence of a new type of how-to books. More focused on the theory and bigger issues of web publishing than hands-on coding concerns, these books exemplify the emerging maturity of the web. Whereas before the field was moving too quickly and hapzardly to allow for any formal (written) literature, the recent stabilization of standards and depth of past case studies is having an impact.

    Jeffrey Veen is one of those old-timers with a lot of experience to share. He’s been working for Wired Digital, involved in web standards work and is generally recognized as pretty hot stuff in web design communities. Now he’s ready to spill the beans and share his experience in The Art & Science of Web Design.

    It’s a heterogeneous book divided in eight sections that can be read more or less independently. Rather than to generalize excessively, I’ll cover the book section by section, and so…

    [1]: Foundations starts the book with a conceptual bang. In less than thirty pages, Veen provides a historical context for the web, as well as a solid theory on why and how to develop the web. This is easily the book’s highlight, with its emphasis on bigger issues rather than nitty-gritty.

    [2]: Interface Consistency is a case study of other sites, and a powerful theoretical argument in favor of navigational standards. This section is complementary to the work of Jakob Nielsen. Again, it’s wonderful stuff if you like to think on a higher plane of design.

    [3]: Structure is another good theoretical primer on how to organize information, how to differentiate between various organizational schemes and why some are more appropriate than others.

    [4]: Behavior starts promisingly enough with a good argument in favor of rule-based design, but slowly peters out with an interesting but incongruous technical demo of a headline-resizing piece of code.

    [5]: Browsers helps to understand the awesome responsibility of web designers in accomodating users through their browsers. A good technical overview, maybe a bit too short.

    [6]: Speed is an argument for clever simplicity, well-needed at a time where designers tend to assume high bandwidth for everyone.

    [7]: Advertising is a short but interesting primer on how to advertise -and to accomodate advertising- on the web.

    [8]: Object-oriented Publishing is somewhat of a let-down as a final chapter, being mostly a case study of one sample web site presumably done by Veen. It lacks the oomph required to send off such a book and also piles up a lot of technicalities at once.

    Overall, though, I was impressed by Veen’s chatty style and overall grasp of the bigger picture of web design. There was a lot in there that I already knew, but reminders always help, and they’re not overly annoying when they’re backed-up by good arguments.

    I wasn’t so fond of the book’s latter half, which seemed out-of-place in a paper-media reference work. If I want Javascript code that will resize my headlines based on their length, I’ll head out to a web site. It doesn’t belong with the theoretical information that should be contained in a book destined to remain on my professional reference shelf. It’s almost as if past the first few chapters, Veen had to use filler in order to satisfy a publishing contract…

    In the same vein, it’s hard to say who’s the target audience for the book. Its scattershot approach make it more efficient as a periodical refresher than a reference source. It’s mixture of theory and coding puts in in reach of both managers and tech weenie; maybe it’ll help both realms understand each other, or maybe it’ll confuse them forever. It’s a worthwhile read, sure, but unfortunately it’s also unsatisfying. A lot of good stuff, improperly tied in together. Maybe it’ll all be fixed in the upgrade…

  • Manifold: Time, Stephen Baxter

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 2000, 440 pages, C$34.00 hc, ISBN 0-345-43075-1

    Stephen Baxter is a hard-SF author with quite a few outstanding deficiencies, but one thing he’ll never be accused of is lacking ambition. In his previous novels, he imagined an alternate manned expedition to Mars (Voyage), wrote a sequel to H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (The Time Ships) and collaborated with Arthur C. Clarke on a novel about the end of privacy and history (The Light of Other Days).

    It’s an impressive résumé, but with the first volume of the Manifold Trilogy, Baxter demonstrates that he’s not going to stop there. Manifold: Time‘s plot focuses on Reid Malenfant, a business tycoon with a fascination for space exploration. In only a few pages, Baxter takes us back to a familiar hard-SF situation: Feeling betrayed by NASA, a rich entrepreneur tries to establish a private space program but is hampered by the overregulated government agencies. It’s all very comfortable.

    But soon afterward, the novel takes a turn towards originality. Our protagonist is warned that the human race will end in two hundred years. A space mission is to be manned by a squid. Hyper-intelligent children are popping up everywhere on the globe. As if that wasn’t enough, an attempt to receive messages from the future actually succeeds. It heavy stuff, instantly addictive for anyone -you know you you are- looking for their next big crunchy hard-SF novel. There are physics lectures, lumps of explanatory narrative, evil Luddites, a reformat-the-universe ending and other genre staples.

    It all ties in together, in what is occasionally a very loose fashion. Manifold: Time is a fascinating novel, but I don’t think you can say it’s a tightly-focused one. For one thing, I happen to think that the intellectual climax of the book happens mid-way through, as the protagonists get a glimpse at the future of the galaxy. Promising elements that could yield another book’s worth of material -the biggest single example being the squids- are dropped unceremoniously as the novel advances.

    For another, Manifold: Time relies heavily on frustrating clichés of the genre. Reid Malenfant is one; while I can appreciate SF’s need for multicompetent Heinleinian characters, Malenfant isn’t particularly well developed beyond being an icon of how determination can be a palliative for a bunch of skills. He’s a bit too caricatural to work well in this environment, and has done too much in his life to be believable in the context of the novel.

    Baxter, like many of his hard-SF colleagues, doesn’t really believe in the goodness of humankind, and once again manipulates his vision of humanity to irrational extremes. In this novel, hyper-intelligent children are beaten up, thrown away and forgotten, then threatened and nuked by governments. It smacks of personal trauma (Was Baxter beaten up for being too smart in grade school? Magic Eight-Ball says yes.) but as for myself I’m getting tired of seeing religious nuts and irrational cults spring up in reaction to change in every single g’damn hard-SF novel. On a related point, I found the mass social reaction to the Carter catastrophe to be far too extreme and simplistic. Humans have an unlimited capacity for self-denial and I happen to think that we’ve immunized ourselves to “end of the world” scenarios with Y2K event and such.

    But never mind my last little rant. Truth be told, I had a lot of page-turning fun while reading Manifold: Time, and I will be reading the next volume in the series shortly. It’s easy to target Baxter for his usual tics and problems, but on the other hand, it must be pointed out that there’s a lot of good fun extrapolation elsewhere in the book. I may not believe in the Carter Catastrophe at all, even from a statistical standpoint, but it does bring a delicious urgency to the novel up to its spectacular finish.

  • Hello, He Lied, Lynda Obst

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Little Brown, 1996, 246 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-316-62211-7

    We’ve seen quite a few books about Hollywood actors. We’ve seen an substantial number of books on Hollywood directors. Screenwriters take delight in writing books about themselves. The only “big” credits we seldom read about are producers.

    (With one important exception: The flashy crash-and-burn career of Don Simpson -TOP GUN, FLASHDANCE, etc…- has resulted in one chainsaw biography (Charles Fleming’s High Concept), but there was nothing typical about the drug-fuelled life of excess he led, nor anything ordinary in his producing career.)

    This paucity may be justifiable. Producers don’t have a set job description: They buy scripts, finesse stars until they extract a commitment, put together an offer for studios, arrange for financing, supervise operations on the set, arrange marketing campaigns, try to ensure awards for their movies… it just goes on and on. Maybe producers just don’t have enough time for writing books about what they do.

    Now, at least one producer has slowed down and published an autobiographical account of her own experience in Hollywood. Lynda Obst’s account is in many ways a disappointing account of what a typical producer does, but at least it’s better than nothing.

    After a perfunctory introduction that explains how she came to land in Hollywood (in short; her then-husband moved), Obst starts to explain the pre-movie life of producers. It may very well be the most heart-wrenching thing I’ve read about Hollywood this year. Turns out that the life of a producer is enough to make a casual cinephile wonder in awe at how anything gets done in Hollywood. Producers will buy scripts, try to interest stars, go in meetings with studio head, try to satisfy large groups of people and get them to agree to spend million of dollars on creative projects. The tiniest things can cause a deal to collapse, sending everyone back to square one. When you factor in the fact that everyone is on tight schedules, well, things have a tendency to become very complicated. Obst’s frustrating experience with the OUTBREAK project is enough to make you swear off ever moving to California.

    All of the above has to be accomplished in cooperation with people with more power than intelligence, using a highly sophisticated set of social codes and ritualized small-talk. Obst thinks she’s being witty in describing how things get done in Hollywood, but for any outside reading up, it’s just disheartening; if government was run like this, there would be a revolution in a matter of days. (Oh, wait…)

    The rest of the book is a mixed bag: Obst includes a chapter on the place of “Chix in Flicks” that, again, is as depressing as it’s self-serving. It’s immediately followed by a chapter about life on location, which is actually funny and informative; I don’t recall reading about these things elsewhere, and that’s worth something.

    As far as the whole book goes, though, it’s not a completely satisfying reading experience. Throughout the book, Obst includes segments and anecdotes she obviously finds funny. Alas, you must have to be an insider in the industry to be amused, because everything comes across as markedly less amusing that she must think it is. A few anecdotes fall completely flat. Others simply don’t make sense. Sign of the author’s place in the Hollywood food chain, there isn’t much here that’s self-critical or even highly critical of the industry. You’d think that a really shrewd observer could be able to step back and point out the problems… but Obst actually seems to enjoy all of the insanity. Furthermore, would it be cynical to point out that Obst’s Hollywood oeuvre isn’t anything worth crowing about? It’s not as if her movies (BAD GIRLS? ONE FINE DAY? Even THE FISHER KING?) are exceptional or uniformly better than others…

    Still, Hello, he Lied is an interesting book. It focused on an under-appreciated role in the Hollywood machine and might even serve to illuminate the dark recesses of the industry. It’s not much of a funny book, as much because of its stylistic shortcomings as for its discouraging subject matter. I just wish there was a better book on the subject.