Book Review

  • 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…

  • 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!