Book Review

  • Eagle Against the Stars, Steve White

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Baen, 2000, 288 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-57846-4

    The rabid patriotism of Americans will never cease to amaze, especially when considered in the context of Science-Fiction stories. You would think that a genre so concerned with change and other global -nay, universal- issues would realize that simple patriotism is a self-limiting expression that ultimately belittle all achievements from outside one’s country. But a quick glance at such rah-rah-rah works like INDEPENDENCE DAY… well, point is made.

    Among SF publishers, Baen has always been regarded at the stronghold of a certain type of ultra-patriotic, libertarian thinking that simply exists nowhere else in the world. Eagle Against the Stars, from simply the title itself, would appear to be a work that plays strongly in this vein. Even the cover blurb might turn off some people with statements such as

    “America was enjoying victory … that’s why the aliens chose it to use as puppet in dominating the planet. We were already set up to do it; now we would do it for them. […] But the Lokaron were going to lesson from their victims, a lesson they weren’t going to like one bit”

    By this point, Baen probably lost a few sales from people repelled by this rhetoric. Fortunately (or not, for those who bought the book for this reason), Eagle Against the Stars isn’t as much about Americans-against-aliens as you’d think. True to SF form, the aliens aren’t as eeevil as you might think, and the rebel Americans aren’t as virtuous as the protagonist thinks they are.

    If books were evaluated on solely the basis of overturned assumptions, Eagle Against the Stars would rate highly. Unfortunately, details like sustained plotting, good characters and unobtrusive didactism also come into play, and Eagle Against the Stars fares less well in these areas. Too bad, because the novel otherwise demonstrates a good setup, an adequate grasp of SF elements -including overturning some of the most unlikely assumptions of lesser SF- and a writing style that shows promise despite a certain lack of interest. It’s not that it’s bad, but that it’s padded and slow, slow, slow…

    Surprisingly, what interest there is in the story comes from the not-so-hidden political agenda of the author and his pointed barb against (all together now:) environmentalists, socialists and communists. Arrr, those damn liberals! Always meddling with the good old libertarians! Never mind that it’s hard to believe that all independent spirit could be sucked out of the United States in a single generation… that was probably caused by the alien mind rays. (Liberals and aliens? Egawd!)

    Fans of political SF might enjoy this novel, but other readers will be disappointed, for despite White’s depth of historical sources and writing abilities, he doesn’t deliver much more than a standard adventure-with-twists that we’ve seen so many times before. James Clavell turned out Shogun when he tackled cultural clash between civilizations of different technological levels, but White isn’t Clavell nor -from the book- is he interested in becoming one.

    But then again, this is a Baen book, which for all their good fun isn’t exactly known as a reservoir of thoughtful SF. Though they are known as publishers of good action/adventure, and Eagle Against the Stars isn’t too good at that either.

    A quick final word on the cover illustration: Not only is it rather tacky to cover a large part of the illustration with blue foil, but the alien’s elongated chin is simply too funny for words. What is it with prominent chins that instills amusement? Will we ever know? Does Jay Leno have an opinion?

  • Anno Dracula, Kim Newman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1992, 469 pages, C$6.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-71591-7

    An interesting trend in turn-of-the-millennium genre fiction is the fusion of different literary tools and assumptions to produce a result that isn’t quite one thing or another. Suddenly, dragons are over New York, being battled by alien-technology stealth bombers and causing a vampire to fall in love with a policewoman. Some readers love fusion, some can’t stand it.

    One particularly popular type of fusion literature is steampunk, in which -roughly- contemporary SF elements are transplanted in Victorian England. Steam-driven spaceships are equipped with computers driven by pulley and lever, Jack the Ripper meets Sherlock Holmes, Queen Victoria makes a cameo appearance and there are enough in-jokes to satisfy anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the time.

    Anno Dracula (perhaps the precursor of the fusion trend, dating back from 1992) goes beyond what eventually became the clichés of steampunk. Here, Kim Newman assumes that everything that happened in Bram Stoker’s Dracula was true, with one important difference; Vlad Tepes escaped the final showdown and using his aristocratic credentials, eventually married Queen Victoria. The England of Anno Dracula is now populated with a new nobility of vampires, with their assorted entourage dominating the country. But then, someone starts killing vampire prostitutes in Whitechapel…

    In almost any way you choose to look at it, Anno Dracula is an exceptional book. The alternate history drawn by Newman is somewhat plausible (which is to say, as plausible as a vampire-drived story can be), fascinating and rather frightening. The details are well-positioned to give maximum depth to the story and wink at the knowledgeable reader. Jack the Ripper co-exists with Doctor Jeckyl, Mycroft Holmes, Queen Victoria, Bram Stoker and Van Helsing…

    But it takes more than a neat steampunk universe to make a good book (witness Colin Greenland’s Harm’s Way) and fortunately, Newman also scores high on the more usual fictional standards. Anno Dracula is driven by unusually interesting characters, from a shadowy British special agent to a Vampire eldress to a genial newspaper reporter to an ambitious newly-vampirized doctor. Newman, despite setting his tale in Victoria England, wisely resists fluffing up his writing style, and Anno Dracula remains compulsively readable all the way through. The memorable conclusion is lavishly built-up and quite satisfying, finding victory where one wouldn’t expect.

    Two sequels have been published to date (The Bloody Red Baron and Judgement of Tears) and if it is doubtful that they will be as enjoyable -most of the fun of Anno Dracula is in discovering the alternate history-, they certainly deserve a read based only on the first volume.

    It’s worth noting that the enjoyment one will get from Anno Dracula is proportional to one’s existing knowledge of literary genre, Victorian England and vampire novels. Anno Dracula is akin to a graduate-level read in that it can be enjoyed by anyone, but contains so many references to other sources that readers with extra cultural baggage will get so much more out of it. A cursory knowledge of Stoker’s Dracula alone -if only from the movie version-, helps tremendously.

    Fusing horror elements with SF world-building and a mystery structure, Kim Newman has achieved more than the simple addition of elements and produced a novel far above the rest of what one would usually find on the “horror” bookshelf. Anno Dracula simply has too much ambition beyond the simple scare to avoid being labelled a darn good book. Fascinating experiment, great entertainment or best-of-breed genre novel, it’s hard to overstate how Anno Dracula is so successful on so many levels. One of the best vampire books to date. Strongly recommended, for a wide array of readers.

  • Bios, Robert Charles Wilson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1999, 208 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86857-X

    Those poor, poor SF authors.

    Earning a living -in any discipline- takes a lot of hard work. In the SF field, it takes more than that: dedication, creativity and a sense of how to please a crowd.

    And the SF crowd is one of the worst there is. It’s not enough to give them an interesting concept wrapped in a good story. No, they ask for memorable characters, clear writing, snappy dialogue and good value for their money.

    As a result, current SF authors have to uphold the professionalism developed in the fields ever since the pulp era. SF, like it or not, has become a small professional industry, and as with any pop culture product, readers can be expected to demand more for their entertainment dollars.

    In most ways, Robert Charles Wilson’s Bios is a fine piece of Science-Fiction. The premise itself is intriguing: In a future where interstellar space travel is hideously expensive, humans have found one planet with a full biological ecology: Isis. The only problem; Isis’s natural ecosystem is “spectacularly toxic” to Earth life. “The entire planet is a permanent Level Four hot zone” promises the cover blurb.

    Fun stuff, especially given Wilson’s initial premise. Bios‘s protagonist, Zoe Fisher, is sent on one of those all-too-expensive trips to Isis, where she is to undergo testing as a human built to be resistant to the hostile biosphere. Meanwhile, scientists stationed on and above Isis begin to see increasing levels of viral outbreaks inside “safe” areas. Something is happening, and it doesn’t promise anything good.

    All throughout, Wilson builds his imagined future with an admirable economy. In a short time, he establishes the future dystopia that is Bios‘s universe, what with its new aristocracy, its pitiless corporations/political parties and overall aura of nastiness. This is the first time that one of Robert Charles Wilson’s novels explicitly takes place in an appreciably distant future, (he’s previously meddled a lot with alternate universes or futuristic element in contemporary settings) and he’s up to the difficult task of world-building with an assured professionalism.

    His writing is also clear and to the point. Bios can be read compulsively, with its short length and dynamic storytelling. There is a memorable outbreak scene halfway through the book, and the final pages also pack a lot of interesting material. Few novel from Wilson are obscurely written up to the point of being uninteresting (Gypsies being the only notable exception) and Bios is even more engaging than its predecessors.

    But, as his previous novel Darwinia suffered from a rather spectacular structural failure, Bios‘s considerable strengths must be tempered with significant warnings. The premise outlined above might lead readers to imagine a certain plot. Unfortunately, that is pretty much exactly what you get, especially if you’re familiar with the sense of doomed gloominess present in some of Wilson’s work.

    To this predictability, let’s also be crassly commercial and point out that Bios‘s snappiness and readability is matched by its slim physical size: at barely more than 200 pages, Bios is almost half the length of today’s average SF novel. (But, at $32.95 Can, still fully the price of today’s SF novel) This is no breakneck densely-textured novel like Ian MacLeod or Greg Egan’s usual output: Once you start looking at the story with the assumption that this is a padded novella, yes, extrataneous parts seem to rise out of the novel. Unfortunately, there is as of now no market for SF novellas. Was Bios padded from a story too long to be novella and too short to be a satisfying novel? That’s a question to ask Robert Charles Wilson at the next SF convention.

    [August 2000:  I did, and he graciously answered that Bios, from the start, was planned as a novel, “though it ended a bit short.” (He also rightly pointed out that it would have been a perfect length twenty, thirty years ago)]

    In the meantime, Bios remains a worthwhile read, but not a worthwhile buy. Consider a paperback purchase if you’re a confirmed fan (keeping in mind that Wilson tries new things here, and succeeds), or else head for your local library.

  • American Hero, Larry Beinhart

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ballantine, 1993, 397 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-36663-8

    At the time, it almost seemed too good to be true. A few months after the fall of the Soviet empire, a border skirmish between two middle-eastern countries quickly escalates in an armed war in which new alliances are formed, new technology is used and old dirty tricks surface anew under different guises. The Gulf crisis of late 1990/early 1991 wasn’t the first war to be televised, but it is -so far- the most entertaining, ending with a big happy ending. Footnote: Total war-related deaths for the Allied side were lower than handgun-related deaths on American soil during the same period.

    Ask any North American who lived through the events, and they’ll tell you that the war was almost fun; that the picture painted by the media began with extreme danger and ended in total victory. America booted out the old ghosts of Vietnam and assumed its role as unique global superpower.

    As expected, guilt came in ringing a few moments later. Gulf War revisionism reviewed the war and declared it bad. It was a ploy to re-establish George Bush’s manhood. It was a media-manipulated skirmish transformed into a global engagement that wasn’t. The poor Iraquis didn’t deserve to lose. Kuwait didn’t deserved to be freed. And so on and so forth.

    Larry Beinhart’s novel American Hero is an integral part of the rich-boy soul-searching done by American after the Gulf War. It pushes the most somber conclusions of the revisionists (and their associated conspiracy theorist) to their logical extreme: The Gulf War was manufactured by George Bush -along with the Hollywood movie industry- to ensure his re-election.

    And the word “manufactured” isn’t used here in a cynical fashion: The most interesting parts of Beinhart’s book are those in which a crazy memo is given to a top-notch Hollywood director, who uses a film archive to literally design “the perfect war”, which will be as victorious as it will be an emotionally satisfying experience.

    Unfortunately, to get to these parts, you’ll have to wade through the increasingly uninteresting tale of Joe Broz, a security agent who gets caught up in the whole mess. Not only does this subplot actually is supposed to be the core of the novel, but it is far less dense -not to mention unoriginal- that the actual making of the war. Notice that when American Hero was adapted for the big screen -as the celebrated WAG THE DOG-, they wisely concentrated the whole action around the war-makers. (They also cleverly neutered the “breathtakingly nasty” [says Kirkus] satiric edge of the novel by inventing a fictional war rather than naming names and citing historical facts.) By the time Broz is hunted down by government agents who will kill him to keep the secret, it’s no use; we’ve see all of this before in countless conspiracy thrillers.

    The other flaw of the book is to depart from a comic premise and treat it as a rather dry conspiracy theory. Granted, the 120-odd footnotes are fun reading and thought-provoking, but look closer and you’ll be able to poke holes in Beinhart’s argumentation that this is All True. (Not the least of which might have been “If Bush really wanted to win the election, why didn’t he wait until 1992 to start the war and ride the victory in presidential elections??”) The last section, explicitly titled “Conspiracy”, smacks of desperation. Someone phone up Beinhart and tell him that heavy-handed satire is self-defeating. (If you really want a conspiracy, ask yourself why a smart, but unpopular, mystery author would suddenly decide to jump on the conspiracist bandwagon… hmmm…) But that’s just the anti-conspiracy-theorist speaking. Feel free to ignore.

    In any case, American Hero is worth a look, if only for the hilarious acid portrait of Bush, the White House and Hollywood.

    And who knows? Like most conspiracies, the Gulf War almost makes more sense that way.

  • Terminal Cafe, Ian McDonald

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1994, 277 pages, US$12.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37416-8

    It takes more than great ideas to write great SF; you have to know how to string them together. Countless pro writers have tried to instil this notion in the heads of even more numerous aspiring authors, but it doesn’t always stick. The shocking thing is that some professional authors themselves do actually forget about it. Results vary, ranging from excellent if nearly unreadable hard-SF to mishmashes of amateurish slush pile bricks.

    Terminal Cafe‘s problems are slightly different. No one will be able to say that Ian McDonald isn’t a phenomenally talented writer. No one will ever accuse him of writing bad prose. Better yet; he’s got great ideas, stuff that most frequent SF readers will gobble up with glee.

    No, McDonald’s problems lie in a different direction. In a certain sense, one could say he writes too well. Or that he writes with ambitions that exceed what should be put in a novel. To put it simply; Terminal Cafe doesn’t cohere and approaches unreadability because McDonald can’t string up his great ideas with an interesting plot that’s written in such a way that’s accessible to most readers.

    On the cover blurb, it reads like a classic-in-the-making: “revolutionary technology has given humans the ability to resurrect the dead. But the even-increasing population of the rise dead is segregated. They have created a wild culture untouched by restrictions of the law. Dead cannot stray in the realm of the living, nor the living into the teeming necrovilles after nightfall.” Now, one artist wants to do exactly that—cross in Necroville after nightfall. Great premise. Horror crossed with SF, a few mind-boggling sights, a thriller structure and -boom- instant SF bestseller. Insert great ideas, stir as necessary. And don’t forget to explain exactly how the dead are so different from the living.

    First mistake: We never learn what/why/how the dead are -including the differences- until nearly the end of the book. And no, it’s not a shocking surprise that twists things around. As a result, a large part of the book isn’t very compelling, because or first reaction is to ask why everyone can’t get along rather than understand the dynamics at play.

    What makes Terminal Cafe so damnably difficult to read is that McDonald aims for the literary crowd and never sustains the interest. the quasi-experimental writing allows for pages of exasperating soul-searching by the characters, but not a lot of plot development. Many of the dynamics between the central characters are never made too clear.

    And yet… once in a while, a fragment of clearly-written, utterly fascinating passage is to be found. The description of a new multinational justice system driven by rented computer time. Original speculations on nanotechnology. Space battles. Future arts. Political shenanigans. These gems of clear diamond in the murk both enhance the book’s overall impression, and darken it—because if McDonald could write these passages, then why the heck could he have made the whole book more interesting?

    It might have been the British origins of the book. It might have been a busy few days where your reviewer didn’t have the patience to try out a complex piece of writing. It might be drugs, extraterrestrials or phases of the moon. But the result is the same; Terminal Cafe is a very mixed bag of fascinating vignettes drowned in oodles of boring passages.

    Proceed at your risks and perils. And if ever you’re writing a SF novel of your own, please please remember that great ideas aren’t all that’s required for a great novel; you have to be able to string them together.

  • Rogue Star, Michael Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 667 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-54299-1

    With 1997’s Firestar, Michael Flynn officially Arrived in SF. Formerly known as an author of a few rather good short stories and co-author of the fannish homage Fallen Angels (With Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), Flynn flew under the radar of most SF fans until he published his monstrous 800+ pages tome. Firestar was the opening volume of an ambitious near-future saga in which Flynn looked as if he’d be showing all other authors how near-future Hard-SF is done. With its huge cast of characters, deep character development and often exasperating attention to details, Firestar gathered a lot of interest and got some critical attention.

    At the time, your reviewer begged to differ. Firestar‘s very ambitiousness dragged down what might otherwise have been a fine hard-SF tale. The huge cast of characters seemed too diffuse for its own good. Flynn’s character development seemed to specialize in making life hard for everyone. There was no happy ending. Not a lot happened, and whatever happened wasn’t worth 800+ pages. Many Messages were passed. Add to that the decidedly libertarian convictions of Flynn’s future (in which governments were evil and only corporations could save the world, yada-yada-yada) and you had an overpadded, somewhat unpleasant book.

    Why read Rogue Star, then? For the sheer masochist pleasure of it, maybe. But a strange thing happened on the way to the ending: While still overly long, Rogue Star started to be engrossing, interesting and even -yep- enjoyable.

    Rogue Star is where the investment made in the first volume starts to pay off. All these useless, unpleasant characters of the first volume start interacting in a conflicting fashion, and for some reason, this seems rather more interesting than in the first volume. Marissa’s financial empire is in jeopardy; a mission to an asteroid finds more than it bargained for; a blue-collar construction worker confronts sex and violence on an unfinished space station. Fascinating stuff, and more accessibly-written too. Not a whole lot of plot for 600+ pages, though. Someone at Tor better grab some scissors for the next volume.

    Still, the result is worth the long read. The space-rigger subplot itself rivals Allen Steele’s similar Orbital Decay in sheer fascination. (Plus, it takes the rather reasonable position that being stoned in a high-risk environment is not a very smart thing to do…) The political and financial shenanigans do seem less naive than Firestar‘s simplistic libertarian positions. The series moves in a more outlandish science-fiction, after the quasi techno-thriller atmosphere of the first volume.

    Plus, Flynn sends a neat little curveball in mid-book to all the readers who by now had been softly settling in a very rational hard-SF environment. Suddenly, things get far more interesting. But that’ll have to wait until the next volume, right?

    In fact, Rogue Star is a bit worrisome, because it shows that Flynn isn’t nearly finished with the series, which is looking more and more like a future history than a simple trilogy. How many more volumes to go? And how will both the “surprise” and the “expected” (come on; all that foreshadowing about planet-killing asteroids for nothing?) will play? As we might think they will ,or differently? (This is not a glib remark: If we end up with a 2000+ pages series in which the climax is what one can expect after reading Rogue Star, then all the good will established by the book will disappear in a puff of angry smoke. It’s hard to say more without spoiling the book.)

    Without being a must-read, Rogue Star is decent hard-SF. Worth a look, especially for those who wondered why they read the first volume of the series.

  • Wise Guy, Nicholas Pillegi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1985, 308 pages, C$5.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-63392-9

    Hopefully, most readers of these reviews aren’t career criminals. Not that it’s a hard thing to do: Despite the distorted picture presented by popular media, lives of crime aren’t at the reach of every common layman: They demand, like most specialized professions, a certain set of skills, mindset and training. Needless to say, this type of training isn’t commonly offered to the average suburban white middle-class male statistically most likely to be reading these lines.

    But, living as he was in Italian New York in the 1950s, Henry Hill was uncommonly well-placed to ascend the ladder of crime. (“and slide down the slippery path of eternal damnation!” adds the preacher) Hired as a common job-runner, Hill quickly shows a flair for the quick buck. As Pillegi explains,

    For Henry and his wiseguys friends, the world was golden. They lived in an environment awash in crime, and those who did not partake were simply viewed as prey. Anyone waiting his turn on the pay line was beneath contempt. Those who did were fools. [P.36]

    To escape from the drudgery of the common American man, Hill saw an easy solution: go deeper in the underworld. And indeed, Hill would become one of the top men in the New York mafia. Upon his arrest in 1980, FBI agents would be stunned at the extent of his knowledge. Unlike other top criminals who only specialized in a few selected areas, Hill -despite a position roughly in the middle of the criminal hierarchy- has involved in everything: Drugs, gambling, theft, murders… Hill knew where the bodies were buried, often literally.

    Don’t feel surprised if you’ve heard this story before: Wise Guy is the basis of the award-winning 1990 Martin Scorsese film GOODFELLAS, considered by many critics to be among the best films of the nineties. Reading the source material, it’s not hard to find the elements that, properly handled, would form the basis for a great film: An interesting protagonist not that far removed from the typical viewer, an epic crime story spanning decades, a wealth of fascinating details and plenty of narrative hooks on which to build great scenes.

    But, as good as GOODFELLAS was, Wise Guy is even better: it deepens the anecdotes, explains some of the film’s seemingly most fanciful liberties (such as the high-class life of top mafiosos in prison) and is somewhat clearer on the path from runner to gangster. Even though Scorsese was no slouch at creating a well-rounded portrait of criminal motivations and the resulting life in constant potential violence, Hill truly completes the picture and the result is very convincing.

    Obviously, half -if not more- the credit for the book must go to journalist/interviewer Nicholas Pillegi, who manages to tighten up Hill’s words in a taut, compulsively readable narrative. That he was able to do all that under difficult interviewing conditions (Hill is currently, and will forever remain, under the protection of the Witness Protection Program) is nothing short of admirable. His work is for our benefit; this is the closest that most of us will come to a personal interview with a monster.

    Interestingly (or unfortunately), the overall impression given by Wise Guy is one of nostalgic charm for the gangster era. Mafia members come to form a relatively sympathetic group of criminals with honor. Far from being despicable serial killers or contemptible petty thieves, Hill’s testimony paints a portrait of rather decent guys despite the pesky murders and police bribery.

    Fascinating how the view from the other side is often more compelling that ours. But I’m still not giving all away for a life of crime. The hours are just murder.

  • Margin of Error: Pollsters and the Manipulation of Canadian Politics, Claire Hoy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Key Porter, 1989, 234 pages, C$24.95 hc, ISBN 0-55013-172-9

    Politics have changed considerably during the last century, and nowhere is this more true than in the now-omnipresent usage of polls. Media use them to boost viewership, establish predictions and build up front-page stories. Politicians use them to gauge the popularity of policies, track down their popularity and plan campaign strategies. Regular polls have become a regular part of the process, protected by an aura of scientific respectability in a field where impressions can often be more important than facts.

    Claire Hoy is a well-respected Canadian journalist who, in 1988, reached his boiling point regarding this issue. How is it that the methodology of polls is never questioned? What is the impact of regular polling on Canadian politics? What are the implications of media/pollster relations when some pollsters are obviously biased in favor of political parties? Margin of Error is an attempt to answer these questions, and it makes for fascinating reading.

    If you’re like this reviewer, Hoy’s central thesis -that pollsters have enjoyed uncritical admiration for too long, and that they now occupy a central position as decision-shapers- is initially suspect, if not outright paranoid. How can these friendly people with the Numbers be in any way dangerous to the democratic system?

    The first section of Margin of Error paints an historical portrait of polling in Canada. Beginning during World War II by way of exiled American specialists, polling quickly established itself as an instrument of knowledge, and soon as a replacement for decision-making; Hoy traces the evolution of the usage of polls from being simple indicators for politicians, to smoke-screens behind which true vision can disappear and where the “best” politicians simply follow the polls.

    Ah, but if only it stopped there… As Hoy demonstrates through chapters about the largest Canadian pollsters, the very perception of pollster impartiality (“just the numbers, ma’am”) is ludicrously absurd. Pollsters have long been associated with political parties, courting leaders to become official party pollsters.

    It gets worse. Hoy clearly demonstrates, through example and a bit of logic, how questions can be slanted to obtain desired results, how precise formulation can affect results and how special-interest groups can, for a relatively low price, get “official” validation for their viewpoint by hitching a carefully-worded questions onto a “general survey”. Pollsters, despite their reputation as number wizards, can independently skew results with bad survey methodologies in an effort to save a few dollars. (Margin of Error shows, dollar-figures in print, just how expensive a good survey truly is, and how badly results are affected by skimping.)

    Not only does it stop there, but as Hoy shows -again through several mind-boggling examples-, media outlets who report this information are most often than not incapable to make an accurate usage of these statistics. They’ll often misrepresent the question (forgoing the precise wording for a more audience-friendly “meaning”), ignore the shaky methodologies and try to buy results on the cheap, resulting in news that are, at best, not paining an accurate picture of reality.

    Your reviewer, somewhat of a stats geek himself, started the book with a decidedly skeptical mind. But Hoy does his job properly, and the overall accumulation of facts, citations and -yes- statistics are simply too revealing to ignore. The misuse of polls represented in Margin of Error borders on the actionable, and yet, with eleven year’s insight, things have most probably gotten worse, not better.

    In any case, Claire Hoy has produced, with Margin of Error, an essential piece of reading for anyone too easily trusting of polls. As it is showing significant age, an update might be in order. But don’t let that stop you from picking up the book and getting an eye-opener on statistical abuse.

  • Reliquary, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 464 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-54283-5

    Something is loose deep under New York. Again.

    Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s first collaboration, Relic, was an unqualified success. Their thriller received good reviews, sold well and was adapted to cinema under the direction of Peter Hyams. (Okay, so the film wasn’t all that great and tanked at the box-office, but that’s not fault of the book itself.) It was inevitable that they’d eventually write a sequel.

    The logical premise, of course, is to expand the action. Relic had one monster, why not have more in the sequel? The original was confined to a Museum, why not let the monsters loose under the entire New York in Reliquary?

    As I said, obvious but effective. In this volume, the remnants of the monster, glimpsed in Relic‘s epilogue, surface some time later as a wave of creepy homeless death occurs under New York. The novel opens as the crisis reaches a boiling point: This time, no mere bum has been killed, but the daughter of a wealthy socialite was mysteriously murdered. Socialite raises hell, policemen investigate, creepy evidence is brought to Relic‘s heroine Margo Green and here we go again…

    Fortunately, Reliquary not only does thing slightly differently than its predecessor, but does them better. This time around, the characters are more clearly defined and more sympathetic. The writing is snappier, even improving upon the lean style that was so successful in The Relic. Scenes are more spectacular, belief is more easily suspended… in short, Preston and Child have improved since their first novel, and it shows. Reliquary is in many respects a more enjoyable book than Relic.

    Special mention should be made of the eeriness of subterranean New York so effectively used here. A relatively old city by North American standards, Preston and Child easily populate New York’s underground with forgotten subway tunnels, service tunnels, multi-level outposts and entire underground populations. They state that most of it is true… who knows? Sort of the setting for that old TV show, “Beauty and the Beast”, adapted for a horror tale.

    Fans of the first volume will be delighted to find more about Margo, Penderghast, Smithback, D’Agosta and Frock. New characters also join them, including a delightfully feisty NYPD officer named Hayward.

    Plus, the novel packs the required chills. There are dead bodies, creepy dark places, riots, carnage, last-minute twists, the promise of world-wide destruction and other sort of fun stuff.

    Through it all, one can’t really shake the prefabricated feel that also plagued The Relic, but then again it’s better to have a professional but mechanical thriller than an incompetent one. Preston and Child might build their novels with flowcharts and mathematical models, but the end result is good enough that it doesn’t really matter.

    What is a bit more annoying is the unwillingness of the narrative to truly use all the elements it so lovingly sets up. At one point, there’s a congregation of wealthy bourgeois, police squads, monsters, bums and oodles of water all headed for the same point. What happens next isn’t quite as spectacular as what you might think.

    Nevertheless, Reliquary exemplifies the type of novel which gave rise to the expression “beach reading”. Undemanding, exciting and unusually readable, Reliquary gets top marks as a thriller. If you liked the first one, don’t miss it.

  • The Making of a Cop, Harvey Rachlin

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1991, 302 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-74740-1

    For most North American citizen, all contacts with policemen are limited to the occasional speeding ticket (if that), for which cops are seen as annoyances at best.

    That’s too easily forgetting that cops are there for things that are in fact quite a bit more dangerous than simple traffic regulation. And nowhere is this truer than in New York City.

    “In 1988 there were 1,915 murders and manslaughters (10 percent of the U.S. total, and more than Great Britain and West Germany combined), 45,824 felonious assaults, 3,412 forcible rapes, 86,578 robberies, 128,626 burglaries, 110,717 grand larcenies, 119,659 grand larceny car thefts, and 43,434 other felonies involving drugs, forgery, arson, prostitution, gambling, and kidnapping” [P.2] If New York isn’t the most dangerous city in the world, it must be close.

    [July 2001: After a particularly pleasant trip to New York City and some knowledge of recent statistics, I am pleased to report that this isn’t true any more. Mayor Guiliani’s reforms of the nineties have truly had an effect. In fact, New York doesn’t even rank in the top-100 per-capita most dangerous American cities list!]

    Against this tide of crime, acting as public defenders, exists the New York Police Department. 28,000 policemen, making the NYPD larger than most national armed forces in the world. But these policemen come from somewhere. They must be trained. Ordinary civilians from all areas must be re-modeled and re-educated so that they can wear a blue uniform, a badge and a gun.

    The Making of a Cop is a meticulously detailed documentary on this training process. Author/journalist Harvey Rachlin was granted unprecedented access to the NYPD training academy during one such training session which turned out 650 candidates into pure true NYPD blue. Through the eyes of four very different students, we follow the whole process, from the first to the last day.

    There is the expected fascinating chapter on the gun range, but that’s only a small part of the training to become a police officer. They must also follow classes in Law, Police Science, Social Science, Physical Training, Driver training, Car-Stop workshops… and all of these subjects, from the most academic to the most physical, are essential to a policeman’s training.

    But The Making of a Cop is not only a dry affair of academia. The world of a police officer is made of difficult decisions that -for the most part- are completely alien to civilians. What is a crime? While that decision is clear when a crime has been committed, it is far more murky when a police officer is witness to potentially suspect behavior. The book details such an occasion, which starts by a policeman watching a bum trying out car doors, and ends with a life-and-death struggle.

    But these finer points of conduct are nothing compared to the training aspirants are required to go through in preparation to busts. While civilians may be put off by the behavior of police officers in day-to-day operations, it’s worth remembering that if we don’t reasonably expect police officers to shoot us in their work, policemen must allow for a degree of definite danger in their line of duty. The Making of a Cop is adept at pointing out the delicate balance between self-protection and service to the public.

    Technically, this book is nearly perfect, giving a compulsively readable account of almost all facets of training from beginning to end, with plenty of tasty anecdotes and first-person testimonials to hook us into the narrative. Rachlin wisely stays in the background, only directly integrating himself in the narrative in the introduction and the conclusion, letting the policemen speak for themselves during training.

    But most significantly, The Making of a Cop is a splendid testimony to the often-ungrateful, often-dangerous job of policemen. It’s nearly impossible to read this book without coming away from it with a renewed respect for police forces, with the types of dangers and decisions that is their daily workload.

    Remember that the next time you get a speeding ticket.

  • Vertical Run, Joseph R. Garber

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1995, 305 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-10033-5

    Some books seem naturally destined to become movies. Then again, some books are directly ripped off from some movies.

    Both of these statements are true in the case of Vertical Run, a thriller taking place in a high-rise building, where a lone man is pursued by a team of special operative who will stop at nothing to kill him. DIE HARD, anyone? No matter, because Vertical Run takes us places John McClane hadn’t seen.

    It begins early in the morning, just as ultra-average senior executive Dave Elliot steps into his office to begins his workday. It’s not a Monday, but his day starts sucking right away anyway as his boss enters the room and points a gun at him. One fancy move later, the boss is knocked out cold (wish-fulfillment is an essential part of all good thrillers) and Dave has more questions than ever. Let’s hope he’s had his morning coffee, because soon afterward he’ll have to face a whole team of crack operatives all intent on his untimely death.

    Unfortunately for them, Dave Elliot’s an ex-Green Beret. That’s gonna hurt.

    And so begins Vertical Run. This is one of those books which perfectly define the expression “page-turner”. Garber knows his stuff, and the pacing of the book is relentless, driving you to read later and later in the night.

    Thrillers are built on premises, and Garber knows how to milk his carefully. Pretty much every detail sounds authentic and he effortlessly builds suspense and excitement out of a few simple actions by his protagonist. The book is filled with these “oh-so-cool” scenes that elevate the novel from a run-of-the-mill thriller to something that readers will remember with a certain affection long after they’ve read the final line.

    There are a few problems, such as the lessening of tension in the last third, the slightly underwhelming conclusion or the fact that the protagonist has so much trouble figuring out why everyone wants to terminate him with prejudice. (Most seasoned readers will immediately recognize the crucial hint as soon as it’s mentioned. Unfortunately, this information is withheld until well past the halfway point, and the protagonist doesn’t figure it out until more than fifty pages after.)

    There have been persistent rumors, ever since Vertical Run‘s original publication, that the novel is headed for the silver screen. It certainly has all the ingredients required for a big thriller: Sympathetic-but-competent protagonist, evil-but-clever antagonist, love interest, action set-pieces and clear narrative. While final release is probably a while away -Hollywood development processes being what they are-, you can do the next best thing right now and grab the book.

    Don’t skip out on the epilogue, which send a nice little curveball in what you’d expect.

  • Poor Richard’s Web Site, Peter Kent

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Top Floor, 2000, 422 pages, C$47.95 tpb, ISBN 0-9661032-0-3

    You’re a small businessman. You own your own little-to-medium company, but lately you’ve become concerned that this Internet thingy might be hurting your sales. Or, at the very least, that you’re missing out on some great marketing opportunity. Whatever the reason, you want to get a piece of the e-action. But building a web site is complicated stuff, right? Expensive too, if you’re to believe the stories in the newspapers.

    Don’t.

    As Peter Kent points out, the dirty little secret of the Internet is that “it’s a giant jobs program for computer geeks.” A bit unfair as a statement, but not quite as ludicrous as you’d imagine. Kent’s point is that most of what you really need to know about a web site can be learned quickly, and practiced cheaply. So here’s a fifty-Canadian-bucks book to teach you how to be cheap. Poor Richard’s Web Site is a giant ad for Peter Kent’s business.

    All kidding aside, this book condenses in easy-to-read format a whole bunch of things most small business owners would be grateful to know about the Internet. Kent doesn’t do technical stuff (as he rightfully points out, there are plenty of other books that do that, and it’s not rocket science in any fashion.) but rather focuses on overarching business and design issues, plus spends a full third of the book on marketing.

    In its first two-third, Poor Richard’s Web Site strikes an admirable balance between down-to-earth business advice, and technically correct information. People baffled by the techno-jargon of other more in-depth work should feel at ease here, while more technically-oriented persons won’t be able to nit-pick the advice to death and even maybe learn a few new tricks or two.

    All throughout, Kent’s advice is sensible, often irreverent (if wholeheartedly supporting Microsoft can be considered slightly edgy) and often brought with a humorous slant.

    So far so good, but the book is contaminated with the stink of shameless self-promotion. As the book advances, it becomes obvious that Peter Kent is trying to sell you something: A contract with his own web hosting company. One or two mentions would have been fine, but when the URL of his own business is brought up every chapter or so, enough is enough.

    Things devolve in the last section, about marketing your web site. Though Kent at least has the decency to discourage spamming -noting that it may result in your web site being wiped out the face of the Earth-, his recommended “soft-sell” practices tend to run on the annoying side, especially when practiced on established communities that don’t really enjoy this type of thing. (eg; Usenet, where similar tactics are usually scoffed at.) At least Chapter 18 mentions real-world PR, which is where most of web promotion dollars should be going anyway.

    But I’m being once again too hard on the book. Naturally, it will appeal more to those with a business-and-marketing oriented mind. Naturally, techies are better off reading something more specialized. On the other hand, Poor Richard’s Web Site does manage to fulfill its goal of providing a one-stop business web primer.

    Just consider the opening five (!) full pages of blurbs as an advertisement of what you’ll learn inside…

  • The Hacker Crackdown, Bruce Sterling

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1992, 316 pages, C$7.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-56370-X

    (Available online at http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/hacker/)

    Bruce Sterling has acquired, in the science-fiction community, an enviable reputation as one of the smartest, most visionary representative of the genre. Indeed, in the turbulent nineties, Sterling has shown himself capable of adapting to the new wave of technology that almost made Science-Fiction obsolete. A string of excellent books (Heavy Weather, Globalhead, Holy Fire, Distraction, A Good Old-fashioned Future) have cemented his reputation as one of the current masters of the genre.

    Few SF observers would have been as bold as to claim such an honor for Sterling at the end of the eighties. Sure, Schismatrix was a boffo space-opera, and Islands on the Net showed promise, but apart from a few other short stories in Crystal Express, the rest of Sterling’s fiction output was disappointing, to say the least. Who remembers Involution Ocean? Or The Artificial Kid? If anything, Sterling was showing more promise as a competent critic (Cheap Truth) and anthologist (Mirrorshades) than a fiction author.

    In the early nineties, however, something happened. In 1990, a string of events rocked the computer underground. A friend of Sterling, Steve Jackson, saw federal agents confiscate a good part of his small gaming company’s assets under the pretext that he was writing a manual for computer pirates. Sterling didn’t simply get mad; he seeked the truth behind the event. The Hacker Crackdown is a journalistic account of the 1990 skirmishes between the telephone companies, the hackers, the police and the civil libertarians.

    The book is divided in four parts. In the first, Sterling begins by explaining the roots of cyberspace, going back as far as the first telephone networks. In one of the best passages of the book, he explains how the telephone system went from a simple cable strung between Alexander Graham Bell’s phone and Watson’s receiver to the current unimaginably complex packet-switching network. Then he traces the effects of a simple bug which shut-down AT&T’s telephone network in January 1990.

    He then takes us deeper underground, describing the subculture of the computer hackers that existed in 1990. He shows how paranoia, caused by the AT&T shutdown, percolated in a “need for action” that led police officers to raid private citizen’s house and to grab their computers—and in many cases, much more than their computers.

    In the book’s third quarter, he goes from one side to the other and ends up talking about the police forces and how they’re trying to update their mandate in the information age. He discusses how most computer security outfits were severely under-funded in the early nineties. Sterling takes us at a computer-security conference, and does some hacking of his own.

    Finally, he ends up explaining the most enduring legacy of the 1990 events; the electronic rights interest group that have been formed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is described, along with a variety of speculations on the future of “law and disorder on the electronic frontier”.

    How important were the 1990 events? Well, as Sterling puts it, any policeman can go to a group of scruffy-looking hoodlums hanging in front of a store and ask them to leave, or else. Few groups of hoodlums would have the presence of mind to go phone up a lawyer to protest police repression of their constitutional right of free assembly. That’s what happened in 1990; for ill-defined reasons, government kicked over the electronic anthill, and that precipitated the formation of electronic rights interest groups, whose influence continues to grow in today’s information age.

    And you couldn’t find a better writer for the job than Bruce Sterling. His writing is clear, incisive and often funny. Even though he is clearly outraged at the police abuse, he gives fair consideration to everyone’s viewpoint, and the result is a superb book that illuminates computer security like few other books before. Strongly recommended. It is still, and will remain relevant. Parallels with current cases involving entertainment cartels versus internet startups (Napster, MP3.com, 2600.com…) under the guise of “piracy” when really it’s all about “consumer control” are chilling, to say the best. Except that this time, civil-rights groups aren’t facing an opponent bound by the constitution… and they can’t compete with their dollar-fuelled lobbyists.

    But don’t take my word for it; go check out the electronic version at http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/hacker/

  • The Gemini Man, Richard Steinberg

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1998, 374 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-58016-7

    I picked up this book by mistake.

    I had been reading movie-rumor sites, and a particular project had caught my interest. Harrison Ford (or Mel Gibson, or Sean Connery) was supposed to be attached to star in THE GEMINI MAN, a thriller about a government operative being tracked down by… a younger clone of himself. Very interesting, especially given that a digital recreation of the lead actor (built from footage taken from movies released twenty years ago) would be used to re-create the younger version of the character.

    So I found myself at a used-book sale with a dirt-cheap copy of Richard Steinberg’s THE GEMINI MAN in my hands. A quick glance at the back cover blurb seemed to match my recollection of the film project: “He was trained to be our deadliest weapon. Now he’s our worst nightmare.” Sounded about right.

    Certainly, the first chapter of The Gemini Man is one of the best thriller opening I’ve read in a long, long time. Deep in Siberia, an American officer is sent to a concentration camp in order to bring back another American operative. The Russians put up some resistance, muttering something about freeing the devil and how, even under maximal security, the prisoner has already killed half a dozen guards. The terrified Russians add that his last escape attempt resulted in the death of a civilian family. The writing is brisk, clear and terrifying as we meet special operative Brian Newman, as if Hannibal Lecter had ended up as an US secret agent. A lot of small ominous details add up to promise a gripping novel.

    The rest of the book never matches this promise. In short order, our female protagonist is introduced; a psychologist tasked with interviewing Newman to decide if he’s fit to re-integrate civilian life. That is, if he can stop killing small birds and stray cats. Hmmm… what do you think?

    It gradually becomes apparent that this isn’t the story for which Ford, Gibson or Connery would have agreed to star. It takes a bit longer to realize that this is a completely ludicrous novel.

    It’s obvious from the start, however, that super-agent Brian Newman, he of murderous dispositions and terrifying abilities, is positioned as an anti-hero of Lecteresque appeal. He seems consciously engineered by author Steinberg as the perfect dangerous man, charming yet ruthlessly amoral, a genius-level sociopath with no remorse. Needless to say, we’ve seen this before, from Patricia Highsmith’s Mr. Ripley to Harris’ Lector, passing by the real-life Ted Bundy. As a reader, I tend to be annoyed by this quasi-glorification of criminal behavior. It seems all the most manipulative (“Oooh, a sexily dangerous man! My primal urges are taking over!”) when considering the statistically documented dimness of most criminals.

    It gets worse, because as the novel unfolds, Steinberg conjures up some neurological/psychological claptrap to “prove” that Brian Newsman isn’t simply a nut, a wacko or a government-trained mad dog, but rather a newly-evolved species of Humankind, Homo Sapiens Saevus or Homo Crudelis. Brain of a new man. Brian Newman. Ooh, subtle stuff.

    I’m used to seeing thrillers come up with whoopers, but that pretty much took the cake. Once the other characters start agreeing gravely and coming out of the woodwork as further examples of this new species, it’s only a small step to suppose that Steinberg belongs to the NRA and that he thinks that the Nazi concept of eugenics was a pretty good idea. Or maybe not, but at the very least he needs to work some more on suspending his readers’ disbelief. (In any case, he’s not learning very quickly; paging through his second novel in bookstores, it quickly became obvious that this was a novel where the protagonist discovers that -egawd!- the American government secretly knows about aliens! How so very original!)

    Of course, once super-badass-anti-hero is established as a new species of man, it doesn’t take a genius to see where the novel is going. It goes there without too many surprises. Yawn.

    Too bad, because The Gemini Man had the kernel, and the opening chapter, of a great thriller. Start of a series? Blah.

  • Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and other observations, Al Franken

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Delacorte, 1996, 351 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-440-22330-X

    It must be *so* easy to be an American political humorist. As a Canadian used to multiple political parties, a tradition of compromise and moderate politics across the board (with occasional curious results, like Conservatives selecting our first female prime minister and Liberals balancing the federal budget!), the American political landscape appears curiously simple, a matter of conservatives (“Republicans”), liberals (“Democrats”) and a gaggle of very small parties (“Weirdoes”).

    On the other hand, this clear American right-versus-left dichotomy has allowed for a strong tradition of partisan political humor. It’s in this context that Al Franken steps in.

    Al Who? You probably don’t recognize the name, but you may remember the character. Franken was a writer for Saturday Night Live, and incarnated -among others- the happy self-help guru Stuart Smiley, latter writing and starring in the so-so film STUART SAVES HIS FAMILY. It’s not really a surprise to find that the acerbic humor displayed in Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot… and Other Observations is far removed from his goofy Smiley character.

    Because, you see, Al Franken really does think that Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot. And he spends a suitable portion of the book proving it, with show excerpts, counter-arguments and an illustrated chart of Limbaugh’s weight. Sweet. Small wonder that there’s another book out there titled Al Franken Is a Buck-Toothed Moron, by Republican humorist J. P. Mauro.

    Is it funny stuff? Absolutely. Remember that Al Franken was writing for Saturday Night Live well before it got boring. He unleashes the standard array of humor-writing tactics on Limbaugh and other assorted Conservatives, going from hyperbole to plain lies, strung along Franken’s testimonies of political events (which might of might not be true, but who am I to tell?) Suffice to say that unless you’re particularly sensitive about a particular person or issue, there’s bound to be worthwhile material in here. (And if you’re offended, well tough because this book has something in it to offend nearly everyone.) Don’t skim over the index.

    But don’t make the mistake of assuming that if the book is funny, then it’s inconsequential. Like all smart satirists, Franken means every word he writes. And, as the French-Canadian humor magazine “Croc” used to trumpet, it’s not because we laugh that it’s funny. Franken’s dissection of Limbaugh’s most ridiculous claims (Chapter 22: “The Regan Years: Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar”) are worth a read, if only as an exceptional primer on how statistics can be twisted, resampled and plain hammered in order to support the arguments you’re making.

    It doesn’t stop there: The chapters about Environmental Regulation, Tax, Health Care and Legal Reform are written in carefully modulated anger, barely covered by dripping sarcasm. It’s obvious that Franken didn’t conjure up these jokes out of spite and thin air; an extensive underlying research carefully supports each argument. It’s smart, and it smarts.

    All in all, Rush Limbaugh is a Fat Idiot and Other Observations is a mordant, offensive, funny book about American politics. Sure, it occasionally isn’t very subtle. But it’s always clever, and that counts for something.

    For Canadians, the carnival-like atmosphere of American political target-shooting is an added bonus.