Book Review

  • Signal to Noise, Eric S. Nylund

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon/EOS, 1999, 371 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-79292-3

    Despite what naysayers might say, the science-fiction bookshelves of your nearby bookstore have never been so attractively filled with dozens of potentially interesting books. This diversity, unfortunately, has made it more difficult than ever to find the really good stuff. Today’s savvy SF reader must learn to negotiate the thin line between hype and actual value, between signal to noise. In this game of equilibrium, it doesn’t take much to drown out any potential interest.

    That happened in early 1998 as I was at the local SF bookstore considering my next few purchases. An unusually-colored hardcover attracted my eye: Eric S. Nylund’s Signal to Noise. Unfortunately, the jacket copy began by claiming that the novel was the first instance of a new emerging genre—hyperpunk.

    That was far too much marketing jargon crammed in a single word. I placed the book back on the shelf.

    A year -and several good reviews- later, I finally bought the paperback copy, noticing that the “hyperpunk” blurb has disappeared from the cover. Strangely, after reading the novel I find myself in agreement that, yes, Signal to Noise is truly “hyperpunk”… or cyberpunk pushed to hyperspace.

    Jack Potter is a typical cyber-protagonist: A young single male computer expert trying to survive in a world dominated by gigantic corporations barely restrained by governments. So far so cyberpunk. But the fun starts when Jack discovers a way to instantly communicate with aliens light-years away. The aliens are traders, and for their first swap, Jack gives them the human DNA code. They send back “an enhanced version.”

    Shades of A for Andromeda, yet? Before long, Jack’s the Favorite Person of at least two intelligence services, two alien races, several venture capitalists and assorted other bad guys. They implant stuff in him, give him enough money to go in business, double-cross him a few times and wring him dry of any further alien trading results…

    Intricately plotted and not without some occasional confusion, Signal to Noise signals the arrival of a potentially major new talent on the SF scene. This isn’t Nylund’s first novel (despite holding two science degrees, he previously wrote three previous fantasy books), but his first full-length SF effort displays a mastery of plotting and hard sciences that’s simply too intriguing to be ignored.

    His writing style combines simplicity and density for a satisfying reading experience. His characters are believable, with some special attention given to the flawed protagonist. His plotting is filled with surprises, passing through a few paradigms before the large-scale finale. A few late-book choices left me puzzled (the selection of sidekicks, for instance) until I realized that Signal to Noise sets up a sequel. This usually irks me, but Signal to Noise can stand alone by itself. It’s my duty as a reviewer, however, to suggest that shrewd readers should wait until they have both books before reading Signal to Noise.

    Fast-paced, imaginative and exciting, Signal to Noise is exactly what readers should expect from a good SF novel. Ignore the “hyperpunk” hype; this book is pure signal to the background noise of your bookstore. I really look forward to the sequel, and anything else from Eric S. Nylund.

  • A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1999, 606 pages, C$38.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-85683-0

    For some reason, I was one of the few people not overly impressed by Vernor Vinge’s previous novel, the 1992 Hugo-award-winning A Fire Upon the Deep. Epic space opera, yes, but constantly focused on the wrong narrative threads: The poor humans stuck on the backward planet rather than the all-out galactic war taking place around them. But that was then, and now is A Deepness in the Sky. Deepness is widely hailed as “the prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep”, but is really so thinly linked that it’s best read as a stand-alone volume. (Though the symmetry of the pair is intriguing.)

    Two human expeditions arrive around a star with the interesting property of cyclically “shutting off” at precise intervals. They discover a planet whose indigenous inhabitants (“Spiders”) are on the verge of attaining space-flight technology. Problem is, the two human expeditions come from radically different societies. One is composed of traders, the other is based on intellectual slavery. Before long, the expeditions are fighting it out in orbit. After the brief skirmish, both camp find out that they can’t travel back to their home systems and that they won’t survive unless they combine their resources. And so the survivors from both camps settle down warily, waiting until the Spiders can provide them with the way to go back home… a prospect at least thirty years away.

    There can be no mistaking that A Deepness in the Sky is pure science-fiction, at least not if you accept the proposition that “SF is about the effects of technological change”. Vinge lovingly details the Spider’s technological progress, using this subplot as a convenient excuse to make some sociological comments on the place of technology on human progress. Though the book is only moderately high on ideas, Vinge’s extrapolation hold some interest. (His digression on multi-generational legacy code held special interest for this IT professional.)

    Vinge also uses a neat trick (which I won’t spoil) to anthropomorphize a basically alien species. Though the use of “cars”, “telephones” and other typically human terms may annoy some readers, it’s a great device to humanize an entire segment of the cast.

    Which, unfortunately, doesn’t really solve the question as to if these alien subplots should have been kept in the novel. If A Deepness in the Sky is a pure-SF novel with fascinating bits and intriguing aliens, it’s a shame that it’s so long and bloated. Wordiness kills a large part of the novel’s momentum, so that even if the first few hundred pages contain massive space battles, the book doesn’t get moving until the mid-point mark. Make no mistake: A Deepness in the Sky is well written, but it’s well over-written too. The characters are worthwhile, but they’re not easily approachable.

    Fortunately, when the book starts moving, it really starts to be interesting. Vinge manages his threads effectively, and his extended conclusion effectively completes the story.

    While assuredly one of the front-runners in this year’s SF crop and definitively worth your money in paperback, A Deepness in the Sky nevertheless fails at provoking enthusiasm. Slowed down by a deliberate prose and longish subplots, this novel joins the ranks of recent books that could have been improved by some serious editing. This caveat aside, don’t miss what is easily one of the best recent examples of a simple yet epic SF story well-told through the personal struggles of full characters.

  • Flashforward, Robert J. Sawyer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1999, 319 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86712-3

    One might wonder at the reason behind Robert J. Sawyer’s current success. Certainly, the author’s tireless auto-promotion has something to do with it. The regularity with which he publishes is another, at roughly a novel per year since 1990. His direct, journalistic prose is easy to read. His professionalism is obvious; he always deliver the goods with each successive book.

    In other words, Robert J. Sawyer truly understands and produces what the average reader demands of SF: Easy, captivating yarns built around the solid core of an idea and wrapped in professional characters and plotting. His latest, Flashforward, is almost a textbook example of how to write a fair contemporary SF novel.

    The premise is a good one: Following a high-energy physics experiment at CERN, everyone on the planet experiences two subjective minutes of a future twenty years away while their “objective” bodies lose consciousness. The immediate repercussions are horrendous: Thousands of people are injured or killed as they blank out in dangerous situations. But the long-term effects are even more significant as everyone correlate their individual visions and find out that they all refer to the same future…

    Fantasy concept, sure, but Sawyer manages to make us willingly suspend our disbelief. In the process, he raises concepts of free-will, of fate, of guilt, of the non-eternal duration of love. Sawyer aficionados won’t be surprised to see Sawyer’s usual matrimony/theology themes weaved in all of this. Heady stuff, but adequately presented in digestible bites.

    The concept leads itself to some delicious situations: A man investigating his own upcoming murder, a marrying couple knowing they won’t be together twenty years later, a writer with a glimpse in his non-upcoming-greatness, a president-to-be harassed with congratulation calls, a future-couple uncomfortably meeting for the first time… Flashforward really benefits from these touches of irony, which compensate for the thin -but well-handled- characters.

    There are a few flaws, like the dubious “everyone-asleep-was-dreaming” assumption (hasn’t Sawyer heard of deep sleep?). The ending is a bit rushed, with the typical Sawyer last-chapter paradigm leap. As usual, Sawyer’s ideas exceed his executive capacity -intentionally?-, and hard-core SF readers can’t be faulted for take the author to task for being a bit pedestrian. But most readers will love it.

    Otherwise, there really isn’t much to say about Flashforward. Fans will like it, with most agreeing that it’s one of his best books yet. It does wraps up a bit easily and could benefit from less conventional writing, but it’s hard to fault such an easily-readable novel (don’t bother with bookmarks) for being too accessible. As usual, a sure choice for the major awards.

  • Icefire, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1998, 703 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-01403-X

    If Icefire is to be believed, the government should be monitoring private home pages to detect, identify and act upon threats to the state based on intricate psychological profiles. In this case, I fully expect unmarked black vans in front of my home any moment now: In the past year, these book reviews have demonstrated an unhealthy interest in global catastrophes of various flavors: Insect extinction (Dust, Charles Pellegrino), Alien Invasion (The Killing Star, Pellegrino and George Zebrowski), EMP event (Aftermath, Charles Sheffield), Exploding Moon (Moonfall, Jack McDevitt), Crazy Terrorists (Storming Heaven, Dale Brown), Cometary Impact (Final Impact, Yvonne Navarro), Bio-Warfare (The Cobra Event, Richard Preston)… Now here comes Icefire, a global catastrophe thriller that begins in one of the world’s most unexpected places… Antarctica.

    The Reeves-Stevens premise is simple: A large part of Antarctica (The Ross Shelf) is actually hanging over open sea. Should this area be abruptly hurled into the sea, it would create a massive wave that would travel across the entire Pacific Ocean in a matter of hours, devastating everything in its path.

    Guess what? This is exactly what happens in the opening pages of the novel, as nuclear warheads are detonated by terrorists. Before long, our Navy SEAL protagonist Mitch Weber is forced to team up with environmentalist Cory Rey to warn the world of the impending danger. Complicating the matter further is that the two were once lovers, but now stare at each other from totally opposite ideological viewpoints.

    To be charitable, Icefire is not a novel of characters. A techno-thriller in the best tradition, it is a breathtaking narrative of rapidly introduced ideas and good-old American can-do military intervention. Everyone who despaired at the current techno-thriller slump should rejoice at the arrival of the Reeves-Stevens on the scene.

    One crucial element that has been well-understood by the writers is the techno-thriller genre’s reliance on secrets. Whether anyone believes that the US military knows about UFOs and such, most of us suspect that they’ve been hiding some pretty fascinating technology. Icefire has far too much fun in imagining what these secrets might be. Though overdone in some areas (come on, they’re still rehashing Roswell?), this is one of the nice surprises of the book. Are these high-tech secrets convincing? Well, I did look on the Internet for some references to the mysterious objects described on pages 243-244. Even at 10$ for the paperback, there is a lot of material for your money in Icefire‘s 703 pages.

    The other surprise is how darn exciting it all is. Icefire begins with nuclear explosions and builds on to bigger things. The means used by our protagonists to travel beyond the wave are increasingly high-tech, and the action doesn’t let stop. Several “Cool Scenes” [TM] pepper the narrative, pushing Icefire well above the average techno-thriller novel.

    Best of all, the writing flows very well. The characters are well defined in their functions, even if not much deeper. (I never really believed in the protagonists’ past romance, for instance, seeing how radically different their personality types are.) The plot mechanics are ingenious, wisely dropping cards when needed and withholding some bigger stakes for later. The conclusion is kind of flat, but after all that happened, who can blame readers for being a bit numb?

    One could go on endlessly about Icefire, but it all boils down to how much fun it all is. What’s most surprising is that Reeves-Stevens are relative newcomers at techno-thrillers. They either studied their market cynically well, or they instinctively know what to do. In any case, I’m anxiously waiting for their next techno-thriller. Good stuff.

  • The Next 500 Years, Adrian Berry

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Headline, 1995, 338 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-7472-0987-1

    So you want to know the future? Don’t worry; you’re not alone. From palm-reading charlatans to government-sponsored futurists to your humble reviewer, everyone has his or her idea on what’s going to happen sooner or later. The only thing every one of these apprentice-seers have in common is that they’re all wrong. The future never ends up being like we imagine it to be, which is both a terrifying and a comforting thought.

    This incertitude aside, it’s always a good idea to keep informed of what other people think may happen soon. Fortunately, a quasi-subgenre of non-fiction literature has popped up to fulfill this desire. Futurist books may be less entertaining than science-fiction, but they appear to have an extra sheen of credibility.

    Adrian Berry’s The Next 500 Years attempts to paint a cohesive and all-encompassing picture of humanity’s near-to-medium future. Though written with a certain sympathetic style and containing many good ideas, it nevertheless fails at being a satisfying read.

    The first half of the book lacks cohesiveness: Berry flits away from irrelevant panics to upcoming ice ages to undersea exploration with very little transition. This would have been fine if the whole book would have been done this way, but the second part of the book flow far more easily, reinforcing the impression that he’s anthologizing a few short pieces written separately.

    I still was about to give high marks to The Next 500 Years where two things happened to make me change my mind. The second thing was an overly condescending final chapter, where Berry abandons every pretence at cautious projection and confidently states such enormities as “politicians will disappear” and “religion is doomed” while “belief will still continue”. Not only is this contradictory, but the whole final chapter smacks of unproven assertions, and the effect is rather sobering, in a bad sense.

    The first thing was rather more damning. The Next 500 years contains several surprising counter-popular affirmations (The ozone hole is not a problem, the greenhouse effect is natural, etc…) One must take these affirmation on the basis that the author knows what he’s doing. But then, I discovered a huge mistake in one of the most basic equations of the books, where it is stated that passengers aboard a spaceship going to a star seven light-years away at a speed of .7c will only experience a trip of two-and-a-half years.

    This is incorrect for two reasons. One: a .7c trip won’t take (1/.7)*light-years-to-destination because of the gradual acceleration/deceleration of the spaceship. Second, the time-dilatation factor of .7c is closer to 2/3 than 2/5, but Berry translates his factors in minutes (1=60) and then takes the minute figures as decimal (1=.6) factors!! In both case, he really screws up.

    Pretty esoteric, true (I did research on this very subject for a short-story of mine, which is why I happened to know that much about it), but if I see such a stupid mistake, what about the remainder of the book? In one statement, Berry blows away most of his credibility. This is not complex science, but if it made its way through multiple revisions, then what about the more complex statements he makes?

    So, it is with reluctance (and, it is true, a giggle or two) that I would ask readers to stay away from The Next 500 Years. Fortunately, other resources can now offer a better picture of the future. (Beginning by the web, resources go from K. Eric Drexler’s Foresight institute at http://www.foresight.org/ to the very serious Futurist at http://www.thefuturist.com/).

    Let’s just hope that this future will include better book editors…

    [Update, November 2005: A reader writes to add…

    I spotted his use of Kinetic Energy = 0.5 m v^2 for input values approaching c in the BASIC program that appears in the appendix.  Slightly more entertaining (in a very sad way) was his claim that the origin of the factor of 1/30 in the reduction of energy required to lift matter from the Moon’s surface compared to lifting it from the Earth’s surface arises as the product of the ratio of surface gravities (1/6) and the ratio of escape velocities (1/5).  By my algebra, this equates to the claim that “all astronomical bodies are the same density”!

    Ouch…]

  • Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World, Lee M. Silver

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1997, 317 pages, C$32.00 hc, ISBN 0-380-97494-0

    The biggest hardship imposed on humanity by genetic engineering might not be the appearance of a race of supermen as much as it’s the flurry of bad jokes and titles oh-so-cleverly plugging in the expression “Brave New World” everywhere they can. Governments should seek a moratorium on that expression rather than looking to ban human cloning research.

    Lee M. Silver, author of Remaking Eden, doesn’t fear the supermen. In fact, his non-fiction exploration of the possibilities of genetic engineering seems to welcome the advent of homo sapiens plus. As such, he’s far removed from the usual naysayers and knee-jerk reactionaries: No wonder he spends most of his book addressing their objections.

    Genetic Engineering is not something we can forget about, for a variety of reasons. The first is that it is not, comparatively speaking, an expensive technology. In an age where any new important endeavor in the field of physics require multi-million equipment, genetic research -and, more significantly, the implementation of existing research- can be done in the confine of large private clinics. Much as computing was popularized by easy accessibility of computers to the masses, reproductive technologies will be used widely, whether we want it or not.

    Another reason why reproductive technologies will not be stopped is that the impetus driving them is no abstract business sense, national competition or far-off payoff: Research in this area is driven by the basic human need to procreate. Parents, not presidents, will insist that the newest technology be used to enhance their children. After all, what’s a tweaked gene or two when some of them are willing to pay for the best schools, the best music teachers, the best social clubs?

    Genetics is not a simple subject, so Silver can be excused to spend more than half the book discussing past and contemporary research. “Bottle babies” aren’t exactly making headlines nowadays, and that’s exactly the point Silver wants to make: These once-“immoral” technologies are now firmly entrenched into accepted social norms. Further genetic research -like cloning, or children born of same-sex parents-, will soon be here, and we can eventually expect them to pass into the same kind of acceptance.

    The book really hits its strides, however, in its last three chapters, where Silver really goes beyond today’s technology to explore the future possibilities offered by The “virtual” child and the “designer” child. The virtual child is an extension of today’s methods, except it consists in fertilizing several eggs, analyzing their genetic makeup and allowing the parents to select the “best” of the embryos. This is only a temporary step to the designer child, which lets parents specify the actual genetic makeup of their children. Of course, we’re not there yet: our knowledge of genes is still too primitive… but we’re getting there. To Silver’s credit, he sees it as a boon and not a doomsday device.

    Remaking Eden is a pretty good book for iconoclast, and a work of Satan for the fundamentalist. The first chapters pretty much destroy the notion that a “natural” threshold exists between living and non-living and that birth is the best compromise we can find. Even for stone-cold atheist humanists, Remaking Eden is at time a harsh read. Make no mistake: this is a book written for controversy. Silver uses the book at tribune to counter-argument some of the most persistent clichés against reproductive technologies. It’s a breath of fresh air to see that he’s so convincing.

    This brand of open-mindedness is absolutely essential to discuss this type of research convincingly. Cloning means, for instance, that there is essentially no conception. That someone’s grandparents can actually be his biological parents. It will take some heavy-duty mental reforms to ensure that these clone children find their harmonious place in society.

    Remaking Eden is a needed rarity: A well-written, accessible book about reproductive technologies that allows us to imagine a better future. Lee M. Silver has done us a real service by writing this book, and allowing to envision a future not necessarily dominated by fear and weakness. It’s well worth reading.

  • Headcrash, Bruce Bethke

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 1995, 344 pages, C$6.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60260-4

    When future histories of SF will be written, some pundit will probably observe that cyberpunk died in the early nineties and that Headcrash was one of the pallbearers. When the satiric carrion-eaters start hovering in droves around a genre, you know it’s a pretty stinky corpse.

    But really; a genre founded on a bleak future dominated by corporations in this era of consumer-power? A genre glorifying street-smarts, as written by patsy-faced SF geeks? A genre wetting itself upon fancy cyber-virtuality when today’s networld is clogged to a grind by porn addicts? A genre where brain damage was the way to punch out, and no one ever though about a fuse-protector? What the hell were these cyberpunk writers smoking in their spare time? Who can blame Bruce Bethke for taking on such an obvious target?

    Headcrash is, simply, a satire on cyberpunk. Jack Burroughs is a nerdish compu-minion in a multi-megacorporation. By day, he slaves away at a dead-end job and fights office politics. By night, he’s MAX_KOOL and do pretty much whatever he wants in cyberspace. Unfortunately, the afore-mentioned office politics bite back and he finds himself “transitioned to Unpaid Administrative Leave” [P.117]. After being mugged by security guards in the parking lot (the bastards even cut off his tie!), Burroughs is offered a risky hacking job by a curvaceous cyber-babe…

    By any rational standard, Headcrash is pretty darn funny. “Here comes Bruce Bethke. And he’s got a chainsaw” blurbs Joel Rosenberg on the back cover. He’s not kidding. Bethke savagely rips apart cyberpunk from The Shockwave Rider to Snow Crash, with a hundred-page detour on the inanity of corporate life that reads a lot like Dilbert on acid. Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton also get their dues…

    The first-person narration is wonderfully funny and compulsively readable. Be careful about reading this one on the bus, unless you don’t mind everyone looking at you when you laugh aloud. Like most geek-fantasy tales, this one promises plenty of techno-gadgets and sex, though it eventually reneges on the latter. Disappointingly, many of the “surprises” are telegraphed miles in advance, with predictable results.

    (Warning; mild spoilers in this paragraph) Headcrash finely upholds the cyberpunk tradition of unsatisfying endings, by pulling a huge disappointment out of its bags of tricks. (One Amazon reader called it “a GPF of an ending”) The long-awaited relationship between two characters isn’t consumed and even if the effect seems conscious, it isn’t less damning. One get the feeling that even if the protagonist ends up pretty satisfied with himself, he should -and could- have had better. (Like, er, traveling with someone else.) I will note with some interest that another recent corporate satire -Mike Judge’s film OFFICE SPACE- ends on more or less the same philosophical point.

    Still, one would have to be really ungrateful not to like Headcrash —though it is entirely possible not to get it given the strongly satiric bent of the work. The dour cyberpunk genre really needed such a strongly-worded eulogy… and as far as send-offs go, this one is really quite decent. As if Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Douglas Adams, William Gibson and Scott Adams decided to celebrate the death of the genre by poking fun at each other, with Hunter S. Thompson crashing the party mid-way through.

  • Random Excess, Ross Laver

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Viking Canada, 1998, 339 pages, C$32.00 hc, ISBN 0-670-87972-X

    Does it make sense to read a book about Corel? Probably.

    Does it make sense to read a book about Corel if you’re an Ottawa-area Comp.Sci. graduate? Sure.

    Does it make sense to read a book about Corel if you’re an Ottawa-area Comp.Sci. graduate who likes to post his reviews on his web site and then put his web site on the resume he’s sending to Corel? Probably not.

    You have to understand that Corel is a Pretty Big Deal in the Ottawa area. Not as much as the all-powerful federal government, or even telecommunication giants Newbridge and Nortel, but Corel has two important advantages: immediate popular name-recognition and a certain technological sexiness, given the sophistication of their flagship product CorelDraw! It’s one thing to be slaving away at code for the Canadian civil service, or for world-wide telecommunications, but nothing beats seeing “your” software lavishly advertised in trade magazines (or in the local-area newspaper).

    That Corel seems almost suicidally aggressive only adds to its image. Even the pressure-cooker reputation of the company deterred few of us Comp.Sci. graduates of sending an application there in hope of a job.

    So, one thing leading to another, it does makes sense to read up about Corel. It’s a testimony to Ross Laver’s skills that he was able to write a general-interest business book about Corel and its founder Michael Copeland while still appealing to the hardcore technical members of his audience.

    Laver’s account begins along with Copeland himself, with a description of the small English tourist town on the decline in which he was born. The path of young Michael Copeland through the English education system is a bit soporific, but already highlights his competitive qualities. Then, upon graduation, Copeland is offered a job at Northern Telecom. Like many immigrants here on a whim, he will never go back.

    The tale gets more interesting as Copeland leaves Northern Telecom, creates Mitel, watches Mitel become an industry leader, leaves Mitel, creates Corel, watches Corel become an industry leader… Copeland was lucky enough to find gold twice; such a personality is neither simple nor easily resumed. It would be too tempting to paint Michael Copeland as an ambition-mad intellectual butterfly going from one thrill to an other. Fortunately, Lever paints a portrait that is multi-faceted, tough but fair. Despite some damning passages, Copeland comes across as a figure to be respected. One gets the feeling that Copeland would be pleased. Then again, Lever did have several interviews with him during the preparation of his book…

    Otherwise, Lever manages to infuse a sense of palpable excitement in the chapters describing the first releases of CorelDraw! The race to beat competing software houses to the market is succinctly represented, as well as the ultimate technical superiority of the released product. These chapters neatly encapsulate both the technological and the marketing aspects of software development in an unusually accessible manner, even for non-technical readers.

    The biggest problem of the book is not related to the content of the book itself: It’s that whatever happens, Lever left his tale at a moment of crisis: Corel still in debt, a declining market share, some heavy sniping from users and a drive toward Java technology. On the other hand, the question isn’t definitely resolved even a year later. But who knows how this book will read in a few more years?

    Until then, Random Excess is a pretty good account of the Copeland/Corel story. It’s a delightful change to read about high-stake computer stories taking place around Rideau Canal or Carling Road, rather than Silicon Valley. Especially for local-area computer-science graduates.

  • Mining the Sky, John S. Lewis

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Addison-Wesley, 1996, 274 pages, C$36.00 hc, ISBN 0-201-47959-1

    In her early-nineties pop-song “Sleepless Satellite”, singer Tasmin Archer wondered “Did we go to the moon too soon?” When hit records begins to ponder the fate of the space program, it’s a sign that things have really gone to waste.

    And, looking at 1999’s NASA, we can only wonder how we’ve gone from the moon to a few overpriced, timid expeditions in low Earth orbit. By any means, we now should have landed humans on Mars, established a base on the Moon and seeded our skies with space stations. Instead, we go nuts over a teleguided rover on the surface of Mars. Whatever.

    Maybe we did go to the moon too soon, argues John S. Lewis in Mining the Sky: That the whole initiative was a purely political battle against the Soviets and nothing more. There’s certainly historical validity to the argument. The challenge then become to find a worthwhile reason to go back into space. As Lewis announces early on, “if we are to return on the moon, it will be because there is some visible relationship between that endeavor and [our] future material well-being.” [P.ix] Mining the Sky is a book-length treatise on the practical advantages of space exploitation.

    It begins close to home, and eventually moves to the stars. We see how we could harvest oxygen from the moon, power from the sun, minerals from asteroids and fusion fuel from Neptune. We see why we should move into space as soon as possible, from stopping civilization-killing meteors to restoring ecological balance to Earth.

    Lewis is no newcomer to the space business. He advances dollars as readily as chemical reactions. While this often becomes obtrusive, it brings an extra layer of credibility to the book, making it unusually convincing.

    Among the great moments of Mining the Sky is the monetary evaluation of an ordinary asteroid: NEA 3554 Amun, the smallest known M asteroid is “only” two kilometers in diameter and weights thirty billion tons. “Assuming a typical iron meteorite composition, the iron and nickel in Amun have a market value of about $8,000 billion.” [P.182] Including the other metallic elements expected in this type of asteroid, Amun’s tag price climbs up to 20,000 billion dollars. Not bad for an object likely to smash into Earth sooner or later.

    Another great moment comes when Lewis tries to represent how much iron is accessible in the asteroid belt: A> 825 quintillion tons, B> four hundred million years of present-day consumption, C> Covering Earth’s entire surface in 800 meters of iron, D> Seven billion dollars’ worth of iron for everyone alive on Earth today. That’s only considering iron and excluding the other metals. And the fact that there are even more Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit!

    Given Lewis’ intent to write a more-rigorous-than-usual vulgarization book, it’s reasonable to warn any prospective reader that Mining the Sky is more of a serious argumentation than an easily accessible “fun” book. The style can get very dry in spots, though Lewis’s unflagging enthusiasm more than does enough to pull us in.

    True, Mining the Sky is a great work of unbounded optimism. But ask any space enthusiast, and they’ll tell you -like Lewis does-, that Space Exploration is not for gloomaniacs. It’s a lot like putting money aside now to ensure a comfortable life later. It’s the logical way to go. It’s the ultimate adventure. It’s where no man has gone before. And in any case, it’s better to go to the moon too soon than get there too late.

  • Aftermath, Charles Sheffield

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1998, 452 pages, C$19.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37893-7

    The great thing about modern civilization is that every few days, we find new ways to bring it down. Take an electromagnetic pulse, for instance. In theory, it’s an energy reaction that simply produces an massive influx of electrons. The consequences, however, are devastating on modern machinery: They overload electronic circuits -frying them permanently- and wipe out magnetic storage formats. This well-known phenomenon -which can be caused by nuclear explosions, among other things- is slowly becoming the sword of Damocles that’s hanging over our modern electromagnetic civilization.

    EMP wouldn’t have been a problem a hundred years ago. Even as late at 1975, the consequences wouldn’t have been as dramatic. But nowadays, a large part of our financial, communication and media networks increasingly rely on complex electronic devices easily damaged by electromagnetic pulses. It’s going to get worse. Aftermath is a novel that takes place after a freak astronomic event has created a massive electromagnetic pulse that completely devastates Earth’s electronics…

    Three cancer victims begin a hunt for a scientist who can continue their longevity treatments. The president of the USA is besieged by personal and national issues. Astronauts from the first Mars mission arrive near Earth to find that nobody can come and get them. Yet another fanatic religious group arises..

    If you suspect a disaster novel, then you’re right: Though Aftermath is definitely SF, it takes place is a future far closer to ours than Sheffield’s other novels. The time is 2026, and in spite of a few fancy new gadgets, there really isn’t much there to tantalize the SF fan. It actually looks closer to 2010 than anything else. Like many disaster novels, Aftermath also sacrifices ideas for lengthy plotting, which is where Sheffield begins to lose control over his book.

    I’m of the opinion that sex is absent of most hard-SF writer’s work because they end up looking silly if they try it, (which isn’t to say that sex in non-hard-SF works isn’t pretty silly either!) and Aftermath pretty much proves my point. Nearly each characters discourses at length about his sexual (in) capacities, from homosexual congressmen to pedophiliac scientists to impotent heads of state. I believe I speak for a sizeable proportion of the North-American population when I say that the less said about the president’s sex life, the better.

    All of this ties into a bigger complaint, which is that Aftermath hasn’t got a recognizably normal character in its dramatis personae. No one to identify with, no bird’s eye view of the action and disaster. I’m all for originality in characters, but when overdone it reads a lot like your average daytime soap opera.

    Fortunately, Aftermath has a bit more meat than the usual melodrama, and it’s one of its virtues that it steadily becomes more interesting as it advances. Be prepared for a rather average start. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes obvious that the novel’s plot lines won’t be tied up by the end of the book, and so Aftermath ends on a note strongly suggestive of at least one sequel. It would have been decent for Bantam to at least acknowledge this on the dust jacket…

    This lack of closure, coupled with the humdrum nature of most of the novel and the sometime-ridiculous sex-driven character dynamics make Aftermath a less-than-commendable choice. Sheffield has done much better in the past, and we can only hope that he’ll come back to form soon.

  • The Transparent Society, David Brin

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Perseus Books, 1998 (1999 reprint), 377 pages, C$22.00 tpb, ISBN 0-7382-0144-8

    Imagine two cities in which cameras are installed in every public area. The only difference is who controls the camera: City Number One has cameras accessible only by the police force. City Number Two has cameras easily accessible by everyone. City Number Two even has cameras installed inside the Police stations! Which city would you rather live in?

    This, in a nutshell, is the main argument of David Brin’s The Transparent Society: modern information technology cannot be stopped and our only choice is to learn to live with them openly. This lucid and thought-provoking work explores the new possibilities and dangers of the information age and comes out with a set of opinions at odds with everyone else, yet curiously reasonable.

    David Brin is no stranger to odd ideas. An astrophysicist by formation and science-fiction writer by trade, Brin’s novels include new concepts and fancy extrapolations by the truckload. With this book, he polishes off a few pet notions, integrates new material, backs it up with some research and enlivens everything with a prose forged in the merciless arena of escapist entertainment. The result is very, very good.

    To be fair, The Transparent Society is not only a book about privacy versus accountability, but also a fascinating techno-social study of neo-western civilization. Fans of Brin’s previous writings will recognize an attempt to consolidate and strengthen his earlier themes. The concept of “social T-cells” alone is a meme that should spread far and wide.

    One of Brin’s biggest strengths is that, even while exhorting a quiet revolution, he just sounds so darn reasonable. Unlike what one might expect from a hard-SF writer, Brin is no elitist: it is obvious that he loves today’s society and the people that compose it. That puts him at least a notch above the many cleverer-than-thou techno-social writers.

    For this reason, not everyone will agree with Brin’s “contrarian” approach. On public discussion forums, he and The Transparent Society have attracted a fair amount of negative comment. Some of this is undoubtedly due to Brin’s skepticism regarding the so-called “cypherpunk” (or “crypto-anarchist”) movement, who claim that strong encryption will liberate the people and bring down all evil governments. Brin offers several compelling reasons why this simply won’t happen, earning the enmity of these online groups.

    The notion of transparency as championed by Brin is not the easiest choice to make. It’s far easier to make mistakes and have your way behind closed doors than in public. On the other hand, our civilization is more or less already based on transparency: Think of the medias, the check and balances in our government, our free market economy, our scientific method based on rigorous peer review… The very idea of truth-as-transparent is even ingrained in our language, as demonstrated by some wonderful common expressions: shady deals, dark side, murky affairs, obscure intent…

    On more practical matters, the book itself is well-produced, though the numerous “hidden” footnotes bring so much to the text that they should have been integrated as on-page side notes rather than put at the end of the book. The index, however, is very complete and useful.

    Brin’s overall thesis is quite convincing. The Transparent Society should be required reading for most policy-makers and forward-thinking individuals. We should consider ourselves lucky to see such a readable counterpoint to the usual shrill privacy alarms that seem to be issued daily. Brin’s ultimate message is worth thinking about; with increasingly decentralized power put in the hands of wholly average persons, privacy will become obsolete, even dangerous in the future. We cannot possibly hope to live in an information age without being transparent to some degree or another.

    [July 1999: It should be noted that, fittingly enough, The Transparent Society was my first purchase ever by on-line commerce. A suitable book for a system built on a sane balance of openness (Internet) and security (encrypted transactions).]

  • Star Trek: The Next Generation #50: Dyson Sphere, Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1999, 235 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-54173-0

    Star Trek has never been known as being particularly rigorous in its scientific accuracy. Hard-SF has never been praised for its overwhelming attention to characters. So what happens when two of today’s hottest hard-SF writers team up to write a Star Trek novel? Dashing all hopes of a Trek novel with the usually well-defined TNG characters dealing with accurate science, the result ends up combining the flaws of both sub-genres.

    Faithful readers of these reviews, if any, undoubtedly noticed my general admiration for the novels of both Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, both of whom have written exciting novels of hard-Science-Fiction that traded characters development for clever ideas and plotting. Together, they have written The Killing Star, a pretty good modern novel of alien invasion that combined ideas and themes proper to both writers.

    I found myself in the unusual position of anxiously waiting for a Trek novel when I learned that they were busy at work on a follow-up to TNG’s episode Relics. That episode, as long-time Trek fans remember well, signaled not only the return of Trek’s original engineer Montgomery Scott, but also marked the introduction of a solid SF device in the Trek universe: A Dyson Sphere.

    A Dyson Sphere is, basically, a ball built around a star so that all of the star’s energy is used. It’s unimaginably big, easily providing the usable surface of billions of Earths. This is the first problem with Dyson Sphere: It’s simply too big to mean anything to the characters. Though not exactly a new problem (Niven’s Ringworld also suffered from “too much to see here” syndrome), it’s especially grating when the novel has to be over in two hundred pages.

    Compounding this problem is the mis-match between setting and characters. There is nothing left for Beverly Crusher, for instance, to do but be awed and fascinated by the sphere. None of the characters can do anything about the setting. (Apart from Picard, that is, and his only emotion is a desire to explore.) Pellegrino and Zebrowski bring back the silicon-based Horta from previous Star Trek episodes, but can’t given them anything interesting to do.

    The second problem is that Dyson Sphere is a story where the characters spend their time reacting to things instead of acting upon them. Basically, they discover a neutron star that will soon strike the Dyson Sphere, destroying it utterly. Fine. (What a coincidence!) But once that’s established, what’s left to do for the crew of the Enterprise? Explore until impact? That’s pretty much all there is. No suspense, even in the few action scenes. The deficient writing doesn’t help; the action is described in a minimal fashion that simply doesn’t evoke the required awe.

    As if this wasn’t enough, the authors are curiously inconclusive about their hypotheses. Was the Dyson Sphere built by Borgs? Possibility raised, but left unexplored. Is the neutron star a weapon of war? Possibility raised but left unexplored. What the heck happened at the end? Possibility raised… Very frustrating. Not to mention the deus ex machina.

    Ironically, the book improves after the novel ends; 37 of Dyson Sphere‘s 235 pages are dedicated to multi-pages author bios and two lengthy afterwords. The afterwords have nothing to do with the book, but they’re fascinating in their own right, discussing antimatter rockets and other advanced physics.

    It pains me considerably to decommend Dyson Sphere: I really expected something better from these two authors. Great for them if the royalties earn them enough money to make them happy (Dyson Sphere was in the USA-Today Top-50 bestseller list!), but as for me, I’d suggest reading the afterwords at the bookstore and wait until the author’s next books. (Or pick up a copy of Pellegrino’s Dust, a much better work at roughly the same price…)

  • Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, Russell Miller

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Key Porter, 1987, 390 pages, C$24.95 hc, ISBN 1-550-12027-7

    First things first: I will not shy away from admitting that I loathe Scientology.

    Most of this anger is a natural byproduct of my general abomination for sects. Organized -read “established”- religions at least have a veneer of respectability and relatively down-to-earth beliefs. (Despite my avowed atheism, I once got an A+ on a college-level essay that argued that the catholic church had a beneficial impact on the colonization of Canada. This has scant relation to Bare-Faced Messiah, but I can’t pass this opportunity to mention it.) Sects, on the other hand, combine financial swindling with seemingly voluntary lobotomy. How else to explain paying obscene amount of money to find the state of mind one can get from a good long walk in the woods with a pretty girl?

    Scientology, however, holds a special place in my pantheon of Bad Ideas. As an early Internaut, I still seethe at their callous legal shenanigans which finally forced the shutdown of the anonymous remailer anon.penet.fi. As a Science-Fiction fan, I carry the collective burden of a genre that hosted L. Ron Hubbard before he decided that the way to make money was to organize a religion. The so-called “top-secret” documents of Scientology, recently revealed by a band of courageous ex-scientologists, read like bottom-level sci-fi garbage. Scientology has no clothes; if it appears so blindingly obvious to me and multiple other wise persons, why isn’t it obvious to everyone?

    Bare-Faced Messiah is not really about Scientology. It’s a biography of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. By casting the forefather in the true light of his accomplishments, Russell Miller reveals the tissue of lies and forgery that is at the heart of Scientology.

    L. Ron Hubbard didn’t compromise a life of honest work and accomplishments by starting the scam called Scientology. This biography makes it clear that Hubbard was a self-aggrandizer, a fabulist and an unbalanced boy well before he used his easy talent for fiction to write for SF magazines. Numerous incidents where Hubbard keeps promoting himself as “The Youngest Eagle Scout Ever” -when no records could prove or disprove this affirmation- is particularly instructive.

    From this boy without a clear sense of himself would emerge a teen constantly inflating his modest accomplishment in tales worthy of men’s adventure magazines. Which inevitably happens, as Hubbard finds himself drawn in a profession where lies are honorable. But Hubbard is a compulsive buyer and before long, he tries to evade his debts in the military service. His war is not heroic, but his war tales are, as he manages to transform a battle with a known magnetic anomaly into a country-saving duel with a Japanese submarine.

    After the war, Hubbard divides his time between magazine pieces and trying to swindle a medical pension from the Navy. He eventually writes a piece called “Dianetics”, from which he’ll establish a religion. Though this first scam ends badly -Hubbard is a compulsive spender-, it lays the foundations for Scientology.

    From there, the remainder of the tale is distressingly familiar: a man with too much power, too much money and too little wisdom. As Scientology grew, Hubbard diminished. His death in 1986 puts a merciful end to a life taken over by paranoia.

    I will quickly gloss over Hubbard’s bigamy, his criminal records, the ludicrous tale of his private navy and other assorted antics; they’re more valid reasons to look for Bare-Faced Messiah. This wonderfully well-researched book lays bare the moral foundations of a fascinating character. For Hubbard might be the twentieth century’s most successful con artist, his true life is even more fascinating than his imagined life.

    Anxious to read the book? Worried that your local library’s copy was destroyed by your friendly neighborhood scientologist? You’re in luck: Check out the online, uncensored version of Bare-Faced Messiah at http://www.jritson.demon.co.uk/bfm/bfmconte.htm

    The Internet just might get the last laugh over Scientology…

  • Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1999, 918 pages, C$39.50 hc, ISBN 0-380-97346-4

    Wow. Where to begin?

    By the physical object itself. Cryptonomicon is a big book. At 918 pages, it’s a pitch-black hardcover that will occupy fully 4.5 centimeters of your shelf. That is, if you decide to plunk down the 40 Canadian Dollars that will grant you the privilege of carrying this pound brick.

    Judging from my local bookstore, however, even the monetary argument will deter few. (I grabbed the last of six copies, three days after its arrival in the store) Only the “Neal Stephenson” is required to attract fans. After a much-remarked SF debut titled Snow Crash (which has since become a cult classic), Stephenson won the Hugo with The Diamond Age and co-wrote two superb contemporary thrillers with his uncle under the pen name Stephen Bury (Interface and The Cobweb).

    Cryptonomicon is far closer to the meticulously-detailed, intricately plotted Bury novels than either of Stephenson’s own SF novels. For one thing, more than half the book takes place during World War Two (echoing Bury’s description of another conflict, the Gulf War, in The Cobweb) and the other half takes place in the present.

    Techo-geeks should be relieved to note, however, that Cryptonomicon is no “mere” WW2 or present-day thriller. Cryptonomicon begs to be fitted in a new genre, “Wired-Fiction”. Stephenson has written for the magazine several (including one of the best article the magazine ever published, “Mother Earth, motherboard”) and his latest novel reads a lot like the ideal novel for Wired-heads. This is a good thing, mind you.

    Judge for yourself: The present-day plot concerns Randy Waterhouse, an Internet expert who finds himself in business to construct a data haven in Southeast Asia. The WW2 plot revolves around Randy’s grandfather, a brilliant mathematician who spends the war breaking Axis codes. Cryptology, technology, hacking, computers, business and a myriad of other subjects are frenetically explored and brought together in Cryptonomicon, at the greatest pleasure of all the techno-geeks in the audience.

    The charm of Cryptonomicon lies largely in its unrepentant didacticism. This is techno-docu-fiction at its most extreme, including graphs, equations and pages-long digressions on arcane subjects (Few reviewers have resisted the impulsion to note the four-page exposé on how to eat Captain Crunch cereal, and I will not be an exception.)

    In the hands of a lesser writer, Cryptonomicon might have been an interminable bore. But fans already know Stephenson’s quirky prose style, and the result provokes emotions oscillating between intense fascination and audible hilarity. This is an amazingly well-written novel.

    This book is filled with so many good scenes that it’s hard to know which ones to highlight. At least keep two of them in mind: The most hilarious is certainly the wonderfully-funny business plan. The most impressive is Randy’s character-defining hacking apex. Thinking of it, Randy’s expedition account (“The Weird turn Pro”) is also mesmerizing…

    It’s not a perfect novel by any mean; the ending -while stronger than Stephenson’s other solo novels- is still annoyingly incomplete. At least one character is still mysteriously unexplained —what’s this about several other volumes in the series? And, for a 918-pages novel, it’s curiously lacking in plot. My own techno-nerd sensibilities kept wanting to go back to the present-day thread, but I’d be hard-pressed to find anything in the novel worth editing out.

    No matter: Much like Interface and Snow Crash were stupendous books, Cryptonomicon easily ranks as a must-read novel of 1999 for technically-oriented readers. It’s big, it’s impressive, it’s exhilarating and, in all seriousness, you get a full forty Canadian dollars’ worth of entertainment.

  • Life Signs: The Biology of Star Trek, Susan Jenkins M.D. & Robert Jenkins, M.D.

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 1998, 189 pages, C$32.00 hc, ISBN 0-06-019154-6

    All things considered, it is pretty ironic that the movies and dramatic television series most closely associated with science are, in fact, those which will make the most errors. For each CONTACT which takes care is trying to be as accurate as possible, there’s a LOST IN SPACE to throw all of physics outside the windows in a hurry. STAR TREK, for all its qualities, has never stuck too closely to accepted rules of science. Instances of TREK scientific ludicrousness (“Invert the beam’s polarity!”, “Spock has no more brain!”, “We’re devolving!”) are too well-recorded to argue.

    Despite everything, Trek occasionally gets it right, or -more significantly- allows for an imaginative springboard to today’s knowledge. Renowned physicist Lawrence M. Krauss has made a name -not to mention a mint- for himself with The Physics of Star Trek and its sequel (Beyond Star Trek) and we could only expect other similar books.

    These books have arrived, en masse, in book-stores: The Science of the X-Files, The Metaphysics of Star Trek, The Science of Star Wars… Not to be left out, The Physics of Star Trek‘s publisher Harper Collins now comes forward with Life Signs: The Biology of Star Trek.

    Fortunately, this book is written by competent personnel: Unlike the doubtful The Science of the X-Files, written by even-more doubtful fantasy writer Jeanne Cavelos, Life Signs is the product of a collaboration between husband-and-wife Robert Jenkins, M.D., geneticist and Susan Jenkins, M.D., psychiatrist. Impressive credits; are they any good at vulgarization?

    All Science of… books are (should be) exercises in scientific popularization rather than simple collections of random nitpicks. Ideally, they should use the SF series/movies as excuses to present more substantial content. Here, The Jenkinses use Star Trek as a reason to explore current research on exobiology, genetics, longevity, cloning, mating rituals, evolution, life in space and other biological considerations.

    A large part of the success of books life Life Signs resides on the way the authors are able to sustain the readers’ attention while still communicating meaningful information. Fortunately, the Jenkinses are able to vulgarize the material in an entertaining and fascinating way… not to mention staying respectful of the show. “How alien can you get?” is a serviceable example of how to structure a broad topic (xenobiology) in an accessible fashion. It helps that the book is often wryly funny.

    In many ways, this book was more informative for your reviewer than was The Physics of Star Trek, mostly due to a weaker knowledge of biology to begin with. This being said, the books have a few significant shortcomings which make it a doubtful buy. First and foremost, at 189 pages, the hardcover edition is certainly not worth thirty-two Canadian dollars! While a desire to keep a complex subject at a manageable length is understandable, Life Signs doesn’t offer a very good return on investment. The cruel lack of an index is a potentially fatal flaw in a scientific reference book. Some of the gimmicks are annoying; for a book on biology, Life Signs often errs in “series summary” territory (see pages 87-92) There is a thing as being too cute.

    On the other hand, if you can manage to acquire Life Signs at reduced rates or in paperback, it makes both a great gift and a fun introduction/refresher to the complex subject of biology. Though their familiarity with specific characters and episodes suggest that the Jenkinses are fans, they’re not blind fans and their rational perspective on Treknology is harsh but fair. (The last chapter is about “Where no one will ever go”, and brings some much-needed sanity to a few of Trek’s most ludicrous assertions.)

    Light-hearted but substantial, Life Signs not only answers long-standing questions, but suggests new unanswered questions… such as why the heck is Picard still bald in an era of advanced medicine?

    Is that a set-up for a sequel? Make it so!