Book Review

  • Moonseed, Stephen Baxter

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Prism, 1998, 534 pages, C$20.95 hc, ISBN 0-06-105044-X

    Sometime, I wonder how Hollywood producers deal with it.

    No, I’m not talking about the sleeping-with-supermodels-and-rolling-in-cash part. That I can reasonably understand. But I really wonder how they have to deal with the trade-offs between story and budget. Consider disaster movie, which are all about showing expensive catastrophes on screen. If you’re on a limited budget (and even $150M is a limited budget), how can you deliver a really good disaster film when it’s literally too expensive to put it all on screen?

    This isn’t a problem in novels, because when you get down to it, prose writers have essentially an unlimited budget for visual effects. They can blow up the earth for exactly the same amount of money that have two minor character talk to each other. No publishing house is ever going to bankrupt themselves by investing in a spectacular historical war novel over a simple romantic comedy. Movie studios, on the other hand, pretty much tattooed HEAVEN’S GATE in the forehead of every script acquisition manager…

    Stephen Baxter’s Moonseed proves how much more satisfying a disaster story can be in written format. Not only is it more spectacular, but it’s also better-constructed and far more clever than its Hollywood counterparts.

    It all begins on the night when astronaut Geena Bourne and geologist Henry Meacher decide to divorce. Venus blows up and Henry is transferred to Edinburgh, where a mysterious silvery dust soon begins ravaging the countryside. Before long, the Edinburgh dust pool is growing at exponential rate, and it becomes clear that they’ve got to stop it. Evidence points at contamination from one of the Moon rocks, so NASA puts together a mission using present-day technology to go back there…

    Stephen Baxter is known for being a hard-SF writer, and Moonseed will do nothing to diminish this reputation. He plays the SF game and follows the rules, which does give a delicious particularity to the part where NASA puts together a baling-wire mission to go back to the moon. Otherwise, spectacular scenes abound, whether it’s Edinburgh being consummated by the “Moonseed” or Seattle being erased by a tidal wave. Big bucks special effects, backed by I-guess-accurate physics.

    Moonseed is less capable when it comes to human characters. Some are barely introduced and then forever forgotten (Marge Case, Jenny Calder, Cecilia Stanley, etc…), others are superfluous (Blue Ishiguro, Hamish “Bran” McCrae and the remainder of the clichéd cult subplot), while the protagonists are involved in quasi-soap-opera plot complications to keep them together. (No, but seriously, wasn’t it possible to select a worse three-person moon team?)

    But it doesn’t really matter, disaster stories and hard-SF novels being what they are. Even the lengths of the novel can be a good thing when they add such richness. Who cares about individual humans when the whole race is at risk? Moonseed is far more original than the usual catastrophe scenarios, ironically by going back to the source disaster story, the classic When Worlds Collide. The ending accelerates the pace of the novel, leading to a wide-open conclusion that truly rewards the reader.

    So, next time you’re contemplating paying almost 10$ for a disaster movie, consider Moonseed as an alternative. Easy reading, original threat, imaginative plotting, neat gadgets and cool scenes not constrained by a fixed SFX budget. What more could you ask of an end-of-the-world story?

  • False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, Thomas Hoving

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon & Schuster, 1996, 366 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-684-81134-0

    For someone like me, technically trained in cold, hard matters of equations, algorithms and formal methods, the world of fine arts is as mysterious and incomprehensible as an alien mindset. You look at a picture, you like the picture or not. If you really like it and if it’s for sale, you buy it. Simple!

    Not so simple. C.P. Snow would be proud. Art is not merely something that can be simply reduced to “liking/not liking”. Especially when older artwork is concerned, it becomes a question of cultural pride, personal self-aggrandizement, financial investments… And then troubles begin. When you buy a Roman sculpture to show off, it doesn’t matter if you like it: It does matter if it’s an authentic Roman sculpture, though. Who is to say if it wasn’t hacked out three years ago by some guy deep in Arkansas with a talent for reproducing “authentic” Roman sculptures?

    False Impressions is a book about fake artwork. Well-respected “former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art” Thomas Hoving brings both erudition and wit to this fascinating subject.

    Though the book is not without flaws, it does present the subject adequately. Hoving spends some time discussing the history of fakes, noting that even in Roman times, for instance, artists routinely faked Greek artwork. Medieval times are full of fakery, up to and including the shroud of Turin. The popularization of the art world has given rise to even more audacious fakery at the beginning of the century.

    A lot of the narrative is simply Hoving’s autobiography as far as fakes are concerned. It’s a bit of a disappointment to find out that in many cases, a fake is never entirely conclusively proved as being a fake. It often happens that even the latest scientific methods are simply useless to distinguish fakes, especially if they are from roughly the same period.

    Neither is the fake necessarily of lesser quality and/or artistic merit. Hoving insists that fakes are often of better quality than the original work of art. Generous souls can even consider them pastiche, especially if they’re not meant to represent a specific oeuvre, but a “lost piece” in the same tradition.

    What is a fake, then? It all boils down to the very simple axiom that a fake is not what it’s purported to me. A Roman sculpture produced by our hypothetical Arkansas guy would be a fake if represented as being authentically roman. But it would be a work of art in its own right if represented as “American, 1999”—though probably decried as being an obvious Roman rip-off…

    Any book that can have me thinking about this kind of stuff gets points for audacity. On the other hand, False Impressions is not exactly a great book and part of the problem lies in the medium. Text-heavy books are not a good way of discussing art. Art is made to be seen, to be touched, to be felt in person. A study of fakes almost requires us to be able to compare original with fake, or at least see what we’re talking about. No such luck here: False Impressions does contain photographs, but they’re on a black-and-white insert late in the book that feels a lot like if each one was painstakingly inserted after much arguing. This would have been terrific material for a TV documentary, even a four-part miniseries. But as such, False Impressions is a tease in its text format.

    Compounding the problem is that Hoving might know his subject like few others, but his writing style often veers into irrelevant minutiae. Everything he writes isn’t exactly essential. Where was the editor?

    Still, I have to admire a book that can make me ask questions about artwork and fakery. False Impressions, despite significant flaws, is an eye opener and a mildly diverting trip into a hitherto unsuspected shady underworld. Not exactly recommended to everyone, but worth picking up if you’re really intrigued by the subject.

  • Fool’s War, Sarah Zettel

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 1998, 455 pages, C$6.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60293-0

    A few contemporary Science Fiction critics of late have bemoaned the tendency of contemporary SF to become entrenched upon itself. Rather than being stories about the effect of rational change on humanity, SF is now most about SF itself. Instead of fresh ideas, we get stories that are explicitly about SF gadgets, space adventures with robots, laser guns and aliens that refer only to other SF stories and not plausible development from today’s world.

    This description of SF-as-SF certainly applies very well to the “media” segment of written SF, those bastardized written STAR TREK episodes, or infamous STAR WARS trilogies. These are not SF-as-literature-of-ideas, but SF-as-moneymaking-machine-for-media-corporation. The work aims at nothing more ambitious than giving existing fans a story in a predefined universe where sweeping changes are forbidden by license holders.

    But one doesn’t need to go in media-SF territory to encounter SF-as-SF. The whole segment of space opera is arguably based on premises that will not be realized “in the real world”. Who can argue in favour of Faster-That-Light engines? Who believes that Galactic Empires are a viable form of government? For all we know, FTL drives will never exist and all of space-opera is fantasy.

    So say the critics. And they’re mostly right: SF has acquired a specialized audience in its long existence, and many of these readers are perfectly content with good old-fashioned stories about AIs, robots, aliens and galactic empires. Where critics err, however, is when they assume that SF-as-SF is somehow less worthy than its more realistic counterpart. Which finally brings us to Sarah Zettel’s second novel, Fool’s War.

    Judge for yourself from the plot description: “Katmer Al Shei, owner of the starship Pasadena, does not know she is carrying a living entity in her ship’s computer systems. Or that the electronic network her family helped weave holds a new race fighting for survival. Or that her ship’s professional Fool is trying to avert a battle that could destroy entire worlds.” The only missing thing is a few exclamation points.

    But however conventionally specialized her setting may be, Zettel knows how to please her public. Fool’s War is clearly written (up to a point where it’s easy to skim and gloss over crucial details), her characters are pretty well-defined and the plotting maintains an adequate level of interest.

    Her take on Artificial Intelligence is one of the elements that Zettel brings to the SF idea cauldron by writing a genre novel. In Fool’s War, AI self-consciousness is a product of sudden paranoia. Succinctly put, sentience happens as soon as a program realizes that it is susceptible to being turned off at any moment. The inevitable systemic crashes caused by newly-conscious paranoid AIs are cause of significant concern for many characters in the novel, and some barely-repressed anger from one particular character.

    Distinctive touches like these, plus genuine dialogue skill, cause renewed interest in Fool’s War. Zettel’s attention to the people side make her space opera read far more like Lois McMaster Bujold than E.E Doc Smith. While some elements are unconvincing (Her inclusion of Islamic characters is understandable, but neither touching or impressive), the novel as a while holds up pretty well.

    Though “merely” a genre novel, Fool’s War play the rules of the game very well. Experienced SF readers will find what they expect in here: A good plot, professional characterization and touches of humour mixed with a sprinkling of ideas. With just some more work, Zettel shows a lot of promise as an author worthy of attention.

  • Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, Dale Pollock

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harmony, 1983, 304 pages, C$14.95 hc, ISBN 0-517-54677-9

    Summer of 1999 was flagged, in movie circles, as being “the summer of STAR WARS” given the release of the newest chapter in the saga, STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE. The movie certainly captured media attention for a while, mostly under the form of humorous human-interest stories about the hordes of rabid fans lining up days, even weeks in advance to be the first to get tickets for the movie’s premiere.

    Your reviewer has more than a soft spot for the STAR WARS films, even though this fondness never reached unreasonable levels. Growing up with the STAR WARS films, however, makes them almost critic-proof, impervious to critical judgment. (Seeing the new STAR WARS on opening day was a must, though a flexible work schedule and matinee showings simplified matters considerably.)

    In this context, it might seem a bit belated to do a review of a 1983 biography about STAR WARS creator George Lucas. But after reading the book, the new STAR WARS summer of 1999 makes it the best year yet to review Skywalking.

    Stop. Rewind. Play.

    Skywalking is a biography of George Lucas. From his childhood in California to teenage years marked by a passion for sport cars—a passion that would culminate in a spectacular car crash, and would be immortalized later in AMERICAN GRAFFITI. The narrative follow Lucas from his first few days at USCinema school, through his student films to, finally, his first full-length feature, THX-1138.

    Then Skywalking details the steps leading up to the release of the first STAR WARS film, from the agonizing screenwriting to the chaotic filming (sets destroyed by sandstorms, malfunctioning special effects, etc…) and the almost-unexpected success of the film. By that time, two-third of the books are done, and the remainder of the book seems like routine; the success of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, the production of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, the making of THE RETURN OF THE JEDI…

    Unexpected details pepper this biography. A visit on the RETURN OF THE JEDI set. Descriptions of George Lucas’ student films. A summary of the first, first STAR WARS screenplay. A chapter on the friendship between George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.

    This portrait of George Lucas is fairly complete. Dale Pollock takes great care in establishing, even at first, the traits that would push Lucas to build a cinematographic empire: His thriftiness, his sense of authenticity, his distrust of authority, his desire to entertain and his refusal to compromise.

    Skywalking remains relevant even seventeen years later because this is a relatively unbiased portrait of Lucas. Relatively, because Lucas granted unprecedented access to Pollock, numerous private documents and several interviews. It’s a fair bet to assume that Lucas cannot be studied in this fashion any more: Would his status as a legend of filmed SF (gack!) allow him to collaborate so willingly to a book of this type nowadays? Hmm… LucasFilm is already known for extensive history rewriting… (“EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE”)

    But the true value of Skywalking in 1999 is to be found in the last chapter, where George Lucas allows himself to talk about his future projects: Enhanced special effect, independent production facilities, forays in video games… THE PHANTOM MENACE is the culmination of these elements, and 1999 is the first year where we can see the extent of Lucas’ success. Yes, George Lucas has accomplished everything he’s set out to do. The irony, after seeing THE PHANTOM MENACE, is that he’s put himself in a position of supreme accountability for the considerable flaws of the end product.

    Skywalking won’t convince those who criticize Lucas. It’s not a chainsaw biography, it’s not a slavish portrait of a demigod. It has managed to remain relevant seventeen years. It even shines on current event, proving that nothing ever exists in a vacuum, that nothing new is without antecedents. Not bad.

  • Manhattan Transfer, John E. Stith

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1993, 381 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-51952-3

    New York, New York.

    Has a city ever exerted a greater fascination from the popular media? Whether in song, literature or film, New York has invaded the popular consciousness, coming to stand for the archetype of the Big City. One can easily mention multiple movies taking place there (1997: MIMIC, MEN IN BLACK and THE PEACEMAKER. 1998: ARMAGEDDON, DEEP IMPACT and GODZILLA. 1999: EYES WIDE SHUT and THE CORRUPTOR…)

    People across the world can enumerate New York’s biggest attractions without ever having set foot on American soil: Lady Liberty, the United Nations, the Empire State Tower, the World Trade Center… Even the districts have acquired reputations of their own: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, the Bronx… (For bonus points, name movies whose title is inspired by these districts)

    For a variety of reasons, New York has become a locus of multiple interpretations. Some of it is simple rural jealousy, though to be honest, in comparison to New York we’re pretty much all rurals. New York stands as the incarnation of all of our feelings toward big cities. Who hasn’t ever dreamt that New York’s problems could be solved by making it disappear?

    That’s what happens one morning in John E. Stith’s Manhattan Transfer. UFOs appear and start severing Manhattan’s links with its surrounding: laser beams cut bridges, subway tunnels, roadways, solid earth… Then a bubble is installed over the city, and the whole package is lifted up in the sky, brought inside a spaceship and installed on a vast plain where dozen of other bubble cities are also lying there…

    A team is quickly formed inside the human city to try to find out what the heck is happening. As they try to enter in communication with the other cities, they find out that the aliens are installing power, water, and waste conducts. Clearly, the aliens want to keep them around for a while… but why? Is this a zoo, an experiment or a grocery cart? (The alien’s true reason for taking Manhattan becomes far too obvious even at mid-book.)

    All of this happens in the first fifty pages of Manhattan Transfer. If only the remainder of the novel could have been that good… Like many premise-driven SF novels, this one falters after the initial setup, and goes on for maybe a hundred pages too long. The middle section is sorely in need of some tightening up. (Maybe by cutting the unnecessary “preacher” subplot?) Fortunately, the novel picks up interest again as it advances forward. If the ending undergoes too many false climaxes, it wraps up in a satisfying, if abrupt, manner.

    Adding to the fun, Manhattan Transfer is written with the can-do attitude exemplified by golden-age SF. The characters of the novel are almost invariably competent men and women, and they won’t stay kidnapped for too long! It’s one of the intellectual pleasures of the novel to see how Manhattanites end up coping with this radical lifestyle change. Though Stith is far more optimistic than it could reasonably be expected, his characters are so sympathetic that readers will forgive some easy rationalizations.

    Devotees of the hard-SF school of thought will find a lot to like in Manhattan Transfer. Even though the writing isn’t as concise and as clear as it could be, the characters are above-average for this type of story, and there’s a clear narrative drive from cover to cover. An unusual, yet well-handled premise and some cool scenes make this a worthwhile read. Better yet; consider it as an alternate version of INDEPENDENCE DAY.

  • Standard Candles, Jack McDevitt

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tachyon, 1996, 248 pages, C$20.00 hc, ISBN 0-9648320-4-6

    As a marginal Jack McDevitt fan, imagine my surprise as I browsed through the Science-Fiction Book Club’s latest catalogue and discovered a mention of the previously-unknown title Standard Candles. A trip to amazon.com later, I had found out that this was McDevitt’s first short story anthology, and that it had been published in 1996 (!) by a small publisher.

    Given that I’ve read all of McDevitt’s other books, my surprise was compounded by the complete absence of Standard Candles from his bibliography. Granted, McDevitt’s latest publisher (Harper Prism) doesn’t list other publishers’ books, but still… So I ordered Standard Candles, curious to see what McDevitt had produced in short-form SF.

    The SFBC edition of Standard Candles is a slim (248 pages) volume containing 16 stories. Given that one of them is more than fifty pages long, the remainder of the stories in this book are fairly short and can be easily read in one time.

    I have a special fondness for single-author collections because they tend to succinctly summarize everything you want to know about an author’s interests, style, strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, in this case, it brought back memories of how, if McDevitt can be great, he can also be insufferably annoying.

    For each Moonfall, Engines of God and Hercules Text, suspenseful novels against backgrounds of hard physics, archaeology and SETI alien contact, there’s A Talent for War, Ancient Shores or Eternity Road, disappointing stories that barely explain their own premises and suffer from pointless detours, unresolved events and depressing finales. And so the pattern repeats itself in Standard Candles, in 248 short pages.

    McDevitt is not a conventionally optimistic SF writer. His stories are filled with fallen civilizations, sentient stupidity, matrimonial failures and malfunctioning technology. His roots in classical studies inevitably bring us back to boom-and-bust cycles, to uncertain futures and the possibility of total systemic collapse. Even his most optimistic scenarios always include signs that, gee, idiots will always be with us.

    Ironically, historian McDevitt often writes Science-Fiction stories in the vein of physicist Gregory Benford, about scientists stuck with very ordinary problems and extraordinary discoveries (“Standard Candles”, “Cryptic”, etc…)

    It’s no mistake if this book is classified as being “Science Fiction/Literature” on its dust jacket, especially after reading “Translated from the Collossian” (aliens go around stealing classical literature) and “The Fort Moxie Branch” (about a mysterious library of lost literary gems). Is it a coincidence, however, if these are two of the book’s best stories?

    Similarly enjoyable are the two great stories related to chess. “Black to Move” is a chilling (if overlong) story of alien cunning explained in chess terms. “The Jersey Rifle”, on the other hand, is a charming, quasi-comic tale about The Best Chess Player in the World.

    There’s nothing charming about most of the book, however. A typical McDevitt conclusion resides heavily on the threat of future Very Bad Things. A welcome exception is “To Hell With the Star”, which certainly ranks up there with the best of the SF wish-fulfillment fantasies. But McDevitt is, by and large, a melancholic, pessimistic writer. Nothing wrong with that, but taken in long sustained doses, it does put a dampener on your day.

    Standard Candles is still a worthwhile anthology: McDevitt delivers more often than not, and provided one doesn’t read all the stories one after the other, the dark and depressing tone is a change of pace. More significantly, Standard Candles is a pretty spiffy summary of everything that interests the author, from classical history to hard physics. Fans will love it; non-fans are advised to wait until they’re fans.

  • The Dragon’s Eye, Joël Champetier (Translated by Jean-Louis Trudel)

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1999, 296 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86882-0

    Allow me to preface this review with an important disclaimer: I am not a disinterested reader when it comes to The Dragon’s Eye. I’ve known both author Joël Champetier and translator Jean-Louis Trudel since 1995’s “Can-Con’95” SF convention and if it would be presumptuous of me to claim them as friends, I can at least honestly call them good acquaintances.

    Similarly, I’ve been reading French-Canadian Science-Fiction for a long time, and my favorite novel remains La Taupe et le Dragon (The Dragon’s Eye), one of the few adult action/adventure idea-heavy hard-SF novel to come out of the French-Canadian scene. I’ve followed closely the process leading to the English translation of the novel and now I’m pleased to see that the American public can now read one of the best-kept secrets of French-Canadian Science-Fiction.

    The Dragon’s Eye takes place nearly two hundred and fifty years in the future. Earth has expanded into space, and the colonization of extra-solar planets has begun. Not all nations have equal means, however, and China finds itself relegated to a barely-hospitable planet in a nearby double-star system. One of the stars is the Dragon’s Eye, a small but dangerous star whose intense radiations cause widespread blindness among the colonizing population. As is conditions weren’t harsh enough, New China is saddled by enormous debts. Rebellion rumors flow freely…

    In the midst of all this arrives Réjean Tanner, an operative for an Earth intelligence agency. He quickly finds himself in enemy territory, tasked with retrieving a rogue agent… regardless if the agent is cooperative or not.

    The stage is set for an adventure solidly placed in the James Bond tradition. But Champetier has other ambitions, and the action/adventure tale that is The Dragon’s Eye never goes quite as well as planned, never quite as easily as we might like it to be. For veterans of the spy genre, this novel is a blast given the number of conventions it cheerfully overturns. In a way, this is almost the anti-James Bond novel, yet not a satiric one…

    An aspect that shines in The Dragon’s Eye is the meticulous world-building done by Champetier. The Eye’s harmful radiations force everyone to take radical steps to protect themselves against blindness and skin cancer; this obsession permeates the book’s society as deeply as one could expect from the best SF extrapolations.

    Best of all, The Dragon’s Eye is a wonderful read. Champetier is one of the few French-Canadian authors to deliberately choose an uncluttered style, and the result is a novel that’s easy to get into, very well-plotted for maximum interest, and never too lengthy. I read it in a flash, pulled by the lean narrative.

    I had initial fears that all the qualities that I remembered from La Taupe et le Dragon were due to unfair comparison with other French-Canadian works. It’s a relief to be finally able to judge the book in a fair context. Fortunately, the book holds up amazingly well: As an action/adventure SF with a unusually good sense of world-building, one could be hard-pressed to find better. Kudos to Champetier and kudos to Trudel for a pretty good translation. With a bit of luck, Tor will now publish Champetier’s other horror novels… and with even more luck, more SF from him. Though we French-Canadian will get to read it first!

  • 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.