Book Review

  • Stalker Analog, Mel Odom

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    ROC, 1993, 367 pages, C$6.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-45257-7

    Legend has it that the late famous Amazing editor John Campbell used to tell writers that he didn’t want their old recycled western stories. After all, it’s so easy to go through an old story and replace every “John” with “Blorip”, “horse” with “tronaap” and “colt” with “pistolaser”. SF, argued Campbell, must be -in addition to everything else- uniquely SF. Remove the SF element from the SF story, and there should be no coherent story.

    I never expect too much from ROC books, and Stalker Analog finely upholds this publisher’s track record as an inconsistent peddler of sorta-SF. Examples of fantasy disguising as SF from ROC are numerous (see a good proportion of Emily Devenport’s production, or a large part of the stories in “SF” anthologies like Future Net) and it’s no coincidence if their books tend to be forgotten come award time and if you have a hard time finding ROC books in mall libraries. Put put it simply, they don’t measure up to the good publishers in the field of SF.

    (There’s also an issue of boring covers, which is not worth getting into today.)

    Stalker Analog starts out as a pretty good illustration of what I mean by sorta-SF. It takes place in a near-future Houston economically dominated by the Japanese and stars a young female cop named Bethany Shay. After an opening sequence where Shay busts up a casino, the real story begins: A serial murderer in the Jack-the-Ripper tradition is terrorizing the city, and it’s up to Bethany to find him/her.

    Up to maybe the two-third of the book, we get a police procedural—a rather enjoyable one, but a police procedural nonetheless. There are a few hints of cyberspace stuff and oh-so-early-nineties Japanese influence, but nothing you couldn’t excise easily from the novel.

    It’s only in its final hundred pages that the plot moves resolutely in Science-Fiction territory, and then only to conclude on a note strongly reminescent of ROBOCOP II. Elsewhere, there isn’t much to attach the novel to pure SF… not even a few high-tech gadgets.

    Interestingly, apart from a brief flash of interest at the end, the novel was substantially weaker in its SF phase. The police procedural is well-handled, and the character development is worth it. When all rules fly out to cyberspace, however, the novel loses a lot of its coherency and evolves in ways that aren’t really clear or satisfying.

    Too bad; I would have liked to see a version of Stalker Analog as a modern crime novel. The elements for a good procedural are all there, and Odom can really write in a manner to hold our attention. The plotting is also quite good, moving rapidly from one point to another. Finally, the action scenes are well described, which is always a must for action thrillers of this type.

    In the meantime, ROC remains a publisher without a clear idea of what SF stories should be. It’s not enough to add “Analog” to a generic title to get a science-fiction novel: you also have to put some of it in the plot too.

  • Death Drives a Semi, Edo van Belkom

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Quarry Press, 1998, 263 pages, C$19.95 tpb, ISBN 1-55082-214-4

    In his introduction to Death Drives a Semi, Robert J. Sawyer writes that Edo van Belkom is “the ideal of what used to be called, back when the term wasn’t disparaging, a pulp writer—he writes stories quickly, often to a given editor’s specification, always producing a quality, salable product on time.” Disparaging or not, “pulp writer” neatly encapsulate both what’s good and what’s not about this collection.

    Horror is a very curious literature that has become even stranger in the last decade. The nineties have seen the popularization of the genre through movies, television series and, more ominously, “young adult” novels. Much like post-STAR WARS Science-Fiction, Pop-Horror finds itself reduced to the lowest common denominator. The result, more obvious on the silver screen, is more successful at inducing laughter (GHOST IN THE MACHINE) when it’s simply not successful at all (I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER).

    Horror is losing potency, slowly being defanged by its increasing accessibility to everyone—including teens and pre-teens. We’re slowly ending up with a genre synonymous with tame, formulaic, lifeless (ho-ho) stories where everyone dies at the end, but readers couldn’t care less.

    This reviewer might already be too jaded despite only a passing familiarity with the genre, but the biggest problem with Death Drives a Semi is that for the most part, it’s nothing special. Many stories can be resumed as “Person discovers supernatural thing, supernatural thing kills person, another person comes in.” Most of the stories end up of the sort easily shown on prime-time television: few chills and even fewer scares. There is no feeling of dread, of disturbing visions. Horror without bite. Morality tales of dark irony, not horror.

    This being said, a few stories are successful in a Twilight-Zone type of way, mostly those who escape the “and then he dies”-type of pat ending. “Roadkill”, “Death Drives a Semi”, “Rat Food”, “And Injustice for Some”, “S.P.S.”, “Baseball Memory” are all superb.

    Furthermore -this is where the good side of being a “pulp writer” comes in-, even van Belkom’s most ordinary stories are a lot of fun to read. The man writes clearly and tells a story. A perusal through a recent “Best New Horror” anthology revealed that the “best” of the genre has evolved in a rarefied realm of smothering over-characterization and emphasis of atmosphere over point or story.

    Thankfully, none of that here. There are no “bad” stories in Death Drives a Semi. (Though “The Ice Bridge” is problematic, with its resolution having nothing to do with the main conflict of the story.) Van Belkom’s character are almost invariably well-defined, with just enough background to make them believable. Technically, this is a very instructive collection.

    But there is a difference between being technically perfect and being actually terrifying. That’s what’s missing from Death Drives A Semi: a willingness to go further than just the usual. “Blood Count”, for instance, stops just when it was getting interesting, just when we were in for some major supernatural disturbance. It would also be interesting to see van Belkom write some more about his “Zombie” world, here represented in “But Somebody’s Got To Do It” and “Roadkill”.

    Hopefully, Death Drives a Semi is the first collection of a writer who will go on to better and more horrific things. It’s only a matter of taking that last step that separates very good from great. In the meantime, Death Drives A Semi is worth your attention; borrow it at the local library or do your part for Canadian-published horror and buy the book.

  • Aggressor Six, Wil McCarthy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    ROC, 1994, 253 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-45405-7

    The Alien, in Science-Fiction, has been a symbol for many things, most of them contradictory. It has gone, from story to story, from ultimate enemy (The War of the Worlds, ALIENS, ID4, The Forge of God) to benevolent friend (ET, Stranger in a Strange Land) while going through stages of Enigmas (Schismatrix), Caricatures of human traits (Star Trek), All-Powerful Guardians (The Ophiuchi Hotline) and everything in between, as needed by the authors. Most of the above-mentioned stories are tales of First Contact and it is in this tradition, more or less, that Wil McCarthy’s Aggressor Six belongs.

    Technically, it’s not quite a “first contact” story, given that the first, first contact is vaguely described through flashback. But it’s certainly the account of the first meaningful exchange between humans and Waisters.

    But Aggressor Six is also a war novel and it begins as humanity is going down for the count. Human colonies have been implacably destroyed by the Waisters, who are now heading for the solar system. Meanwhile, a team of human experts on Waisters is put together to try to emulate the alien thought processes and find a way to beat the invasion.

    It is a miracle that Nietzche’s advice on fighting evil doesn’t figure on the first page of the book, because Aggressor Six is all about Becoming the Alien. That the process is intended by the characters doesn’t make it any easier: The protagonist’s superiors and colleagues are unsettled when he truly begins thinking like the Waisters.

    This was Wil McCarthy’s first published novel and it has a few regrettable deficiencies that we can blame on inexperience. For a 250-pages story, it has considerable lengths. Most of the middle section, for instance, is spent in internal monologues and not enough in external action. In his willingness to represent the strangeness of the aliens, McCarthy initially goes too far, eliciting confusion instead of comprehension. This confusion eventually abates, and the conclusion of the novel is well-handled. The aliens might be strange, but they have internal coherence.

    The end result is a novel that’s moderately satisfying, though perhaps more worthwhile for a hint of the author’s latter works than the actual narrative. The action scenes are well-done, and McCarthy manages to inject interesting ideas in his First Contact story. The Machine Intelligence sequences are particularly chilling, even though not exactly ground-breaking. Aggressor Six is a cut above the usual ROC material.

    Personal Trivia: I happen to remember Aggressor Six as the first novel I’ve seen promoted on the Internet by the author itself. It was, as I recall, in 1994 on rec.arts.sf.written. It took five years, but the promotion effort did pay off!

  • Orbital Decay, Allen Steele

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1989, 324 pages, C$4.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-49851-5

    Science-Fiction, for all its vaunted capacity to extrapolate logically into the future, is often an awfully unrealistic literature. Consider one of the genre’s flagship universe: Star Trek. In the first two television series, everything ran smoothly on the Enterprise: Few crewmembers disagreed with each others (when they did, it was a sign of alien possession), everyone had comfortable living space (no one complained about cramped quarters, at least), nobody was bored or burnt out, the food was great… In short, quasi-utopia in space. From Star Trek, we were meant to interpret this as a better future, with better specimens of humanity that never bickered, bawled or belched.

    Our “real” future is likely to be very different.

    Allen Steele is not your typical Science-Fiction writer either. His “real job”, before writing SF, was being an investigative journalist for an alternative paper. This, to say the least, differs somewhat from the usual SF writer, who either goes through science, engineering or Eng.Lit. degrees before putting pen to paper. This difference has permeated his fiction: Steele is interested in the blue-collar guy, the working man who makes it happen, not the scientist, the engineer or the politician who makes grandiose plans.

    Orbital Decay might be the novel that most clearly illustrates this difference yet. It’s the story of the blue-collar workers who actually have to build those fancy new solar power satellites and space stations. These workers aren’t exactly very bright, nor completely at ease with the law. Stuck away in a tin can without sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, they’ll soon rectify matters…

    Orbital Decay distances itself with glee from the squeaky-clean futures of SF: The only engineer in the novel is a space-sick spoiled brat who’s there for maybe three scenes. The commander of the construction project is a picture-perfect astronaut who believes that space is for a superior breed of man: he becomes insane. The government is installing a device to overhear all telephone conversations across the globe. The new hydroponic technician brings up marijuana seeds. Two (2!) of the main characters are on the run from the law.

    The resulting book is a novel that has plenty of potential to annoy the readers more comfortable with the “good old (conservative) stuff” of SF. Your reviewer (a straight arrow if there was one) anticipated the drug subplot with dread, even though it finally wasn’t as bad as expected. (The characters come to the same conclusion as anyone with a brain would foretell in five second: Drugs are dangerous in space, for even worse reasons than drinking is dangerous in a car.)

    Unfortunately, the stupidity of the drug subplot brought this reviewer to reflect on the other absurdities of the novel. So Bruce can’t request a tape deck for weight reasons, but can bring in a lot of cassettes? So none of the construction wroekrs can communicate down there while ham operators can do it with our current-day astronauts? So they’re limited to PG movies tapes while satellites around them are broadcasting the Spice Channel? Granted, the novel is now ten years old, but the concept of next-generation launchers like the Delta Clipper has been kicking around for a while… are we still supposed to believe that it still costs X,000$ per pound to ship stuff into space? Add to that the unlikeliness of a corporation signing up the first-arrived (like, uh, criminals on the run?) as space construction workers. What do they do now for oil rig crews?

    Don’t be mistaken: For all its faults, Orbital Decay is an acceptable novel, bringing a unique perspective to SF’s assumption. But it isn’t as good as it think it is. To challenge the basics, one must be sure to understand them correctly. But that, would say Steele, is exactly the kind of reaction he was aiming for. So don’t be discouraged by this review and pick up Orbital Decay. If nothing else, it’s a darn good read.

  • Engines of Creation, K. Eric Drexler

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Anchor, 1986, 298 pages, C$13.95 tpb, ISBN 0-385-19973-2

    (Also available online at http://www.foresight.com/EOC/)

    Read enough reviews, and you’ll inevitably come a review lamenting a bad book by referring to trees cut down senselessly. Far less often, however, will you find the opposite opinion. Given the environmentalist thinking of the past decades, it seems vaguely heretical -or at least very uncomfortable-, to actually suggest that dead trees were justified.

    Engines of Creation is the type of book that not only inspires this kind of devoted following bordering on fanaticism, but also includes the intellectual rationale to stop feeling guilty about it. Simply put; if what Engines of Creation proposes becomes true, we’ll be able to give back to nature what we’ve taken from it—with compound interest.

    Heady assertion, but the book is that convincing. Let’s review the basic argument: We will eventually develop tools and techniques to manipulate matter at the atomic level. It’s not even a new technique; biology is, after all, the domain of this kind of manipulation.

    Drexler spins this argument through its logical implications: We’ll be able to manufacture literally anything for a ridiculous cost. We’ll be able to build better immunological systems for our bodies. We’ll be able to feed, clothe and house everyone while simultaneously ending our dependence on natural resources. Limits to growth? Imperceptible.

    Optimistic previsions are often harder to believe than the standard doom-and-gloom prophecies. That’s probably why Engines of Creation is a meticulously constructed argument. Drexler begins by explaining the drivers of change and the roots of projection. He warns about the wrong ideas polluting our mental landscape and then hammers down the counter-idea to the widely-held belief that there are absolute limits to our growth.

    Engines of Creation is an invigorating book. It shows us a possible future that’s simply too good to miss. It’s also the kind of book that creates not only fans, but believers.

    But it’s a mistake to assumer that Drexler’s opinion of nanotechnology is unqualifiedly positive. In fact, he spends most of the book discussing the horrors of nanotechnology run amok and the ways to ensure that it stays firmly under control. He’s as terrified of nanotech as anyone else, maybe because he understands it so much. Drexler, however, isn’t a doomsayer. He acknowledges the problems, but also proposes reasonable theoretical solutions.

    This book is a joy to read for its clear writing style and the wealth of ideas blossoming from its pages. Beyond being the manifesto for the nanotech crowd, Engines of Creation is also a powerful book on the philosophy of science and technology, as well as a good volume of anticipation writing.

    But beyond the optimistic outlook and the limpid writing, is Engines of Creation credible? Scientific non-fiction books usually have a very short shelf life: Before anyone knows it, science has progressed further and the fixed content of a book becomes obsolete. It’s fascinating to see that even though Engines of Creation was written in 1985, there only one obsolete chapter in the whole book. It’s even more interesting to realize that it’s the most convincing chapter: It talks about the Internet, predicting quite accurately the rise of global communication in scientific research and the wonderful possibilities raised by the cross-linking of texts. “It might even become addictive” warns Drexler. Little did he knew. If he was right about that, what about the remainder of the book?

    It’s hard to over-praise Engines of Creation given its enormous cult following and the wonderful possibilities offered by the book. Suffice to say that it should be recommended reading for everyone. If there is even only a slight possibility that some of Engines of Creation becomes true, then we all need to be prepared for what’s coming up.

  • The Killing Star, Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avonova, 1995, 340 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-77026-1

    Science-Fiction writer Jerry Pournelle once told Charles Pellegrino that he “must have fascinating nightmares.” With his third novel, Dust, Pellegrino almost ended the world on a note of ecological collapse. In his first effort, Flying to Valhalla, he spent some time discussing the planet-cleansing effect of relativistic bombs. The Killing Star bridges these two novels by destroying the human race with relativistic bombs.

    To be fair, it must be said that The Killing Star is a sequel to Flying to Valhalla, though no previous knowledge of the first book is required. It takes up the story where the first novel left off, with one extra-terrestrial anxious to inflict maximum damage to human civilization. Enter relativistic bombs.

    The concept is incredibly simple: Take something -anything- and accelerate it to near-lightspeed velocities. Arrange the trajectory so that your target is struck by the near-c projectile. The impact will produce an energy roughly comparable to pure mass/energy conversion (the closer to c, the closer the equivalent). For best results, send a projectile that spreads over a wide area at the very last moment. Total destruction quasi-assured. Best of all, aggressively speaking, is that by the nature of the weapons, you can’t see it coming until it’s far too late.

    Now, obviously, no nation on Earth has the means and willingness to build relativistic bombs, and -more practically- to send them away at near-c velocities. This is where implications become fascinating: only a much more advanced civilization would be able to do such a thing. Though we can speak for ourselves as incompetent, what if other extraterrestrial races out there have this capacity?

    Furthermore, what if they’re convinced that every race wants to do it to them? Wouldn’t they strike preemptively? Is that why the SETI project hasn’t intercepted any signals from other civilizations? Are we stupid enough to advertise ourselves to overly paranoid races? Are relativistic bombs heading our way as we speak? Pellegrino and James Powell make a convincing analogy about the galaxy being like Central Park at night. Sure, chances are that you’ll be able to walk through it unharmed, but as you crazy enough to shout “Hello! I’m friendly! Talk to me!” while doing it?

    This review is halfway over, and still hasn’t talked about the novel itself. That should tell you something both about the novel and the strength of the ideas contained within.

    Thirty pages in The Killing Star, humanity has been destroyed at the exception of a few isolated outposts under the sea, near the Sun, on comets or inside asteroids. The remainder of the novel is dedicated to the relentless hunter/killer game between alien predator and human prey.

    To be fair, the characterization in The Killing Star is better than the two other Pellegrino novels… probably an artifact of the collaboration with Zebrowski. It’s still not good enough to give life to the characters, but it’s better. (Admittedly, it’s always difficult to be convincing when trying to characterize the clones of religious prophets.)

    But purist of the hard-SF ethos will argue that characterization and complexity of plotting must take second seat to ideas and fulfillment of premises. In this regard, The Killing Star fares much better, bringing forth some intriguing ideas and presenting a convincing account of the ultimate alien invasion.

    But beyond that, The Killing Star is simply a lot of fun to read. Some of the sequences are breathtaking by their audacity. There are rich ironies in almost every chapter. It’s a grim but fair novel that rigidly adheres to science. Devotees of Clarke will find here what they want to read, with a harder edge and more suspense.

    But long after the details of the plot will be forgotten, it’s the central idea of aliens-as-conquerors -suitably modernized- that will endure. Whether this shows hysterical paranoia or healthy foresight will have to be decided by the reader’s prejudice, but you just have to thank Pellegrino and Zebrowski to present us with such rich material for speculation.

  • Deepdrive, Alexander Jablokov

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon EOS, 1998, 311 pages, C$19.00 hc, ISBN 0-380-97636-6

    Once in a while comes a book that’s not easily reviewable. Whereas most books are easily criticized as being good/bad, some aren’t as simply analyzed. Deepdrive is a case in point; a book with some terrific aspects that nevertheless fails at being a satisfying read.

    One of Deepdrive‘s best characteristics is the setting: In a future far removed from us, the solar system has been colonized by both humans and aliens. Strange creatures are transforming Venus. Aliens on Mercury fire a gigantic gun at the sun for mysterious purposes. Dozen of races people the systems alongside humans, most often doing things that other races can’t figure out. These aliens are here, but they can’t go elsewhere: The faster-than-light engines (“deepdrives”) they used to enter the system all self-destructed upon arrival, thus preventing these pesky humans from escaping. Spurred by suspicious rumors, several humans have tried to find out working drives, without success.

    Wonderful setting; does Jablokov do anything with it? The plot eventually set in motion resides around an alien called Ripi, a lone representative of his race who’s held in “protective custody” on Venus. Our story begins as a team of mercenaries is sent to recover Ripi. After all, maybe he knows the secret of the deepdrive…

    But, as we could expect, things go wrong, Ripi is found, lost, retrieved and let go again. Our mercs fight the police, squabble among themselves, discover each other’s secrets, disband, come together, etc…

    The above might have been a superb space adventure in the most classical sense, a fast-paced action-filled SF story with the fun hallmarks of the genre’s most enjoyable romp. Well, in the final analysis it is not.

    And it’s fiendishly hard to figure out why.

    My first thought was that the prose style was somehow lacking in readability, but that doesn’t turn out to be true: Though Jablokov doesn’t grab our attention like the masters (Heinlein, Varley, etc…) can, he’s similarly removed from the undecipherable prose of his more “literary” counterparts.

    Things get more complex when we look at the characters. Despite assembling a motley group of different personalities as his mercenary team, Jablokov has given us no real hero. I had to keep reminding myself that his protagonists were human, because they didn’t act in any manner similar to ours. In trying to be interesting, Jablokov might have gone too far in the realm of the bizarre and the alien. The result is that we can’t focus on anyone and can’t relate to any character.

    It gets worse when considering the story from afar. The recovery of Ripi is only the beginning of the adventure. The problem is that everything that follows is less interesting than the first hundred pages. It’s hard to be satisfied with a novel whose dramatic high-point comes at the beginning. I found myself scanning rather than reading because I just couldn’t get interested in the various events.

    The novel might have been too long to be snappy, it might have been too short to give us the chance to be interested in the characters. But whatever the reason, the result is not successful. Hollywood often has the tendency to recycle original premises in other films; I find myself wishing for a future novel doing exactly that from Deepdrive.

  • Mission to Mars, Michael Collins

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Grove Weidenfeld, 1990, 307 pages, C$20.00 hc, ISBN 0-8021-1160-2

    I have always been fascinated by space. My parents are fond of reminding me -to my great embarrassment- that as a very young lad, I regularly pointed upward at night, repeating “The Moon! The Moon!” to everyone within earshot. As a slightly older lad, I practically cut my reading teeth on Apollo mission clippings and a used copy of Jules Verne’s De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon)

    Is it any wonder I became a heavy science-fiction reader? After I had read all about the historical events and witnessed the first few shuttle flights, there wasn’t much left to explore in the real-world. And, up to a certain point, fifteen years later that’s still true: Humankind has ignored the promise of outer space, being content with circling the globe -if that- for strictly pedestrian reasons. It’s intolerable that most people accept the fact that there hasn’t been a human on the moon for twenty-five years.

    Historical records show that once Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Nixon and Agnew were already talking of taking the next step; going to Mars. Of course, we know what then happened to Nixon and Agnew, but the dream of going to Mars hasn’t fared much better.

    However, the nineties have seen a renewed surge of interest in plans for Mars. Only in Science-Fiction, we’ve seen almost a dozen novels dealing with Martian exploration, from the definitive Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson to awful franchise novels which shall remain nameless.

    But the book that arguably sparked this interest is Mission to Mars, by ex-astronaut Michael (“First Man Not to Walk on the Moon”) Collins. In this 1990 non-fiction account, Collins exposes why and how we should go to Mars, as well as the problems to solve until then.

    As could be expected, we get a solid description of the current state of our knowledge about the Red Planet, as well as practical considerations for making the trip. We don’t have Star Trek technology: Our closed-loop environmental systems are imperfect at best, and the weight of the spacecraft we’ll be sending there will remain a significant problem for a long time.

    Collins is no armchair commentator; he’s been up there and he knows what he’s talking about. Mission to Mars is peppered with candid -often tough- advice about a myriad of small and big subjects.

    The book really lift off, however, in its last third, where Collins writes a small docu-novella describing in fictional format the adventures of the first colonists. A testimony to the power of good science-fiction, this account repeats the arguments and issues of the first two-third of the book while making them more interesting and certainly more memorable. While no Hugo-winning piece of work, it is serviceable enough to serve as centerpiece to the book. (As for the “straight” non-fiction part of the book, the two highlights are chapters about submarines and Antarctica as related to a Mars Mission.)

    Though not exceptionally well-organized, Mission to Mars flows well. The index ensures that it will be usable as reference material.

    Where Collins fails, however, is to convince me that we should forego the Moon to go directly to Mars. I’ve suggested elsewhere that it’s this attitude that made us go on the Moon before we were ready to follow up exploration by colonization. In my mind -and Collins didn’t change it-, we should establish a permanent colony on the Moon even before thinking of going to Mars. If the goal is to move permanently into space -and I can’t think of any other overriding goal for humankind-, it’s far better to expand in the neighborhood than take a short trip in next country.

    But, personal preferences aside, Mission to Mars is a succinct compilation of the whys and hows of going to Mars. It’s worth the time for anyone who still looks above at night and wonder why we’re not already up there.

  • Beggars in Spain, Nancy Kress

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avonova, 1993, 407 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-71877-4

    All together now: Science-Fiction is all about studying the effects of change on human beings.

    More succinctly put: What if, rationally?

    The best novels of the genre usually spring from a good single premise. Something that, preferably, hasn’t been done before. Then, the best novels explore the repercussions of this premise over human society, preferably using sympathetic characters to illustrate the repercussions on a personal level. Finally, the best novels do this seemingly effortlessly, with a lively style and a wonderful story to tell.

    While Beggars in Spain isn’t perfect, it certainly adhere to most of the criteria above. The result is an above-average pure science-fiction novel.

    The premise is one of the most simple yet fascinating encountered lately: Due to genetic engineering, the gene responsible for sleep is eliminated from a few children. This leads, obviously, to individuals with far more time for work, study or play but also, more surprisingly, to happier, smarter, more balanced individuals. There are no disadvantages. Their abilities are such that they quickly graduate at the top of their classes, get good jobs and generally outperform their sleeping colleagues. As could be expected, this leads to strife and conflict between the Sleepless and the Normals. Beggars in Spain is the tale of Leisha Camden, a Sleepless which allies with neither side and tries to moderate the conflict.

    Nancy Kress has been the “Writer’s Digest”’s own fiction columnist for several years, and the technical mastery that has landed her this column is so well-practiced in Beggars in Spain that it shines by its transparency. The prose is simple yet effective. The plot goes effortlessly from one significant event to another. The characters are sketched rapidly and developed as Kress goes along; despite a rather large cast of characters, the personae dramatis is rarely confusing.

    But if the characters are good, the plotting is only average. The novel is divided in roughly four parts, each of them chronologically distinct from the other. This gives the impression of four linked stories, not a single novel-or maybe a novel like those old-fashioned family sagas, spread over several generations and at least half a century. In any case, it does seems like the most interesting conflict of the novel is at the beginning, where the first sleepless have advantages so important over the remainder of humanity that sparks develop between the two groups, not the curiously anticlimactic three-partitioned conflict near the end.

    It’s important to note that the believability factor of Beggars in Spain is, all things considered, quite low. This would have been less of a problem if Kress hadn’t attempted to couch everything in plausible-sounding biology. Her argument that sleep was an obsolete evolutionary trait is senseless (otherwise natural selection would have eliminated the oft-sleeping lions, etc…) and come perilously close to sinking the novel. But, again, the “What if?” predominates and the premise of a sleepless, all-around better human must be accepted. (It might have been better to assume quicksleep -thirty-minutes naps once every forty-eight hours or so- rather than sleeplessness.) Another curious oversight is the absence of comment on how boring it would be to live through the night every night and see all friends go to sleep; what is there to do?

    Still, don’t get the impression that Beggars in Spain is not worth your while. In fact, the various nitpicks are signs more of a stimulated intellect than a desire to dismiss the book. Kress vaulted in the big leagues with this novel (it was nominated for the Nebula Award, as I recall) and the ultimate result is a fascinating examination, according to the rules of the genre, of a very intriguing “What if?”.

  • Man o’ War, William Shatner

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace/Putnam, 1996, 256 pages, C$30.95 hc, ISBN 0-399-14131-6

    I must have Lemming genes somewhere in my DNA.

    Otherwise, who else to explain me reading this book? I have heard, time and time again, the maxim that novels “written” by Star Trek actors are generally beyond bad. Heck, I even wrote that in a previous review.

    And yet, I still bought Man o’ War. The fact that I paid 50c for a good-quality hardcover at a charity sale is a pretty sad rationalization for what was, after all, an unexplainable poor choice.

    Let’s review facts, shall we? William Shatner is a Montreal-born actor whose greatest claim to fame is the starring role of “Captain Kirk” in the most famous Science-Fiction television series, “Star Trek”. Even though the series lasted only three years, it gained a huge cult following that eventually made it a cultural icon, along with Shatner.

    In the early nineties, Shatner “wrote” a rather fun novel called “Tekwar”. The quotes around “wrote” are important, given that most insiders credit SF author Ron Goulart with the novel and subsequent series. To say that the first novel was fun in no way implies that it was good; the sequels went downhill from there, both in quality and enjoyment.

    Man o’ War is not related to the Tek series. Here, the hero is Benton Hawkes, ace diplomat. As the book begins, he’s just made the biggest mistake of his life: taking the side of the poor oppressed people against the big evil corporation in delicate negotiations. As punishment, Hawkes is sent to Mars, where colonists are allegedly revolting against the government. Gee! Is he going to be able to defuse the situation?

    There’s nothing terribly original in the above outline, and there’s even less originality in the actual novel. Between the nicely-designed cover minimally illustrated by Bob Eggleton, we don’t get much more than ink on paper in actual real value.

    It’s a real sign of trouble when the action scenes in an action-oriented book are more boring than what surrounds them. In fact, they’re handled with so much ennui that we practically feel revulsion for the protagonist while he’s dispatching the opposition: Why so much bloodshed when Hawkes himself isn’t worth our interest?

    And so on and so forth: There’s nothing remotely interesting in Goulart’s, er, Shatner’s future, neither on Earth nor Mars. Man o’ War is a complete waste of time.

    But the novel descends even further in mediocrity by a blatant disregard for anything resembling solid economics, basic physics or simple logic.

    Economics: The novel will try to make you believe that Mars is able to produce vital quantities of foodstuff for Earth. Uh? What about the costs of shipping the stuff? Why should the colonists be oppressed if they hold Earth’s stomach in a grip?

    Physics: The Earth-Mars trip takes a dozen days. Uh-huh. Right. Wait, there’s more! Like unexplained artificial gravity on the ship. Or even -that’s where my already-well-stretched suspension-of-disbelief snapped-, in Chapter 37, Hawkes phones up an acquaintance on Earth… and start talking in real-time. Okay, everyone associated with this book: it’s time to go back to high-school physics!

    Logic: The Evil Guys ships hundreds of soldiers to Mars -casually disregarding expenses- in hope of fermenting a rebellion. Why the heck? Why not just pay the darn colonists?

    Anyway… Stay away from Man o’ War. It’s one of the best example of pure garbage produced by a gaggle of people without the slightest respect for A> Science-Fiction, B> Your Money and C> Your Intelligence. This goes far beyond the Curse of Star Trek Actors-cum-Novelists: It’s a literary debacle of INDEPENDENCE-DAYesque proportions. There are no redeeming features to this book. And my review will stop there, because now I’m getting really angry.

  • High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess, Charles Fleming

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 1998, 294 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-385-48694-4

    Everyone’s fascinated by Hollywood.

    Not that there isn’t something to be justifiably fascinated about: The lovely, sunny weather. The movie business, with its public displays of fame and fortune. The glamour of the stars. The women, the men, the mansions, the cars… Who in North America -oh, even the world!- wouldn’t jump at the chance to be part of the Known Universe’s biggest Dream Factory?

    But even then, most people will almost immediately add that celebrity doesn’t mean happiness-as demonstrated by the sob-stories of the tabloids. How many times has Hollywood has been compared to a soulless ambition-devouring monster? How many people have failed miserably in their dreams and ended up broken by Tinseltown? Great power does not exist in a vacuum: it takes away from others.

    The life and death of Hollywood producer Don Simpson is not as much the subject per se of High Concept as it is a springboard to examine the “culture of excess” that surrounds Hollywood. Prostitution, drugs, vanity or simple unbridled spending are staples of the industry and Don Simpson indulged in all of them.

    To casual moviegoers, Simpson might best be remembered as one half of the Bruckheimer/Simpson duo of Hollywood producers. In almost fifteen years, they brought to the silver screen a string of “high-concept” blockbusters: FLASHDANCE, BEVERLY HILLS COP and its sequel, TOP GUN, DAYS OF THUNDER, CRIMSON TIDE, BAD BOYS, DANGEROUS MINDS and (posthumously for Simpson) THE ROCK. But at the image of these flashy, loud, often violent movies, Simpson lived a life in overdrive: High Concept follows Simpson from his childhood Alaska to sunny California, where he made his first big hit with AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. Then he teamed up with Bruckheimer (Simpson was the hyperactive creative guy; Bruckheimer was the calm, nuts-and-bolts person) and went on to glory.

    But if Hollywood magnifies success, it also extracts a terrible price from anyone with even the slightest moral flaw. Simpson found himself in the position of the high school nerd suddenly surrounded by money and debauchery. His downfall was inevitable.

    Charles Fleming makes an icon out of Don Simpson. In successive chapters, he examines the excesses of Simpson and places them in a context “devoid of negative consequences… In another industry, Simpson’s excesses would have resulted in a firing, a suspension, a forced stay in rehab, intervention by his superiors or abandonment by his peers. In Hollywood, though, Simpson simply became another show business character.” [P. 11]

    High Concept is the condemnation of an entire industry. Tinseltown created the false paradise that ultimately destroyed Don Simpson. “Hollywood fiddled while Simpson burned and after his final self-immolation, fiddled on.” If you want dirt, Fleming dishes out the dirt. But this is well-documented (10 pages of notes), contextualized dirt. With the benefit of hindsight, we get full access to Hollywood’s most notorious drug dealers, madams and over-indulgers. If Don Simpson is forgotten for a few pages, well, that’s the way the town is all interconnected. Because it always comes back, one way or another, to Simpson.

    Fleming’s style is wonderfully readable, mixing anecdotes with more pondered insights and tentative conclusions. While certain chapters are weaker (Doctor’s Orders) than others (Hollywood High), the whole book is solid, crunchy reading. This isn’t tabloid gossip; this is a serious look at a diseased industry racing to destruction, much like Don Simpson.

    Ultimately, though, High Concept is a powerful cautionary tale. I can see this book being used, much like Peter Biskind’s Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll, as a source-book for every Hollywood-hating fundamentalist. The remainder of us will be reminded of the price of success… and what if we found ourselves in the same situation?

    Because at the end of High Concept, I’m still a guy from Ontario who would jump at the chance of making a few million dollars in Hollywood. As, I suspect, would anyone.

  • Poison Pen: The True Confessions of Two Tabloid Reporters, Lysa Moskowitz-Mateu & David LaFontaine

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dove Audio, 1996, 208 pages, C$24.99 hc, ISBN 0-7871-0916-9

    CRITIC SURVIVES SHOCKING TABLOID TELL-ALL!

    “I thought I’d die!” says bespectacled reviewer!

    ROCKLAND (CLS) — Today, in a stunning display of willpower, noted book reviewer Christian Sauvé has finished reading Poison Pen, a 208-pages tome about tabloid reporting. In a press conference given to the press, he has agreed to share his impressions about the book.

    Poison Pen, written by an ex-couple of scribes for national tabloid newspapers, contains numerous shocking revelations about this shady world of gossipy publishing. From snooping techniques of investigative dirt-digging to the back-stabbing office politics of tabloid papers, the subject matter of this tome is fertile ground for anecdotes. “Poison Pen is a portrait of the wild and wicked world of tabloid reporting” writes LaFontaine.

    “And it is wild and wicked!” says Sauvé. Among other saucy anecdotes, you’ll find in this non-fiction account are how Lafontaine impersonated a doctor to try to get access to Lisa Mary Presley’s hospital room and how the couple ambushed Ted Danson and Whoopi Goldberg in a hotel during a weekend tryst.

    “What’s more, these guys are absolutely shameless about it!” exclaims Sauvé. Indeed, Lafontaine writes that “readers want to be told that celebrities are just as miserable as they are. Hate to spoil your cherished illusions, but by and large, celebrities are having a hell of a lot more fun than you ever will.” “I was a quick study in this business of deceit.” adds Moskowitz-Mateu. “I learned how to write catchy lead, how to exaggerate the truth… In the tabloid industry, being a good liar is considered a highly desirable trait.”

    “You would expect a book about celebrity gossip reporting to be entertaining” says Sauvé, describing his foolhardy presumptions, “and Poison Pen is simply hilarious. The tales of how they try to get scoops -and even those where they fail, like the Liz Taylor marriage, are incredibly funny. I thought I’d die laughing.” Sauvé singled out the chapter on celebrity marriages as being most indicative of the book’s madcap subject.

    Readers should expect to find more serious material, however, in the coverage of some of Hollywood’s biggest recent stories in the pages of Poison Pen. The 1989 California Quake is meta-covered by LaFontaine, who looks at the tabloid reporting itself in the face of the crisis. Similar material is assembled about the Oklahoma City bombing and the O.J. Simpson trial which, according to LaFontaine, changed forever the face of news-reporting in America: “Viewers have grown accustomed to hearing stories reported in the finest tabloid style, built around a kernel of fact and surrounded by a nebulous cloud of rumor, assumption and hype.”

    This type of honest self-assessment is one of the highlights of the book. However, as Sauvé says, “you end up with a book that’s half-great, half-repulsive. Generally speaking, Lafontaine writes the most interesting parts of the book, providing both history, context, rationale and significance to the phenomenon of tabloid newspapers. Moskowitz-Mateu acts like a blonde bimbo by restricting herself to inconsequential anecdotes.” The worst example, according to Sauvé, is in Chapter 7 -about addiction- where “Moskowitz-Mateu repulsively tells of a friendly chat with Paula Abdul about eating disorders, and then dumps her whole guilt on us by writing that she was sickened by the whole thing and decided not submit the story.” Independent reports have confirmed Sauvé’s adulation for Abdul.

    “In the end, you have a good book that could have been even better.” concludes Sauvé. “I would like to see another book by LaFontaine going even deeper in the business. But as for Moskowitz-Mateu, heck, leave her in the cesspool because she brings no valuable insight to her work.”

  • aol.com, Kara Swisher

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Random House Times Business, 1998, 333 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-8129-2896-2

    As an experienced computer user (I started in 1983 with the Commodore 64, graduated to the IBM PC five years later, went on the Internet in 1993, got a Comp.Sci. degree and never looked back), I’m the type of person who finds inner peace and contentment in poking around the Machine itself rather than to be simply contented with using it for other purposes. My computers are open more than half the time, my Operating Systems are customized, my head is full of intricate procedures to coax the last possible unit of performance from my system… I must face the blight of being a nerd, someone as interested in How It Works than What It Does.

    I’m not the type of user that America Online wants.

    This online service has made its fame and fortune by grasping what most technically-oriented companies were slow in understanding: The average users don’t care about technology. They want the benefits without the hassles. They want everything to be as simple as possible. And, by most standards, AOL has delivered what users wanted, opening the Internet to hordes of users without the kind of hard-won civility that comes from accessing something after a considerable amount of effort.

    For all of these reasons, I don’t like America Online. They could disappear tomorrow with nary a qualm from me. But it’s not essential to like AOL to like aol.com.

    This “biography” of America Online begins at the very beginning, with the foundation of a company in the early eighties by an entrepreneur with too many ideas and too little common sense: Bill Von Meister. After an extended limbo where the company repeatedly changed names and incarnations, AOL finally hit it big in 1993, with more than 500,000 users. But the drama wasn’t over: The following five years would find AOL struggling with growing pains, the arrival of the Internet, a more techno-savvy audience, a massive nineteen-hour shutdown and a huge commercial battle with Microsoft. Every year, another crisis seemed to engulf the online service, which has already been declared dead more time than it can recall. But AOL has always survived-for better or worse.

    Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher brings this whole story to life in aol.com, meticulously chronicling the history of AOL up to the beginning of 1998. Despite Swisher’s collaboration with American Online for research -she was reportedly granted unprecedented access to the company for more than a year-, the result is sharply critical of some of AOL’s biggest blunders. She does know her material, even if the spin she puts on a few elements (like James Exon) tends to be grating to seasoned online veterans.

    Though the book tends to concentrate on anecdotes rather than analysis, the writing is easy to follow and fun to read. The incessant crises that rocked AOL during most of its existence make for good drama and Swisher doesn’t have to dig deep to find fertile material for her book.

    The organization of the book is also irreproachable, at the exception of two chapters at the end, both detailing AOL’s battles with the American government’s efforts to censor the Internet. These two chapters are unexplainably split and offer repeated information, though their payoff is sweet: The diskette used to relay the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the government’s Communication Decency Act from the judges to the Internet was one of the ubiquitous AOL diskettes distributed across the country!

    Despite all its virtues, aol.com couldn’t manage to make me like America Online, but certainly convinced me to respect it. The Little Online Service That Could should, by all rational standards, be dead now. But it endured and the story of its success is well-told in aol.com.

  • Murder in the Solid State, Wil McCarthy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1996 (1998 reprint), 277 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-55392-6

    Good examples of Science-Fiction crossed with Crime Fiction are nearly as numerous as crossovers between SF and Thrillers. Many SF authors have written a few mystery novels (Isaac Asimov, Stephen R. Donaldson, etc…) and for some reason, (solidarity among the ghettoes?) readers of SF are often fans of crime fiction. The basic plotline of thrillers, (One man confronting powerful forces conspiring against him!) on the other hand, has always been a natural way to develop the bigger-than nature plots of most grandiose SF. Murder in the Solid State will suck you in with a murder mystery, but ultimately evolves in your basic near-future conspiracy thriller.

    It all begins, appropriately enough, at a nanotechnology scientific conference. David Sanger is a young physicist with things to prove to the world. Shortly after the beginning of the conference, he finds himself arguing against a rather unpleasant older scientist widely despised by his peers. Heated words eventually lead to sharp weapons and before long David is sword-fighting (!) against his nemesis. His martial arts training takes over and he wins the fight, but finds himself in custody the following morning as the older scientist is murdered during the night… A hundred pages in the novel, David’s most trusted friends turn against him and he finds himself tangled in something much bigger than just a murder.

    In time, the “Solid State” of the title assumes its full political importance and it’s a bit of a surprise to find us cleverly slipped a message about the dangerous implications of comfortable safety. Like many pure-SF writers, McCarthy espouses libertarian (or at least vaguely anti-government) tendencies but exhibits them more carefully than most of his peers.

    One of the cover blurbs is James Patrick Kelly saying “Think ‘Hitchcock meets Heinlein’” and the comparison is apt. The narrative is lean and rarely pauses for its breath. The future technology is described plausibly, with some attention for the social impact of said technology. The protagonist is suitably sympathetic, with the result that we keep on rooting for him even as he is forced to commit unpleasant acts. The narration is suitably paced and the reader’s interest rarely flags.

    But if Murder in the Solid State is a perfectly competent thriller with the added interest of being peppered with solid nanotechnological details, it’s also obvious that it’s a bit pedestrian, a bit… well… ordinary. After the whirlwind first hundred pages, the novels comfortably settles down in a classical thriller structure, and it doesn’t take a lot of perspicacity to intuit that the protagonist is eventually going to confront the Bad Guy.

    But it doesn’t really matter, because even if not every book can be a classic, we can always use another good competent SF adventure. And Murder in the Solid State more than proves that Wil McCarthy is an author worth examining. Who knows what else he’ll come up with next?

  • Proteus Manifest, Charles Sheffield

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Guild American Books, 1989, 406 pages, C$15.00 hc, ISBN Unavailable

    Ever since the “New Wave” pseudo-revolution of the sixties, a segment of Science-Fiction has been quite content to push the boundaries of literary achievement at the expense of the story. Sometimes is works (Neuromancer), but second-hand bookstores across the nation are packed with the failures of the experiment. Arguably, the final result is a stronger, more mature and better-written Science-Fiction. But ordinary readers can’t be blamed if they get the impression that a lot of the simple storytelling fun has gone out of today’s SF. Even worse; they tend to accept this as a matter of fact, and so the impression that Written SF Can’t Be Fun Any More If It Want To Be Serious subconsciously endures.

    That’s why it’s such a breath of fresh air, from time to time, to re-discover solid works of SF that unashamedly bring back the simple joy of reading. It’s not fancy to be conventional, but most of the time it works.

    Charles Sheffield will never be misidentified as one of the genre’s greatest stylists. A scientist by trade, Sheffield has turned to Science-Fiction late in life, producing works heavily inspired by the hard sciences, with only a perfunctory interest in characters.

    His first novel was Sight of Proteus (1978), a short tale about a future Earth modified by the widespread use of nonsurgical techniques to modify the human body. These can be as innocuous as simple plastic modification or as fundamental as changing sex, etc… The hero of the tale is Behrooz Wulf (ie; Bey Wolf), a top investigator at the agency charged with protecting the Earth from illegal and dangerous modifications. It all begins as they suspect a famous scientist of forbidden experiments…

    Sight of Proteus is, to be frank, a bit silly. Sheffield’s body-shaping technology is a mix between fancy machines and almost wishful biofeedback mechanisms. Given that the real-world has invented nanotechnology since Sheffield’s novel, let’s just say that his techno-babble isn’t as fresh or convincing as it was then even if the end results are more believable. The world-building is also slightly suspicious; one would expect more of scientific progress if, after all, they’re able to shape bodies literally at will.

    But even despite these quibbles, Sight of Proteus is fun. The writing is marvelously limpid, up to a point where one wonders how come most novels aren’t as accessible, imaginative and entertaining as this one.

    Things get less pleasant by the end, as our protagonists go an Nivenesque trip through the solar system and the story doesn’t conclude as much as is dropped almost in mid-flight.

    Proteus Manifest is one of the Science-Fiction Book Club’s own omnibus editions, thus cleverly combining two book published at ten year’s interval under a same cover. Unfortunately, a universe based on the body-changing premise and a protagonist with the same name are about the only things the two novels have in common: There are few linkages with the events of the first novel, and Sheffield’s prose has evolved significantly in the decade dividing Sight of Proteus with Proteus Unbound (1989).

    Even the plot is bigger, as Behrooz Wulf is asked to solve disquieting form-changing equipment failures in the Outer Solar System. At the same time, he’s plagued with maddening hallucinations and a lost love. Oh, and there’s also a rebel colony hidden inside the asteroid belt. Could all of these things possibly be linked?

    The fun of the first volume carries through the second book, which is more satisfying than the first (though the conclusion is almost as abrupt). Good ideas, sharp writing, nice plotting and an effortless mastery of hard sciences; it’s good enough to compare with Niven and Clarke, as well as make one wonder why they don’t write that kind of SF any more.

    Though Proteus Manifest is at time frustrating and not exactly completely successful, it is so wonderfully imaginative and clearly written that it’s well-worth picking up in used bookstores. Who said that the New Wave had killed old-fashioned Hard SF?