Book Review

  • Starlight 2, Ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 318 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86184-2

    In his introduction to Starlight 2, editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden reopens a well-stirred can of worms by noting, unapologetically, that his anthology series includes both Science-Fiction and Fantasy. The SF-vs-Fantasy debate has torn apart many otherwise-solid relationships, destroyed entire families and plunged not a few countries into internal strife. Well, maybe not, but in the fannish community, there are few more acrimonious subjects.

    Hayden, -noted contributor to rec.arts.sf.written, in addition of being one of the best editors in the SF business- forces the debate in his introduction to Starlight 2, when he writes such combative statements as “[both genres] share the same readers” (not sure) and “much of SF is fantasy with hardware” (much of bad SF, usually) as well as his counterpoint to David Hartwell’s “all-‘true SF’” credo for his “Best SF” anthology.

    Past this rather doubtful three pages, Starlight 2 is a collection of thirteen Science-Fiction and Fantasy stories. There’s something for everyone, and that’s the biggest failing of the anthology.

    I’ll be honest and admit that I skimmed over the stories by Suzanna Clarke, Carter Scholz, Ellen Kushner, Esther M. Friesner, Angelica Gorodischer (as translated by Ursula K. LeGuin): Life’s too short to waste on that icky fantasy stuff, especially when it gets boring on page two and the last few pages offer no big surprises.

    The anthology starts off with a bang with Robert Charles Wilson’s Divided by Infinity. Smooth introduction, great paradigm change(s), terrifying conclusion, great premise. If only the other stories would have been like that…

    M. Shayne Bell’s “Lock Down” offers the promise of a much better story that what is actually delivered. No big conflict, no development… just… almost a vignette. Disappointing. With luck, Bell will develop his premise into something more substantial. Maybe a novel?

    Raphael Carter is almost invariably a constant joy to read, and “Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation” is no exception. Despite a relatively meaningless premise, the story is presented, quite originally, in the style of a scientific research paper. Fun stuff.

    Martha Soukup’s The House of Expectations veers close to comedic territory at times, but finally ends up as one of the best -and most poignant- stories of the volume. Classically structured and clearly written, it’s a pleasure to read.

    Many people will be surprised by David Langford’s A Game of Consequences. Not because it’s not up to Langford’s usual high standards of writing, but because it deals with rather more serious themes than the British author’s usual brand of comedy. One of the best of the volume.

    “Access Fantasy”, by Jonathan Lethem, conforms to expectations of difficult reading (one story, one paragraph), cardboard future, ironic humor and inconclusive conclusion that we’ve come to expect from Lethem. Surprisingly, it’s also a lot of fun. Who would have thought?

    Geoffrey Landis is best known for hard-SF, but Snow looks a lot like pure realism. The sympathetic protagonist, however, is miles removed from the usual clichés or squeaky-clean hard-SF protagonists. A very good short-short story, with a twist.

    Finally, we come to Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life, which always seems poised of the verge of something much bigger and much better, but ends up rather weakly, with the sense that an opportunity was missed. I still think it’s a pretty good linguistic SF story, but a lot of the extra stuff should have been cut.

    SF or Fantasy, magic or reality, Starlight 2 offers a collect of sophisticated speculative fiction. Though I didn’t find it as uniformly marvelous as some other critics (too much fantasy, not enough oomph in the conclusions), it’s good reading as long as you know which story to pick and read. “True-SF” fans, however, should be best served by the Hartwell anthologies.

  • Trunk Music, Michael Connelly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Little Brown, 1997, 383 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-316-15244-7

    The biggest problem with crime fiction nowadays is that a lot of it tends to be written as part of a series. You know the setup: One author will create a really good protagonist, and then re-use him in multiple books. Never mind the unlikeliness of someone going though all of these adventure; it seems to be the norm.

    Publishers will undoubtedly tell you that this is a great way to sell more books. If a reader likes one book, then s/he’ll be more likely to try the next book in the series. For the authors, it arguably allows them to concentrate on the all-important plot and proceed with an already-established protagonist in a familiar environment.

    Unfortunately, there is a darker side to this practice. The most significant is that this assumed background gets more inclusive as the number of books piles up. Readers jumping into a series in mid-stream can be bewildered. It becomes a major challenge for an author to find ways to integrate this background in their newest novel to allow them to pick up new readers. (The limitations imposed by the existing background are of no relevance to this review and will thoughtfully be ignored here.)

    Trunk Music is the fifth book in Michael Connelly’s series about an LAPD detective with the unlikely name of Hieronymus (“Harry”) Bosch. Novice readers need not worry about jumping in mid-stream, however: Bosch begins the novel by opening his first case since coming back from disciplinary leave. As Harry gets back into the Homicide-solving business, we readers are offered the opportunity to meet with his new colleagues and reflect with the protagonist about how his job has changed. Nice.

    Furthermore, Harry’s first case isn’t your boring run-of-the-mill murder: The victim is discovered stuffed into the back trunk of his car, a white Rolls-Royce. His name: Tony Aliso. His profession: Movie producer. Of course, things are about to get far more complex. The wife reacts strangely. The Organized Crime unit reacts strangely. Internal Affairs reacts strangely. We’re in for a suitably twisty maze of a plot.

    Almost every interesting element of crime fiction is present in Trunk Music: California, Murder, Las Vegas, Double Agents, Theft, Escapes, Hollywood, Mafia, Romance, Blackmail, Los Angeles, Internal Affairs, Racism, Prostitution, Cars, Old Flames, Gambling, Corruption, Interrogations, Movies, FBI… the list goes on. The result is a complex novel that uncharacteristically remains understandable throughout.

    Even more convincing is the accumulation of procedural detail. It’s crucial for most crime fiction to convince the reader of their plausibility and Trunk Music is undoubtedly a novel of the nineties, with its post-Rodney King LAPD, attention to Employment Equity issues and usage of modern communication and audiovisual equipment.

    Connelly’s writing style has a lot to do with the novel’s success. His characters are well-introduced and suitably handled. Nobody’s perfect, and even the hero is motivated by goals that aren’t always admirable; watch as his initial handling of the case is more a case of personal advancement than reasonable procedure. The dialogue is spot-on and there are more than a few chuckles to be enjoyed from Harry Bosch. Great Scenes also pepper this novel, raising it from the ranks of the merely good novels to the status of a little great yarn.

    Despite being a fifth-of-a-series, Trunk Music starts out in a way that’s easy to immerse newer readers. Then the plot, the characters and the details take over and the result is nothing short of a superb police procedural. Publishers will undoubtedly be pleased to note that gee, if Trunk Music was that good, it might be worthwhile to read Connelly’s next book…

  • Shadows of Steel, Dale Brown

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 1996, 367 pages, C$33.95 hc, ISBN 0-399-14139-1

    Another book, another enemy, another war.

    It must not be an easy job to be a techno-thriller writer. The standard formula -to which one must adhere in order to keep readers- requires at least one non-negotiable variable: An implacable enemy who threaten America’s interests. In the eighties, such an enemy was easy to find: Every country behind the Iron Curtain was an acceptable foe and most novels featured Evil Soviets.

    Of course, things weren’t as simple after the Berlin Wall came down. Writers have been forced to use drug dealers, American Terrorists, India, Russian extremists and other more-or-less convincing enemies.

    Iran, however, has always been a good enemy (Clancy’s Executive Orders, Coyle’s Sword Point, etc…) and in Shadows of Steel, we go back to the tried-and-true Iranians, whose usual anti-American stance and aspirations toward becoming a regional power makes up for at least a willingness to fight.

    On the other hand, these are the enlightened nineties, and only a few of Iran’s craziest military officers wish war with the United States. No matter; before long we’re bombing them again. What else do you need to know about a Dale Brown novel?

    If it’s any good? Tough question. Shadows of Steel is a competent technothriller, but invites comparison with other works that will inevitably make it seem less enjoyable than it actually is.

    The biggest problem with Shadows of Steel is that it’s part of Dale Brown’s long-running “Patrick McLanahan” series. It brings together characters from many novels, including Skymaster‘s Jon Masters, Day of the Cheetah‘s Wendy McLanahan and Storming Heaven‘s Kevin Martindale. In internal chronology, it takes place after Brown’s second novel Day of the Cheetah. And there lies the difficulty. Brown’s 1989 novel wasn’t very realistic, featuring several fictional high-tech devices in a future seven years removed and postulating a dastardly plot by the Soviets to steal one of America’s newest fighters. On the other hand, it’s still one of Brown’s most exciting novels: Plausibility was more than compensated by slam-bang action and the result was one heck of a good read.

    You can guess the rest: Shadows of Steel is so much more down-to-earth (fewer high-tech, more jargon, more actual procedures) that compared to Day of the Cheetah, it’s downright boring. Not entirely boring, mind you: Brown is incapable of delivering anything else than a good read. But the difference between the two novels is shocking, almost as if a soft-spoken attorney reminded you of his past as a Black Panther.

    Either Brown wants to be exciting, or he has to match his series’ coherence with real-world markers. There is increasingly less middle ground. Unlike Tom Clancy, whose “Jack Ryan” novels are now ludicrously diverged from reality, Brown is trying to take his wilder earlier novels and tighten them up even more closely with current events. It doesn’t work. Time for new singletons.

    Two other major annoyances: Along with the previous Storming Heaven, Shadows of Steel also feels like a series of good-to-great scenes linked together by a thin thread of plot. More ominously, Shadows of Steel concludes on a note that more than feels like if the whole novel was a setup for Brown’s next book (Fatal Terrain).

    Is Shadows of Steel still worth a read? As usual, the answer -despite the relative lack of excitement in the plotting- is still that military aviation fans will find here one of the most polished novels dealing with their favorite subject. Non-fans need not enlist.

  • Mars Underground, William K. Hartmann

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 428 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-58039-7

    The most unfortunate consequence of Science-Fiction’s fascination for Mars during the nineties is the production of the planet’s definitive future history. From now on, every novel about the Red Planet have to contend with the towering shadow of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, which more or less said everything that needed to be said seriously about Mars until we eventually get there: Lesser Mars novels like Jack Williamson’ Beach Head are eaten for lunch by Robinson’s Mars.

    It seemed to me that the only serious way to avoid comparison to Robinson’s story was to go gonzo and write far-out novels like Greg Bear’s Moving Mars, so different from Robinson’s history that it couldn’t be compared. So, I didn’t really expect anything like Mars Underground to succeed, given the way it almost retreads the first half of Red Mars. And yet…

    Mars, 2032. We will follow four persons: Dr. Alwyn Stafford is the closest thing to a Martian: He’s been on the planet for almost twenty years and continues his research in Martian life-forms. Carter Jahns (shades of Burrough’s “John Carter”?) is one of the engineers responsible for planning human expansion on Mars. His friend Philippe Brach is the French artist-in-residence on Mars. And, disrupting the cards by her arrival from Earth is Annie Pohaku, news journalist.

    One day, Stafford disappears while on a solitary exploration trip. The whole Martian contingent is mobilized to find him, including Jahns. The clues they find are puzzling, suggesting deliberate intent to confuse the situation rather than accidental disappearance. But why, and how, would Stafford disappears? The story gets even more complex when Annie gets much closer to Philippe and then to Carter… serial seduction, or ways to ensure she doesn’t miss a potential scoop?

    For a newcomer to science-fiction, William K. Hartmann has impressive credentials: Multi-degree scientist involved with projects such as Mariner 9 and the Mars Global Surveyor Mission, Hugo-nominated author/co-author of eleven science books, be brings both knowledge and technique to Mars Underground, with fascinating results.

    The biggest surprise, I suspect, is that despite Mars Underground‘s clear membership to hard-SF, it is written with an elegance uncommon to the subgenre and an attention to characters that is far removed from the quick sketches we’re almost used to read. Uncommonly, this novel centers almost as much on a love triangle than on the promise of a good old-fashioned scientific mystery.

    As far as enigmas go, this is a good one. Stafford’s disappearance has a few quirky aspects that can’t be easily explained by Jahns, who presses on further and further until he discovers an explanation, then another, then a conspiracy… The intrepid Annie is with him at each step of the way, but whose side is she really on, besides herself? Hartmann keeps the reader guessing throughout the novel, only letting the answers appear near the end. Even though the conclusion isn’t as strong as it could have been, it’s spectacular enough to be interesting.

    Ironically, it’s the reverse that’s true of the novel: While Mars Underground is very strong in terms of characters, plotting and overall writing, it’s not as spectacular as it could have been. Hartmann stays as close as possible to the realm of the possible -his Mars is uncannily *real*- and while the result is commendable, it’s not as awe-inspiring as one might have expected. This is not really a failure as it is a slight disappointment, and even then not very much. Mars Underground is a better-than-average Hard-SF novel that’s surprisingly human and should gather a readership beyond the usual school of Science-Fiction realism. It needs no comparison to Robinson’s Mars to be appreciated.

  • 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.