Book Review

  • 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?

  • The Art of War, Sun Tzu (translated by Ralph D. Sawyer)

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Barnes & Noble Books, 1994, 375 pages, C$10.99 hc, ISBN 1-56619-297-8

    There are times when it’s more appropriate for a reviewer to tell you the best way to enjoy a book rather than if it’s good or not.

    With Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, one can comfortably assume even before cracking the spine of the book that it’s great: Arguably written more than two thousand years ago by one of China’s best tactician, The Art of War has been studied repeatedly in the Western world during the last century, from military academies to corporate boardrooms. Some will argue that The Art of War is a military treatise; others will say that it’s a political/social manual, or even a book of philosophical contemplations. It’s certainly not obvious with statements like “In order await the disordered; in tranquillity await the clamorous. This is the way to control the mind.”

    The Art of War, even in translation, has long passed into the public domain. You can download several translations from the Internet. Why, then, buy a 11$ book about it? To understand it better, probably.

    Ralph D. Sawyer is, putting it mildly, a pretty knowledgeable man. The Art of War itself fits in less than a hundred pages. The remainder of Sawyer’s book is political and military context, commentary, discussion of newly-found versions and more than a hundred pages of notes. (!)

    Perhaps more significantly, Sawyer has taken the time to write a new translation of The Art of War. If we compare it to the classical public-domain “Giles” translation (1910), it certainly has more flavour than the classical version. Boring, artless statements like “The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.” (Giles) suddenly become snappy “Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Way to survival or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed.” (Sawyer).

    But even with the modern, literary translation, The Art of War is by nature not an easy book to read. Or rather, it is easy to read, but not easy to grasp; it is to be read as slowly as possible.

    One thing that might help is to discuss the book with a group. An ex-colleague of mine, Eleanor Glor, holds monthly meetings about Innovation in the Public Sector called “The Innovation Salon”. The subject matter for February 1999 was a discussion of The Art of War, as moderated by David Jones, a enthusiast of Sun Tzu’s book.

    I can’t think of a better way to understand Sun Tzu; the discussion was literate, lively, wide-ranging and thought-provoking. I had prepared by reading The Art of War twice, without looking at the commentary and as a matter of fact, David Jones warned us that one should read Sun Tzu and try to form a good opinion of him well before trying to read any commentary.

    A good example is, I feel, the debate about the military value of Sun Tzu. Some commentators will try to tell you that The Art of War has less to do with warfare than pure philosophy. I happen to disagree (David Jones’s arguments failed to sway me.) but that assumption is crucial for many commentaries, who are sometimes radically oriented on this simple opinion of the text. (Similarly, some translations are skewed toward the militarist of the non-militarist approach; could it be a coincidence that my translation is though the pen of a scholar from the militarist school?)

    Even so, do not get the impression that I’m suddenly a wide-eyed convert to the Ancient Wisdom of the Orient; I think that attempts to reconcile The Art of War with modern life are interesting but misguided. At the same time, a careful reading of Sun Tzu will provide many rather good aphorisms and enough quotable material to impress both colleagues and friends. It’s worth repeating, however, that discussion is almost invariably a far better way to learn to appreciate Sun Tzu; why not try an impromptu reading group?

  • The Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 1992 (1997 reprint), 517 pages, C$16.95 tpb, ISBN 0-345-41366-0

    I have traditionally been wary of associating alternate histories with Science-Fiction, perhaps because so much of it tends to be anecdotal, based on whether a bullet went “zang” instead of “zing”. Alternate histories -or at least in the usual anthologies- is usually far more akin to political history (Alternate Presidents) or obvious exercises in either obvious hand-wringing (“Hitler wins war!”) or wish-fulfillment (“Hey! Gandhi with a bazooka!”).

    Nevertheless, there is a good argument for alternate-histories-as- science-fiction. For one thing, it’s a mode of historical literature based on the real definition of Speculative-Fiction (“What if?”) For another, a good author can use alternate history as a mean to explore technological changes on a society, which places us squarely back into SF.

    The Guns of the South is the first book I’ve seen that has “Alternate History” as category on its spine. It’s also one of the finest examples of science-fiction that I’ve read recently, and this for two factors:

    The first is the obvious usage of an SF device as inherent to the plot. The novel begins in January 1864, during the American Civil War. Things are not rosy for the Confederate forces; the Yankees are able to out-produce them and General Lee is aware of the precarious state of his forces. But a tall man with a strange accent arrives in camp to show a new weapon. He calls it an AK-47.

    This, of course, is a time-traveler. He says he’s willing to furnish the South with as many weapons as they may want, for a quasi-ridiculous price. It doesn’t take long for the Confederates to accept the offer and equip their men with these fancy new “repeaters”. The rest is alternate history. Able to literally outgun the North, the Confederate smash into Washington and force a peace on their terms. Barely 150 pages in the novel, we see the beginning of the new C.S.A.

    What follows is a difficult peace for both our protagonists: General Lee at the top of the changes, and a schoolteacher name Nate Caudell as the smarter-than-average citizen’s viewpoint.

    The second element that brings me to associate The Guns of the South to science-fiction is the novel’s examination of technological change on society. The men from the future simply want the South to win for racist reasons. But by introducing themselves and their technologies in the 1860s, they themselves have an effect on the affairs of the C.S.A. Soon, Lee himself begins to disagree with his benefactors…

    The Guns of the South gains most of its point, not through its meticulous research, but from the ease with which it can be read. As a French-Canadian, I consider myself as being as ill-informed about the Civil War as it is possible to be; yet, Turtledove does a splendid job to produce a perfectly entertaining novel. Good characters and a fast-moving narrative aren’t the least of the novel’s virtues.

    I do have an objection to make, though, in that we never learn quite enough about the time traveler’s means in their original time period. As so-called SF, The Guns of the South is more complacent in using time-traveling as an easy justification than a seriously thought-out device (otherwise, the time-travelers could have simply killed Lincoln, Grant and nuked Washington to ensure easy victory without the fuss.)

    But these quibbles are irrelevant when considered against the goal of Turtledove’s effort. There are many adjectives to use when praising The Guns of the South, but “fascinating” seems like a good one to end with. With this novel, Harry Turtledove has fashioned a little classic of the sub-genre. It’s a book that holds the interest by its erudition, but also by virtue of action, readability and intellectual interest. And a happy ending. Great stuff.

  • Desperation and The Regulators, Stephen King & Richard Bachman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Signet, 1997, ???? pages, C$??.?? mmpb, ISBN Various

    Desperation, Stephen King: Signet, 1997, 547 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-18846-2
    The Regulators, Richard Bachman Signet, 1997, 489 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-19101-3

    Any way you look at it, Stephen King is an interesting author. Springing to national fame after two unusually successful movies adapted from his novels (Brian DePalma’s CARRIE and Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING), he has reigned over the bestseller lists for more than two decades. While lesser authors might have comfortably rested on their laurels, releasing formula novels every year or so, King is a genuine writer who’s not afraid to take risks. These risks don’t stop at what he write, but also extends at how they’re published. To promote Insomnia in 1994, he travelled through the United States on a motorcycle to do signing in independent bookstores. He agreed to publish The Green Mile in six small instalments, like the serial novels of yore. In 1996, he simultaneously released two novels: One under his name, and the other one as his pseudonymous alter-ego, Richard Bachman (also known as the author of Thinner and The Running Man, among others)

    The experiment doesn’t stop at the simple simultaneous release of two books. Where it gets really interesting is that both novel share their cast of character, the name of the villain and even some common lines. Up to a certain point, one can argue that the events of both novel sport a common history.

    Nevada, 1858: In the middle of nowhere, a small town has sprung up around a mine. The soil isn’t exactly stable, so the company hires Chinese personnel willing to work for almost nothing under horrific conditions. One day, while more than forty men are working underground, the mine caves in. Accident or totally intentional event? In any case, the mine is re-discovered more than a century later, as a blasting uncovers the mine shaft.

    Here, the stories part ways.

    In Stephen King’s Desperation, the action stays in the small mining town of Desperation, Nevada. During the first hundred pages of the novel, various visitors are brought together in the town’s jail by a crazy policeman. Few remain alive in the town, and who knows if the policeman has anything to do with this? For that matter, even the few surviving citizen of Desperation seem ready to swear that the policeman isn’t his usual self…

    In Richard Bachman’s The Regulators, the action stays in Wentworth, Ohio. More particularly, in the suburban picture- perfect Poplar Street. It’s a superb summer afternoon until a paperboy is killed by a shotgun blast fired from a futuristic red van. Before long, half the street’s residents are dead and the other half are waiting for the next devastating attack. It doesn’t help that Poplar Street isn’t in Wentworth any more…

    You can read one or both novels in any order; neither is sequel or sideshow. There are, however, interesting bonuses to be gained from doing what this reviewer did and reading both concurrently, fifty or a hundred pages at a time in both: backstories are fleshed out in one novel but not in another, subtle personality changes take more significance, background details seem more pertinent. The fate of characters isn’t identical, of course. Some survive to both, die in one or die twice.

    As interesting as the concept is, however, one almost wishes that the interplay between both works could have been deeper, even maybe up to an absurdly almost-postmodern point (one character could “know” something learned by the other book’s character, and similar tricks). In any case, the experiment raises interesting questions, and readers should be thankful that King has experimented with this.

    Besides literary curiosity, however, it’s a relief to find out that King has written some of his most “characteristic” novels in years with Desperation and The Regulators.

    Desperation, with its desertic, almost post-apocalyptic locale and its ultimate combat between the forces of good versus an incarnation of evil, is not without bringing back memories of King’s The Stand (though being nowhere near that novel’s power). King’s seemingly-effortless management of a multi-character cast also recalls some of his most successful older novels. On the other hand, it has more than a few lengths, also like King’s previous work. In any case, it’s a change (improvement?) from King’s last three novels, which took a far more intimate psychological approach.

    The Regulators is closer to Bachman’s previous five novels in that there are few lengths and more violent action than King usually puts in his novels. Shorter than Desperation and more classically exciting, The Regulators also marks a radical departure from King’s last few novels, which were becoming more and more sedate. Not exactly the ultimate tale of suburbia terror (the villain simply doesn’t let itself to this goal), The Regulator is nevertheless fast-paced action with a supernatural premise. Bachman’s narration is honed to quasi-perfection; the result is great.

    Both novel also mark a return to two of King’s favourite themes; children (saviours in both, but more ominously so in The Regulators) and writers (heroes in both, but more ominously so in Desperation).

    One flaw shared by both novels is that the opening chapters (creepy in Desperation and action-packed in The Regulator) promise more than is ultimately delivered. While this is not a new problem in horror -where menace is almost always more effective than execution- it seems more disappointing here perhaps because of the interplay between both novel. In The Regulators, it’s a bit difficult to express outright rage at the antagonist, while in Desperation it doesn’t seem quite so threatening in latter stages than in its policeman incarnation.

    In the end, however, Stephen King is having fun and the result is a return to old familiar places. (The second drive-by shooting in The Regulators is almost as merry to read as the degeneration of the villain in Desperation) Either novel is good by itself. Taken together, however, they become special. Maybe not as great as could have been expected, but still worthy enough of the King mark of quality.

    It remains to be seen what else Stephen King plans for us…

  • Storming Heaven, Dale Brown

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 1995, 399 pages, C$28.50 hc, ISBN 0-399-13931-1

    It’s always a pleasure to go back to a favourite author, only to discover that his newest novel is as good as his previous efforts.

    Dale Brown is an ex-Air Force pilot who has specialized in far-out aerial techno-thrillers. His writing appeal to me for various reasons; an emphasis on plot, a love of details, a knack at serviceable characters and an eye for the Cool Scene. Contrarily to techno-thriller ubermeister Tom Clancy, Dale Brown’s novel have remained manageably lengthy, and in roughly the same familiar territory.

    Storming Heaven is, at the same time, solidly similar to Brown’s previous novels and an encouraging venture in new directions. Like all Brown novels so far, it’s about war in the air. This time, however, America isn’t sending units to fight far away. This time, the battle is at home.

    After a perfunctory prologue (Summarized: “I say that America’s borders should be more protected!”, “Ha-ha, you crazy old fool, go home!”), the action kicks in high gear as American authorities try to apprehend Henri Cazaux, the world’s most wanted terrorist. Cazaux doesn’t see it that way, of course, and departs in a small plane after killing a good half-dozen Federal Agents. After National Guard fighters units join the battle, Cazaux is cornered and fights back like a mad dog, blowing up a substantial portion of the Los Angeles Airport in the process.

    As everyone licks their wounds, Cazaux realizes that this is how to take revenge on the Country That Abused Him. He quickly hatches a plan to make devastating strikes against the USA’s largest civilian airports…

    Most techno-thrillers remain solidly in the military world, barely according attention to more humdrum civilian concerns. Storming Heaven is an exception, given that it’s solidly built around the world of civilian aviation. As is the norm with the best novels of this type, Brown takes us places we wish we could visit: High-stakes financial boardroom, an air controller’s station, a gigantic plane storage park…

    As for the novel itself, it might not be the best Brown yet, but even an average Dale Brown novel is better than the norm. Perhaps too disjointed (the novel often appears to be a string of big action sequences tied together) to be fully satisfying and too loosely connected to its characters to be involving, Storming Heaven is still interesting enough to sustain our attention.

    Still, the novel has significant shortcomings. Henri Cazaux might be fine even (because) when he’s so over-the-top, but the same can’t be said of his “love interest”, Jo Ann Vegas, who oscillate between victim, sadist, astrologer, punching bag, manipulator, oppressed and genuinely puzzling personality. In a genre so founded on hard facts, it’s puzzling to see the appearance of such a mystical character. She’s the weak link of Storming Heaven. Stylistically, Brown still has a way to go. There has to be a simpler way of saying “The vertical and horizontal antenna sweep indexers of the F-16 ADF’s AN/APG-66 radarscope continued to move, but a small white box had appeared at the upper-left portion of his F-16 Fighter Falcon ADF’s radarscreen.” [P.232] even though I appreciate this level of detail…

    Oh; Storming Heaven links together Brown’s Hammerheads (given Ian Hardcastle’s supporting role) and Chains of Command (with the thinly-veiled references to the Clintons, more acidly Hillary who’s described as “The Steel Magnolia”.) even though only Hammerheads (a substantially better novel) is useful as background material.

    At least Brown doesn’t forget to have fun, as he slips in some barbs about the Clintons (P.352: “’She’s got bigger things on her mind these days… like how to keep her and the President from being indicted.’”) and self-congratulates himself (P.205: “’Ludicrous. This is not some damned Dale Brown novel, this is real-life.’”)

    Not the best Brown novel, but still a darn good one, Storming Heaven should please more fans of the authors, as well as bring in a few new ones.

  • Dreaming in Smoke, Tricia Sullivan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1998, 401 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-57703-4

    As most semanticians point out, words are not “just” words. They are linked to specific emotional content in our memories. “fresh red apple” has a different feel than “structured organizational content” or somesuch. Some words possess deeper associations than others; “Beauty”, “Songs”, “Love” all play on another register than “Fear”, “Honour”, “Orders”. (These last three words are taken straight from three successive Tom Clancy novels. The former are from fantasy novels.)

    It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Point of Impact is a substantially different book than -say- Bimboes of the Death Sun. Marketing directors have obviously realized this long ago, and so it’s not a conceptual breakthrough to go from there to a more general theory of book selection: If the title sounds good, buy it.

    Dreaming in Smoke might be Tricia Sullivan’s third novel, but it was my first exposure to this new SF author. It wasn’t the title that grabbed me, but the intriguing cover illustration, which depicts a very SF-looking metallic structure above a frail sail-driven boat floating over a golden sea, surrounded by clouds of green-tinged vapour.

    This is human colony T’nane. By some quirk of history, this inhospitable planet has been selected as a suitable place to send colonists. Temperatures are high, the air isn’t breathable… Worse: the planet (or, at least the parts we visit) seems to be a vast ocean almost always on the verge of ebullition.

    Placed nearby a volcanic area lies the first planetary base, controlled by an AI named Ganesh. There is no human life on T’nane without Ganesh: the survival of the colonists depend on precise environmental controls, and that’s where the AI comes in.

    Meanwhile, research is ongoing to find ways to cope with the harsh environment. Scientific research occasionally takes a different form, as scientists use a dream-like state to sort between intuitive hypotheses. (Maybe Tricia Sullivan has read once too many the account of the discovery of benzene) That’s where Kalypso Deed comes in: she’s a “shotgun”, a more detached observer who directs the creative energies of a dreaming scientist toward more productive ends.

    Kalypso is also something of an underachiever. Despite her genetic potential, she has consistently failed to attaint the expectations of her elders. She doesn’t understand the maths that her scientists are using; that will be her salvation. Because bad things happen, and they do early on; fifty pages in the novel, Kalypso’s routine “shotgun” shift goes wrong and the AI crashes, carrying most of the station’s life support with it. As the elders try to blame someone, Kalypso is quickly dragged in over her capacities… or is she?

    Dreaming in Smoke could have either been (based on the title) an incredibly boring novel in the “Beauty, songs, love” tradition or (based on the synopsis) a pretty spiffy novel of adventure against a background of a crazy AI and a hostile environment. Unfortunately, title and blurb clash and the novel has too much hard scientific content and attitude to be dismissed easily, but drags on far too often to be considered enjoyable. Over a hundred pages could have been slashed, easily. The Dream motif doesn’t help, as many metaphoric scenes just end up being senseless and confusing. It would have been helpful to tighten the action around the Kalypso/Azamat (hAZArdous MATerial?) axis and clean up the prose.

    As it stands, Dreaming in Smoke is a thoroughly average SF novel that doesn’t really deserve either condemnation or commendation. Sadly, there is so much better stuff out there than the only reason to pick up this novel would be to discover Tricia Sullivan. Which isn’t a bad reason, mind you: for one thing, she’s able to overcome push-button titles.

  • Traces, Stephen Baxter

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 1998, 359 pages, C$37.50 hc, ISBN 0-00-225427-1

    I’ll admit it right away: For a hard-SF student, I’ve been negligent in my recommended readings. I skipped over Benford, forgot Forward and simply didn’t pick up Clement. But I’m catching up on Stephen Baxter. I really liked The Time Ships and thought of no better way to follow up than to borrow the British edition of his latest collection, Traces, at the local library.

    I’ve discussed elsewhere my preference for collections over novels for unfamiliar authors, so there’s no need to go over it in length again here. Briefly put; a short story collection like Traces gives a better idea of the author’s scope and versatility than one single long-form story.

    So what can one deduce of Baxter’s interests, strengths and weaknesses from Traces? A fascination for history probably; alternate history certainly. A competence with the hard sciences. An impatience with overdetailed characterization. A melancholy for the now scaled-back dreams of the early space age. A respect for the elders of SF like Wells, Verne, Clarke…

    But by far the best thing about Baxter is that he’s fully aware that “short” is half a successful short story. In 360 pages, Baxter packs in 21 stories; no fifty-page novellas here, no interminable seed novel.

    Perhaps the most regrettable thing about Traces is that despite being composed of easily categorizable stories, there is no attempt at organization. David Brin’s collection Otherness did this with some success; maybe Baxter could have done the same, redistributing his comments about stories around these categories instead of lumping them into one single afterword.

    There could be an “Alternate Histories” section, with pieces like “No Longer Touch the Earth” (where Aristotle’s concept of a celestial orrery proves to be true… and unnoticed until Amundsen and Scott) and “Brigantia Angels” (where the British invent the plane in 1895).

    A more specialized section could be dedicated to “Alternate Space Programs”, led by “Moon Six” (an astronaut on the moon is carried in several alternate realities where space exploration is at different stages of development) and followed by “Mittelwelt” (Germany wins WWI and is able to launch a space program), “A Journey to the King Planet” (England discovers antimatter and jump-starts a space program during Queen Victoria’s reign) and “Pilgrim 7” (a Mercury-program astronaut orbiting the Earth is carried away to a more peaceful alternate reality shortly after the Cuba crisis goes nuclear)

    There could always be a section called “I learned from the masters”, where Baxter could prove that he’s able to write stories like Wells (“Columbiad”, where Jules Verne’s classic From the Earth to the Moon is fact), Clarke (“Traces”, a big-scale remix of “The Star”), Niven (“Something for Nothing”, which has significant similarities with Niven’s “The Hole Man”) and golden-age planetary-exploration adventures (“In the Manner of Tree”, with requisite gruff starship captain and mysterious natives)

    Traces is not a flawless anthology, sinning sometime by tediousness (please forgive me if I admit to skipping large parts of both “Downstream” and “The Blood of Angels”) and pointlessness (“George and the Comet”’s point is undiscernible, “Inherit the Earth” simply falls flat.) But the remainder is pretty good, and certainly worth considering in paperback at your next trip to the local SF store.

    Any author that can claim to rewrite Superman and actually do a good job (“Good News”) as well as write a rousing story about a dead classical poet (Lord Byron in “Darkness”) deserves at least a modicum of attention. Traces might just be the best way to get acquainted with Stephen Baxter.

  • The Number of the Beast, Robert A. Heinlein

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Fawcett, 1980, 511 pages, C$4.75 mmpb, ISBN 0-449-14476-3

    Given this new millennium, some particularly silly person will undoubtedly try to poll Science-Fiction fans to try to find out was the foremost SF writer of the twentieth century. I say “silly”, because the contest is over even before it begins; the honour logically goes to Robert A. Heinlein.

    Say what you want, gnash your teeth, moan loudly or run away screaming; Robert A. Heinlein is the defining SF writer of the twentieth century. He has shaped the genre to his liking, inspired more writers than anyone else, provoked more arguments and debates than any other and influenced more people than most politicians. He’s not only the author of the hippie manifesto Stranger in a Strange Land, but also the militarist fantasy Starship Troopers and the libertarian classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

    Notice, however, that these novels were all written in the first two-third of Heinlein’s career. In the seventies, the author was severely affected by poor health and his post-1970 novels were marked by a severe lack of editorial revision, increasing authorial indulgence and a detestable tendency to praise a small group of fictional characters very much like Heinlein at the expense of everything else.

    The Number of the Beast is widely known as one of Heinlein’s worst books and an interminable exercise in solipsism. Given that it’s one of the very few Heinlein novels I still hadn’t read, I was curious to see for myself what the fuss was about.

    After reading the novel, I’m still unsure whether the book was a satire or not. A straight plot summary of the book will not do: what would any serious SF reader think of “two couples of geniuses are chased by aliens and forced to depart through space and time aboard their specially-modified car”? Right…

    It’s apparent from the start that this is a novel that will defy conventional assessment. When hitherto-unknown characters marry in the first thirty pages, when all four protagonists have multiple doctorates and when alternate universes are defined by SF stories, it quickly becomes apparent that anyone applying rational literary standards will quickly regret it.

    Which is essentially saying that anyone expecting a conventionally entertaining novel won’t like The Number of the Beast. Critics are right when they say that the four protagonists in The Number of the Beast are all Heinlein in disguise. It’s not enough to be ready to wackiness; it’s almost a prerequisite to be very familiar with all of Heinlein’s corpus up to 1980 to be comfortable with the discussions in this novel.

    But is it enjoyable? It depends which part of the novel you read. The opening 150 pages have some plot, and are carried through mainly on Heinlein’s sheer narrative verve and great character introductions. The protagonists are so ridiculously ultra-competent that we’re reading in part to see which one will top the other with some other outrageously exotic skill.

    But the 350 remaining pages are, despite the lively prose, often an exercise in tediousness. Interminable, useless technical descriptions are wrapped around some more (not unenjoyable) Heinleinisms. The impression is one of a writer who’s lost his outline. Even the spirited Envoi does nothing to reconcile ourselves with a novel that’s two-third empty.

    That’s the conventional way of enjoying The Number of the Beast… but I’m not sure the unconventional way is open to anyone save the late Robert A. Heinlein himself.

  • Immortality, Dr. Ben Bova

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1998, 283 pages, C$31.00 hc, ISBN 0-380-97518-1

    Immortality has been a staple of Science-Fiction for as long as the genre has existed, from at least Greek mythology onward. Most of the time, Immortality was presented either as a goal for mad scientists (“With this ingredient, I shall live forever and enslave the world!”) or, perhaps more ominously, as a curse bestowed on an unlucky few.

    Eventually, given SF’s own tendency to pervert its own assumptions, more balanced work have emerged. Increasingly realistic biomedical advances in the real world have helped to steer fiction away from the “mad immortals” cliches. The SF of the nineties has seen a renewed interest in the concept. Kim Stanley Robinson made it one of the keystones of his grandiose “Mars” trilogy, even though some will argue that it was a mean to develop the story with the same characters, not an end in itself. More recently, James L. Halperin vulgarized the subject in 1998’s quasi-mainstream novel The First Immortal.

    Ben Bova’s Immortality, despite Bova’s solid reputation as a Science Fiction author, is a non-fiction work. It explores the avenues by which medicine may reverse aging, the consequences of such a scientific triumph and the desirability of immortality.

    Doctor-Bova-the-scientist has meticulously distanced himself from Ben-Bova-the-SF-writer in Immortality. Indeed, his “Other books by Ben Bova” blurb lists only non-fiction works and even then it’s staggering to see that he has written more non-fiction books that most writers will write novels in their lifetimes. But Bova has carried to science writing the same limpidity of thought and writing that has earned him his legions of SF fans.

    Immortality is an unusually accessible work about a subject that is unusually complex. It’s no coincidence if it take more than a hundred pages to get at immortality itself: Bova has to carry the reader through elementary chemistry and biology before really tackling immortality. Fortunately, it’s a much more pleasant read than the prospect of “a hundred pages of basic sciences” might imply. Side-bars, personal anecdotes, catchy headers and other techniques make Immortality a model of good scientific vulgarization. As might be expected, Bova’s research is meticulous. At the end of the book’s first part, we can’t be anything but convinced that immortality is just around the corner. The scientific evidence so far is overwhelming.

    As stunning as is this conclusion, it’s the second part of the book that will fascinate. Here, Bova explores his previous assumption by looking at the social repercussions of Immortality. He reasonably intuits that not everyone will welcome this revolution with equal fervour. He also posits “what-if?” scenarios based on the costs of immortality treatments, availability and continued medical research on the subject. Alas, this part is over much too quickly; if the book has a weakness, it’s that this examination of social impacts could have been expanded. Bova makes simplistic assumptions that will give ammunition to overcritical readers.

    But no matter. After finishing Immortality, it’s difficult to disagree with Bova’s assertion that death will eventually become, not obsolete, but far less implacable than today. It’s a breath of fresh air in a marketplace of end-of-the-world predictions.

    Perhaps the most impressive thing about Immortality is not the prediction of immortality -after all, it’s been a common fantasy for a while now-, but the fact that this prediction is detailed, quite reasonably, in a popular science book. Even long after first reading the last lines of the book, they will resonate as strongly as before:

    The first immortals are already living among us. You might be one of them.

  • Lethal Exposure, Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1998, 290 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-00536-5

    One can say a lot of not-so-complimentary things about Kevin J. Anderson. He’s one of the bestselling SF authors of the nineties, but -most will hasten to add-, he’s done so on the shoulders of some pretty powerful institutions: Anderson wrote or co-wrote at least a dozen novels in the Star Wars and X-Files universe… Lately, he’s been shamelessly exploiting the church of Scientology by writing a novel in “collaboration” with the late L. Ron Hubbard. A prolific writer, Anderson also has time for a substantial body of more original work.

    He collects collaborators like others collect cars and the quality of the work often has a direct link with the other writer. With Doug Beason, Anderson writes very-hard-science techno-thrillers, from DIE-HARD clone (the rather good Ignition) to post-apocalyptic drama (Ill Wind) to, finally, a series of novel starring Craig Kriedent, high-tech FBI agent.

    The formula is simple: Imagine a FBI agent specialized in high-tech crimes. Give him two competent sidekicks, one ex-squeeze and an ambiguous girlfriend. Make them resolve murders in high-tech locations. Pack in as many scientific details as the average hard-SF fan will tolerate. Add some more action, near-future technology and write up everything in a limpid style that’s impossible to resist.

    I wasn’t too fond of the first Kriedent novel (Virtual Destruction), mostly for the usage of gratuitous pathos and less-clever-than-they-thought plotting. The second book (Fallout) was closer to techno-thriller than to crime fiction, and had the benefit of better action scenes as well as a very memorable finale. Lethal Exposure tops both by combining the best elements of the first two books.

    In the opening pages of Lethal Exposure, a scientist working after-hours at Chicago’s Fermilab particle accelerator is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. He calmly diagnoses himself as a living corpse and turns himself in. His physician is Trish LeCroix, Craig Kriedent’s ex-girlfriend. She calls him up, convinced that it was no accident. Kriedent quickly arrives on the scene, and then the action really starts.

    This time around, the mystery elements are combined with action sequences to produce a mystery/thriller hybrid. Since we’re comfortable with the main characters, the authors are allowed to spend some time developing secondary players and allowing their protagonists to react more naturally. Technically, Lethal Exposure is better-paced than its predecessors, balancing the action with just enough mystery. The ending is surprisingly emotional, though one loose end is still dangling by the end of the novel.

    Inevitably, some will feel disappointed at some of the shortcuts taken by the authors. The romantic triangle is given scant attention and the murder attempts are as unbelievable as a direct Chicago-New Delhi Concord flight. (Refuelling? Continental United States supersonic overflight? Demand? Facilities?)

    But no matter; for an open-ended series novel, Lethal Exposure is a darn good read. It’s the best of the Kriedent so far, and the last pages give plenty of openings for a series of sequels. Of course, it remains to be seen if Beason and Anderson want to continue, (contrarily to the previous two books, there is no mention of a follow-up book) but if they can keep the same level of quality than with Lethal Exposure, fans are sure to follow.

  • Red Ink, Greg Dinallo

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1994, 341 pages, C$28.50 hc, ISBN 0-671-73313-3

    My, have times changed.

    Fifteen years ago, nobody would have considered Russia a country in crisis. They were pointing nuclear missiles at most North American cities, and that was enough to stop most people from thinking objectively about a country that was struggling under a rigid bureaucracy, an inefficient economy and backward technological progress. Author Greg Dinallo himself, in 1988, penned a novel titled Rocket’s Red Glare which featured a dastardly Russia plan stemming from the Cuba crisis.

    Of course, nobody could have a clear picture of the true state of the Ex-USSR given that nothing was really well-known about the country. No open media, no independent accounting, no glassnost.

    Of course, we all know the major beats of the subsequent story; Chernobyl, the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, the 1991 coup in Moscow, the division of the USSR into independent countries… The true picture of the communist aftermath is finally clear and it’s not pretty. Now, Dinallo is looking at Russia again… and my have times changed.

    Red Ink‘s protagonist Nikolai Katkov isn’t particularly sad to be rid of the old regime. An ex-gulag prisoner, Katkov is a freelance investigative reporter. He sees the new Russia through jaded eyes. As with most noir novels, Katkov is also down on his luck. By mid-novel, he’ll be stripped of most of what he hold dear.

    Of course, it starts off innocently with a banal murder. Except that the victim is a high-banking government officer. Except that the victim was investigating high-stakes financial transactions. Except that he might or might not have been killed by a professional. Except that the trail points to the Russian mafiya. Except that Katkov’s article is rewritten and published under another byline. Except that Katkov is nearly gunned down…

    The only thing missing is a love interest, and she quickly arrives as the sultry Gabriella Scotto, U.S. Treasury Special Agent. What is going on? Is her investigation tied into the murder?

    Red Ink is, all things considered, an adequate thriller with enough quirks to make it interesting. The first-person narration is suitably cynical to add spice to the narrative, though this particularity fades as the novel goes on. The relation between Katkov and Scotto is handled maturely, with a flair that’s lacking in most Hollywood-inspired thrillers. Characterisation is strong, the writing is clear and -at least initially- compulsively readable. There are a few memorable scenes and the conclusion is far more interesting than could have been expected.

    The first third of Red Ink is unfortunately much more fascinating than the remainder of the novel, promising more than what Dinallo eventually delivers. As Katkov travels to a more familiar environment (from our perspective), the book loses some of its charm, even if Katkov’s fish-out-of-water condition provides amusement. Simply put, Red Ink remains good, but isn’t special in its latter half.

    Dinallo has always been an unconventional thriller writer, bringing sometimes uncomfortable elements in his fiction but usually building interesting payoffs. Red Ink is the best of his books yet, and Dinallo owes some of this success to the careful research he’s done about the Russia of the nineties. Red Ink is a good choice for an entertaining read… and proves that even if Russia has changed, it still offers considerable potential for all of those poor cold-war writers.

    My, have times changed!

  • The Sneaker Book, Tom Vanderbilt

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    The New Press, 1998, 177 pages, C$19.95 hc, ISBN 1-56584-406-8

    My troubles with footwear began a few years ago, as my favourite model was discontinued. Through high school and most of college, I bought pair after pair of Reebok Pro Volley Mesh. After some experimentation, this had proven to be the most comfortable, most versatile, relatively sober design. I really liked these shoes.

    But, inevitably, the soles of my old pair cracked, it began to snow, my favourite model wasn’t available any more and I eventually found myself in the market for new shoes. A few trips to specialty footwear stores were unforgettable experiences: The shoes there bore no relation to what I really wanted to wear: I was looking for something relatively modest, not too flashy and as close as possible to the streamlined shape of the Reebok Pro Volley shoe.

    What I discovered was an assortment of globulous, multicolored, fanciful shapes that looked more like Jim-Burns-drawn futuristic weapons turned upside down than footwear. I retreated to the nearest general-interest megastore and came out with a pair of white Nike Air.

    I hated those shoes. Lightweight and featureless, okay, but two weeks after buying them, one of them began to squeak. You can imagine the infernal sound in a deserted corridor: Clop, squeak, clop, squeak, clop, squeak… I toughed it as long as I could (one year; my self-imposed shoe replacement delay) and went back to Reebok sneakers.

    I consider myself a sane customer, but that, by any standard, was demented. No sneaker nowadays lasts more than a year, and it’s impossible to find a good model since they keep changing year after year!

    The Sneaker Book finally put some sense in the mania that is the Sneakers industry. Design changes every quarter; squalid production conditions, obscenely-paid celebrity endorsements, nauseatingly pervasive marketing, shameless commercialisation of an image over function… there is a lot of material there for a scathing denunciation, and this is what Tom Vanderbilt delivers.

    He takes us from design to sales, intelligently pointing out the crazier parts of the industry without necessarily being arrogant or spiteful about it. The result is book that reads well, and can be consulted easily. (There is a good index at the end.)

    The design of the book, however, is less successful. In an effort to appear hip and modern, the designers have shot themselves in the foot (har-har) in matter of readability. Some sidebar excerpt from other works are run consecutively on several pages, running alongside the main text; the effect is to force the reader to either read one and go back, or to try to follow both threads simultaneously. The good idea of illustrating each page with a sneaker is undermined by the lack of identification of each shoe, and the repetition of several similar images.

    Nevertheless, The Sneaker Book is an excellent work. It takes a product that most of us take for granted, and deconstruct it in such a way that we’re never going to think of sneakers in quite the same way again. It’s a precious document chronicling not only sneakers-as-footwear, but as a chilling materialization of some of the late twentieth century’s worst traits: Rampant commercialism, sports as entertainment, ghetto formalization, third-world exploitation, women inequity, image-as-substance…

    Whatever you might choose to see in The Sneaker Book, it certainly made me look at my footwear often. The “Made in China” tag in all of my shoes never seemed more ominous. Who should care about my petty complaints of squeaking, changing models and lack of durability when I’m really the living incarnation of the first-world nations stepping on the product of the less fortunate members of the human race?