Book Review

  • Forbidden Summit, Payne Harrison

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1997, 340 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-16214-1

    Open letter to Payne Harrison:

    Dear Mr. Harrison,

    It is with considerable dismay that I write you about your latest novel, Forbidden Summit. For reasons which shall be exposed at length below, I find it regrettable to contemplate the possibility that one of the best techno-thriller writers in recent memory has fallen prey to disillusions so laughably flawed that he must be pitied, not scorned.

    I really loved your first two books. Storming Intrepid was a tremendously exciting novel of cold war conflict, adroitly mixing limpid writing with an exceptionally thrilling plot of warfare in near space. I bought it twice: In paperback, and then in hardcover. Thunder of Erebus was no slouch either. You managed to bring techno-thrillers to a fresh new location -Antarctica- and the story contained far too many good scenes to enumerate. It was great.

    I was slightly disappointed by Black Cipher, though. Even though the field of cryptology is intriguing like few else, your narrative talents had slipped a notch, and this rather simple tale of a lone cryptologist against a conspiracy of highly-placed officials… was satisfying without being spectacular.

    Still, when I heard that a new Payne Harrison book was in bookstores, I rushed to the shelves, only to be surprised by the fact that your new book was a paperback original. When dealing with an established author, this is usually a sign of an inferior work. Puzzled, I read the synopsis and understood.

    “A powerfully convincing novel of the ultimate government secret”… “Four unidentified aircrafts are tracked on a controlled descent over North America.”… “The official response -or lack of it- is puzzling.” “A desolate summit on a desert mesa. There, far from public eyes, the truth is waiting…” A glimpse through the afterword confirmed my doubts.

    I quietly placed the book back on the shelf. Is that what it had come to? One excellent author reduced to pandering to the wide-eyes neurotic true X-Files believers?

    Having thus resolved not to buy Forbidden Summit, I was ironically pleased to unwrap the book at our Christmas office party; my reputation as a voracious reader had netted me two books, including yours. So I would be able, after all, to actually have an informed opinion on your latest novel.

    So I read and find myself unpleasantly vindicated. The shocking thing is not as much the fact that you do believe in this alien stuff -all pretences of harmless fiction are erased by your afterword- as how most of your writing skills seems to have gone to waste since Thunder of Erebus.

    I’ll be blunt: The pitifulness of your cardboard characters is only surpassed by the shallowness of your plotting. Old flashes of the Payne Harrison of old still resonate at odd moments: Good technical descriptions, a few interesting scenes. But beyond that, it is not an impression of dislike that one gets of Forbidden Summit. It is one of pity, of shameful embarrassment at the fall of a once-promising writer. Your book is boring, misogynist, clumsy, inconsistent with reality and sadly paranoid. It reads like something you threw up after watching INDEPENDENCE DAY once too many.

    In a way, you are your own best advertisement for your theories of alien conspiracies. Bring back the original Harrison, you alien bastards!

    In the meantime, your pathetic belief in alien conspiracies are not only miserable in their own right, but they are an insult to the millions of soldiers, officers, scientists, engineers and politicians whose virtues you so espoused and profited from in your previous novels.

    And if only for that, you should not be allowed to publish another novel.

    With sincere wishes for an improvement in your mental health,

    An ex-fan, Christian Sauvé.

  • Brute Orbits, George Zebrowski

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Prism, 1998, 222 pages, C$33.50 hc, ISBN 0-06-105026-1

    TITLE: Brute Orbits

    AUTHOR: George Zebrowski

    STATUS: Hardcover Science-Fiction Novel

    SUMMARY OF PREMISE: In the near future, Earth has successfully brought several asteroids to Earth orbit in order to mine them. Once the precious core has been extracted, some bright guy has the idea of transforming them in habitats, stuffing them with prisoners and sending them away in ten, twenty, thirty-year long orbits before they come back to Earth. Of course, it’s not that difficult to make a “mistake” and send the asteroid for an even longer orbit.

    SUMMARY OF PLOT: There isn’t much of a plot. The massive space and time frame covered makes it difficult to have a unique protagonist. So Brute Orbits follows a few prisoners and historians, each vignette trying to tell a facet of the story. In one series of linked chapters, a super-intelligent prisoner tries to manage his micro-society of fellow criminals as they head away from Earth. In another, a political dissident talks with other exiles until the asteroid’s indoor lights go dark. In another, a historian tries to piece together the history of the Rocks. These are pretty much the only three sustained stories; other passages feature characters we seldom see again.

    SUMMARY OF THEMES: Zebrowski here attempts to use his premise as a vehicle for argumentation about the judicial system’s corrective branch. As with any work dealing at length with criminality from a serious perspective, Brute Orbits exhibits a dark and violent viewpoint. Unlike most of these other works, however, Brute Orbits strongly suggests that not all prisoners deserve their fate and that society -not to mention more specifically society’s elites- ultimately define and causes crime.

    SUMMARY OF VIRTUES: Brute Orbits‘s premise is exceedingly clever, forcing us to contemplate virtually escape-proof prisons, and the realization of a “just throw’em away together” social phantasm. Zebrowski’s writing is also, with a few exception, quite readable. Some good scenes. Good grasp of the hard sciences. His argument that society is the biggest criminal is a provocative systemic self-examination on the level that SF does at its best.

    SUMMARY OF FLAWS: Though other readers might disagree to the “flaw” designation, the “vignette-sequence” structure of Brute Orbits has its disadvantages. Probably the most important of those is the lack of attachment to characters. Without those, Zebrowski is hard-pressed to illustrate his ideas convincingly. Not only does Brute Orbits reads like a fix-up, but the stories of the fix-up are all interleaved with each other. It’s not only difficult to read as a whole, but doesn’t really convince. Unfortunately, Zebrowski’s charge that society-is-criminal really needed a good dose of sympathy and credibility. This is lacking.

    VERDICT: Not worth buying in hardcover, and a risky choice in paperback given the wealth of competent storytelling out there. Readers intrigued by the strong premise should consider borrowing from the local library.

  • Luminous, Greg Egan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Millennium, 1998, 295 pages, C$21.95 tpb, ISBN 0-85798-552-4

    Greg Egan’s reputation is already established: A hard-SF writer of considerable ambition, he invariably integrates stunning ideas in his fiction. Even though his shortcomings are significant, there’s no arguing that he’s one of the defining SF writers of the nineties. His influence is considerable, given that he now seems to exemplify Hard-SF. (It will be noted, though, that Egan seems to have few political ambitions and thus will not promote himself as heavily as other writers.)

    His first short story collection, Axiomatic, was an impressive compilation of unflinching Science Fiction. Egan tackled the Big Themes head-on, producing stories that might have been slight in literary qualities, but iron-clad in concepts. To say that Luminous was heavily anticipated is to understate matters.

    Was it worth the wait? Well, mostly yes for the fans.

    The best news are that Luminous shows that Greg Egan has lost none of his willingness to confront the big themes. Tackling Happiness, Mathematical Certitude, Genetics, Cosmology, Sexual Orientation and -oh, that too- Consciousness, Egan is a perfect poster-child for SF’s grandest literary aims. It’s not quite as well executed as it’s attempted, but still…

    The title story has a strong beginning. It doesn’t really meshes well with the remainder of the story, but draws you in effectively. “Mitochondrial Eve” is a good satiric story, with an impeccably readable style. “Cocoon” forces you to think twice about sexual politics. “Our Lady of Chernobyl” is a futuristic Private Eye mystery that’s as enjoyable as anything else written in the sub-genre. “Reasons to be Cheerful” is fascinating in the exploration of a few key assumptions.

    Other stories are less successful. “Silver Fire” ends as it was just beginning to take flight. “Mister Volition” is almost a rambling monologue about some ill-defined point. “The Plank Dive” lays on the science too thick: I love Hard-SF, but this went over the limit. “Transition Dreams” is an interesting horror story à la Dick, but dragged on. “Chaff” is like a lengthy description of an neat idea, with two pages of plot at the end; it took me two readings to grasp the point, and it’s not much of a stunning one.

    Containing only ten stories, Luminous is also a disappointment in its length. Still, it’s an essential part of the Egan bibliography, and a key piece of nineties SF. Wait for the paperback, sure, but don’t miss it then.

    BRIEFLY: My conclusion after reading Egan’s Diaspora: I must stop reading Greg Egan on the bus. If, for some reason, you’re unable to concentrate, you won’t be able to extract all the good stuff from Egan’s concept-heavy writing.

    A huge tale (both in space and time) of humanity’s expansion in the metaverse, Diaspora inverts most of the standard cliches of SF and, even then, presents some inspiring thoughts. If you even felt uncomfortable at the silly STAR TREK-style space exploration paradigms, this is the book for you. It’s not especially readable, or gripping, but it’s almost endlessly surprising. I’ll definitely need to re-read this one again in a few years. But not on the bus.

  • Time Bomb 2000, Edward Yourdon and Jennifer Yourdon

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Prentice Hall Ptr, 1998, 416 pages, C$27.95 tpb, ISBN 0-13-095284-2

    This review will look silly in two years.

    But that’s okay, given that the book I’m reviewing is going to look even sillier in two years.

    Personally, I love the idea of the Y2K bug. It appeals to several archetypes that I find just irresistible: The failure of improperly managed technology; the trans-generational ticking-bomb suspense of it all; the signal that computers really ruled the late twentieth century… Plus, the timing just couldn’t be better. Just as we had half-convinced ourselves that we were rational creatures that didn’t really fear an arbitrary year-symbol increment, here comes this wonderful doomsday problem, sprung up from half-buried secrets and whose consequences could be as terrifying as anything we could imagine…

    If it wasn’t a science-fiction story (and it was, cf: Arthur C. Clarke’s The Ghost of the Grand Banks, 1989 —my first exposure to the Y2K problem), well, gosh-darn it, it should have! It’s just too good for it!

    Of course, the mercantile instinct has awaked in the shadow of this impending catastrophe. Since they’re saying our money might become worthless, some people are quite ready to take it away from us right now!

    How many “miracle solutions” newscasts will we have to endure before the madness ends? Well, Time Bomb 2000 will at least tell you what’s in store, given that there’s no such thing as a magical Y2K silver bullet.

    Time Bomb 2000 looks at the Y2K problem on twelve sectors from three perspective. For Jobs, Utilities, Transportation, Banking/Finance, Food, PCs, Information, Health/Medicine, Government, Embedded Systems, Education and Telephone/Mail, the Yourdons (father/daughter) estimate the chances of day-long, month-long and year-long disruptions. Their conclusions, as might be expected, aren’t very optimistic.

    Their conclusion is both rational and chilling: Nobody knows what’s going to happen. Given this premise, the Yourdons gently suggest that it might be better to be over-prepared than caught without necessities. The authors remain quite confident despite everything. They don’t predict the fall of civilization as we know it, but they’re not ready to call it a non-event at this point. Seems reasonable to me. If anything, being over-prepared for the Y2K might be a good idea in case of extraordinary snowstorms, etc…

    (Readers who think that I’m being too gullible on the subject of disaster preparation should know that during January 1998, the whole Eastern Ontario/Central Quebec area was paralysed by an ice storm of extraordinary proportions. Though my hometown was spared from any ill effects beyond a twenty-four blackout, it did hammer home the usefulness of a wood stove, a good set of preparation, candles and a positive attitude in the face of these event. Other areas went without electricity for almost three weeks. When people ask me about Y2K, I usually answer by telling them to prepare for another ice storm.)

    Consider Time Bomb 2000 mental insurance; even though you might not follow each suggestion or take each threat seriously, at least you will have the choice to make up your mind. As for me, I must say that the book forced me to take in consideration a few factors. Given that I’m planning a major lifestyle change (buying a house is a major lifestyle change) the potential Y2K systemic failures described in Time Bomb 2000 led to establish a timeline that takes in consideration at least the possibility of Bad Stuff happening… just in case.

  • The Golden Globe, John Varley

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace/Putnam, 1998, 425 pages, C$32.99 hc, ISBN 0-441-00558-6

    Thirty-three bucks for a tour of the solar system. How does that sound to you? Even better: Wait a year and get it for ten bucks. Or rush to your library and get it for free! But given that it’s a new John Varley novel, why wait?

    My first exposure to Varley was tardy, but significant: An impulse purchase of a (discount) hardcover edition of Steel Beach. I loved that book. Varley’s style -a chatty, lively first-person narrative loaded with fascinating asides about an original future- make than made up for a weak narrative structure and deliberately shocking details.

    It was only later than I discovered Varley’s most successful works: The short stories assembled in The Persistence of Vision and The Barbie Murders. I wasn’t really ecstatic over the “Titan-Wizard-Demon” trilogy, but liked Millennium and loved The Ophiuchi Hotline. So, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I was waiting for the arrival of Varley’s first novel since 1992’s Steel Beach: The Golden Globe.

    Even casual students of the Elizabethan era will infer that this novel has some relation with Shakespeare and/or the famous theatre in which many of his plays were first performed. But Varley gives another meaning to the title by referring to the cornerstone of his imaginary “Nine World” sequence: Luna.

    Taking place a few years after Steel Beach‘s “Big Glitch”, The Golden Globe is a gigantic travelogue through Varley’s most celebrated future history. Kenneth “Sparky” Valentine is a once-famous actor, now running from the law after a few rather illegal acts on Pluto. He’s a spectacular thespian, a student of Shakespeare, a con artist and a terrific narrator. As with Steel Beach, Varley opens with a shock sequence as Sparky plays both Mercutio and Juliet in a rowdy representation of the Bard’s classic—including the sex scenes.

    Before long, however, we’re on the run with Sparky as an unkillable Charonese (think “Silician”) mafia assassin is aiming for him. A few flashbacks, a few exotic locations, a few action scenes, a sudden new plot, a sudden conclusion and you close the cover on one of the best SF books of 1998.

    There’s no denying that The Golden Globe is a shaggy-dog story. Fans of complex plotting won’t really find what they want here. Varley’s talent is in writing short stories, and he does the next best thing here by offering a string of vignettes, mini-adventures, tourist visits and linked flashbacks. Some will find it tedious; others will read it with glee.

    In this regard, it’s very similar to Steel Beach, which also spent a lot of time describing future life on Luna, and included unrelated vignettes here and there to either sustain our interest or divert us from the main action. I may prefer the earlier novel by a nose (I’m more partial to a journalist protagonist than an actor) but the bottom line is that readers who loved Varley’s previous novel will also like this one.

    Reader references run deeper, as it’s difficult to talk of this novel without mentioning Heinlein at least once, and Double Star at least twice. Much like Heinlein’s Lorenzo Smythe, Valentine’s narration is a compulsively readable mix of classical theatre and street smarts.

    Indeed, it’s difficult not to like Varley’s protagonist, and in the end, that’s what carries the novel through. Even the travelogue aspect of The Golden Globe should not be a disadvantage given that SF has a long and illustrious history of such novels (Clarke’s 3001, Niven’s Ringworld, large segments of Robinson’ Mars trilogy, etc…)

    So get the book, sit back and enjoy.

    The show is just waiting to begin.

  • Twistor, John Cramer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon, 1989 (1998 reprint), 338 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-71027-7

    Even though I usually borrow the books I review from the library, or otherwise acquire them at used bookstores, I’m still a firm believer in the voting power of a dollar. You might see me reading a Harlequin romance, but you’ll never catch me buying such a book. Looking back at the past six months, the list of authors I’ve bought in new bookstores (excluding French-language books) goes like this: Greg Egan (x3), John Cramer (x2), Robert J. Sawyer (x2), Charles Pellegrino, Bruce Sterling, John Varley, Thomas M. Disch, Peter David, Joe Haldeman, Stephen Bury, Paul di Filippo… It’s no coincidence if most of those authors best represent my idea of SF.

    The relationship has two components, of course: I’m buying a book from a good author to support him, because s/he usually writes a book good enough to make me feel my money was well-spent. Charles Pellegrino’s Dust, for instance, contains so much stuff that it’s almost a bargain to buy the hardcover at full price.

    It’s a bit of an overkill to speak of an author as “reliable” after only two books, but John Cramer is exactly the kind of author that I want to support with my hard-earned dollars. A working physicist by day, Cramer dons his secret identity by night and writes ultra-hard science-fiction for the enjoyment of (mostly) everyone.

    In a field too often dominated by hand-waving technobabble at even the most basic level (think “Star Trek”, for instance), it’s refreshing to see some true SF where the magic is carefully confined to a far-away place. The technobabble isn’t gone, but it sure sounds better.

    In Twistor, we get a story that has been done a few times already: A scientist discovers a way to switch a volume of space between various alternate universes. While he works on this revolutionary discovery, a greedy businessman and a non-less greedy supervisor try to wrestle the discovery away from him…

    Familiar territory, but it’s all in the execution. The first virtue of Twistor is to establish its credibility with a careful assortment of details and of real-life procedures. Even though we’re still dealing with a scientist-and-his-female-assistant, the verisimilitude of this cliché isn’t as grating as could have been, given that the female assistant is a very strong character, and the relationship is initially explained as a teacher/graduate student situation.

    What may be the biggest difference between Twistor and inferior SF is that the author is willing to play the game of “Yeah, but…” with the reader. It’s a blast to think of objections to the plotting… and then to see them answered two of three pages later. (eg; the section taken out of the tree affecting its stability) Less rigorous writers usually ignore these objection; Cramer confronts them head-on and the novel feels even more real because of that. He’s also willing to explore all the possibilities of his initial premise.

    Like most hard-SF, Twistor has the usual flaws in writing and dialogue. It should be worth noting that even if Cramer isn’t a stylist on the order of, say, Kim Stanley Robinson, he does have a stronger grasp of plotting and characterisation than his hard-SF colleagues.

    It should be obvious by now that I’m encouraging you to vote with your dollars, so rush out and buy Twistor if you feel that hard-SF is your cup of tea. While you’re at the bookstore, pick up a copy of Cramer’s second novel, Einstein’s Bridge for a pair of books that will not only give you faith in contemporary SF, but provide you with a few hours of very enjoyable entertainment.

  • Distraction, Bruce Sterling

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1998, 439 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-10484-5

    Power can take many forms. Most of us either think of power as being incarnated by electricity, violence or (inevitably) politicians. But even for politicians, elected officials often don’t wield as much power as we’d believe. Considerable influence can be attributed to non-elected personnel in the politician’s staff, who can analyze situations and recommend favourable alternatives. Bruce Sterling’s last novel is a true political science-fiction novel, exploring the sources and consequences of power in a future America that’s far stranger than anyone but Sterling could imagine.

    Distraction features protagonist Oscar Valparaiso, a political operator with “personal background issues.” As the novel begins, he’s happy but exhausted: He just managed to elect his candidate, an architect with senatorial ambitions. He soon has to face his biggest challenge, however, in trying to rationalize the operations of a federal research institute. His effort will have greater repercussions than he ever hoped for.

    But as with most Bruce Sterling novels, mere plot descriptions do little justice to the actual book: It’s the constant accumulation of details that makes the novel so enjoyable. The United States of 2044 aren’t quite as impressive as today. Military bases get operating funds by establishing roadblocks. Vast bands of high-tech nomads roam the countryside. Louisiana, led by a charismatic leader, is on the verge of secession. A new Cold War is taking place between The United States… and the Netherlands.

    It’s a measure, either of America’s current insanity or Sterling’s talent that despite the rather high comical/ironic content of Distraction, the novel remains believable. Part of this impression should be attributed to the author’s refusal to play around with a single-tone future like so many inferior SF writers. Distraction‘s future feels real because it’s composed of widely disparate elements without necessary relevance to the plot. It is textured.

    At some point, someone is going to have to write a thesis on how Bruce Sterling’s non-fiction writing has enhanced his novels. He’s a regular contributor to Wired magazine, and it shows: Distraction even provides comfort who everyone who ever thought that SF is destined to be “mainstreamed” in a society constantly closer to Science-Fiction. (ask Thomas M. Disch) Distraction is pure, fresh, cutting-edge SF.

    It’s worth noting that despite a few exceptions, Sterling develops his characters quite well. Only the lack of development of Oscar’s crew (or rather—“krewe”) disappoints.

    (Tangentially, it’s interesting to note that two of the most politically complex SF novels of 1998, Distraction and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica, feature senator aides protagonists.)

    Readers disappointed with the aimlessness of Sterling’s previous novel Holy Fire will be pleased to learn that Distraction has a much stronger plot. Even though the wealth of details makes for a leisurely-paced story, the impression is a least that the narrative is going somewhere. Indeed, it’s a rather satisfying story that Sterling wraps up… an uncommon impression in the field of political thrillers where dead protagonists turn up as often as back-room deals.

    It’s almost a given that Distraction will find itself listed on almost every major SF award nominee list. Sterling’s already considerable reputation and Distraction‘s reader-friendliness also almost ensures that it’s going to be a strong contender for the Hugo and/or Nebula. Enjoy.

  • The Cobra Event, Richard Preston

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ballantine, 1997, 432 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-40997-3

    Most accounts of Richard Preston’s previous non-fiction book, The Hot Zone, commented on its terrifyingly high suspense factor. This reviewer wasn’t an exception, going as far as to question the appropriateness of horror novels in the face of The Hot Zone‘s realistic subject matter of viral plagues.

    Well, Preston seemingly listened to the reviewers and wrote The Cobra Event, a gripping novel of -what else?- biological terrorism in the continental United States.

    It begins as a teenager dies gruesomely in a high school art class. Soon, a CDC medical pathologist is on her way to New York to see what caused the death. She discovers that the teenager isn’t the only victim… and that the deaths might be part of a biological warfare test run.

    Viral infections are scary enough that there’s really no need to imagine cold-blooded terrorists hatching a global depopulation plan. But that’s where The Cobra Event chooses to go, and the result is gripping.

    This novel’s greatest strength -credibility- is almost a given from the author of three non-fiction books. Even though there’s no stopping an author from inventing spurious facts, false references and imaginary events (it’s fiction, after all), this reviewer is firmly convinced that careful homework shows. It informs the narrative and gives it an extra layer of credibility that is essential.

    The Cobra Event is, right down to its very narrative, loaded and enhanced with facts, descriptions, actions and plotting that have to be modeled on real-life. The most immediate effect is to assign an unusually high plausibility to a basic idea (terrorists do bad things) that had been done time and time again elsewhere. A less-obvious effect is to engender a delightful feeling of dread. This is not a novel for the squeamish: many deaths are very violent and clinically described. The book contains two full-fledged autopsy scenes that will make even the most hardened reader squirm in their seats.

    But, as many inept techno-thriller writers have demonstrated inadvertently, credibility isn’t enough for a successful book. You have to make it serve the story and to deliver a novel that’s compelling in its own right. Above all, it must be presented in a way that will be accessible to thousands of airplanes passengers all over the world.

    Here too, Richard Preston excels. As readable as The Hot Zone was, The Cobra Event is even better. Good sympathetic characters, fast pacing, hypnotically readable prose all merge and make up a superior thriller. Down to the conclusion, which isn’t as tidy and wrapped-up as we would have liked to believe… just like a real-life bio-warfare event would presumably be.

    Memorable, entertaining and credible, The Cobra Event is pretty good effort for a first novel, letting us speculate on a long and successful dual career for Preston, alternating non-fiction books with novels.

    BRIEFLY: In comparison, Pierre Ouellette’s The Third Pandemic is, if you’ll pardon the pun, anaemic. Though it deals knowledgeably with a plague caused by bacteria and doesn’t stop right before the abyss, The Third Pandemic isn’t exactly enjoyable. Good set-pieces can’t erase the bad taste left by an annoying pessimism about human nature, very suspicious plotting, anti-technological bias (the second-to-last paragraph of the book is almost offensive) and lack of large-scale vision when dealing with a global disaster. The writing is also unnervingly ineffective, transforming exciting scenes in hum-drum descriptions. Read Richard Preston’s The Cobra Event instead.

  • Neanderthal, John Darnton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 1996, 395 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-312-96300-9

    Once upon a time, in a land much like our own…

    …there was a sub-genre of novels called “Lost Worlds”. Written around the turn of this century, these novels usually starred valiant explorers, battling exotic creatures to discover stunning secrets: A mini-ecological environment complete with dinosaurs! A Mysterious Island! A fortress guarded by the last Greek warriors! The Tenth lost tribe of Israel! A wonderful treasure!

    Needless to say, as Earth was progressively settled and explained, lost worlds began to disappear. Who can believe, now, an amazonian plateau populated with prehistoric animals?

    And yet, these novels keep their charms. Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island is still one of my favourite books, as is Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. There is a quaint yet hardy spirit of adventure and exploration in these stories that is terrific for younger readers and loads of fun -in small dosage- for adults.

    Neanderthal is a pure Lost World novel. As the story begins, two scientists are contacted with news of an important discovery. Their mentor is calling them back, deep in Asia. There, they find a lost race of Neanderthals. Will they be able to escape?

    Now, given that Lost World novels are fun and that Neanderthal is a Lost World novel, we might logically expect Neanderthal to be a fun book.

    If only things were that simple…

    Neanderthal falters on several fronts, perhaps the most egregious being a completely humourless approach to the material. Lost Worlds novel should be awe-inspiring and thrilling, while remaining faintly silly. Here, Pulitzer-winning New York Times correspondent Darnton plays it with a tedious seriousness, even as he brings up such whoppers as a limited form of telepathy. (For various reasons, we eventually suspect that Darnton doesn’t only play around with the concepts of lost races, telepathy and ESP, but actually believes in them, which raises a whole new lot of problems.)

    To this, we can add the usually suspects devices of the noble savages and the bloodthirsty barbarians. But whereas Doyle and Burroughs handled those with a kind of charming earnestness, Darnton’s Lost Races are more cyphers than objects of fascination.

    But all of this would have been irrelevant if Darnton had delivered a thrilling novel. And he does not. Neanderthal is a stuffy bore of a “thriller”. No suspense. Very few set-pieces. Minimal implications for worldwide peace. Lesser novels would have brought back an evil Neanderthal in civilized land where it would have gone in a murderous rampage. Well, that’s what missing from this novel; a sense of fun and of pulpish excitement. Instead, we get a three-act play with three humans and a bunch of guys in monkey suits.

    Which is rather sad, since Darnton has obviously put a lot of time in doing his research for Neanderthal. Well-integrated (and some no-so-well-integrated) expository passages at least give the impression of taking away something worthwhile from the novel (though with Darnton’s tendency to throw around “remote viewing”, we can legitimately doubt his credibility.)

    THE EXPEDITION OF THE CENTURY UNCOVERS THE FIND OF THE MILLENNIUM! promises the back-cover blurb. CREATURES THAT POSSESS POWERS MAN CAN ONLY IMAGINE, AND THAT ARE ABOUT TO CHANGE THE FACE OF CIVILISATION FOREVER! it adds. THE MUST-READ THRILLER OF THE YEAR! is exhorts. With this kind of publicity, we’d be justified in expecting a rather more exciting thriller.

    What we have, instead, is a Neanderthal that should remain extinct.

  • Horizontal Hold: The Making and Breaking of a Network Television Pilot, Daniel Paisner

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Birch Lane Press, 1992, 206 pages, C$23.95 hc, ISBN 1-55972-148-0

    Something quite sad and remarkable happened in November 1998.

    The television series “Babylon 5” ended, after a five-year run.

    For those of you who have thus far managed to get away with a complete ignorance of “Babylon 5”, know these facts: Conceived in 1987-1988 by J. Michael Straczynski as a five-year “Science-Fiction Novel for Television” and shopped around multiple studios -who all balked at this grandiose premise-, “Babylon-5” made it on the air in 1993 (Pilot) and 1994 (series). Despite constant rumours of impending cancellation and some rather heavy sniping from the concurrent Star Trek fans and producers, “Babylon-5” finally managed to end after its planned run, producing something unique: a truly original multi-layered five-year story on television.

    But the 1993-1998 era is also littered with one-year series, half-season wonders and six-episode failures. For each “Babylon-5”, how many “The Visitor”? And for each show yanked after six episodes, how many pilots?

    Horizontal Hold tries to answer this question by showing the making of a (failed) television pilot, with all the high and low points of the process. Meanwhile, we learn how vile an institution is TV broadcasting. The story begins in 1989, when a writer at an independent production company gets the idea for a new sitcom: Why not follow, week after week, the misadventures in the life of presidential scriptwriters?

    The concept is promising and the book shows how we go from idea to pilot. It’s not a pretty process, especially seen from a writer’s point of view. Characters are modified, tailored, changed, dumbed-down… and that’s when they’re not simply eliminated from the script, which gets re-written daily. Production factors often modify the story.

    Obviously, good writing isn’t the main concern of television.

    Horizontal Hold shows exceptionally well the committee-driven nature of TV, with its endless compromises and its dependence on stupid dumb luck. Unpredictable events prove to be the ultimate demise of the pilot described in Horizontal Hold: A surprise strike undoes a first try, and the changing whims of a TV executive nail down the second attempt.

    But throughout all of this, a potentially depressing story remains quite lively, all thanks to Paisner’s writing skills. He brings a witty style that’s not only humorous in its own way (Discussing a character’s elimination right after an actor’s narrow brush with dismissal: “Bonnie Doone isn’t so lucky. Of course, she’s just a character and therefore unable to manage much of anything on her own behalf.” [P.78]) but also includes many delicious behind-the-scene anecdotes.

    Paisner rarely preaches directly about the nature of television, letting the story speaks for itself. It’s an eloquent message. Certainly, I would have been intrigued by the presidential-screenwriter concept: that it wasn’t given a fair chance is as disheartening as it is frustrating. Given the process described in Horizontal Hold, it’s a minor miracle that anything of value ever appears on our television screens.

    Horizontal Hold is a very worthwhile non-fiction account of the reality behind the cathode tube. It’s reasonably impartial, lucidly examining the possibility (among others) that the product just wasn’t good enough to make it to the small screen. But most of all, it’s a compulsively readable account of a fascinating event. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself shutting off the television to finish the book.

    But really; now that “Babylon-5” is off the air, what else are you going to watch?

  • Final Impact, Yvonne Navarro

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1997, 469 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-56360-2

    In fiction, there are several ways to end the world, and several things to do once you’ve done it. Perhaps the most famous apocalyptic book of all is Stephen King’s exceptional The Stand, which combined gritty realism with supernatural elements to produce a book strong enough to forgive its rather significant shortcomings. With Final Impact, Yvonne Navarro sets herself up to be compared to King, and the results are almost as disastrous as the catastrophe itself.

    1999. Inspired by the Shumacher-Levy comet, another celestial object finds itself hurtling at Jupiter. Problem is; it misses, fragments in a myriad of smaller rocks and heads straight for Earth. Meanwhile, efforts to destroy some of the fragments are sabotaged, and the rocks hit.

    But that’s not the real story.

    From the above, we might infer a relatively competent novel firmly grounded in hard sciences and rigorously extrapolating the effects of a massive asteroid strike on Earth.

    Not so.

    You see, even during the prologue, we’re introduced to (more than) four people possessing extra-sensorial powers. (I will avoid talking about the inconsistent nature of the superpowers, as it seems to be the norm with such pseudo-SF.) Since Navarro describes herself as “a dark fantasy writer”, you can bet your fallout shelter that life isn’t an easy road for them. Indeed, in the first ten pages, a girl is abandoned by her parents and a boy looks on as his father kills his mother. And that’s only the first two protagonists.

    Scientific plausibility goes downhill as soon as the rocks hit, since the Earth stop rotating (all together now; riiiight) and some humans transform themselves in the usual gallery of fantastic creatures: vampires, werewolves, etc… This isn’t gratuitous, of course, given that Earth now has a “light side” and a “dark side”. Ooooh, deeeeep, maaaan.

    And then the novel ends.

    That’s right. Final Impact is the first volume of an unknown series of books. Nowhere is it mentioned. Some threads are still up in the air, nothing interesting has been done with the setup, character dynamics are still unresolved… and you have the gall to ask why I disliked the book?

    Even then, though, it must be said that Final Impact isn’t totally worthless. For all her dubious plotting, incompetent scientific sense and lack of marketing acumen, Yvonne Navarro has created some vivid characters in Final Impact. While they’re either too good or too evil to be classified as realistic (not to mention these pesky ESP powers), they’re well-defined. The most interesting character, Lily, is a welcome exception given that she’s morally ambiguous and as “normal” (few superpowers) as Navarro’s characters come.

    Final Impact is also surprisingly readable—warts and all. Navarro keeps the flourishes down to a minimum, and prefers to follow her characters as closely as possible. The execution mitigates the weak story.

    There’s a certain audience, I suppose, for the tired clichés sprouted off by Final Impact (Yet Another Rock-Smashing Earth, Yet Another Group of Superpowered Mutants, Yet Another Good-Versus-Evil setup, Yet Another Fantasy series…) but serious -read “jaded”- readers will want to read fresher material. Because at the end, what Final Impact offers is only a good setup for a Role-Playing Game scenario.

  • Déjà Dead, Kathy Reichs

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1998, 532 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-01136-7

    Despite all the good qualities a novel can possess, they’re for nothing unless someone actually picks up the book and starts reading it. Given that automated mini-harpoons are outlawed, books have to find better ways to hook you so you actually consider reading the story.

    There are, needless to say, many ways of doing so. Some are completely divorced from the content of the book (like the book design, quality of production, lettering… even cover illustration in some case…) while other directly come from the book’s content.

    Déjà Dead has an undeniable hook for most French-Canadian readers of crime fiction. It’s a major novel from a renowned American publisher (Scribner/Pocket), by an American author, that takes place… in Montréal.

    The differences between Kathy Reichs (author) and Temperance Brennan (protagonist) are slight from a professional point of view. Both work as forensic anthropologists for “the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Québec.” Write what you know, say most writing books.

    And Reich obviously knows her stuff. Déjà Dead has, as an additional hook, the merits of allowing the reader to peer over the shoulder of a forensic anthropologist at work. Some of the digressions, like the discussion of dismemberment methods, are oddly fascinating.

    The setup is average as far as crime novel go: Bodies are discovered, brought to the attention of the protagonist, who then eventually deduce that they’ve got a serial killer in action. What follows is, obviously, the efforts of the protagonist to catch the villain, even though the protagonist in this case might have zero business trying to catch the bad guy.

    Déjà Dead plays the rules of the genre with a qualified awareness of them, suggesting an author who’s spent a lot of time reading what’s available out there. It doesn’t prevent the usage of traditional dramatic devices like the Missing Friend (who, we all know, is going to be involved in the sordid murder business.) As for the pet… well…

    The novel is also a bit overwritten, combining the slight impression that we know where it’s going with the feeling that we’re going there slowly. While Reichs creates an interesting atmosphere, Déjà Dead still could have profited from a thorough editing.

    French-Canadian readers, of course, will appreciate the setting. It’s worth noting that Reichs doesn’t make too many mistakes, which is a welcome improvement over many of the other US writers who have attempted a Québec novel (see, for one regrettable example, Clive Cussler’s Vixen 03).

    The female narrator-protagonist is also a change of pace from the hard-boiled narrator or third-person point-of-view that we see so often in this genre. Given that numerous references are made to Patricia Cornwell in the opening blurbs, chances are that this is intentional.

    Still, for a first novel, Déjà Dead possesses the remarkable qualities of readability, painless exposition, good characterization and good writing. I’d be picky to ask for more. I’m already hooked enough as it is.

  • Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 1998, 740 pages, C$38.99 hc, ISBN 0-399-14390-4

    Tom Clancy has long been one of my first favourite authors, as far back as I can remember being able to form the concept of “a favourite author”. I recall plunking down a fair amount of change for a (then) complete paperback collection of his novels. (Since then, of course, I’ve discovered other authors even “better” than Clancy, but that’s neither here or now.)

    As might be expected, however, It always seems like the best books are from before you discover the author. Having read Clancy’s first five books in rapid succession, they still form kind of a superior unified work in my mind. As such, each new Clancy book is an anxiously anticipated half-disappointment compared to the classics.

    To that problem, we can add the very worrying trend of seeing the “Tom Clancy” trademark on a variety of inferior products. Since early 1996, Clancy’s name has been associated with inferior ghostwritten adventure novels, a very bad submarine game “novelisation”, many worthy nonfiction books and an array of computer games. We might ask; where are the novels?

    Clancy’s latest “true” book, Rainbow Six, almost straddles the line between novel and marketing product. It certainly didn’t sound good when I heard that a computer game called Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six was being coded at the same time by Clancy’s gaming company, aimed for simultaneous release.

    But Clancy fans can now buy in peace: Rainbow Six is Clancy’s first “real” novel since 1996. The difference is apparent: It’s a fat hardcover book, with the wealth of details, action and overwritten subplots that we’ve come to expect from the techno-thriller master.

    It’s almost a shame that Rainbow Six‘s biggest weakness is its premise: An international team of highly trained covert operatives is formed to battle terrorists. (Sounds like a G.I.Joe cartoon, yet?) At the same time, a band of fanatic environmentalist scientists is developing a virus designed to kill off the entire human race! Egawd! Will the Rainbow team defuse the threat? Duuuuh!

    Well, the good news are that once you’re in the novel, it doesn’t really matter any more. We’re back in the world-famous Clancy prose, which is part clunky, part limpid. As ever, the lack of stylistic touches possesses an undeniable rough elegance. Rainbow Six is also a return to Clancy’s earlier novels in that there are several well-executed action scenes throughout the novel, in opposition to several other recent works (The Sum of All Fears, Executive Orders) where most of the bang was held back until the end. Indeed, Rainbow Six does have something like an anticlimax, or at least a lacklustre finale.

    Be warned, however, that since readers demand big fat Clancy novels, Clancy has obliged and the result, as usual, could have been edited down by as much as twenty-five percent.

    This is not, by the way, a good novel to enter the Clancyverse. Numerous explicit references are made to the events of earlier novels, and newer readers will be frustrated. It can still be read by itself, but shouldn’t. (Clancy’s flagship character, Jack Ryan, is present, but in the background and then only referenced by title rather than name.)

    Rainbow Six does for Special-Forces teams (SWAT, SAS, Delta, SEAL, etc…) what The Hunt for Red October did for submarine crew: It offers a privileged (and, we presume, reasonably exact) glimpse in the lives of some very very special soldiers. After reading Rainbow Six, it’s hard not to trust their real-world expertise at intervening in tense situations.

    Given this, it’s a bit of a shame that Clancy had to resort to such dubious video-game premise to fuel his novel. (Not to mention that the virus thing has been done before… in Clancy’s previous novel!) It seems to me like smaller stakes (like the good action set-pieces in the first half of the novel) would have been amply sufficient… especially given the rather disappointing way the whole plot is defused.

    Clancy fans will love it. Not many non-fans will be converted. The computer game is said to be adequately good. Clancy delivered the goods: Even with every fault it has, Rainbow Six is a good read.

  • The Hot Zone, Richard Preston

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Anchor, 1995, 422 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-385-47956-5

    It’s invisible. Undetectable. Incurable. It can affect over ninety percent of the world’s population. It eats your insides, liquefying your internal organs. In the final stages, you’re essentially a bag of blood held together by flesh. Near the end, it will make you go in convulsions, sending body fluids everywhere. It rides on the blood, ready to prey on other humans.

    It’s Ebola.

    It’s not every day that you can read a book sporting a blurb in which Stephen King says “One of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.”

    After reading The Hot Zone, you might want to question the value of horror novels. Because The Hot Zone is nonfiction. Ebola is real. It kills and cannot be cured. The human race is singularly helpless before this microscopic predator. Far scarier than a couple of bomb-toting terrorists, vampires or doomsday devices.

    Richard Preston wasn’t exactly a novice when he published The Hot Zone (besides being a regular New Yorker contributor, he had published two other scientific / technical non-fiction books) but this is the book that made him famous. A chilling Ebola outbreak happened shortly after the book’s release and for a few weeks, The Hot Zone went up the charts and into public consciousness. At least one heavily derivative movie (OUTBREAK, 1995) was made. The French translation of The Hot Zone is simply called Ebola. My own paperback copy of The Hot Zone is a fourth printing.

    But beyond its great reputation, The Hot Zone is more than a book that happened to be at the good spot at the good time. Richard Preston has fashioned a good, solid, even gripping account of the virus threat.

    The Hot Zone is divided in four parts.

    The first one describes Ebola, and its initial outbreaks in Africa (Zaire, mainly) and Europe. Preston doesn’t miss the chance to describe extensively the effects of the virus and so we get lovely descriptions like:

    When a virus multiplies in a host, it can saturate the body with virus particles, from the brain to the skin. The military experts then say that the virus has undergone “extreme amplification.” During this process, the body is partly transformed into virus particles. In other words, the body is possessed by a life form that is attempting to convert the host into itself. The end result is a great deal of liquefying flesh mixed with virus, a kind of biological accident.

    After that, The Hot Zone moves to Reston, a suburb of Washington where an Ebola outbreak decimates a monkey house. Parts three and four of the book deal with the growing alarm, and decontamination of the Reston site.

    Part four is fairly unique: Preston packs his travel kit and goes to investigate Kitum Cave, the most likely source of the Ebola virus. He obviously survives to tell the tale, but the effect is delightfully unsettling, boosting both the book’s tension and the author’s credibility.

    The Hot Zone is that rarest of scientific books; A true-life thriller, a compulsively readable account and a lucidly described exposition of a complex subject. It does push the Big Buttons a lot, but with adequate reason to do so.

    The Hot Zone is not only a non-fiction account that will teach you things (with it, you might spot mistakes in OUTBREAK), but a largely-read book that reserves its reputation while at the same time making a substantial point: The world is a lot more dangerous that we complacent, civilized, contemporary humans seem to be ready to believe.

  • Permutation City, Greg Egan

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Millennium, 1994 (1998 reprint), 310 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-75281-649-7

    I usually read two books at the same time. One hardcover for reading at home or for where carrying hardcovers around isn’t too much of a problem. At the same time, I usually carry a paperback with me to read on the bus or whenever I find myself with a moment to spare. Given that I’ve been doing this for more that a while (we’re talking half a decade here…), I was convinced that there was scarcely any difference between my perception of a book read on the bus or at home. Looking at the paperback copy of Permutation City on my desk which I’m supposed to review today, I’m not so sure.

    Permutation City is about a lot of things, but it really revolves around the concept that sometime in the future, humans will be able to be “copied” to electronic formats, which then live inside a VR environment somewhere on the Net.

    Bah! Déjà vu! will say some. Already seen. Sawyer did it in the Nebula-Winning The Terminal Experiment.

    Not so fast. Permutation City opens with a copy being activated, realizing that he’s a copy imprisoned in a computer and immediately reaching for the suicide button. Quite a contrast with Sawyer’s “oh yeah, cool!” approach. And, dare I say, somewhat more realistic.

    (Please don’t interpret this as unkind words about The Terminal Experiment which, despite significant flaws, remains of the of best SF books of 1995.)

    As usual, Greg Egan packs idea upon idea and the results is as exhilarating as it’s mind-bending. One can rest assured that every new Egan novel will be cracking with new concepts and nifty setpieces. Like his other novels, it’s a trip, and a heady one. Unfortunately, Permutation CIty suffers from one usual Egan tic, and an unusual one.

    The usual tic is that by the end of the book, all laws are being rewritten, the action is quickly moving on the metaphysical plane and things simply don’t make sense any more. The good news are that Permutation City handles this breakthrough better than either Quarantine or Distress.

    The bad news are that Permutation City seems to suffer from a slower beginning than Egan’s other novels. Despite the gripping opening set-piece described above, the first half of the book settles down in a fairly hum-drum pattern that is either very subtle, or uncharacteristically overwritten. (Or, of a philosophical bent seldom seen around here.) This impression of a novel that should have been tightened remains even after the action starts. (Other nitpick: “baling out”… urgh!)

    Fortunately, the remainder of the novel brings up so many questions that readers are unlikely to feel cheated. Which brings us back to the paperback copy of Permutation City staring at me. I’ll admit that I wasn’t in my usual frame of mind while reading Permutation City (job interviews will do that to you). Who knows whether or not I would have read a hardcover edition with the same attitude? (Philanthropic readers who wish to contribute to this experiment are encouraged to email me…)

    This hardcover/paperback theme turned even stranger if you consider that the hardcover novel I was reading at the time was James L. Halperin’s The First Immortal, a novel about immortality that uses “copies” in what is again a gosh-wow fashion. Egan’s approach, using the usual cautious SF skepticism, does seem considerably more realistic that Halperin’s. It’s probably another element of the considerable different between the two author’s approach: Egan is obviously writing SF shaped by previous SF.

    For whatever reason, then, Permutation City didn’t grip me as strongly as Egan’s other novels. I reserve the privilege to re-read it again in the future and change my mind, while still encouraging everyone to grab whatever Egan they can locate. SF is terribly lucky, as a genre, to be able to claim such an audacious writer in its ranks. Let’s see where Egan goes next.