Book Review

  • Year’s Best SF 3, Ed. David G. Hartwell

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 448 pages, C$8.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-105901-3

    Who do you trust?

    When you get down to it, that’s the only worthwhile question when you buy a “best-of” anthology. Normally, people don’t have the same tastes and chances are that once in a while, a gem to another will be garbage to you. In SF, there are now two annual “best of” anthologies. Gardner Dozois edits one, David Hartwell edits the other.

    I’ll state right up-front that from what I’ve seen, I tend to trust Hartwell rather than Dozois. Not only have I met Hartwell and heard a few suspicious things from Dozois about media SF, but the content of the anthologies themselves are very different.

    One thing that struck me of Dozois’s anthology is how… well… most of the anthology wasn’t true *Science*-Fiction. Fantasy yes, magical realism yes, social-fiction yes, but hard-SF was practically absent. Not so with Hartwell, who selects stories that are mostly, obviously, from the genre of true science-fiction. (Unlike Dozois, Hartwell has proven his knowledge of other fields by editing anthologies of Horror, Fantasy, etc… Maybe that’s why he doesn’t feel the need to put everything he likes in one big “SF” anthology.)

    Year’s Best SF 3 contains more than twenty stories in almost 450 pages. Fortunately, most of them are short and Hartwell avoids selecting interminable novellas (another pet peeve of mine; never mind). Most of them are readable, most of them are firmly based upon new ideas and most of them are enjoyable.

    Among those:

    • In “The Nostalginauts”, S.N.Dyer shows us a future high-school graduation where almost everyone there is present twice, at twenty-five years intervals. This is my favourite story of the volume: Densely written, credibly extrapolated, with a fun punch at the end. I look forward to see more of Dyer’s stuff.
    • Tom Cool continues to produce entertaining material (after his excellent debut novel Infectress) with the paranoid “Universal Emulators”, where matters of identities and counter-identities are much more complex -or simple- than we might think.
    • If Tom Cool takes on identities, Nancy Kress does new stuff with moods in “Faithful to Thee, in my Fashion”. Would you believe future seasonal mood fashions? Good sociological extrapolations, fascinating premise and Kress makes it work. Nicely subtle “unhappy” ending too.
    • Geoffrey Landis’s “Turnover” seems to me to exemplify the capacity of SF to provide creative freedom to unorthodox science. Best of all, Landis uses a silly tone to postulate silly theories. The result is a lot of fun.
    • Gregory Benford morphs himself briefly in Ray Bradbury to write “The Voice”, an updated version of Fahrenheit 451‘s basic premise. Meanwhile, Bradbury is in the anthology too, with a decidedly un-hard-SF tale named “Mr. Pale”. Complete fantasy, but enjoyable.
    • Greg Egan is up to his usually provocative self with “Yeyuka”, a tale of bio-technology and technological imperialism.

    On the other hand, I wasn’t able to finish the stories of William Gibson, Kim Newman and R. Garcia y Robertson.

    Still, given that the remainders of the stories are pretty impressive, Year’s Best SF 3 gets my recommendation for anyone wishing to get an idea of where the genre is going at the moment. Good for neophytes, good for jaded fans, good for everyone, Year’s Best SF 3 is a solid choice. Best of all, it’s even a bit cheaper than the usual paperback!

  • The Book of Knights, Yves Meynard

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 222 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86482-6

    I will freely confess that I do not read much fantasy at the moment. I used to be a fan a few years ago, but dropped out sometime since then.

    I’m not sure of my reasons. Maybe it’s the implicit rejection of technology and the unrealistic glorification of the European medieval era. Maybe it’s the casual acceptance of destiny as a way of life and the triviality of merit, or free-will. Maybe it’s the constant use of the monarchic system, with its rigid classes of royalty and commoners. Maybe it’s that my cartesian mind can’t deal with different causalities.

    Whatever the reason(s), I now usually end up bored stiff by fantasy. Even given that I’m a fairly fast reader, I won’t touch fantasy novels and much less fat fantasy trilogies.

    But (conflict-of-interest disclosure time) since I’ve met Yves Meynard a few times and since I like to do my part for Canadian SF&F&H, I decided to try The Book of Knights. Given its relatively thin 222 pages, at least I was assured of a fairly quick read.

    The novel begins as a young boy named Adelrune discovers a tattered volume in his parent’s attic. This volume is, of course, The Book of Knights. In a small town where official doctrine is rigidly followed, the book represents evasion for Adelrune and soon, he’s running away to become a knight.

    He eventually enters the service of a mage that will teach him, barring a hefty price. Then it’s off in the vast land, for Adelrune must prove his worth. Adventures ensue.

    From the plot synopsis, it might appear as if Meynard didn’t take any chances, combining a familiar premise with a surefire way to maintain interest. I found myself constantly reaching for my copy of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

    But it must be said that however classical The Book of Knights‘s premise is, Meynard does a pretty good job with it. Furthermore, the details themselves are original: We seldom feel as if we’re reading recycled Tolkien outtakes. Sagacious readers will experience a delicious thrill from time to time, as things suddenly go quite unlike how they could be expected to go.

    Better yet, The Book of Knights manages to be satisfying and morally ambiguous in a genre where whiter-than-white victories are usually the norm. Adelrune’s quest might tangentially resemble other quests, but the resolution of it is certainly different. The quest itself was probably not the point of the book.

    The Book of Knights is also unusually readable, something that may surprise readers of Meynard’s other stories. Despite a few longish passages (after the Inn passage, after the Ship passage), this novel can be read in almost a single sitting. Dialogues are written in a literate pseudo-medieval way (“I am very much older than I appear. All those whom I grew up with are dead; the country I dwelled in has been parcelled out into five duchies and patched back up several times.”) that somehow seems neither ridiculous, over-polished or intrusive.

    While my basic opinion of fantasy remains unchanged, even I have to admit that The Book of Knights is a pretty good book. Although the hardcover might still be a bit overpriced at this moment (borrow it at the library), the paperback should be a worthwhile investment for a large segment of the SF&F readership. A strong contender for next year’s Aurora awards, The Book of Knights also heralds the arrival of a major new talent on the Fantasy scene. I can’t wait to see what Meynard writes next.

  • The Intruders, Stephen Coonts

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1994, 375 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-87061-0

    Readers already familiar with military fiction already know that most of it takes place during wars. Whether historical or imagined, war seems a natural place for highlighting the efforts, sacrifices and emotions of average (?) military characters.

    Stephen Coonts’s first novel was Flight of the Intruder, a Vietnam-era story of naval aviators trying to do their job as well as they could under the hesitant American political system. It was turned into a movie, albeit not a very successful one.

    Afterward, Coonts branched out in fiction that was closer to thriller territory than military action… Terrorists taking over an aircraft carrier (Final Flight), a witch-hunt for soviet spies in a top-secret aircraft project (The Minotaur), drug dealers taking over Washington (Under Siege, not the Seagal movie) and hijinks in post-USSR Russia. (The Red Horseman)

    All these novels starred Jake Grafton, a professional naval officer. In Flight of the Intruder, he’s a pilot. In Final Flight, he’s an air wing commander. The Intruders fills in some of the gap between the two novels. What’s unusual about it is that it’s straight military fiction without a war.

    It’s 1973. The Vietnam war is over, at least for the Americans. Jake Grafton has narrowly evaded a court martial for his acts at the end of Flight of the Intruder and is now enjoying his leave in the United States. Things don’t go too well: Drinking in a bar after a stormy meeting with the parents of his wife-to-be, he gets mad and defenestrates a guy who’s ragging against the military.

    For his troubles, Jake gets an affectation on an aircraft carrier, teaching carrier aviation to Marines. What follows is almost two hundred pages of miscellaneous anecdotes and a seventy-page adventure tacked at the end.

    This is not meant to be disparaging: The Intruders is quite enjoyable overall, with its detailed description of life aboard an aircraft carrier cruise. Simply put, carrier aviation is not for sissies: There’s probably no more difficult task for a pilot than to land on the ridiculously short deck of a carrier, at night, during rotten weather where the landing deck can suddenly jump up and down by several feet. Even departing from a carrier, as Coonts shows us, can be hair-raising.

    Much like the movie MEMPHIS BELLE, Coonts compresses dozens of exciting incidents, big and small, in one trip. Most of them happen to protagonist Jake Grafton, (Someone is the book says: “Stuff keeps happening to you, man!”) who decides early on that this will be his last cruise. Of course he will stay (see the later novels), but why?

    Coonts’s characters have always been fairly interesting, and he surpasses himself in The Intruders. Not only are Grafton’s friends more polished than ever before, but Grafton himself acquires an extra depth during the novel: his evolution to the mindset of a professional Navy aviator is very credible. Meanwhile, we get an insight in the psychology of naval pilots, probably one of the toughest job on Earth.

    The novel suffers somewhat from the inclusion of a pirate adventure (really!) at the end, another case of “Uh-oh! Got to have a plot!” anxiety.

    Exciting, fascinating, gripping and not without an extra layer of significance, The Intruders manages to overcome the potentially off-putting barrier of “historical non-warfare” military fiction to produce a novel that’s commendable to anyone interested in the genre. You will learn stuff, and you will enjoy it.

  • Death by Deficit, Richard Rohmer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Stoddard, 1995, 234 pages, C$26.95 hc, ISBN 0-7737-2902-X

    It’s been said that Canada is a country shaped by paranoia. Given the antagonistic relation between the two original founding nation (France and England), the frightening bully-like power of its southern neighbour (The United States), the rebellious streak of its French province (Quebec) and the increasingly multicultural nature of its population, (see Toronto) it’s no wonder that the nation is always going from one overblown crisis to another, second-guessing itself and feeling terribly insecure about its future.

    In the process, Canadians have shaped the best country of the world.

    But insecurity sells, and Richard Rohmer has built a career upon this. Author of more than a dozen novels and half-a-dozen nonfiction books, Rohmer has specialized in intricate, high-stakes political/military thrillers featuring Canada as the protagonist. Ill-written and badly constructed, Rohmer’s novels often feel like solutions in search of problems; clever concepts ineptly inserted in rotten novels.

    Nevertheless… it sells. Provided you’ve got some time to lose and borrow the book from the library, Rohmer’s novels might even be not entirely unenjoyable. Death by Deficit goes straight in this category.

    A few years ago, in the middle of the latest recession, the Canadian economic and political scene went berserk on the concept that Canada was irresponsibly running a budget deficit of nearly forty billion dollars a year. After several years of profligate spending by parties in power, an effort was made to reduce the deficit to manageable levels.

    Today, the zero-deficit budget isn’t yet here, but it’s surprisingly close, especially given “common wisdom” of not even ten years ago. Through massive cuts everywhere (and quite a bit of screaming), the Canadian government is finally getting a hold of fiscal maturity. (Alas, the debt will remain for quite some time…)

    In 1994-1995, though, things weren’t so rosy and it seemed possible to imagine a future where Canada would simply go bankrupt. Quite a few people dwelled on the consequences, including Richard Rohmer.

    Death by Deficit is nothing but an intellectual exercise in which the goal is to un-bankrupt Canada. As a fictional work, it is simply laughable: Characters are ill-defined (and all women are beautiful), dialogue is hilarious, narrative flow is broken by the inclusion of a (real-life!) news program transcription, etc…

    But as a thought-exercise, it’s a pretty fascinating read. Rohmer exposes the problems and shakes the sceptre of the consequences, then proceeds to find three different solutions to the problem. Although none of them are terribly convincing, they offer some food for thought.

    The technical details of the inner workings of the government and national fiscal policy are credibly exposed: Chances are that you’ll learn a few things. Given its alarmist nature, Death by Deficit is frightening and memorable; The old scare tactics still work well.

    “Hard economy-fiction” might not be the best-selling category out there, but Death by Deficit shows that fiction, even incompetent fiction, can help a great deal to expose and sensitize readers to issues that might only be of interest to accountants and newspaper columnists. Don’t read Death by Deficit for gripping accounts of super-special economic agents or even decent storytelling, but take a look to appreciate what Canada might have narrowly avoided, and what may still be in store for us if we’re not careful.

  • The Divide, Robert Charles Wilson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1990, 249 pages, C$10.95 tpb, ISBN 0-385-26655-3

    Intelligence -and higher intelligence- has always been of interest to SF writers and readers. Maybe it’s because of the usual belief that persons interested in SF are, on average, more intelligent than the common person. Maybe it’s because highly intelligent protagonists suffer from a sense of alienation akin to what the usual SF fan feels. Or maybe because it’s SF’s job to fulfil fantasies… and being smarter is probably high on everyone’s list of fantasies.

    But high intelligence is often seen as much of a handicap than a blessing. From Stapleton’s Odd John (referenced to in The Divide) onward, high intelligence is a source of pain and misery. The Divide takes the normal/high intelligence difference further by creating a protagonist with multiple personalities: one of average wits, the other… definitely not.

    Robert Charles Wilson has never been a particularly inventive author with his premises. (Although his latest, Darwinia, is an exception) You can almost pick off the major themes he explored book-by-book: Time-travel/cyborgs in A Bridge of Time, alien invasions/metaphysical transcendence in The Harvest, parallel universes/alternate histories in Mysterium…

    But Wilson more than makes up for his pedestrian subjects by treating them with a sensitivity uncommon in SF. The characters in his stories are almost always fully realized, depicted like real humans, and given the chance to exhibits genuine traits. What’s more, Wilson writes with a commendable clarity: His books are difficult to put down because their narrative intensity -even for low-key novels!- is so strong.

    The Divide might not be Wilson’s best work (for reasons soon explained), but it is certainly a pleasant read. For a contemporary novel with a low body-count and a sentimental approach, The Divide grips its reader in the opening pages and doesn’t let go.

    John Shaw is the product of a secret government project (gee!) conducted thirty years ago to enhance human intelligence. When the project was disbanded, John was put in a foster home. Twenty-five years later, the scientist in charge of the project thinks that John is in trouble-and he’s not far from the truth: John Shaw’s mind has created Benjamin, an averagely-smart alter-ego. But now, Benjamin is taking over…

    As the scientist’s assistant tracks down John and Benjamin’s intrusion in John’s life are becoming more and more frequent, stakes are raised with the arrival of the brother of John/Benjamin’s girlfriend-a dangerously unbalanced young man with a troubling history of violence.

    In lesser hands, The Divide might have been an insipid rehash of old plots, stale Freudian (or Jungian) stereotypes and a sappy love story. But Wilson is aware of these pitfalls and the novel weaves well between these pitfalls. The only disappointment comes at the end, where the books ends up more like a trashy Hollywood thriller (fight in an abandonned warehouse, etc, etc…) than what we might have expected from the book so far.

    Nevertheless, this is a pretty solid choice for anyone interested in Canadian science-fiction, Robert Charles Wilson or “quiet” science-fiction in general. The Divide has tremendous potential to reach outside the borders of the genre. Toronto citizens will enjoy the cover illustration, in whose background the CN tower is hit by lightning…

  • The Green Progression, L.E. Modesitt Jr. & Bruce Scott Levinson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1992, 312 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-51641-9

    Are you the kind of person that loves to say exactly the opposite of what everyone else is saying? Would you take on the job of being the devil’s advocate? Do you think that a bit of discussion is better than unthinking unanimous agreement, even if you happen to agree with what’s being discussed?

    If so, you should have a blast reading The Green Progression. Perennial libertarian iconoclast L.E. Modesitt Jr. has teamed up with relative unknown Bruce Scott Levinson to write a reactionary environmental novel.

    Everyone more or less assumes that the environment is something worth protecting. Everyone should cheer when Washington adopts stricter environmental standards, since it means that less pollutants will be released… and if there are less pollutants, it means the environment is better off, right? Anyone who complains must be evil industrialists trying to protect their profits, right?

    Modesitt and Levinson take the position that enough is enough, and that environmental standards in the US are good as they are. But how to spin a novel around this? You wouldn’t think a novel whose protagonists are lawyers, bureaucrats, researchers and politicians could possibly be exciting. And yet, The Green Progression is surprisingly gripping.

    Jack McDarvid is a former pilot, a former CIA operative, a former EPA staffer but a current husband, father and consultant at a law firm that specializes in environmental issues. At the beginning of The Green Progression, his boss is gunned down in a drug hit. Then, his inquiries in his former boss’s last case are proving very sensitive to some important people…

    Modesitt and Levinson happily mix a few other threads in the plot. A Russian operative is shown encouraging tougher environmental standards in the US to drive away the high-tech industries. McDarvid’s associate gets involved with a woman implicated in radical environmental movements. A humble staffer receives a scholarship for her daughter in subtle exchange for… information. CIA, congressmen, French industrialists, radical lefties and other characters all get caught in this political/bureaucratic thriller.

    The Green Progression is not an easy book to read. It uses more -much more- hard-science jargon, assumptions and concepts than most hard-SF novels on the market. (There’s a glossary at the end) The separate threads are difficult to differentiate at the beginning. The plot takes a while to coalesce, leaving the reader confused for the first part of the book.

    But then, the novel somehow pulls itself together and the result is a fairly enjoyable, mostly ingenious novel that doesn’t quite resemble anything else you’re likely to have read so far. There’s a happy ending.

    It’s a fascinating novel not only for its focus, but also for its attitude that takes pleasure is showing the reader how much of what he thinks he knows is wrong. The bureaucratic process involved in making new standards is very well described, with the result that the book expands your knowledge of how government works. (Whether or not you trust the authors is up to your confidence in their research and ability to represent reality!)

    Some readers will enjoy the anti-rabid-environmentalist viewpoint, others will loathe it. That’s normal. The Green Progression will probably find a ready home among hard-SF enthusiasts, most of them already receptive both to the pro-technology agenda and to Modesitt himself, who’s better known as a SF&F writer. Unusual thriller; worth a look.

  • Factoring Humanity, Robert J. Sawyer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1998, 350 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86458-2

    Robert J. Sawyer’s latest novel, Factoring Humanity, is about a estranged couple. Heather Davis is a psychology teacher at the university of Toronto: She had devoted her career to the deciphering of an ongoing alien message. Kyle Davis is a computer scientist: He’s working on artificial intelligence and quantum computing. In the first chapter, the gulf between the separated couple widens as their daughter accuses Kyle of sexual abuse. During this family crisis, the extraterrestrial message stops and strange individuals begin to have more than a passive interest in Kyle’s research…

    Good? Bad? It won’t surprise anyone to learn that Factoring Humanity confirms what most fans already know about Robert J. Sawyer’s fiction.

    One: It’s unusually readable. Sawyer’s journalistic training has taught him to write concisely, which is a change from the over-padded SF&F trilogies that we almost take for granted. The prose style is compulsively readable, a combination of effective writing and intellectual suspense.

    The pattern repeats itself with his latest novel. Don’t bother looking for a bookmark before reading Factoring Humanity: Chances are you won’t put it down before reading the last line. On one hand, it’s a wonderful reading experience to be absorbed so completely in a novel. On another hand, it’s disappointing to finish a pricey hardcover in a single afternoon.

    Two: The Big Ideas are there. After tackling death and the soul (The Terminal Experiment), cosmology and immortality (Starplex), genetic destiny (Frameshift) and the legal ramifications of accusing an alien of murder (Illegal Alien), Sawyer takes on the matter of (collective) consciousness in Factoring Humanity. Add to that the trifles of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and extraterrestrial messages and we get a busy book.

    Almost too busy. Even though the book’s already full of interesting themes, Sawyer still piles up more, with the effect that some of the subplots seem rushed. For instance, much more could have been done with Cheetah, the “Approximate Psychological Experiences” computer simulation which has a small part in Factoring Humanity: it could have been the subject of a story by itself. (Later on near the end, we almost expect Sawyer to link Cheetah’s thread with the “organic consciousness” issue… it doesn’t quite happen. And it’s difficult to be more explicit without spoilers.)

    Three: A more forgiving ability to suspend disbelief is necessary. For all its virtues, Sawyer’s fiction is always somewhat suspicious in plotting. Coincidences, unlikely character relations, half-integrated plot elements are always there to help the plot advance, whether it makes natural sense or not. There always seems to be a few contrived situations here and there. (Witness, per example, the unusually high proportion of exotic genetic problems around the protagonist of Frameshift. Or the earthquake in Far-seer. Or the diary in End of an Era. Or…) Some of the character’s psychology is also slightly suspicious.

    Factoring Humanity repeats this accumulation of unlikeliness by linking the discovery of another extraterrestrial message to Heather Davis’s ex-boyfriend, among other things. The novel also has the added disadvantage (?) of luring the reader with a hard-SF beginning, only to end with a distinctively metaphysical tone.

    Four: Sawyer’s usual themes are there. Religion and matrimonial problems once again find their way here, which isn’t a surprise since most of Sawyer’s novels so far have included something like this. Philip K. Dick once said that the greatest failing of SF was its inability to deal with marriage. It seems that Sawyer is single-handedly proving Dick wrong.

    Five: You will read it. Not only is Factoring Humanity a strong contender for next’s year’s awards, it also shows why Robert J. Sawyer is now the foremost SF writer in Canada today. Hugo, Nebula and Aurora alert!

  • Masque, F. Paul Wilson and Matthew J. Costello

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 1998, 342 pages, C$29.00 hc, ISBN 0-446-51977-4

    It’s funny how books can remind you of food.

    I have absolutely no idea why this is so.

    Maybe it’s a purely personal prejudice: after all, I can’t go a few days without some reading much as I can’t go more than a few hours without food.

    Maybe it’s because you eventually learn that beyond “good” and “bad” books, there are books that are perfectly adequate without being any good and there are great books that somehow fail to satisfy you. Rather like food doesn’t necessarily divide itself between “poisonous” and “healthy”.

    Masque, for instance, is the SF equivalent of a meat and potato meal with a small amount of soya sauce thrown in: completely ordinary, but with a few interesting bits.

    Since van Vogt’s Slan (and probably even before then), science-fiction has always had a soft spot for ostracised minorities with special talents. In Masque, we have Mimes, a group of genetically-tailored humanoids that can change their shape according to specially programmed templates. In this story, all Mimes are owned by warring corporations (yes, it’s a wacky wonderful cyberpunk future all over again!) to be used as spies whose identities can be re-created at each mission.

    (Scientific verisimilitude of humanoids able to change to another form in a matter of minutes is interestingly obscured by convincingly-sounding techno-babble, but the basic premise remains pretty unbelievable.)

    Our hero is Tristan, a mime who is about to accomplish the final mission of his contract. It seems simple: infiltrate an enemy base and steal plans. Of course, obstacles will turn up. Whether it’s inconvenient scruples, mutants, underground sects, fighting pits or constancy duplicity, Tristan will soon discover he’s way over his head in tactical complexity.

    Nobody will be shocked to learn that he meets a girl, kills bad guys and overthrows a regime or two before the end. No surprises here. Scant excitement too. Masque plays it very safe by using Standard Plot #32 and portraying the protagonist as a sweet, almost innocent hero-to-cheer-for. Why? Because he’s sweet, innocent and the protagonist.

    Which is to say that there’s some character development, but not that much of it. No matter: even the freshest characters this side of Shakespeare couldn’t have saved this pretty generic SF thriller from bare adequacy.

    Science-Fiction, like science itself, advances primarily through individual contributions to the whole discipline. Despite having done a competent job at cribbing together elements from umpteenth stories, Wilson and Costello’s advances to the genre are pretty equal to nil.

    Still, Masque has a legitimate place in the SF ecology. By being an adequate thriller, it might be translated to the screen and become an unusually smart SF thriller. It might introduce readers to SF. It might be something to read while waiting for the next good SF novel. It might make money for Warner Aspect. It might entertain a few readers for a few hours.

    Grossly overpriced as a hardcover (this is the prototypic paperback SF novel if I ever saw one!), Masque might still, given these caveats, be a good choice at your local library. But only if there’s nothing better available in the New Arrivals bookshelf.

    Going back to the food analogy, Masque is average fast-food, competently put together by chefs who have the capacity to do much, much better. It will fill you up until the next meal, but will also quickly evaporate from your memory when said next meal will arrive.

  • Evolution’s Shore, Ian McDonald

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1995, 401 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-553-57309-8

    Once upon a time, in a country far away, a few happy people were sitting somewhere. Then, suddenly, a man came to them and said “It’s coming!”. They looked at him. “It’s coming!” he said again. “What is coming?” they asked. “IT’s coming!” the man said. Then he left.

    The people, now less happy, wondered what was coming. So they waited, and they wondered. Then they waited some more and wondered some more.

    And then IT came.

    End of story.

    Quoting from the back cover:

    “It began with strange activities on one of Saturn’s moons. Then came the meteor strike on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, followed by an alien infestation by a strange vegetative life-form. For Gaby McAslan and her SkyNet news team, this is the story of a lifetime. As the Dark Continent becomes a frenzied backdrop of apocalyptic anticipation, Gaby fights to be the first to get to the truth.

    It the alien infestation an invasion or a gift? Does it mean destruction or evolution? Does it spell the final chapter for humanity… or just the beginning?”

    Bad news: You will never get the answers to these questions.

    Good news: Evolution’s Shore is good enough that you might never notice.

    Evolution’s Shore follows the adventures of Gaby McAslan, (a Slan?) a video-journalist covering the ceaseless expansion of an alien life-form in Africa. It’s an enjoyable ride: McDonald writes well, and maintains an effective level of intellectual tension throughout.

    Characterisation is okay, although the members of Gaby’s news teams remain a bit out of focus, which is unfortunate when bad things begin happening to them. As for the protagonist… since this is a “serious” science-fiction novel, Gaby’s psyche is thoroughly examined and explored. Her sexual hang-ups are described in detail and her mental anguish often takes precedence over plot development.

    One shining aspect of the novel is are the vivid images written by McDonald. Evolution’s Shore contains several memorable scenes, which help make the book stick in memory some time after you’ve turned the final page. The author’s imagination shines through.

    However, it is unfortunate that this imagination stops before the ending: Evolution’s Shore teases but does not deliver. The novel breaks off at the moment of ultimate revelation and we are left wondering at the outcome of it all. Maybe McDonald is preparing a sequel, but as such, Evolution’s Shore is a disappointment as a self-contained novel.

    Nevertheless, given the well-written prose, mesmerizing scenes, overall interest and original premise, Evolution’s Shore is well worth a read. Far too few novels deal with Africa, evolution-beyond-humans or original alien concepts… It’s a shame that it brings back memories of Waiting for Godot, but then again, Waiting for Godot wasn’t entirely bad.

  • The Ringworld Throne, Larry Niven

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 1996, 355 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-41296-6

    They say that there’s a difference between saying “it sucks” and “it didn’t work for me.”

    Let’s try it.

    The Ringworld Throne didn’t work for me because first of all, I was bored stiff by it. Somehow, it seems that since… oh… 1980, Larry Niven has forgotten his previous success as a straight storyteller, and has settled in a comfortable position of Science-Fiction Elder. The result is that most of his single novels (he’s still okay in collaborations, with exceptions: See The Gripping Hand) are interminable, peculiar, monotonous and lifeless. The sense of boundless fun to apparent in the early Niven work has virtually disappeared. As a result, we readers have to slog through more that half The Ringworld Throne before something interesting happens. And when something does happens, it’s still unimpressive. Even though we eventually get to something approaching a conflict about the whole Ringworld, the setup is so flat that the whole book itself becomes dull. The focus, most of the time, remains on the small problems of a few humanoids on the Ringworld.

    The Ringworld Throne didn’t work for me because it didn’t grab my interest in the characters. For a third book in a series, you would think that we would spend a lot of time with the characters of the previous novel. Not so. By the time perennial Niven favorite Louis Wu makes a substantial appearance, we’ve had almost two hundred pages of assorted travels with new, underdeveloped characters. We never care for them, Niven never cares for us. There’s a dramatis personae at the end, but it’s irrelevant since all characters seems to condense in a single nameless mass. While Wu is on stage for some time, it doesn’t seem enough. Even Wu’s usual verve seems almost extinguished this time around.

    The Ringworld Throne didn’t work for me because it didn’t use its setting to its full potential. Admittedly, this has always been a problem with the Ringworld series: While the concept of a ring around the sun large enough to accommodate the landmass of a zillion planets seems promising enough, how do you make an interesting story about that? The suspicious plotting in Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers only highlighted this. I’ve never been too fond of the unlikely aspects of the Ringworld series (Teela Brown bred for luck? Please. Rishathra? Puh-lease!) and The Ringworld Throne takes an almost childish delight in bringing these concepts back and harping on them. The final result is the use one of the biggest object ever imagined to tell a over-padded story of warring tribes. Ugh! I’d rather read something about Ian Bank’s Orbitals.

    The Ringworld Throne didn’t work for me because, as if it wasn’t enough yet, it’s almost a fantasy novel that could have taken place anywhere else. I’m not sure we really needed “vampires” and “ghouls” on Ringworld. Perhaps Niven should have taken this little neat idea(s) of his for a third Ringworld novel and stuffed them into a little black box safely hidden away. I won’t shy away from calling this a bunch of words with only scant legitimacy to the Ringworld succession. Bad idea, bad execution, bad, bad novel.

    Oh heck, I’ve given it a shot. Now let’s call it like it is:

    The Ringworld Throne sucks.

  • Relic, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1995, 474 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-54326-2

    Thriller fans, rejoice.

    You want a scary concept? Imagine a creature, snatched deep from the unexplored Amazonian jungles and brought to New York City. A perfect predator, with the intelligence of a human and the robustness and reflexes of a large reptile. It kills. It eat parts of the victim’s brain. It can’t be shot, it can’t be found…

    You want a scary setting? Imagine the New York Museum of Natural History. Halls and rooms and corridors filled with bones and statue and skulls… Abandoned basements left unexplored for decades… Rooms where bugs lovingly eat the flesh of dead animals so their bones can be easily cleaned… An opening exhibition on the subject of Superstition.

    You want characters? Imagine Margo Green, young museum researcher. Imagine Dr. Frock, an old wheelchair-bound iconoclast. Imagine Lt. Pendergast, a police lieutenant with the mind of Sherlock Holmes and the street smarts of the best noir detectives. Imagine Bill Smithback, a young journalist with dreams of glory, but a book project hampered by the Museum’s management. Imagine ambitious researchers, overbearing police officers, a control-freak public relation officer, a New York City mayor and a host of other characters.

    You want an unlikely succession of events? Imagine that days before the opening of the major exhibition on Superstition, bodies of visitors are found in the museum, horribly mutilated. On the night of the glitzy opening, the killings continue… but everyone’s trapped and the classical storm is raging outside the building.

    Given all these elements, it’s no surprise to see that Relic is a pretty enjoyable thriller. The events happen in much the same way that you’d expect them to, with the gradual unveiling of a terrible threat and the impossibly complicated final setup. There are pretty neat final revelations at the end of the narrative. It’s fairly well constructed, doesn’t loses time with needless maudlin romance and lets us wander down the hall of a fascinating place. The style is also at the standard thriller level, which means that clarity takes precedence and that you’ll be able to breeze through Relic‘s fat 450+ pages in almost no time.

    It’s interesting to note, however, that this reviewer has a slightly disappointed opinion of the final result. Despite valiant efforts, Child and Preston don’t seem to make the extra step that would transform Relic from a pretty good thriller to a truly stupendous one.

    Maybe the fault lies with the characters, who for some reason come along as adequate, but not overly sympathetic. As it is often the case with this kind of book, the world is divided between villains and heroes, and the distinction is pretty clear-cut. Bad things usually happen to bad guys, and the heroes all survive to party another day.

    Part of the fault might also lies with the science, which sounds plausible but is still unconvincing. Okay, so there are polysyllabic words, but when you strip them away, you still get a Star Trek: Voyager-type situation. It’s interesting, but not very persuasive. (Not having seen the much-ridiculed movie version of Relic, this reviewer suspects -but cannot prove- that this is what happened in the paper-to-screen translation.)

    But the biggest flaw seems to be the level of improbability of the story-line, which places most of New York’s elite in the grips of the monster with glee but not with a lot of justification. And though it might be nonsense to say so, the book seems to lag a bit in the second third.

    Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t grab Relic the next time you’re in the mood for this type of reading. It’s the classical Beach Reading book that sells copies because it more than satisfies the reader’s expectation.

  • To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1997, 434 pages, C$32.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-09995-7

    Only Connie Willis could have pulled off this novel.

    Connie Willis: Multiple Nebula and Hugo winner, author of the celebrated 1992 time-travel tear-jerker Doomsday Book and all-around good person.

    This novel: To Say Nothing of the Dog is delightful mixture of Victorian fiction, romance, mystery, time-travel thriller and screwball comedy. It begins when historian Ned Henry, suffering severely from time-lag, is transported to 1888 so he can rest a little from a harried search for a nearly-useless artifact. Of course, he only has to accomplish a very, very easy task first… It’s not hard to guess that the task will be bungled, and will be made worse by successive “corrections.” In this case, the traditional devices of the screwball comedies are complicated by the perils and peculiarities of time-travel.

    Pulling it off: There aren’t many words in the English language that describe To Say Nothing of the Dog as well as “delightful”. I first began to read more with a sense of duty and homework. After fifty pages, I seriously wondered why I was spending my time reading this particular book when there were so many other in my reading stack. A few dozen pages later, I didn’t wonder any more: I was hooked of the characters and (mis) adventures of Ned, Verity, Cyris, Princesse Adjumante, Terence, Toodles and the remainder of the cast.

    Despite a slow start, To Say Nothing of the Dog grabs the reader and reels them in. A large part of this is due to the style, which brings back fond memories of, simultaneously, victorian-era novels, Agatha Christie mysteries, P.G. Wodehouse stories… and of course, Connie Willis at her best. (I guess Jerome K. Jerome must be there somewhere, but I lack the literary references to say for sure. Although Jerome’s characters are in To Say Nothing of the Dog, which in turn is the subtitle of Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.) The writing is slightly enlivened (in a historical way), but gripping once the reader is immersed in it.

    There isn’t a single romance in this novel; there are three of them. And they all end happily. (As if there was any doubt!) Sympathetic characterization is one of Willis’s many talents, and this novel relies heavily on it.

    It’s an amusing misnomer to call this “a new SF book” since it’s a strongly nostalgic work that plays heavily on the reader’s memories of widely disparate works. This novel, even though it’s an unassuming comedy, plays much better among those readers with a strong background in these types of fiction.

    Needless to say, Willis’ own Doomsday Book is essential background reading: I see To Say Nothing of the Dog as the antithesis of her earlier Hugo-Winning novel, the comedic equivalent to the intense drama of the previous book. An antidote or an apology, Willis took risks in sharing the same future history for both novels. I hope that reader that were disappointed by either will like the other.

    It might just be me, but after Remake, Bellwether and now To Say Nothing of the Dog, Willis has solidified her standing position as one of the best, most humane authors that SF has to offer at the moment. Not hard-SF, no, but still an essential part of today’s scene.

  • Icon, Frederick Forsyth

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1996, 567 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-552-13991-2

    It must be a difficult time to be a spy-thriller writer. With the Soviet Union down and out, with the climate of global harmony (more or less) reigning over the civilized countries of the world, what can they write about?

    Usually, they fall back on history, invent new enemies or write about something else altogether. Frederick Forsyth does a bit of all of this in his latest novel, Icon.

    A note to would-be authors everywhere: This is how a master begins a novel:

    “It was the summer when the price of a small loaf of bread topped a million rubles.

    It was the summer of the third consecutive year of wheat crop failures and the second of hyper-inflation.

    It was the summer when in the back alleys of the far-away provincial towns the first Russians began dying of malnutrition.

    It was the summer when the president collapsed in his limousine too far from help to be saved, and an old office cleaner stole a document.

    After that nothing would ever be the same.

    It was the summer of 1999.”

    Frederick Forsyth is not an unknown author. His first book, The Day of the Jackal, was one of the best thrillers -nay, novel- of the seventies. He has been a steady bestseller even since. Icon is his twelfth book, and he has not lost one bit of his talent.

    What to expect from a Forsyth novel? A very complex plot. Multidimensional characters. A succession of fascinating details. A solid grasp of politics. Clear, delightful prose. Surprises backed-up by solid facts. Some action. And some of the best suspense you can find in prose.

    While ex-journalist Forsyth has made his reputation writing near-past thrillers artfully blending fact and fiction, Icon goes in the other direction and becomes a near-future thriller about a mad politician in Russia just about to become prime minister. It’s also about a master spy name Jason Monk, destroyed by Aldritch Ames, the KGB mole inside CIA in the eighties. It’s about how to stop a madman from taking power. It’s about the dangers of a fallen superpower. But most of all, it’s about a couple of hours of good, solid entertainment.

    Unlike some other spy writers (Seymour, LeCarre), Forsyth has never lost his goal of a pleasant read. It’s complex, but the prose isn’t, and this rather convoluted plot thus becomes sufficiently accessible.

    Goodness is in the details, and Forsyth once again fills up his novel with a dizzying array of well-researched facts. His chronicle of Aldrich Ames is as fascinating as it is discouraging. It’s impressive that this wealth of minutia never slows down the narrative, or bore the reader. Pure storytelling is among Forsyth’s skills, and he shows off a clear example in Icon by interleaving in the first half of the book the early career of Jason Monk and the main plot of the novel. (By the time Monk joins the main story, his back story is fully introduced; a virtuoso feat of narrative structure.) Icon loses some steam in the second half, and somehow does not fully attain a superior level, but still holds the interest.

    Demanding readers are unlikely to be disappointed by Icon. It’s refreshing, in an ironic kind of way, to see that the spy thriller genre isn’t dead yet. Even better, this novel shows that Forsyth is still at the top of his game, after a few average-to-good books that disappointed some. A marvel of summer reading, Icon is big enough to mesmerize during several hours.

    Enjoy.

  • Adiamante, L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1996, 312 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-54558-3

    Thousands of years after being exiled from Earth, an evolved subset of humanity comes back seeking reparations. If the population of Earth can’t agree to give what they want, well, destruction might as well be as good as anything…

    Intrigued? There’s more.

    For instance, the returning humans are cybernetically enhanced humans. Their ships are almost indestructible. Their weapons are terrifying.

    The humans on Earth have established a decentralized society that is very near utopia. There are un-enhanced humans, but most of the elite is composed of, again, enhanced humans.

    The would-be destroyers are willing to negotiate, so Earth assigns negotiation to a reluctant man. His problem, beyond -obviously- avoiding destruction, is to deal with the threat in a manner that will not transgress the basic principles of his society. This future Earth is unwilling to become a monster to fight monsters.

    The plot is original. Fortunately, Modesitt’s writing is up to the task. Adiamante alternates between the third-person viewpoint of the invaders and the first-person narrative of the Coordinator. The result is one akin to a psychological poker game with ever-rising bets. Only rarely do novels manage to attain -and sustain- this level of intellectual tension.

    Part of this success must be attributed to Modesitt’s world-building. His future Earth may not be believable (see below) but is fairly consistent. The moral choices are explicitly defined. Some novels quickly gloss over the political structure of the future -especially when they’re not readily identifiable as “straight” democracy or dictatorship- but Modesitt takes great care in filling in the details of his society.

    This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone aware of Modesitt’s previous works. A long-time favorite of the Libertarians, Modesitt obviously has an agenda. Still, he manages to produce an entertaining novel without (too many) political messages. This critic didn’t really believe in Modesitt’s postulated system, but it’s a fine idea anyway. Other readers with sufficiently open minds should have no problems with this.

    The heart of the novel is a clash between the incompatible cultures. The title Adiamante is well-chosen, reflecting both the adiamante motif in the book and the rigid positions of both parties. (Adiamante being in the novel a practically indestructible material, much stronger than diamond.) The science in this novel is believable and exciting: There’s a vivid description of advanced weapons for persons so inclined.

    Adiamante has the distinction of offering a vision of the future that’s fresh without being too alien. While the narrative may be predictable, at least the setup offers an original situation. The new animal species populating Earth, for instance, are logical and frightening.

    Some of the characters could have been brought out of the background a bit, but since this is more of a premise-driven novel, it makes sense to develop only two of them.

    Very enjoyable, nicely written, provocative without being (too much) pontificating, Adiamante is a good choice for SF that’s both entertaining and intellectually stimulating.

  • The Sea Hunters, Clive Cussler & Craig Dirgo

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon & Schuster, 1996, 364 pages, C$32.50 hc, ISBN 0-684-83027-2

    Even the most casual reader has probably heard of Clive Cussler. Author of almost fifteen novels, Cussler has enjoyed a sting of bestsellers starring an delightfully wisecracking hero named Dirk Pitt. Starting with the success of Raise the Titanic!, Cussler has become the foremost writer of adventures today.

    I’m not much of a fan of Cussler, even though I’ve read most Dirk Pitt adventures. It’s what I call fast-food novels; highly entertaining, but mostly empty. It doesn’t help that almost all Pitt novels are precisely constructed over the same framework; they do tend to be repetitive after a while. But at a rate of, oh, once a year or two, Cussler’s books are usually a good way to pass the time.

    What most Cussler fans didn’t know was that Cussler himself shares some of his literary alter ego’s adventurous traits. As Cussler himself explains, he used some of Raise the Titanic‘s royalties to fund his first small-scale expedition to find lost shipwrecks. It didn’t go well, but Cussler was hooked. Since then, he goes out at least once a year to look for lost ships. Cussler is in the shipwreck business for the excitement, not the money. He doesn’t take souvenirs of the shipwrecks, or loot his finds. When he finds the wreck, he report the positions to everyone. Local authorities then may choose to raise the wreck or not. The Sea Hunters is a collection of his most memorable adventures.

    There are approximately ten shipwrecks covered in The Sea Hunters, and each account is preceded by a fictionalized account of the last moments of each ship. (Much like the prologue of each Cussler book, in fact.) To be entirely fair, I skimmed over most of these historical dramas. While they’re useful to the context, they rarely bring something essential to the discovery stories. (Since each search account is written at the first person by Cussler, the historical docu-dramas might have been Dirgo’s contributions to the book.)

    In any case, the accounts of Cussler’s travels are the real treasures of The Sea Hunters. Cussler takes us with him through research and discovery, enabling us to taste some of the excitement of these sea hunts. Cussler explains that not only are there a lot of lost ships, but most of them can be found cheaply (if not always easily) provided a few dozen hours of careful research.

    Some of the highlights of The Sea Hunters involve a lost ship eventually found under a parking lot, another destroyed barely hours before Cussler got to it and another adventure where they search for a sunken… train. But the most rollicking and hilarious adventure is wisely kept for the finale, where Cussler and his band of merry adventurers go against nothing less that the French government, secret services and a French frigate! This part alone contains several laugh-aloud moments.

    It’s easy to see where Dirk Pitt got his talent for witty repartee: Cussler knows how to tell a story, and this book shows it. The contemporary search accounts are compulsively readable, and rarely dull.

    The Sea Hunters offer a look at an author that’s definitely not your usual novelist. I’ve become more of a Cussler fan after reading this, and that’s probably the nicest thing I can say about this already memorable book. Cussler fans might want to take a look. Other might find this a good introduction to Cussler.