Book Review

  • Lightpaths, Howard V. Hendrix

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1997, 345 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-00470-9

    Looking at the bookstore shelves nowadays, it would be too easy to think of science-fiction as a dead genre, replaced by fat fantasy trilogies, endless media spin-offs and cheap thrillers with aliens and laser guns. But, despite the endless moaning of doom from many (this critic occasionally included), this is simply not true. There has rarely been so much good, serious hard-SF fiction published at a same time. Looking at the May 1998 SF bestseller lists, we can see books from such dignified examples of good, hard SF writers like Clarke (3001), Benford (Cosm and Foundation’s Fear), McDevitt (Moonfall and Eternity Road), Flynn (The Forest of Time), Bear (Dinosaur Summer and Foundation and Chaos) and Bova (Moonwar), with Cramer (Einstein’s Bridge) and Brin (Heaven’s Reach) waiting in the wings.

    Not only isn’t hard-SF dead yet, it’s not even sick.

    Past these powerhouses of hard-SF, many other writers are writing perfectly delightful works that deftly combine serious extrapolation, scientific knowledge and narrative savvy. Lightships (Howard V. Hendrix) is a perfectly acceptable example of them.

    Almost half a century in the future, events come to a head inside and around an orbital complex high above the Earth: A socially-engineered Utopia is threatened by factors both internal and external. A computer system might attain sentience. A male researcher with a voyeurist masochist fetish seeks to design a fool-proof population-reduction device and transform human society into a highly selective matriarchy. Meanwhile, his female co-worker is working on an immortality plague. Mysterious X-shaped objects are being manufactured in space around the complex. During that time, a highly popular musical group is giving concerts on the habitat.

    Even in nearly 350 pages, there is a lot of material in Lightpaths. It’s almost ridiculous at times (A conversation almost turns into something like “Hi! I’m working on a way to diminish Earth’s population. You?” “Oh, I’m finishing my work on immortality.”) but it does make for interesting reading. Woven with great skill throughout almost all facets of the book is the motif of Utopia.

    This book offers a lot of food for thought. Even the questions asked by Hendrix aren’t as easy as one might suppose: He is a writer with great ambitions, matched with obvious talent. Especially catchy are the invented musical lyrics, which can easily be hummed. It will be interesting to see where Hendrix goes next.

    Which is not saying that the book is flawless. The cover quote is by Robert J. Sawyer, who says “If Robert A. Heinlein had grown up reading William Gibson… Lightpaths is the novel he’d have written.” While it’s easy to see why Sawyer used this simile (Lightpaths‘s utopia has distinct Libertarian overtones, and there is a distinctively cyberpunk edge to at least one subplot… then there’s the Gibsonesque writing style) it must be said that Hendrix still doesn’t master the sheer narrative verve that Heinlein used so well.

    If Lightpaths is great food for thought, is fare substantially less well as pure entertainment. The prose style is not compulsively readable. The characters are fully realized but a bit bland, and have a certain delight for indulging in endless conversations. There isn’t a lot of action until the end of the book. After all has been said and done… it does seems like opportunities have been missed.

    Nevertheless, Lightpaths is still worth a look, especially if you’re interested in promising young authors, the theme of Utopia, cyberpunk-inspired prose or the current state of SF. It’s original, fully-conceived and a bit disappointing. But it clearly demonstrates the kind of good SF that can be found right now on library shelves, provided you’re willing to take risks and explore a bit.

  • Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, Curtis Peebles

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1994, 420 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-15117-4

    If you think even slightly like me, you must despair at the new age section of your favorite bookstore: Whole shelves full of astrology, angels, self-help parapsychology, meditation, crystals and -last but not least-, UFOs, extra-terrestrials and flying saucers. It still heartens me to see that at the nearest Chapters, these black/green/purple books are located right besides the comic book section. (Even though it’s really embarrassing when I browse the graphic novels shelves.)

    Given the flood of easy cash (“a fool and his money are soon parted”) coming from the whole UFO craze, it’s hard to find good, accurate, complete and convincing sources chronicling this modern superstition. The “Skeptical Enquirer” magazine is good, but patchy due to its periodical nature (and not available everywhere). Watch the Skies has the advantage of debunking everything UFO in a single handy package.

    The whole UFO business begins in 1947, when pilot Kenneth Arnold spots “peculiar saucer-shaped aircrafts flying in a line at incredible speed.” Over the years, Peebles shows the reader how the UFO myth was shaped by fringe notions (Did you know that “contactees” were once rejected by the “mainstream” UFO mindset?), pop culture events (from the pulp magazines to the classic movie THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL to… well, Peebles stops just before “The X-Files”) but mostly wishful thinking transforming perfectly explainable events in “weird, strange, mysterious” happenings.

    And, most importantly for this kind of book, Peebles is convincing. Paradoxically, his credibility is strengthened by the fact that he doesn’t try to explain everything in a definitive manner. What can be explained is explained, and the remainder isn’t. But most of the classical elements of the UFO mythos -familiar to most laypersons- are explained away. The explanations ring true. This is about as even-handed as a skeptical book will get, and it’s immensely satisfying.

    Also revealing are the various hoaxes that taint the UFO scene ever since if was created. How major pro-UFO figures were persons with a lot to gain, financially speaking, from the continued existence of the myth. How others had histories of troubled psychological pasts. How others purely manufactured events and documents to gain fame, money and/or popularity. The much-lauded MJ-12 documents are here completely destroyed by meticulous comparisons of these documents with contemporary official documents recently declassified. The Bermuda Triangle (remember that?) is also debunked. The famous cattle mutilation cases are also explained away and I, as an ex-farmboy who’s had to deal with his share of dead cows, agrees with Peebles that there’s no mystery to them!

    A disquieting fact about the UFO myth is how it has transformed through the year from a simple “unexplained sightings” theory to a grab-all abduction / UFO / cover-up / secret pact / alien experiments conspiracy, much more sinister and much more dangerous that it ever was in the past. A myth must evolve and become steadily more exciting, or else it becomes quaint and passé. Glancing at the UFO shelves at the bookstore, I wonder how much more time this shameless commercial exploitation can continue…

    Watch the Skies! is exceedingly well-researched, with almost fifty pages of end notes. A lot of the source documents are from official documents; others are the pro-UFO books themselves. A pretty good index completes the book, although there are regrettably no pictures.

    The biggest surprise of Watch the Skies! is how entertaining it is. While scholarly, Peebles’s account is also compulsively readable. While I was looking forward to parts of this book as much as my next dentist appointment, I was pleasantly entertained by most of the book. It is also sufficiently accessible for anyone, regardless of scientific or skeptical background.

    Ultimately, it’s obvious that Watch the Skies! probably won’t convert true believers into skeptics. As Peebles says, UFOs become a subject of fanatical, almost religious zeal: Reasoning becomes irrelevant. But Watch the Skies! is a significant book, because it takes a hard look at the whole UFO hysteria in a carefully thoughtful manner. A must-read for sceptics and should-read for everyone else.

  • Beyond Star Trek, Lawrence M. Krauss

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1997, 190 pages, C$29.50 hc, ISBN 0-465-00637-X

    So you’re a hard-working physicist with a good reputation, a talent for glib talking and a certain tolerance for the worst excesses of media SF. What would be a good way to popularize your name and make some money? Write about the mistakes in Star Trek, of course! And if you’ve got the stamina for touring, you might as well come to half-forgotten cities everywhere in North America to give enormously entertaining conferences to promote your book!

    Well, somebody has already done all those things. His name is Lawrence M. Krauss, and he’s (among other things) “Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy and Chairman of the Department of Physics at Case Western Reserve University.” He’s the author of four books so far, the best-known of them being The Physics of Star Trek.

    I had the incredible luck of going to a lecture given by Krauss in February 1997 at the Museum of Civilization in Hull. (That’s at a stone throw’s away from the Canadian Parliament, for those among you with an imperfect knowledge of Ottawa-area geography.) Even though his talk was described as exposing the mistakes of Star Trek, it would be fairer to say that it was about a whole lot of different areas of physics, using Star Trek as a thinly related driving thread. Both The Physics of Star Trek and Beyond Star Trek also adopt this slant, with fairly efficient results.

    (By the way; Krauss is an excellent speaker. Don’t miss his talk if ever he comes back in your area. He’s still the only speaker I’ve seen who was able to get an audible “oooh!” from a live audience by explaining results of a neutrino experiment.)

    While The Physics of Star Trek dealt only with physics distantly related to Star Trek, Beyond Star Trek goes… well… beyond that. INDEPENDENCE DAY and “The X-Files” mostly get the Krauss treatment this time around.

    From INDEPENDENCE DAY, Krauss explores the themes of alien visiting earth, getting there from here, exploring other worlds and escaping the death of the sun. That’s in addition of the obvious problems of massive spaceships orbiting earth, hovering over cities and crashing down to earth.

    Starting from “The X-Files”, Krauss explores the scientific difficulties in ESP claims, artificial intelligence, quantum mechanics, time-travel paradoxes, relativity and empty-space energy. As he points out about ESP: Why can’t we detect “ESP radiations” when we can already “hear” stars a few million light-years away?

    It sounds eclectic, and it is. Science is too vast to be constrained, and Krauss moves merrily from one area of physics to another. In 190 short pages, we get an interesting look at physics today, all in an accessible, frequently funny style. Beyond being simply a book for trekkies, Beyond Star Trek (and its companion volume) is also a good introduction to hard science to audiences already sensitized by media SF.

    Beyond Star Trek is a bit thin to warrant being bought in hardcover, or even at full paperback price. But for an introduction (or a refresher) on the amazing current world of physics, a good amount of rational thinking and some provocative philosophy of science, you could do far worse than at least take a look at this book. It’s needless to say that it’s immeasurably better than an umpteenth X-Files inspired “I was abducted by bug-eyed monsters!” hypocritical “non-fiction” trash. And it’s a blast for nit-pickers everywhere.

    (It would be fun to have a book plonking down every scientific error in every SF film ever shot. But then we’d need Gharlane of Eddore as a contributor, and very probably a CD-ROM to distribute the reams of material we’d find… Hey, now that’s an idea!)

  • Einstein’s Bridge, John Cramer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon/EOS, 1997, 310 pages, C$3.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-78831-4

    A 3.99 $Can. paperback which proclaims “A Novel of Hard Science Fiction” on the cover. How could I resist?

    As part of their initial launch program, Avon/EOS is releasing one title per month at a low, low (3.99$) price. This is a great marketing gimmick, especially if you’re already on the edge of buying the book. Einstein’s Bridge had been getting favorable comments (for a hard-SF novel) So it wasn’t much of a decision to buy the book on an impulsion.

    Fortunately, Einstein’s Bridge would have been well-spent money, even at regular price. While saddled with the usual problems of hard-SF written by practicing scientists, it’s also a fairly good novel of pure SF.

    Einstein’s Bridge initially takes place at the beginning of the twenty-first century and stars physicians working at the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Waxahachie, Texas. During a routine experiment, weird things happen, a few laws of physics are broken and evidence of extra-terrestrial life is found. Then we move on to the really interesting stuff.

    Readers with at least a passing interest in Science will probably state at this point in time that there will be not such thing as a SSC in Waxahachie because the US government cancelled the project in 1994. They’re right. What does that tell you about the novel…?

    Plotwise, Einstein’s Bridge fares pretty well, especially when compared to other ultra-hard-SF works, who tend to use generic plot templates as framework for their ideas. This novel has an unusual construction (caused by external factors, we gather from the introduction) and this is the source of a few unexpected plot developments. This is a novel where the ending isn’t painfully obvious from the beginning. (Even though the last fifty pages or so are more or less predictable.)

    Cramer is a fairly good writer at the “top” level, but the novel’s weakest link is undoubtedly the dialogue. While we can’t know how everyone around the author talks, to the layman’s ears, the dialogue in Einstein’s Bridge seems overly burdened with unnecessary information, complex phrase construction and an absence of monosyllabic words. The worst example of this weakness comes at the very beginning of the novel, where two characters trade information that could have been directly cribbed from a travel guide. But as with most things, the forgiving reader will easily “tune out” this kind of weakness. It improves after a while, anyway. At this level, Cramer is easily better than Robert Forward.

    There are also a few psychological unlikelinesses, but it seems almost unfair to judge Einstein’s Bridge on these stylistic criteria where the novel has so much more to offer. The science is seemingly exact, or at least convincingly faked. The description of the actual scientific process is one of the most realistic that I’ve read. Cramer also offers a persuasive argument for continued scientific progress, and relevant scientific commentary. The concepts and ideas are original, and plentiful: other novels will be stealing ideas from this book for years to come. The overall atmosphere is essentially SF: Die-hard fans of hard-SF (I am one, of course) will feel as if they’ve finally come home.

    One negative aspect of the low price is the non-inclusion of a 50K+ political/scientific afterword. Instead, we get a short notice saying that the material is available on the Internet at the Avon/EOS site (http://www.avonbook.com/eos/). After reading the excellent afterword, I’d say it’s very, very sad that Avon/EOS had to cut this corner.

    Overall, Einstein’s Bridge is an excellent hard-SF novel, easily overcoming its shortcomings by sheer imaginative power. In an age characterized by endless series of media-spin-off, new-age crap and endless fantasy trilogies, this is wonderful proof that hard-SF still has a place on the shelves of every bookseller. Cramer has the potential, given a few stylistic adjustments and a bit of luck, of becoming one of the next big things in SF. I intend to help make it happen.

  • The Pure Product, John Kessel

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 381 pages, C$33.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-86117-6

    I have always been fond of saying that if you want to discover an author, you’d be better off with a collection of his (her) short stories than a novel. Not only are the stories shorter (-duh-) but you also get a wider sample of the author’s interests and themes in a collection. Additionally, the idea level and the quality of writing is almost always higher, word-for-word, in short stories rather than full-length novels.

    At least, when the author’s reasonably good.

    Take, for instance, John Kessel. I’ve read his previous novel, Good News From Outer Space. It seemed to me a collage of half-finished vignettes, strung together by a threadbare plot of happy-happy alien invasion. I was not impressed.

    This is not the case with The Pure Product, a pretty engaging collection of short stories from Kessel’s pen. Most of them are good, and a few of them truly attain excellence.

    Generally speaking, Kessel knows how to write a story. He creates sharply-drawn characters, and his eye for detail will quickly draw you in the story. When he’s not playing around with original ideas, he can make the old ones seem fresh, or at least interesting enough that we won’t even think of stopping to read.

    Kessel’s fiction should be accessible for almost every readership. He doesn’t write Hard-SF (but has a certain knowledge of it) and, at a few exceptions, doesn’t rely on the existing SF bag of tricks. (One exception is his alternate-history about Herman Melville, space-opera writer) Furthermore, most of his stories are crisply told, with the cool and assured prose of a true pro. No excessive Ellisonian-type loghareea here.

    Some stories miss, some succeed. Among the better ones:

    • in “Not Responsible! Park and Lock!” Kessel recreates a society completely shaped by the presence of an infinite road. Money has been replaced by miles driven, good old fifties-style cars equal houses, robots tend to the basic jobs, and children go on schoolbuses to learn… It’s absurd, senseless and yet we can’t wait to know more. Unfortunately, the story tantalizes more than it reveals. It’s still the best concept of the book.
    • Kessel doesn’t write Hard-SF, but his “The Einstein Express” brought back very, very fond memories of a Time-Life Science book about relativity which used the basic concept of the story. That it’s a romantic comedy with a happy ending is a double-plus.
    • Showing that human pains mixed with SF can produce some of the best literature, “Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine” explores something that seems obvious once the concept is there: What if you and your mate could selectively erase the bad memories of your relationship? What if that was an alternative to divorce? Would it solve anything? What if your memory gets erased, but you suspect that your mate’s memories remain intact…?
    • “Faustfeathers” is a deliciously anachronic play about (who else?) Faust. Enough said; it’s a blast.
    • In “The Franchise”, a very young George Bush faces off Fidel Castro in one of the most exciting World Series ever!

    …and so on. “Man”, “Invaders”, “Animals”, “A Clean Escape”, “Some Like it Cold”… More than fifteen stories, and at least ten of them are good, even very good. It’s ironic, it’s well-written, it’s humane, it’s smart, it’s comic, it’s tragic, it’s accomplished.

    It’s John Kessel.

  • Free Space, Edited by Brad Linaweaver & Edward E. Kramer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 352 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-85957-0

    It is the opinion of some that SF, in its purest form, is a subversive literature. At the surface, it seems only to be about space, science, extra-terrestrials, time-travel and other improbable stuff. But, what sets SF apart from the other branches of fiction is the tacit acceptance of change. Contrarily to horror (easily the most conservative genre around; ask Stephen King or remember the Laws of Horror Movies so cleverly spoofed in SCREAM.), SF usually concludes that ordinary humans won’t crack up under change, will even find a way to adapt and profit from the loss of any status-quo.

    Of course, politics are almost by definition the battleground of change. Somebody has an idea and thinks everyone should do it. Other don’t think so, and organized politics ensue. Science-Fiction has always been interested in politics (see the rather heavy allegories in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and War of the Worlds) and Free Space is the latest entry in the political-SF sub-genre.

    Moreover, it’s a particularly worthy entry… but your own political preferences may color this rating slightly. For Free Space is, quite obviously, a collection of (mostly) new stories revolving around the theme of freedom, power and responsibility. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this anthology endorses a philosophy reminiscent of Libertarianism. (The introduction contains this giveaway: “It seemed to me that I could get things started by contracting a number of writers who had won the Prometheus award.”…) It’s dedicated to the Heinleins, it’s got stories by William F. Buckley and L. Neil Smith and opening quotes by Thomas Jefferson -twice- and Nietzche.

    Fortunately, this isn’t only straight propaganda: A fair number of interesting stories are contained between the covers of Free Space. Some of the best pieces take a lighter approach to the themes: John deChancie’s “Planet in the Balance” is a constant delight, as is Victor Koman’s “Demokratus” (the ending greatly redeeming the remainder of this heavy-handed story.)

    Most of the other good stories were more serious, and gave less importance to straight political ideas. Among those, Robert J. Sawyer’s “The Hand you’re dealt” has recently been nominated for a Hugo award. It may not be the best story of the book (see below) but still entertains a lot, even despite the depressing genetic determinism it explores. “Day of Atonement” (J. Neil Schulman) is a pretty good thriller, perhaps a bit harsh on Israel. Free Space is also a book of surprises. This reviewer only knew the work of Brad Linaweaver and Dafydd ab Hugh by their collaboration on the horrendous Doom series, but both authors prove to be fairly competent authors, with ab Hugh’s story being on par with some of Sheffield’s near-future stuff. James P. Hogan also astonishes, with a story that’s thematically and stylistically beyond most of what he’s written before. (“Madam Butterfly” also contains one of the book’s most memorable scene, the culmination of a series of near-chaotic events.) Finally, the anthologists made an unusual choice by selecting a meta-story by John Barnes (“Between Shepherds and Kings”) to close the book. It’s not that great a story, but (simultaneously) makes both important points that A> These are only Science-Fiction stories and B> Talking about grand-scale freedom is worthless if you can’t be free yourself.

    But beyond that, the most impressive story if the volume is a discovery; “The Performance of a Lifetime” (Arthur Byron Cover) breaks a lot of storytelling rules, but still emerges as a winner. A tale of large-scale crime, told in a perfectly controlled tone. It’s hilarious and tragic at the same time. And the conclusion is a doozy. Truly a memorable story.

    Free Space is not without flaws (for instance, a fair number of stories are empty exercises of style and rhetoric over narrative drive… and if there’s a common universe behind each of these stories, it’s so tenuously followed that it might as well be forgotten.) but it certainly represents a vigorous attempt to bring back an important political dialogue in today’s SF. You will certainly not agree with it -this reviewer often didn’t- but at least you will react to the stories. Free Space is not Empty Stuff.

  • Circuit of Heaven, Dennis Danvers

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon/EOS, 1998, 373 pages, C$19.00 hc, ISBN 0-380-97447-9

    The first few months of a new SF imprint are always exciting, even when it’s really a repackaging of an existing one (in this case, Avonova becoming Avon/EOS, a considerably less catchy moniker) In this case, it’s been even more interesting than usual since the fine folks at Avon/EOS are intent on trying out several new things to make their new imprint stand out.

    For instance, there’s their insistence to use only design elements on their covers. What this means is that you’ll never see a Michael Whelan illustration on an Avon/EOS book: Figurative illustrations are out and abstract designs are in. I like cover illustrations, so I don’t like this. Time will tell. Never say never… We’ll see in two or three years about the Whelan cover.

    The other interesting marketing strategy is that once a month, Avon/EOS selects one of their hardcover publication and shrink it down. The result is a physical object that’s slightly bigger than a paperback, but with hard covers. It’s pretty ugly and doesn’t look very serious, but it sells for nineteen Canadian dollars. Not bad.

    Such is the case with Dennis Danver’s Circuit of Heaven. Ugly format, ugly design on the cover. But as the novel reminds us, appearances can be deceiving. Let’s take a look inside.

    The novel begins nicely enough, with a first chapter that’s straight exposition: So there’s a guy who perfected personality upload into computers, and virtual reality’s so powerful that almost everyone on Earth has chose to turn themselves virtual. The Pentagon has been converted to house these twelve billion (!) personalities. So far, so very very interesting.

    At this point, five pages into the novel, we might expect to be set for a fascinating exploration of the human spirit when the body becomes irrelevant. What can twelve billion personalities do together? What might be the repercussions of immortality and constant well-being on relationships? Can you combine personalities or split them off?

    Mistake.

    This novel remains to be written. Instead, we get a sappy romance between what is initially a rebellious “real” guy and a troubled virtual girl. I used “sappy” in the nicest possible way: As romances go, this one’s fair enough that I didn’t feel too cheated by the lack of willingness of the novel to explore its own concepts deeper than as background props.

    Fortunately, this romance-for-the-virtual-nineties is written well enough, and with enough twists of the sub-plot to entertain most readers. Not all of it is meaningful (a competent editor could have removed at least fifty pages, perhaps a hundred.) but it holds together fairly solidly. Fortunately, characters are okay (Although they -and other things- bear an uncanny resemblance to this year’s movie DARK CITY), as is the prose style.

    Thematically, it’s an unusual work in that is casually expects everyone to be all fudgy-happy to get virtual. I disagree, but then again that’s just me. Still, the back-cover blurb reads like a Wired slogan: “The Body is Baggage. The Soul is expendable. The Future is Virtual.”

    No fireworks, no Hugo awards for Danvers. But Circuit of Heaven is good enough to make you forget the unusual format it’s printed upon. Definitely not your run-of-the-mill SF, this romantically-flavored novel should appeal to anyone looking for something slightly different.

    Despite my misgivings related to some aspects of Avon/EOS’s initiatives, I can only applaud their decision to take chances with newer, less familiar authors. Danvers is reportedly working on a semi-sequel to Circuit of Heaven. With hope, this one’ll examine the implications of its framework. Until then, I’d recommend keeping an eye on the Avon/EOS line.

  • The Cobweb, Stephen Bury

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1997, 384 pages, C$17.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37828-7

    The first thing you won’t notice anywhere on the paperback cover of Stephen Bury’s The Cobweb is any association of Bury with young SF superstar Neal Stephenson. (It is well known that Stephen Bury is the pseudonym that Stephenson uses when collaborating with his uncle.) Unlike Bury’s first novel, Interface, which loudly advertised “co-written by NEAL STEPHENSON”, The Cobweb is promoted as being “A frightening and savagely witty new thriller from the author of Interface”

    Whatever Bantam’s intentions were, it is clear that The Cobweb is not Interface and at the same time a novel very much in the style of the previous novel. In short, this isn’t Stephenson: this is Bury.

    The Cobweb is a thriller mostly taking place in the last few months of 1990 in a small town somewhere in Iowa. Deputy sheriff Clyde Banks has a few problems: He’s trying to be elected sheriff, his wife is gone to war in the Gulf and mysterious crimes are happening in his town, with prime suspects being foreign students studying at the local university…

    It’s always a risk to write a near-past thriller. Events have to be restrained, characters can’t do things that would clash with our perception of history. In other words, we already know how the story will end, at least in broad and general terms. Despite this, an impressive amount of very good novels (notably Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal and The Fist of God) have successfully bridged this difficulty. The Cobweb joins their ranks.

    Most of the novel is centered either on Clyde Banks, or on a humble Washington CIA analyst named Betty Vandeventer. Their personal struggles become more fascinating than the bigger events surrounding them. The novel is a page-turner, and Bury’s gift for characterization is evident.

    The prose is also delicious, a mix of good storytelling with a wealth of details. We come out of the novel feeling as if we know more about the world that we did before. Bury’s take on the development of the Gulf War is especially interesting, exposing plausible links and consequences that explain a lot. The co-authors have a firm grasp on political, economic and scientific concepts, and this knowledge goes a long way in assuring the aura of believability essential for any thriller. They manage to make bureaucratic infighting exciting, which is an achievement in itself.

    Bury’s fascination for details, already visible in Interface, makes The Cobweb worth its price in paperback: This is a curiously satisfying thriller, unlike other books in the genre which can be read in a flash and feel as insubstantial as hot air.

    This isn’t Interface, but it’s as good. Whatever Bury wishes to write next, his readers are assured of a very good read.

  • The Science of JURASSIC PARK and THE LOST WORLD, Rob DeSalle & David Lindley

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Basic Books, 1997, 194 pages, C$25.50 tpb, ISBN 0-465-07379-4

    Since JURASSIC PARK and THE LOST WORLD were two immensely popular SF movies seen by million of people worldwide, it was only natural that at least one unauthorized non-fiction book would come out of this success. The Science of JURASSIC PARK and THE LOST WORLD is this book.

    Those looking for snide references to acting blunders by Jeff Goldblum et al. will be severely disappointed, though: this isn’t as much a shot-by-shot discussion of the movies as a meticulous description of the problems facing potential Jurassic Park scientists. The subtitle “How to build a dinosaur” is a far better description of the book’s content.

    Since the two authors are scientists and not movie buffs, you get a book much more centered on science than filmmaking. Even then, much of Science is spent discussing the details provided in the books, rather than in the movies. (The two authors probably hadn’t even seen the movie version of The Lost World at the time of the publication of the book) Furthermore, it’s a book focused on “how can we make this happen” rather than “this is where they screwed up.”

    The book is divided in nine big questions, each covering a different problem to be conquered before T-Rexes can stomp the ground again. The most salient are finding dinosaur DNA, extracting it, reconstructing it, turning the DNA into embryos, raising these embryos and compensating for the lack of a “natural” environment.

    One side-effect of the book might be to give to the reader a glimpse in the infinitely complicated mechanisms of life. If DNA is the blueprint of life, it’s not the finished construction. And what if the plans are in multiple copies, mixed-up, even shredded?

    Each step of the way is meticulously detailed—up to a point where it will seem very unlikely to the reader that dinosaur construction is even possible. The two authors of Science know their stuff, and it show, perhaps even a bit too much when they delve into the strange jargon of biologists.

    But even then, the book remains mildly interesting. It’s by no mean gripping, but it challenges normal mental curiosity. The road to a living, breathing, people-eating dinosaur now seems arduous, but not impossible. While an opportunistic book cashing in a faddish trend, Science is primarily a useful vulgarization of an interesting subject. Somehow, it is likely that if ever a third Jurassic Park book is written, Science will be one of Crichton’s reference books.

  • Passion Play, Sean Stewart

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tesseracts, 1992, 231 pages, C$?.?? mmpb, ISBN 0-88878-314-0

    For a writer, one good way to ensure interest from the reader is to mix widely disparate elements in a single work. Some of the time, the result is a mish-mash of incongruous concepts. Most of the time, it seems like a fairly obvious gimmick (as Jurassic Park‘s mix of genetic engineering and chaos theory) Once in a while, though, the themes mesh well together and the result is often a classic.

    In the field of Canadian Science-Fiction, Passion Play (Aurora and Edgar Award, 1992) is considered a minor classic and after reading it it’s easy to see why. Basically, it’s an endearing mix of science-fiction and crime story: the plot is about an investigator asked to solve the death of an actor.

    So far, so accessible. Then the complications begin.

    First, the setting. We’re a few years in the future, in an America dominated by a religious leadership (The Redemption Presidency, in a tone slightly similar to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale —another great Canadian SF novel.) The atmosphere is restrictive, oppressive and retrograde. Women’s right are in decline -if not almost gone-, as are most progressive ideas. Vigilantism is encouraged; the novel begins as a small mob kills a women for adultery—the leader of the mob being the husband.

    Enters the protagonist; Diane Fletcher, a woman in a man’s world. Her precious talent: She can see and feel the emotions of others. This makes her useful to the official police force, who subcontracts a few cases to her. Fletcher is one of this novel’s biggest assets: Her narration is almost always impeccable, and her personality is fully developed. It is fortunate that the tale is told by her voice.

    The victim of the crime isn’t ordinary either: Jonathan Mask is, at the beginning of the novel, the most famous actor—sorry, “communicator”—in America. And he’s also very, very dead, electrocuted inside his hi-tech suit he was wearing for his new teleplay. It might be an accident—but since this is a crime story, we can bet that it’s not.

    Fortunately, Steward knows how to tell a tale. It gets muddled in the end (like most whodunits) and the end result is too dark to be cheered, but Passion Play is an impressive debut by the author who would later write the engrossing (but frustrating) Resurrection Man. Passion Play is slightly more enjoyable although the ending is unnecessarily grim. Too bad; this novel could have used an optimistic finale.

    Still, this 1991 Tesseract book is well-worth tacking down. Stylish yet easy to read, complex but captivating, let’s hope that our future has a few more authors like Sean Stewart and books like Passion Play.

  • / [Slant], Greg Bear

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 349 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-85517-6

    Greg Bear is a very uneven writer. At his best, he’s able to produce stories like Blood Music, The Forge of God, Eon and the exceptional Moving Mars. As his worst, he gets taken with disillusions of literary grandeur and turns out stuff like most of Eternity, Strength of Stones and the incredibly boring Queen of Angels, all of whom manage to fumble clever premises by molasses-like plotting, cypher-characters and obscure prose. With / [Slant], Bear has added another miss to his collection.

    Well, I’d better qualify this statement. Queen of Angels did not amaze me, despite the fact that some critics hailed it as one of the best SF novels ever. Cool ideas, interesting stuff, but it was still mind-numbingly boring. Slant is the sequel to Queen of Angels.

    (A word or two about the title: somewhere buried into the copyright page, we find the following doozy: “The title consists solely of the slant sign.”)

    Slant picks up a four years after the events of Queen of Angels. Despite the quadruple whammies of Self-Sentient Machine Intelligence, the Binary Millenium, explorations of the Country of the Mind and possibly intelligent extra-terrestrial life, the world of 2052 hasn’t changed very much from the previous volume. Most of the prequel’s protagonists are a step down from where they were previously. Policewoman Mary Choy has moved to Seattle. Psychologist Martin Burke has a private practice and doesn’t meddle with the Country of the Mind anymore: nobody does.

    Meanwhile, a man named Jack Giffey is mounting a raid on a modern-day pyramid. A porn star/occasional prostitute has a disturbing encounter with a paying customer. A middle-aged man has seemingly lost his wife’s affection. Other stuff happens.

    For a good hundred-fifty pages, nothing is brought together. Then, we get ominous hints of something like an impending collapse of the collective unconscious. (Unfortunately, nothing like that happens..)

    By the time all characters, events and subplots come to an end inside the said modern-day pyramid, we’re ingested a bit of philosophy, met a few characters and seen a future that’s quite plausible.

    It still doesn’t mean that it wasn’t boring.

    To be fair, there are a few good quotes and a few equally good ideas here and there in /. There is an unusual emphasis on the theme of male/female relations (there goes / again), treated quite maturely. The characters are effectively (re-)introduced and we get the idea that we could have had a fairly good story with them. The first fifty pages are even quite good, mostly because at this point all possibilities are still open. Unfortunately, Bear settles for a pedestrian walk through the future and we, the readers, suffer through it all.

    Slant doesn’t even have the memorable bits from the first volume, so it’s very probable that it’ll disappear from the SF conscience in very short time. A pretty weak cover by Jim Burns also doesn’t help. The interior design is quirky, perhaps a bit too much.

    Upon reading books like /, there is always the doubt that the author may be too smart for us, that we’re just too dull, too immature to “get” what he’s talking about. It is probably the case with both of those books, but the ultimate recommendation stands: If you’re in the market for a readable, fast and fun read, steer clear of /.

  • Dreaming Aloud: The Life and Films of James Cameron, Christopher Heard

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday Canada, 1997, 260 pages, C$21.95 tpb, ISBN 0-385-25680-9

    In the last minutes of March 23rd, 1998, James Cameron brandished his Academy Award for Achievement in Movie Directing above his head and exclaimed before a few hundred million viewers, “I am the king of the world!” Despite the fact that this hyperbole was quoted directly from his script for TITANIC, it was a sentiment that a lot of Cameron fans could share.

    James Cameron, born in Kapuskasing, (Ontario, Canada) had come a long way from his humble origins. In fifteen years, he has produced some of the most stunning movies the world could have imagined. His cinematography reads like a box-office hit top-ten: THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, THE ABYSS, TERMINATOR II: JUDGEMENT DAY, TRUE LIES and finally, especially TITANIC. He has broken the most-expensive-movie-ever record not once or twice, but thrice. His movies consistently push the limits of moviemaking technology, and yet he seldom contributes substandard material. His movie, as shocking as it may seem, are techno-marvels built upon human emotions.

    Cameron, like the best folk heroes, consistently goes against impossible odds. Many people thought him defeated after the saga of TITANIC’s making. 500+ million dollars of US gross box-office revenue later, Cameron proved them wrong. But if the skeptics had read Dreaming Aloud before doubting Cameron, they might have thought differently.

    Dreaming Aloud chronicles Cameron’s life from his Kapuskasing Days until the eve of TITANIC. He see Cameron during his stint at Roger Corman’s B-flick studio, where he directed his first feature film (PIRANHA II). Then it’s his chance meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger, future wife Linda Hamilton and fate with the first TERMINATOR movie. The remainder is known and expected, but author Heard makes it interesting. Whether it’s about his films or his marriages (Linda Hamilton being Cameron’s fourth wife. As the author says, “Marriage is something Cameron believes in but isn’t very good at himself.” [P. 188]) the style is completely readable (very possibly in a single sitting), especially for confirmed Cameron fans.

    An index, a cinematography and a few photos complete the account.

    But even despite the appeal of Cameron’s films and the breezy style in which it is written, Dreaming Aloud is at the same time far from being satisfying enough. A look at the bibliography reveals a scant six books and seven magazine articles used to write “Dreaming Aloud” This reviewer has read (heck, has written) essays with more sources than this. Dreaming Aloud may or may not be a compilation of these thirteen sources, but in retrospect it is also a very distant biography. We never get the sense that Heard has actually talked to Cameron, or done extensive legwork on his subject. The extended plot summaries (4-5 pages for each major movie) are not interesting for Cameron fans (who already know these movies by heart) and may feel out of place for the remainder of the audience. The usefulness of their length is doubtful.

    Dreaming Aloud closes while pondering the after-TITANIC for Cameron. Given the success of the movie at the Academy Awards (11 Oscars, tying BEN-HUR’s record), this is a surprisingly powerful finale.

    Fortunately, we now know that Cameron has taken his deserved place in the Hollywood hiearchy. He is in the enviable position of having dared the gods, and won. He can do whatever he desires next: it will be seen by millions. At the moment he is truly, as grandiose as it may seem, King of the (Hollywood) World.

    Millions of fans cheer.

  • Ignition, Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 1997, 320 pages, C$32.00 hc, ISBN 0-312-86270-9

    EARLY 1996

    —Hi, what’s up?
    —Thought about our next book a bit. You know that we’ve got to deliver another thriller to Tor/Forge in the coming year.-
    —Yeah, something a bit meatier than our Craig Kreident franchise for Ace.
    —Exactly. So, I was watching DIE HARD yesterday, and-
    —Ah yeah, pretty good movie. We could do something like this.
    —Exactly. So, I began thinking where terrorists could do some damage, and came up with something pretty wild. Ready?  How about Cape Kennedy?
    —Terrorists take over a shuttle? That’s a great hook!
    —Thanks. Now, I guess we’d have some kind of shuttle flight-
    —-so we could show off our Hard-SF background with the technical details-
    —Yeah, and terrorists would threaten to blow up the shuttle on the launch pad while the hero would run around, killing bad guys and saving the shuttle.
    —Terrific premise. We can do something with this.
    —The best thing is that there’s plenty of explosives around.
    —Right! A few rockets here and there, some hi-tech weapons…
    —Not to mention helicopters and APCs and the shuttle!
    —We could even sell the movie rights to Hollywood!
    —But no reviewer would miss the connection.
    —Hey, this one’s for the money, right?
    —Uh-huh. So, back to the premise: We could always make the hero -an astronaut- a bit more vulnerable, something to chuck off in the movie-
    —Like, oh, having him with a broken leg?
    —Oh, come on, he’d be grounded- Hey, that’s not bad! He’d be pissed-
    —Yeah! And then he’s wobble along blowing up terrorists (laughs)
    —We could make this work. And what about a love interest?
    —Uh… Got it! An ex-lover of his that’s gone up to flight control. Traditional fiery relationship. But then they kiss and make up.
    —I like it. How about a villain?
    —Oh, don’t know yet… We’ll get around to that later. I just want to make sure we’ve got a good amazon female henchman assassin character somewhere.
    —That about wraps it. I’ll draft the outline and send it to New York-
    —No special effort for style, I guess.
    —Nah. We nailed it with Ill Wind: No need to waste style on thrillers. Descriptive is good enough. Gotta keep them turning the pages!
    —That’s the goal! Okay, talk to you later.

    MARCH 1998

    Anderson and Beason probably never had the above conversation, but they succeeded in producing a perfectly entertaining thriller with Ignition. Okay, so the villain is simultaneously hilarious and bland, the conclusion is dragged-out and the image of a hero with a broken leg is often more comical than inspiring, but the remainder of the novel isn’t half-bad. A couple of big explosions, action scenes and classic wish-fulfillment makes this an engrossing read. Should make an interesting movie.

  • Airframe, Michael Crichton

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Knopf, 1996, 351 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-679-44648-6

    (Read in French translation as Turbulences, Robert Laffont, 1998)

    Another year, another Michael Crichton techno-thriller. At least, this one is better than The Lost World… even if that’s not really saying much.

    When future literary historians will dust up the shelves of turn-of-the-millenium popular fiction, they’ll have to take notice of the name Michael Crichton. After all, when you regularly top the best-selling lists like he does, year after year without any signs of slowing down, these things tend to stay in memory.

    But when they’ll peer closer at Crichton, I get the feeling that they’ll run into a maddening puzzle. Was Crichton an author, or not?

    Are there any creative endeavor that Crichton hasn’t tried? Besides being a best-selling novelist (Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Rising Sun, Disclosure…), Crichton is/has been a fairly good movie director (THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, WESTWORLD… even one of my favorites: RUNAWAY), a computer game programmer (an obscure illustrated text adventure called, I believe, AMAZON), a TV scripter/producer (E.R.), a screenwriter… where does he find the time to write these books? (Notice that we haven’t mentioned his medical studies, or his family, or that he once won an Academy Award for improvements in movie accounting. No, really!)

    Crichton, these days, is arguably more famous as Crichton himself than as the guy who’s slaving away behind the keyboard putting words one after the other. Part of this might be caused by his novels. Okay, so Crichton has made a living out of warning people about technology. But besides that, his books feel like prepackaged products: Formidably competent, usually utterly entertaining, but devoid of flavor, quirkiness or personality.

    Airframe certainly fits into the cookie-cutter profile that Crichton fans have come to expect. Once again, it deal with a high-technology subject (in this case, passenger airplanes) from a dramatic angle (people are killed during a in-flight accident) using characters freshly recycled from the nineties’ stable of stereotypes. In this case, our heroine is an administrator at Norton Aircraft, the antagonist is a young and irresponsible media “journalist”, the evil overlord is a (grr! grr! kss! kss!) rich and greedy corporate guy, and so on and so forth.

    Plotting is strictly by-the-numbers, with unexpected events happening here and there without any justification but that something must happen by this point. (The chase through the airplane hangar is particularly ludicrous.) At least Crichton does not do cliches. His characterization may be familiar, unsubtle and hastily pieced-up, but it stays within the borderlines of the reasonably adept.

    It’s fun (?) to note that despite being sold by truckloads to a mass-market audience, Airframe contains considerably more scientific and engineering jargon than most science-fiction novels. In many ways, this is a prototypical techno-thriller. The hook, the process, the gimmicks, the resolution are all technological, and the ultimate cause of the crashes won’t exactly be guessed by the casual reader (as it is too often the tendency while writing this type of fiction.) Airframe at least has a veneer of authenticity, a probable result of considerable time spend researching the subject.

    Predictably, Airframe is slick, fun entertainment. Easily readable in a single day (or a single airplane flight, heh-heh-heh) and perfect for beach reading, it again proves why Crichton is at the top of the charts, and deserves to stay there.

  • Interface, Stephen Bury

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam, 1995, 583 pages, C$15.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37230-0

    American politics are -rightfully- an endlessly fascinating topic, especially when seen from the outside. With power, greed, money and lately -as if it was the only thing missing-, extramarital sex, you can’t really go wrong. The increasingly mediatic aspect of, specifically, high-office campaigning have been the inspiration for many fine works (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, Primary Colors, ROB ROBERTS…) and Interface is an attractive new high-tech work dealing with the subject.

    Half of Stephen Bury is better known as Neal Stephenson, writer of such SF masterpieces like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. With Interface, he switched technological gears and collaborated with his uncle to produce one of the most entertaining political techno-thriller you’re likely to read this year. Or any year.

    The jacket blurbs will try to sell you Interface as a chilling novel where one presidential candidate has a chip implanted in his brain that lets him get instantaneous audience feedback. The truth is that this particular subplot is fairly insignificant, barely exploited and then quickly forgotten. But the remainder of the novel is even better: Public Opinion moguls, redneck psychos, government-controlling conspiracists, crazy spin doctors, humble housewives, foreign neurosurgeons, nerdy engineers and a few million voters all tangle, fight, debate, act, flee or react to make this a complex, but engrossing story.

    Interface is an incredibly dense novel. This is definitely one that you’ll want to read attentively; not only is there a lot of plot, but there’s also a lot of details. Stephenson is also known by his articles for Wired magazine, and his fascination for the sociologies of America is evident.

    The style of Interface is even better than anything we could have hoped for. Bury’s combined voice is sardonic, clear, often hilarious and always compelling. With some books, the reader feels smarter than the author but here, not only are we conscious that Bury’s smarter, but we accept this without resentment. (“Why didn’t I think of that?”) The amount of detail is incredible; protagonist Cozzano is not described as a rich guy, but his whole family history is unwrapped before us. It’s a measure of Bury’s talent that this exposition and erudition does not feel forced or boring. Similarly, these authors don’t skimp on characterization: Everyone here, despite some very unlikely stunts, feel like actual human characters, and not puppets moved on a stage for our entertainment.

    But beyond all this, beyond the enthralling prose and the grrrreat characters, what makes the novel are the Cool Scenes. Cool Scenes are these almost-perfect snippets of prose that aren’t always related to the plot, but stick in the mind for a while. We’re talking Dune‘s sandworms. Neuromancer‘s public-telephone trick. The snowballs thrown at the Moon in Earth. The cruciform resurrections in the first Hyperion volume. Interface has a lot of these Cool Scenes: A Politician vandalizing an ambulance; a blow-by-blow description of dirty campaign tricks; a psychological test; an unemployed housewife taking on a presidential candidate—and winning. This is what elevates Interface over the rest.

    Despite all of this, Interface‘s conclusion is a bit rushed. Some of the parts don’t quite gel together. Threads are left untied. And we never get the “robo-candidate” novel promised on the blurb.

    But nevertheless, Interface is more than a keenly successful satire on American politics: it’s great, great entertainment. You will probably even learn a few things. Buy it.