Book Review

  • 3001, The Final Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 1997, 263 pages, C$35.00 hc, ISBN 0-345-31522-7

    Let’s get two things out of our way first:

    One: I dearly like Arthur C. Clarke. I’ve read most of his books and at the exception of his collaborations, he rates from okay to excellent. While his stories are often exercises in problem-solving and his plots thinly-disguised travelogues, that’s what he does best and that’s why I keep going back to Clarke. Apparently, millions of other readers think the same thing, because Clarke repeatedly hits the bestseller lists with each new book.

    Two: 3001 is a rotten novel. In almost 300 pages, Clarke commits enough narrative mistakes to send a less-renowned author back to a few more rewrites. The first part of the novel is a brief look at Earth, 3001 style. In the second, he tells more than shows. Five minutes pass in one chapter, 30 years in the next. Stylistic errors abound, although that might be compounded by the translation I was reading. There’s even one factual error -verified in the original untranslated text- in chapter 32, when it is stated that Frank Poole was born in 1996. (Which would have given him the tender age of… 5 during the 2001 mission. Right.) Ping, Mr. Clarke!

    Surprisingly, it doesn’t really matter. 3001 might be one of Clarke’s last novels and he’s entitled to a few shortcuts. Certainly, this is a better work that other latter-day Asimov or Heinlein. To compare apples with manure, even a middling Clarke is better entertainment that a middling Hollywood product. (Although 3001 ends on a note surprisingly reminiscent -of all things- of INDEPENDENCE DAY. Even Clarke apologizes for this in his afterword; synchronicity strikes again.)

    Thematically, the novel has only tangential links with the previous three volumes. It “ties” up a few loose ends, and ignores the remainder. After reading 3001, I went back to 2061 and found out that the epilogue, titled “3001”, was completely disregarded by Clarke this time around. Others small discrepancies are smoothed over, and retro-adjusted. Obviously, humanity won’t go to Jupiter for 2001 any more than Hal was activated in February 1997. The future described in 3001 nevertheless remains quite plausible: Much like our own memory of 2001 has faded, the inhabitants of 3001 describe our own times as, of course, a century of unparalleled barbarism.

    One unrealistic attribute of the characters is their tendency to constantly refer to events five centuries past. When’s the last time you quoted extensively from a 1497 philosopher? Overall, 3001 is a pretty similar place to 1997. A few cosmetic changes perk up the scenery, but far less that what the Singularists (from Vinge’s hypothesis) might suppose.

    But 3001 is top-heavy with ideas. From Ring City to Religion As Mental Disorder (chuckled softly the atheist), this novel at least offers an entertaining travelogue. Whatever one may think of Clarke’s style, at least he’s kept his swiftness with innovative concepts. Extensive notes (30 pages of assorted sources, acknowledgements and goodbyes.) complete the book, providing an enjoyable dose of further readings, short editorials by Clarke (Does he believe this stuff? Absolutely!) and, generally, words by the master. Hard-SF fans will slurp this up with glee. At least I did.

    Despite all its faults, 3001 remains a very enjoyable read for Clarke fans. Others might not agree; their loss. The novel works better as a travelogue with a loose relation to the original trilogy; don’t go back and read all three books attentively before beginning this one. Don’t buy it in hardcover either; it’s poor value for your money unless you’re a confirmed Clarke collector. But it’s definitely worth a read for its target audience.

  • Yours, Isaac Asimov, Ed. Stanley Asimov

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 1995, 332 pages, C$??.?? hc, ISBN 0-385-47622-1

    Despite what anyone may think of Isaac Asimov’s fiction, opinion, style or latter years (this reviewer, for one, maintains that most post-1970 Asimov novels were average at best, errors otherwise), there is no denying the influence he had on SF and America during his life. This in itself would make the Asimov name pretty valuable (to publishers) even after his untimely death in 1992.

    So here is another book by Asimov about Asimov. In this case, here is the Stanley Asimov-edited book of Isaac Asimov-written letters. Before e-mail, before facsimiles there was the letter, and Asimov wrote a bunch of them. How much of a bunch? “Isaac received about 100,000 letters in his professional career… he answered 90 percent of them.” [Introduction] Even considering that half these answers were on postcards, that’s a staggering mass of material.

    To his credit, Stanley Asimov manages to distil a jovial book of Asimovillia, full of the Good Doctor’s own brand of immodest modesty, suggestive limericks and unique personality. A writer of nearly 500 books can’t escape having encyclopedic interests, and this is one of the most distinctive things gleaned from Yours, Isaac Asimov.

    Beyond that, it’s a revealing look at the personality of the man by his writings, collected and edited by someone who knew him well. Even those who think they know everything about Asimov should learn a few things.

    For instance, fans of the prurient Asimov from the forties and fifties will be surprised, even shocked, at the decidedly looser opinions of the more unleashed writer of the sixties onward. More than forty limericks, among other things, populate the pages of this book. Some of them are fairly spicy.

    The book is divided in more than fifty short thematic paragraphs, among them “Being a liberal”, “Quantity”, “Campbell and Pohl”, “Fans”, “Youth”, “Memory”, “Censorship” and “Being Atheist”. Stanley poignantly ends the collection with two chapters on Health and Death. And yet, the overall tone of the book is one of cheer and good living. Asimov loved life and these letters show it.

    Of course, this collection will mean more to Asimov fans that to relative newcomers. As such, it might not be worth buying in hardcover, but any serious Asimov collector should at least take a look at it.

    It occurs to this reviewer that if ever humanity perfects the machine in Robert Silverberg’s “Enter a Soldier. Later, Enters Another” (Where everything known about a person is entered in a computer in order to simulate his personality), Asimov might be one of the best candidates to recreate. Not only has he left us more that 450 books from where to glean material (not including his massive autobiographies and everything everyone else wrote about him), but everyone could agree that Doctor A. should still be around.

    I can’t think of a more telling homage.

  • Look at the Evidence, John Clute

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Serconia Press, 1995, 465 pages, C$29.00 hc, ISBN 0-934933-06-5

    So there I was, in the dealer’s room of Montreal’s Con*Cept’97 convention, blowing most of a week’s salary on books I didn’t really need but wanted anyway. So I hand my stack to the dealer, who promptly gives me back John Clute’s Hugo-winning Look at the Evidence.

    You can imagine what kind of thoughts passed through my mind: What? Is he refusing my right to buy the book? What’s going on? Then the dealer points at the other end of the table: “You might want to get this autographed right now.”

    Now, John Clute is physically impressive: Close-cropped blonde hair at the top of a frame that’s well-over six feet and a width that would make him a serious contender for a part as a wrestler in any TV production. We chatted about CD-ROM encyclopedias (Clute is one of the authors of both the Encyclopedia of Science-Fiction and the Encyclopedia of Fantasy) and I escaped with nothing more serious than a dedication. (“for Christian,” etc… sure is better than a dislocation) (Then there’s when I asked Lois McMaster Bujold to autograph my copy of Mirror Dance, but I’m already name-dropping way too much.)

    In the field of SF, there is no better critic than John Clute. Co-Author of the definitive encyclopedias in two genres, not including the Visual and Multimedia encyclopedias of SF, Clute is one of the field’s watchmen. So it’s quite a treat to find five years of critical essays reunited between the same cover. Look at the Evidence is the compilation of all reviews Clute wrote during the years 1987-1992. SF has changed dramatically during those five years, and this book is like a report from the frontlines of this change.

    It is during these five years that Clute developed his theory of First SF (roughly; SF-written-as-SF, not really as separate future extrapolation). Also included is a Protocol of Excessive Candour and a too-brief passage about the Real Year of a given SF book. And, of course, a heap of book reviews, sometime favorable, sometime scathing but almost always interesting.

    Naturally, Look at the Evidence will be most revealing to those who already have a deep knowledge of the field. I’m always fond of saying that reviews have to answer to those who already read the book in addition to those who wonder if they should. Clute is a critic more than a reviewer, and this means that he’s often speaking to readers In The Know. (There’s one memorable pun about Connie Willis’ Lincoln Dreams… but never mind that.)

    Of course, not all reviews are equal, and Look at the Evidence is obviously best consumed in small doses: Reading review after review is not a good way of distillating Clute’s sagacious opinions. Clute’s style is dense and heavy with wordplay: Don’t take this book to the beach.

    Unfortunately, the physical format of this collection isn’t very appealing. I disliked the cover illustration (attributed to Judith Clute), and the overall typographical tone of the book is traditional British-drab. The black cover of the trade paperback edition is easily damaged, with unsightly white spots appearing after even the most careful handling. But this shouldn’t detract the readers from the exceptional content.

    For a would-be reviewer, reading Clute is a humbling experience. His column at Sci-Fi Weekly (http://www.scifiweekly.com/) offers a shocking contract with the remainder of SFW’s regular reviewers, and Look at the Evidence should be considered as an ideal to attain. I, for one, am in awe of Clute: Even my best reviews are only scribbling compared to what’s in his collection.

    Clute as an (intellectual) wrestler? I’m down and out!

  • The Forest of Time and Other Stories, Michael Flynn

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1997, 381 pages, C$33.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-85526-5

    In recent years, Michael Flynn has become one of Analog Magazine’s brightest writers, with tales of Hard Science-Fiction exemplifying what the genre is capable of doing nowadays. After a collaboration with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (Fallen Angels, an infamous homage to fandom incidentally never mentioned anywhere in this anthology), a story mosaic (The Nanotech Chronicles) and two novels of his own (In the Country of the Blind and the critically acclaimed Firestar), Michael Flynn offers us this collection of ten tales, all published in Analog between 1982 and 1994.

    Most of the ten tales are Hard-SF, even if there are a few borderline cases. There is an interesting variation of styles, from the tall tale (“On the High Frontier”) to the social satire (“Grave Reservation”) to alternate histories (“The Forest of Time”) to ambiguous SF/fantasy (“The Feeders”). A few stylistic tricks don’t overly complicate the usually straightforward style. The whole book is readable pretty quickly. A few stories are predictable.

    There is an introduction, and story notes for each tale. Readers will be pleased or annoyed by their elitist tone, (especially when Flynn talks about Hard-SF) but Flynn’s explanations are sometimes revealing.

    It’s an interesting book, and an adequate anthology. Flynn fans and Hard-SF enthusiasts should throw themselves on the paperback.

  • Tesseracts^5, Ed. Robert Runte & Yves Meynard

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tesseracts, 1996, 352 pages, C$9.00 mmpb, ISBN 1-895836-25-5

    As we all gather ’round the (imaginary) fire, we can ask ourselves many questions. Depending of the audience, one might chance to ask “What happened to Canadian SF?”

    Usually, this kind of question is asked with sadness, or disbelief. How could X have sunk to these lows? Where is Y now? Is Z better remembered by his role in an otherwise insipid TV sitcom of the sixties?

    But in the case of Canadian SF, What Happened To It is a story that can be told with a smile, a winning smile. What Happened To Canadian SF is that it’s never been better. Not only are major authors of the genre indisputably coming from Canada (Robert J. Sawyer is the best-known of them. There are/will be others.) but an increasing number of people are turning in totally enjoyable material. Case in Point: Tesseracts^5

    Published by Tesseracts books, a Canadian editor, and featuring stories by Canadian authors, the Tesseracts series of anthologies is now an annual celebration of the best SF found north of The Border. Any reader, not necessarily motivated by a sense of duty toward his country, can pick up this book and have a good time.

    Depending, of course, what one would consider a good time. While most stories in Tesseracts^5 are in fact excellent, nobody can argue that they’re almost uniformly gloomy. Abuse and anarchy abound. Even the most light-hearted story (Paul Stockon’s “High Pressure System”; the quintessential Canadian SF tale if there’s one!) still has a horrifying core. From accidental maiming (Jan Lars Jensen’s “Domestic Slash and Thrust”) to sexual domination games (“Laïka”, Natasha Beaulieu), the best stories are also the most uncompromising. What this says about CanSF is one truth that might not be comfortable to interpret yet.

    The anthology contains stories by both French, and English-speaking Canadians. (The French stories are translated) Fans of French-Canadian SF should note, that all of the French stories here have already appeared somewhere else despite the incomplete copyright information.

    Other than that, the best stories of the volume are by known and not-so-well-known names. Jean-Louis Trudel’s “The Paradigm Machine” is remarkable not really by its construction (four vignettes loosely connected) but by a representation of the Internet by someone who knows his stuff—The flame-war sequence is a gem. “Messenger” (Andrew Weiner) is an eminently readable piece about a journalist-narrator and (what else?) a “mad” scientist. Michel Martin’s “Tortoise on a sidewalk” and Sally McBride’s “There is a violence” do interesting things with the traditional clichés of, respectively, time-travel and alien contact. James Alan Gardner does a fine job at describing alien psyches, despite a slow start, in “All Good Things Come From Away”. Robert Runté’s afterword is well worth reading by itself.

    A few other stories are less pleasing: There are a fair number of plain tales, of interesting stories without any memorable conclusion, of pointless meandering and of perhaps too-subtle stuff. But as anthologies go, Tesseracts^5 is better than average in this regards.

    If there’s one serious complaint, it’s that the interior design of almost all Tesseracts books is not as good as it should be. It’s designed on a personal computer, and it shows: The typography is less precise than usual from professional publishers and the printing is often reminiscent of good photocopies.

    The presence of such an annual collection couldn’t be a better sign for the Canadian SF industry. It is to be hoped that the next volumes of the series (Tesseracts^6 is in bookstores as of this writing) maintain the high level of this book, and that more writers, known and unknown, find their stories widely distributed by this series.

  • Primary Colors, Joe Klein [as Anonymous]

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1996, 507 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-60427-5

    From time to time, a book appears which become more than a book. For a quirk or another, it becomes not something that talks about something, but something that’s talked about. Recent example include Kitty Kelley’s unflinching biography of Nancy Reagan (Her Way), the scientifically-racist The Bell Curve, James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy and… the “anonymously” written Primary Colors.

    In Primary Colors‘ case, the identity of the author was the subject of the discussions. Warner Books was pushing a satirical novel about American politics, in which a previously unknown southern governor (and his domineering wife) dealt with sexual scandals and other assorted problems on the way to the Democratic convention. Given the parallels with the Clintons, if it was written “anonymously” then it must have been the work of someone closely related to the Clintons! Could it have been the work of George Stephanopoulos, the press secretary? Or another person high up in the Clinton organization? Whodunit, Whowroteit?

    The game amused political America for a few weeks, until it was discovered that Joe Klein (a Newsweek journalist who covered the campaign.) wrote the novel. The game wasn’t over yet (more than a few journalists questioned the ethics of Klein, who reportedly went in rages of denial at his coworkers and friends before it was conclusively proven that it was him) but the controversy was enough to send Primary Colors riding on top of the bestsellers lists.

    But what about the book?

    Well, it’s just about everything we’ve been promised: a scathing look at American politics, starring the Stantons, close (but not perfect) representations of the Clintons. The events described in the book are, fortunately, quite fictional, and it makes for some mesmerizing reading about modern politics in America. The wheeling, dealing and back-room back-stabbing are all well-described, at the exception of a few rough spots where the author might have tried to be too clever for his own good.

    The story is narrated by Henry, one public relation whiz who joins the Stanton team early on. (The narrative stops before the presidential campaign.) During the book, Henry will fall in love with a fellow co-worker, deal with personal issues, discover shocking “truths”, make friends and influence people. His personal odyssey become at times more interesting than the campaign itself. He’s sympathetic, and he should be: A few passages are unusually moving, and the reader will run the gamut of emotions, from humor to disgust, back to exhilaration and loss.

    A strong stable of supporting characters help round out an already solidly-written novel. Klein’s style is not without quirks, but mostly carries the reader through to the story he’s telling. This isn’t an “anonymous” novel because the author disavowed his writing; Klein should be proud to have produced quite a good piece of prose. There are a few rough spots, and the conclusion is of the “make up your own” type, but Primary Colors is an interesting book in its own right. It’s appropriately cynical, fairly funny and compulsively readable. A must for every political pundit.

  • Light Raid, Cynthia Felice & Connie Willis

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1989, 263 pages, C$6.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-48312-7

    The line between reality and fiction, despite a few odd incidents, is very clear. In SF and other high-action genres designed for escapist entertainment, it is essential to suspend our disbelief; to accept without discussion some of the concepts at the basis of the fictional construct. With the best stories and authors, this is easy since there’s usually some kind of coherent link with What’s Already Known by Us. Lesser fiction assumes things out of thin air and bases the whole story on impossible concepts. The sagacious reader loses respect for the story, can’t believe in it, and usually closes the book in disgust. While a boring book is just a boring book, a bad book can be infuriating.

    This is all to say that Light Raid is a truly wretched novel. I would normally give average marks to this average story, but the problem is that the authors made a huge, fatal mistake: They used Quebec as the antagonist.

    The plot, so we might get past it as soon a possible: North America is torn apart by war. Quebec is fighting against an alliance of states, in this case the Western States. In this, somewhere, a teenage girl (Adriadne) is desperately trying to prove that her mother isn’t a spy for Quebec. Hijinks, laser raids by Quebec satellites and pathetic adolescent romance ensues.

    The problems with this already-stupid plot are numerous: The first being, of course, that it’s impossible. There are seven million people in Quebec, half of them in Montreal and most of them in jobs that aren’t exactly in highly-scientific or technological sectors. And we’re supposed to believe that these evil Quebeckers can terrorize three hundred million people with laser satellites? To take a comparable simile, can you imagine North America at war with Evil Ontarians? Uh-huh.

    Militarily speaking, the protracted war described in Light Raid is absurd. War buffs will tell you that high-tech conflict can’t last long; it’s even worse to consider that Quebec, a province in a country without an inkling of a decent space program, could maintain an orbital fleet of laser satellites without… ahem… American intervention.

    But that’s small potatoes to Felice and Willis, who had to have an antagonist, and who better to use that the Quebeckers since they don’t speak English, (*gasp,* the infamy!) and probably won’t even read the novel anyway. Would the novel would have worked better starring, say, a California-Texas Union? Absolutely. Would it have pissed off Texans and Californians? You bet. Would that have affected the book’s sales figures? Rhetorical question, my dear Watson.

    The idiocy doesn’t stop there, though: Speaking of Watson, one of the characters is an agent for Scotland Yard. Never mind if Scotland Yard has jurisdiction in western North America, or why there’s a Saskatchewan Prince: His main purpose is to get Adriadne out of trouble and make sure she have sex with the right guy (i.e.: himself. Never mind she’s 17 and he’s 22. Must be typical adolescent romance stuff.)

    Even more shocking, the Peter Harris cover illustration actually represents a scene from the book. (“Where will it stop?” he cried.)

    This book is insulting, and what’s worse, not even remotely engaging. Call it a unfavorable prejudice, but I just couldn’t get into it considering the blatant disregard for reality that the authors display in their world-building. I always say that If you can’t muster the intelligence, rigor and will to play by the physical rules of the universe, you shouldn’t even try. In this case, I hope never to see anything this horrible again: Connie Willis has demonstrated she’s able to do better (Bellwether), but it’s going to be difficult for her to do much worse.

  • The Heechee Saga, Frederik Pohl

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 1977-1990, ??? pages, C$??.?? mmpb, ISBN Various

    Gateway,1977, 278 pages
    Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, 1982, 279 pages
    Heechee Rendez-vous, 1984, 311 pages
    The Annals of the Heechee, 1987, 278 pages
    The Gateway Trip, 1990, 244

    Frederik Pohl is a workmanlike SF writer, turning out novel after novel of decent -if not overly exciting- works. As a founding elder of modern SF, he’s been around a while and so there’s a large fan base for his works. Pohl’s writing career can be divided in two sections: The first took place before 1961, when he revolutionized the SF field by writing social satires (often in collaboration with C. M. Kornbluth; see the beloved classic The Space Merchants). After a lull in which he edited genre magazines, the second half of his writing career truly ignited in 1977 with Gateway.

    Gateway (Best Novel Nebula and Hugo) was the story of one Robinette Broadhead, who spent most of the novel telling his hang-ups to a psychological computer program. The Gateway of the title is a vast asteroid, filled with alien ships who can travel across the galaxy. Problem is, they don’t always come back… and Humans can’t control the ship in any way. Gateway is a fun read, presenting intriguing idea and a suitably complex protagonist in a clean, compelling prose. Some call it one of the best SF novels ever, others just like it very much.

    Beyond the Blue Event Horizon takes place a few years later, when Robinette is even richer, and feeling far more guilty. Another alien Heechee artifact is discovered in this solar system, and Robinette must (as in “must advance the plot”) explore it. This sequel is a bit of a letdown, and isn’t resolved at the end.

    Heechee Rendez-vous picks up another few years after the events in the sequel, and introduces even more plot threads only tied up at the end of the fourth volume. Said fourth volume offers less surprises than the previous three, and the ultimate conclusion is easily guessable by the sufficiently attentive reader.

    The four-book cycle could have easily been compressed in a trilogy, mostly by forgoing extrataneous elements in the second and fourth volume. The inclusion of a few misunderstood kids in the fourth tome is especially grating.

    But it’s an interesting series. Concepts are deftly introduced (not always, though: Lumps of ugly exposition are scattered here and there) and used in efficient ways. Pohl’s style is readable even at its worst. A sense of accomplishment is gained.

    The Gateway Trip ends up the series on a high note. More of a collection of ideas about Gateway, it reprints the fascinating novella The Merchants of Venus (prequel to the whole series) and a bunch of short fictional-expositionnary texts about Gateway, the expeditions from Gateway, the Heechees and other stuff. It can be safely read by anyone who’s read the first two volumes, and could even be used as a substitute for the last three books. Lavishly illustrated by Frank Kelly Freas (the illustrations lose their potency in the paperback edition, though) it’s a lovely little book, well worth the effort and money for Gateway fans.

  • The Best of the Nebula, Ed. Ben Bova

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1989, 593 pages, C$17.00 tpb, ISBN 0-312-93175-1

    A 600-pages book full of the “best Nebula-winning stories”.

    To me, that sounds dreadful. I prefer Hugos to Nebulas: My liking for storytelling over literary prowess is well-known, and so is (despite a few exceptions) the preference of the SFWA for literary prowess over storytelling.

    And yet, I’ve made a point to read all the Nebula-winning novels, and most of the Nebula-winning stories. The Best of the Nebula offered a chance to complete my collection.

    The books is edited by Ben Bova, who not only serves us a lousy introduction, but also a few paternalistic introductions. As for the actual content, most of the stories are “classics”… this despite actual quality or entertainment value.

    For instance, I’ve never been able to read McCafferey’s “Dragonrider” to the end, and this anthology only serves to up the number of tentative to five. Most of Zelazny, Tiptree, Delany, Leiber, Russ or LeGuin’s material doesn’t impress me, and this didn’t change with The Best of the Nebula either. On the other hand, I’m glad I finally read Martin’s “Sandkings”, Ellison’s “A Boy and his Dog”, Silverberg’s “Passengers” and Moorcock’s “Behold the Man”.

    This anthology offers a fairly good overview of slightly higher-grade SF for the literate neophyte, but fans of the genre will want to take a look at the table of content before buying it.

    I’ve played the game, and selected my favourite Nebulas since 1965. Here’s the list:

    Novels

    • Dune, Frank Herbert (1965)
    • Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke (1973)
    • The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (1975)
    • Man Plus, Frederik Pohl (1976)
    • Gateway, Frederik Pohl (1977)
    • Startide Rising, David Brin (1983)
    • Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
    • Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (1985)
    • Moving Mars, Greg Bear (1994)
    • The Terminal Experiment, Robert J. Sawyer (1995)

    Short Stories

    • “Repent Harlequin!, Said the Ticktockman”, Harlan Ellison (1965)
    • “Behold the Man”, Michael Moorcock (1967)
    • “The Screwfly Solution”, Alice Sheldon (1977)
    • “GiANTS”, Edward Bryant (1979)
    • “Tangents”, Greg Bear (1986)

    Novelettes and Novellas

    • “A Meeting with Medusa”, Arthur C. Clarke (1972)
    • “The Bicentennial Man”, Isaac Asimov (1976)
    • “Sandkings”, George R. R. Martin (1979)
    • “The Ugly Chicken”, Howard Waldrop (1980)
    • “Blood Music”, Greg Bear (1983)
    • “The Night We Buried Road Dog”, Jack Cady (1993)

    …and a few others, mostly in the Novel and Longer Short Stories category, but that’ll do for now. Of course, my list of favorite Hugo-winners is far, far more interesting…

  • Samurai from Outer Space, Antonia Levi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Open Court, 1996, 169 pages, C$30.00 tpb, ISBN 0-8126-9332-9

    You can find the strangest thing at your nearest college’s library.

    For instance, there I was in the University of Ottawa main library, checking out the New Arrival section, when a title bounced at me from the bottom row: Samurai from Outer Space. Who could resist taking a look at a book with such a title? I picked it up. The subtitle clinched it for me: “Understanding Japanese Animation.”

    Now, understand that I am not an otaku (anime (Japanese animation) fan). I’ve watched countless hours of dubbed Japanese animation in my youth (French-Canadian TV was/is full of dubbed Japanese children’s series) and the “big” anime movies (AKIRA, GHOST IN THE SHELL) but I don’t go to the local Anime club, or track down the latest anime release as soon as it’s imported. I don’t even know more than a handful of Japanese words.

    But I’ve got friends who are otaku. One of them’s the audiovisual tech for the anime club, the other knows enough Japanese to get by… With this kind of friend, I’d have to be an idiot not to get at least a passing appreciation for the genre by passive osmosis. So, it was only natural that I had to borrow Samurai from Outer Space.

    (To give an idea of the mindset of UfO computer science students, everyone I showed the book to either said “Oooh!” or “Cool!”)

    Reading this book is time well-spent. Samurai from Outer Space is a fascinating journey into not only Japanese animation, but into the very collective mind of Japan’s society. As Levi points out in her introduction, you can’t understand art without understanding the cultural context in which this art was produced. Most of the time, anime is produced by Japanese for Japanese. The attitudes of anime are thus the attitudes of Japan itself. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of history already knows about the divergent paths Japan and Western culture undertook, only to be reunited in the last few decennia.

    This difference is reflected everywhere: Anime is built on a paradigm that is completely different from the Western tradition of storytelling. Mood is important; virtue isn’t necessarily rewarded; the eyes have it; women can be powerful and sexy without being a sidekick; characters can be multifaceted; animation isn’t for kids; you don’t have to have a happy ending… And that’s barely scratching the surface. The chapter on the role of women in anime and Japanese society is revealing; far from being powerless, the typical Japanese housewife wields an unsuspected power in Japan. (A power often reminiscent of the role of the rural French-Canadian housewife between 1850-1950, but I digress once again…)

    But what about the otaku who doesn’t care about sociology? (Levi is quick to point out that a true otaku is bound to be interested in Japanese society, note!) Samurai from Outer Space is a splendid text for both novices and experts. Some of the analysis is invaluable and a few conclusions are surprising.

    The book isn’t always interesting, especially for the casual reader: The chapter on religion is loaded with references to traditional Japanese myths, and while they’re well-explained, they’re not always easy to grasp. Sometimes, Levi overdoes the sociological analysis on this side of the Pacific ocean (“Gen-Xers […] were born in an overcrowded world filled with crime”, [P.108] etc…) but everything holds up pretty well. For an academic publication, the style is downright breezy: I found myself smiling through most of the book, and laughing quite heartily at a few places. Also notable are the “side-notes”, literally placed on the side of the page rather that at the bottom, or the end. Samurai from Outer Space could have used a few more illustrations and put them alongside the text rather in a separate section, but publishers can’t always do it all, I guess.

    In short: Grab it, read it, you’ll like it. Recommended.

  • Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1996, 326 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-09958-2

    In Look at the Evidence, master SF critic John Clute has written a fascinating essay on what he calls the “true age” of a SF work. Ineptly put, this mean that despite the stated year in which a Science-Fiction work takes place, it is almost always about another year. Most of the time, a book written in, say, 1995 will be about 1990 rather than 2361. Most of the SF written in the seventies is thus about the seventies: Overpopulation, environmental collapse and feminism all figure prominently in these works. (Clute then goes on to state that a lot of recent genre SF is about 1940-1960, which is a fascinating idea that deserves exploration… but not here.)

    Clute’s theory isn’t universally applicable, but works quite well in the case of Bruce Sterling’s latest novel; Holy Fire.

    Before venturing further in critical theory, though, a bit of plot:  Holy Fire takes place a century from now, in a future where life-extension treatments are getting increasingly commonplace and efficient. Not surprisingly, the power is now in the hand of those who live the longest, who can invest their money in decade-long financial enterprises and can afford to wait to reap the results. There’s now “real money” and the young don’t have any. Gerontocracy is a common word in this novel.

    Mia Ziemann is a medical economist nearing ninety years of age, and it’s her job to know about these things. The novel opens as she visits an old lover but a few fortuitous encounters later, Mia decides that it’s time to cash in her life savings and to be rejuvenated. Once that is done, she escapes from her medical supervision and makes her way to Europe, where she spends the remainder of the novel hanging out with anarchists, calling herself Maya, sleeping with unattractive men and finding her true self, not necessarily in this order.

    It doesn’t take a diploma in literary engineering or medical sociology to guess why Holy Fire is a novel of the nineties: In an age where the baby-boomers are hitting their fifties in greater numbers (and retiring younger and younger; this critic’s father being a case in point) it’s evident that Sterling is taking a unsettling tendency and pushing it in a farther, more “Comfortable” future. Mia’s world is becoming more friendly, less violent, but also more boring with less place for innovation and initiative. Parallels…?

    A better, but less exciting work than Sterling’s previous Heavy Weather, Holy Fire uses the word “postmodernist” a lot. It shouldn’t be too surprising then that most of the novel consists of aimless wandering through the anarchist cliques of Europe. Sometimes it’s interesting, other time it’s filler until something happens. The Maya/Mia dichotomy isn’t very well defined, or at least could have been used better. This novel consciously turn the traditionally SF “coming of age” novel on its head by starring a 90-year old woman rediscovering herself using a young body. (Is it a “going of age” or “re-coming of age” novel?)

    Still, Holy Fire is very likely one of the best SF book you’re likely to read this year. Sterling, a leading proponent of the now-passé (really?) cyberpunk movement, has kept intact his love of gadgets so evident in all his works. Holy Fire features talking dogs (including a likable talk-show host), translating devices (sometime reminiscent of Douglas Adam’s Babel Fish), a believable rejuvenating process (probably the most mesmerizing sequence of the book) and some impressive home pages… er… palaces.

    A mature, sometime meandering work, Holy Fire strengthens Sterling’s position as one of the surest talent of contemporary SF. Perhaps too consciously post-something to achieve wide success and recognition, but smart and speculative enough to be read anyway.

  • Unfriendly Skies, Captain "X" and Reynolds Dodson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 1989, 236 pages, C$24.95 hc, ISBN 0-385-24824-5

    There are some books adequate to read on a long airplane flight, and then there’s Unfriendly Skies.

    This book is an informal exposé of the then-current (1989) state of the civil aviation industry in North America. Written by an anonymous airplane captain with journalist Reynolds Dodson, it is at times frightening, hilarious, hair-raising and fascinating.

    Captain “X” began his flying career in the military, and then came aboard “a major airline”, where he climbed the steps toward full captainship of an airliner. His experiences span more than twenty years, and he’s got a lot of stories to tell. Somewhere between anecdotal autobiography and diatribe against deregulation, Unfriendly Skies is an immensely readable, thoughtful, witty work.

    Captain “X” -through the services of Dodson- tells his stories with a tough, no-nonsense voice. The style is often gripping, and switches with ease between horror and humor. While the aim of the book is to expose the dangers of deregulation, Unfriendly Skies goes beyond that to become the memoirs of a pilot: Readers of Airport will like this one.

    This isn’t the shocking “revelations of a deregulated airline pilot” we’re promised on the cover. While the inside jacket copy will try to sell this book as a denunciation of current policies, you will most probably come away from this book as more appreciative of airline pilots than anything else. The fault, Captain “X” says, resides more with the politicians who passed the deregulation legislations than with anyone else.

    The material covered by Unfriendly Skies is diverse: Training, Death, Passenger oddities, Hijackers, Airports, Microbursts… Truly a round-up of the pilot’s experiences, this is one of the best books on the subject.

    And it is brutally honest. Several airplane accidents are discussed and dissected. Perhaps the most frightening revelation of all are the microbursts, atmospheric phenomenons that can make an airplane fall several hundred meters without warning. What can be done about it? Nothing.

    Similarly, Captain “X” tells about the life of the average pilot. How divorces are common, how they always catch colds from the incessant traveling, how their family life is a mixture of absence and presence. It’s not an easy job, and this book shows why.

    To take only one chapter as an example:

    For a French Canadian, it’s a shock to learn that Montreal is one of the worst city in North America (“Excedrin Capitals”) when it comes to passengers: Captain “X” tells of an instance where a drunk French Canadian woman punched a captain who was trying to tell her not to smoke in the non-smoker section. (And they say that cigarettes don’t make you more aggressive…) Believe it or not, that’s one of the more pleasant stories. From the TV star which poured a cup of coffee on a stewardess to the drugged New Yorker who fondled a sixteen year old and bit another passenger’s nose, we’re quick to realize that the most dangerous components in an airplane might not be in the cockpit…

    Unfriendly Skies fulfils most of the qualities of a good general nonfiction book: It’s got style, readability, content and facts. Unfortunately, the book lacks an index and falters when it tries to preach, but redeems itself by an optimistic view of future commercial air travel and a good organization of the material. Recommended… but not as airplane reading.

  • The Stars are Also Fire, Poul Anderson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1994, 412 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-85534-6

    I really don’t know why I bought this book.

    Granted, I was celebrating my last day on the job, and okay, so it was a Fat First Edition Tor Hardcover at 3.99$(Can.) but still… The Stars are Also Fire is the sequel to Harvest of Stars, another Fat Tor Hardcover bought for 3.99$(Can.) in the throes of a spending delirium. Harvest of Star ended up long and boring. The Star are also Fire is even worse.

    The problem, I think, is all in the writing. Even if I gathered that the book was about evolution, AIs, independence and complex family matters (not to mention colonizable planetoids) the writing is so stupefyingly dull that all the excitement of the plot is smothered. Beautiful prose, but complete lack of action. To make matter worse, the book is looooooooong. Even simple actions take three, four pages.

    So, no stars for The Stars are also Fire In fact, the remainder of this review would be my appreciation of the book if I had to say it stand-up comedian style. (Sorry, Mr. Anderson.)

    So I bought this book last week. [Applause] Yeah, I know. Anyway, it’s from Poul Anderson and the cover’s pretty spiffy. [Shows book to audience] Yeah, the Vincent DiFate picture has absolutely no relation to what’s inside the book, but hey: We’re used to that from DiFate. In fact, if I ever see a DiFate cover faithfully representing what’s in the book; watch out, ’cause I’m gonna sue!

    So I begin to read the book and fall asleep. I wake up, start to read again, fall asleep again! What’s the matter here? This some kind of US Army experiment? Or maybe they’re gearing up so if the FDA bans sleeping pills, they’re gonna get out literary substitutes?

    I tell you, it’s been a slice since I’ve read a something that boring. I fact, I think it was last year’s tax papers. And those were only a few pages while this sucker’s more than 400 pages long! At least with this book, you get your money’s worth of sedatives. And some still say that length doesn’t matter!

    Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure your sex life will improve with this book. Soon, you’ll be thinking: Oh, sex with the wife, or a few more pages of this? “Hmm… Oh, Honey?” Afterward, just make sure to make conversation before attempting a chapter or two.

    Still, the book has its uses around the house: I was hanging a few paintings lately, and this book helped enormously: It’s so boring, I could use it to drill holes through the walls! Brother-in-law dropping by when you’ve got other plan? No Problem! “Come here, bro: Let me read you a few pages of this. What? Leaving already?”

    I should feel lucky, I guess. At least, this isn’t as bad as Michael Crichton’s Sphere. Read that book? Yeah, nay? Well, that Crichton thing ends up by, I’m not making this up, “and it was all a dream.” Yeah, and you’re dreaming if you think I’m going to buy another one of your books, Mickey! That was so bad that I throw my copy on the wall every month. Both covers are now gone, as are a few pages. Once, I was with a friend, threw the book on the wall, at there’s a page that flies away from everything else, okay? So I take the page, rip it up, and eat the darn pieces! Dung it was, and dung it will become again!!

    Thank you, thank you, see you next time! [Applause]

    (All events are fictional, except for everything in the Sphere paragraph, which is all scrupulously true, including the dung line.)

  • Rogue Warrior, Richard Marcinko & John Wiseman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1992, 397 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-79593-7

    On the surface, Richard Marcinko’s Rogue Warrior appears to be one of the most entertaining autobiographies you’re ever likely to read. Told in the language of warriors, with the tough-guy style and the mucho-macho attitude, it’s the life of Richard Marcinko, SEAL. Marcinko, among other things, fought in Vietnam and Cambodia, founded SEAL Team Six (the Navy’s counter-terrorist unit), founded Red Cell (the Navy’s simuli-terrorist unit) and then was kicked out of the Navy.

    Marcinko is a real-life action hero. His training exercises had more bite that the average Stallone movie. Some of his actual operations are sometimes too good to be easily believed. His rise through the rank, even despite his gung-ho attitude, is impressive.

    As it’s an assisted autobiography, you can bet that Marcinko plays his tough-guy role to the hilt. He swears, he talks back to superiors, he sleeps around with every female not seriously overweight, he kills enemies, he hates wimpy paper-pushers, he always have impeccable justifications -moral, if not legal- for what he does.

    For Marcinko, the ends justifies the means. If he has to disobey orders; fine. Overrule the chain of command; sure. Disregard protocol; no problem. Use excessive force; we’re in a war, man!

    And this is where Rogue Warrior becomes fascinating. While such blatant disregard for authority might be excellent fodder for action movies and military thrillers, Richard Marcinko is a real-life figure. He fits the profile of an out-of-control operative perfectly, in acts if not in spirit. He might have been too successful; we (helpless, wimpy, naive civilians) can’t help but being uneasy at the casualness of the swearing, the macho ideal of sleeping with as many women as possible, the quasi-“boys-with-toys” attitude.

    Rogue Warrior is likely to be one of the best military-related book you’ll read this year, or any year if you’re a fan of the genre. (Having a predilection for action movies and right-wings political tendencies certainly helps, by the way.) More sophisticated readers will find here a provocative testimony to the difference between fact and fiction.

    It seems that even Marcinko realizes this; four novels by the co-authors of Rogue Warrior have appeared since 1993 (Red Cell, Green Team, Task Force Blue, Designation Gold) each with the distinctive tough-guy approach that made this autobiography so readable, but without the “Hey! This happened!” feeling. (Amusingly (?), at least one page on the Internet mixes up the novels with the “real-life adventures” of Richard Marcinko. Doom on us.) I’ve been told the guy’s a regular hero in some of the most extremist right-wing groups. Strangely, I can see why…

    February 1998: Marcinko’s forays in fiction aren’t particularly worth remembering, but if you want something really off-the-wall, grab a copy of the non-fiction Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior. It’s worth the quick read. In Leadership Secrets, Marcinko applies his style, vocabulary, anecdotes and attitude to the fine art of… management. No kidding. Corporate America better start shaking in their boots. For the most part, his advice makes sense. (“Lead from the front, keep asking subordinate to prove themselves, do the unexpected, etc…”) But the style is just light-years away from any management book you’re ever likely to read. And the swearwords are the least of it. It’s hilarious and ten times more fun than Lee Iacocca’s biography, it’s the kind of book you keep just to show to friends. A real curio. Just don’t start shooting business rivals, okay?

  • Ancient Shores, Jack McDevitt

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Prism, 1996, 372 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-06-105426-7

    In High School, we once had a question on a geography exam which went a bit like this: “Why are we sure that there weren’t any other advanced civilizations on Earth centuries ago?” The correct answer being, of course, that we would have found artifacts and other signs of their presences. Given modern scientific methods, it’s a fair bet to say that—despite more than a few new-age fantasies—no other civilizations roamed the earth before ours.

    I often thought back to that exam question when reading Jack McDevitt’s Ancient Shores. The novel begin when one farmer hits a “rock” in a field in North Dakota. As any good farmer knows, rocks must be taken out of fields before they can break machinery (I’m speaking from personal experience, here) So they dig, dig, dig… and find a full-sized yacht. A few pages later, we discover that the boat is made of “impossible” element 161…

    Ever since seeing that gorgeous Bob Eggleton illustration on the cover of The Engines of God, I’ve been having these weird urges to try some McDevitt. I finally broke down in the Ottawa Public Library “New Arrivals” section, borrowing McDevitt’s latest paperback release, Ancient Shores.

    For the most part, it’s an acceptable book. The existence of alien artifacts on Earth produces some very believable reactions, but also more than a few doubtful thought processes. Most of the news snippets about economic collapse due to indestructible materials are, to me, unlikely. Business has too much inertia to experience the rapid downturn exhibited in the novel.

    This quibble aside, the book moves quickly enough to satisfy anyone. Only the last part drags, mostly because we know where the novel is going. The ultimate conclusion hovers between the over-dramatic and the just right.

    Characters are handled the right way, but there are far too many secondary characters introduced once in great detail, and then never to be seen again. There are times where I miss Brunner’s approach in Stand On Zanzibar, with chapters being explicitly designated as being background material, subplots or integral to the main story.

    But by far the biggest problem with Ancient Shores is the impression that we’ve only read the first novel in a series. By the end of the book, many possibilities have been opened, and the effect is more one of dissatisfaction than of mind-expansion. Have I mentioned the possible presence of an alien life-form that’s not even solved by the end of the story?

    It occurred to me that Ancient Shores shares interesting similarities with Stephen Gould’s Wildside: A doorway to other worlds, the combat of a smallish band of explorers against government orders to take over the artifact, etc… Unfortunately, Wildside is a better book: In the end, reader reaction to Ancient Shores is likely to be one of vague satisfaction rather than definite liking. Too many loose ends (and possibly too many knots) are left to give a sentiment of satisfaction. Too bad, because McDevitt sure knows how to write in a way to hook the reader.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go take some rocks out of nearby fields…

    [September 1998A Talent For War (Jack McDevitt), despite its name, is not a military SF novel. Instead, expect -if possible- a far-future story where an initially shallow pseudo-historian tries to uncover a historical enigma more than two centuries old. Of course, there are various action sequences sprinkled here and there. Pretty good stuff, but just don’t make the mistake of reading the first hundred pages, letting it lie for a few days and then go back to it; you’ll be hopelessly confused with the dozen of important character names. As ever, McDevitt writes clearly and the result is an unusual novel that can be read easily. Not as good as it could have been (tightening up the action could have been useful) but a good choice.]

    [October 1998Eternity Road, by Jack McDevitt, is a disappointment. Despite his knack fro creating engaging plots around far-future archaeological/historical investigations (no less than four of his novels have this motif), here he fumbles and the result is overlong and short on satisfaction. Eternity Road takes place roughly a thousand years in the future, most of these years after the catastrophic fall of our civilization. The plot, roughly, is a quest toward a legendary place through post-apocalyptic countryland. Yes, we’ve seen this elsewhere. Though there are several odd quirky details to keep up our interest (the bank and the A.I. scenes are fun), the novel feels too episodic, to quickly wrapped up, too ordinary to be remembered fondly. It takes almost forever to start, and then cuts off almost in mid-story. Not up to McDevitt’s usual standards, and not really worth your time unless you’re a post-apocalyptic buff or a McDevitt completist.]