Book Review

  • Courtship Rite, Donald Kingsbury

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1982, 409 pages, C$4.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-46089-7

    If you should be so lucky as to meet Donald Kingsbury in person, you will be impressed. With his 6-foot+ frame, unkempt white hair and long-winded interventions, he’ll towers above you physically and intellectually. He’s the perfect picture of a British intellectual. He’d make a perfect mad scientist. Instead, he turned to Science-Fiction.

    My first Kingsbury fiction was the excellent “To Bring in the Steel” in the Hard-SF anthology The Ascent of Wonder. A good hard-SF tale, it also delved unusually deep into the psyche of its characters. “A mix of Herbert and Heinlein,” I thought at the time.

    With Courtship Rite, the comparison with Herbert seems more and more adequate:  it’s a planetary romance of the best, most intricate sort… just as Dune was.

    On the planet of Geta, several centuries in the future, a human civilisation has evolved after quite a few centuries of isolation from Earth. Geta is a desert: arid, harsh, barren. Most of the plants are poisonous. The human society has adapted in consequence: Cannibalism is the only source of meat, marriages involve multiple partners, people “decorate” themselves with scars and complex rituals dictate courtship, death, love… This isn’t a “nice” society, nor an easy book to digest. The technological level is barely above medieval despite the advanced genetic knowledge and some scenes are simply brutal.

    The story itself is ho-hum: Boys love girl, but chief orders them to marry barbarian princess. Boys stage Ritual of Death to see if she’s worthy and the story goes on from there. What follows is war, pain, death, a more-or-less happy ending, several levels of intersecting intrigue and a fascinating social exploration. The book is immensely detailed, yet effortlessly so: Kingsbury obviously knows Geta like he lived there.

    For Courtship Rite is the social equivalent of Hard-SF tales. Geta’s society is meticulously described by affection and -yes- admiration. I was impressed by the originality and completeness of the vision. In many ways, this book is a trip on another planet.

    The characters are exceptionally well-drawn. This is a superior planetary romance, on both sense of the term: A smart SF Harlequin book… (albeit an unusually sadistic one) Kingsbury had put a lot of care in his characters and it shows. Whatever the story is, you care for them. What’s more, I got the unusual feeling that the latter part of the book was moved along by the characters; excellent. Each of the book’s 66 chapters is headed by an original epigram -another touch of Dune– and some of them are true gems.

    It’s a magnificent tapestry, a very dense, well-written book. I recommend spending a little more time on this book. I didn’t and frankly, I now regret it. A re-reading in a few year will be much more satisfying. It has the depth of Dune, if maybe not the strong narrative drive: The story is uneven and takes more than a while to rev up to speed. Add to that a few technological inconsistencies (the genetic vs mechanical knowledge) and the overall effect is diminished, but still impressive.

    Still, it’s a very good read. It’s no wonder it was nominated for the 1982 Hugos. If you can find it in used libraries, don’t hesitate to pick it up. This isn’t for everyone, would make a rotten miniseries, will certainly shock most SF readers in places (even the most jaded) but is worth of attention by mature SF readers.

  • Ammonite, Nicola Griffith

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 1992, 349 pages, C$4.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-37891-1

    Re-reading the above reviews, I am filled with dread: Not only aren’t they very good, but they’re also insufferably nice. I hate nice. Sooner or later, someone is going to send me a nasty e-mail asking whether or not Kim Stanley Robinson paid me for the heaps of praise lavished on his Mars trilogy.

    So, in an effort to scale back the balance a bit, I have selected the worst SF book I have read this year. And this book is gonna get it. Be sure of one thing; I am not going to get any check from Nicola Griffith in the foreseeable future.

    Because, you see, Ammonite is a bad novel. There are many degrees of badness, as well as several factors that sour my opinions of a particular book and Ammonite is a particularly remarkable intersection of a bunch of these anti-qualities.

    I’ll be honest: I’m less than partial to explicitly feminist novels. I’ve explained several of the reasons elsewhere, but my main point is that fighting excesses with excesses are not a good way to win. Castrating all males is as much a power fantasy as tying up all females. (Personally, —I have a sister—there’s no doubt in my mind that women are as much out equal in terms of aggressiveness and inherent potential for violence… watch out when social conditioning will crumble.)

    And Ammonite is an explicitly feminist novel. In spades.

    On a certain planet, all men die and most women get temporarily sick from a native virus. Centuries pass, and anthropologist Marghe Taishan (that’s our heroine) arrives on the abandoned planet to test a new vaccine. What she discovers is a pastoral, all-female society (or rather, societies: War’s still going on between the clans.) Ah, but if all males dies upon exposure at the virus, how are the women reproducing? Will Marghe be able to stop the conflict between the opposing forces? Will she find love, meaning and happiness on this planet?

    Now here comes my biggest objection to the book. Any careful SF fan could be able to guess where the story’s going based on the previous paragraph: The women are able to reproduce themselves with the transformations brought by the virus. Marghe will go native, meet girl and fall in love, but not before going through some terrible experiences of her own. Odds are that she will go through the single most defining experience for a woman on the planet, which is becoming pregnant “all by herself” (with a little help from her friend.) Of course, we can expect her to solve the Big Political Conflict by the end of the book and Live Happily Ever After.

    The fun of SF, in most cases, is to see the author destroy our preconceived assumptions while going through the novel. And it would be even better for said author to do it entertainingly: I want action, or intelligence. If you’re about to write a 350-pages book, be sure to sustain it with enough plot, storyline twists and surprises to make me feel I’ve paid an adequate sum for the g’darn book!

    Sadly, this doesn’t happen here. The expected twists never come: Marghe goes native, is rejected by natives, goes through some terrible experiences, falls in love, never gets sympathetic but does get pregnant, solve the conflict and Lives Happily Ever after. Points are deducted for goofy science, interminable length and glorification of new-agish crap.

    To put it simply: There are no surprises in this book. By the time the Big Political Conflict is solved, we just don’t care anymore. I would have liked the book better if Marghe would have either just hung herself or loosened the man-killing virus upon the galaxy. But this doesn’t happen.

    It might be a wise time to include a personal interlude here: In the first three months of 1996, I took an English course at my very own UofO, entitled “Utopian and Science-Fiction.” The course, taught by a teacher by the unlikely name of P h y l l i s P. P e r r a k i s, stank, bored and confused. But that’s another essay: “How academia doesn’t get SF, or at least not around here.”

    At one point in the course, a female student from nearby Carleton University came into our class to ask if anyone was interested in participating in a survey for some kind of thesis on feminist SF. One of the two books: Ammonite. One fellow classmate (female) wanted to participate: “Anything for a free book” she said.

    I warned her. I told her it wasn’t worth it. I pleaded for abstinence and restraint. I used a great many deal of **asterisks** to convince her not to waste her time on the book. But she didn’t listen…

    Guess what? A week later, same place, same time: Fellow (female) classmate comes to me and says: “You’re right. It’s an incredibly boring book.” Ha! Vindication! Seems that her problem with the book was the same than mine: No surprises, incredible ennui…

    Ammonite, to restate, is a failure as a novel. Even then, it almost succeeds as a science-fiction story. The first chapters are interesting, but as soon as we get an idea of where the novel’s going, it loses all interest. Marghe’s trek across the planet is nothing compared to the odyssey the reader has to endure through the novel’s 349 pages. By the time everything settles down, we just don’t care anymore.

    More on new-ageish crap: The society described by Griffith in Ammonite is barely feudal. Isolated clans, fighting for dominance until Marghe makes them all cooperate. Rejection of technology (which only serves males or male-indoctrinated females) is much more than strongly implied. The goofy pseudo-explanation for the virus’ effect smacks more of undigested psychic healing exploita than actual biology. Techies, or just rational people, will have to go elsewhere to get decent entertainment.

    As a feminist tract, it’s not very good either. It did win the Lambda award for best gay/lesbian/bisexual novel of the year, but this award means exactly what it does… Not that all “feminist” novels are bad, or anti-technology: Elisabeth Vonarburg’s In the Mother’s Land/The Maerlande Chronicles is a good example of female-dominated, interesting, non-anti-tech novel.

    In summary: Burn, baby, burn!

  • A Million Open Doors, John Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 1992, 315 pages, C$25.95 hc, ISBN 0-312-85210-X

    Much like the Music Industry’s been feverishly looking for bands “like the Beatles”, SF has been looking for “Heinlein’s Successor” ever since the Grandmaster declined/became boring/died in 1988. Various successor have been appointed (including most notably Spider Robinson; not a bad choice) but none has risen to take the crown.

    The latest heir to the throne is John Barnes, a science-fiction writer whose books have been steadily growing in maturity and intensity. From an inauspicious beginning (The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky, 1988) Barnes has produced a few fine novels (most notably Orbital Resonance and A Million Open Doors) before hitting the big-time in 1994 with his excellent disaster epic Mother of Storms, followed in 1995 by the ultraviolent Kaleidoscope Century (His latest projects are the fantasy One for the Morning Glory and a series of men’s adventure books self-admittedly written for a quick buck.)

    Why the comparisons with Heinlein? Ask the four authors whose blurb on the back cover of A Million Open Doors compare Barnes to the Big Guy. Ask David Pringle, whose Ultimate Encyclopedia of SF says “If Robert Heinlein had been raised amid suburbs and malls and the socio-political chaos of the past three decades, he might have grown up to be John Barnes.”

    Yet, the comparison is unfair: Barnes’ forte is sociological extrapolation and -lately,- fiction that isn’t afraid to pull its punches, may it be in violent or sexual content. Quite a few Usenet readers have expressed a few doubts about the author himself after reading the ultra-violent-porn subplot in Mother of Storms. Others are reputedly abandonning Barnes after the sometimes graphic Kaleidoscope Century.

    Well, never mind that. With A Million Open Doors, we take a trip back to a kinder, gentler John Barnes. This is a tale of two planets: harsh Caledony, where a religious government casts a humorless, rigid shadow over their inhabitants and Nou Occitan, a planet “where duels are fought with equal passion over insults and artistic views alike.” The narrator of the tale is Girault, a “young” man living the extravagant life of the traditional Nou Occitans. He spends his days drinking with his friends, fighting duels, insulting strangers and writing poetry for his “girlfriend.” When said girlfriend “betrays him in the worst way possible”, Girault finds himself running away from her, off on Caledony.

    Yep, this is a novel of Culture Shock: Imagine a 16th-century French aristocrat trying to convert modern-day Iran to his way of life and you’ll have a good idea of this novel’s thrust. But as Girault changes Caledonia, Caledonia changes him too… Like so many good Heinlein novels, this is also a very good coming-of-age story.

    I was surprised and delighted by A Million Open Doors. It’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s very amusing. This novel has that extra… oh… “joie-de-vivre” that leaves you smiling even days after reading this book. Better yet, this is an intelligent bright novel. Barnes’ insight in what make societies tick is impressive. At the same time, the story stays very personal: A strong cast of characters complement narrator Girault’s passage in adulthood, ten years belated. This isn’t as much a “Growing Up” novel as a “Will you grow up, already!” story.

    This is a much more even novel than the latter Mother of Storms. It’s more focused and less dark. Less brilliant, perhaps (Mother of Storms is an incredibly smart novel, even for SF) but with a larger potential audience. (This isn’t to say A Million Open Doors is fluffy from start to finish: There’s a few darker passages, especially their solution to death…)

    The cover art, as usual from artist John Harris (of Ender’s Game cover fame) is hopelessly out of touch from what’s in the novel.

    Had I mentioned that the prose style is compulsively readable? Thought so.

    It’s difficult to say which kind of novel I prefer from Barnes: The light, uplifting work like A Million Open Doors, the massive volume like Mother of Storms or the dark distopia of Kaleidoscope Century… In the end, the versatility of John Barnes might be his greatest talent yet.

    I’ll keep reading.

    [January 1997 addenda: Just to prove that I have a talent for being wrong, I claimed in a Usenet message that A Million Open Doors should please everyone. (Referring to the recent ultraviolent content in Mother of Storms and Kaleidoscope Century). A day or two passed, with a reply to my message saying that there was quite a bit of disgusting S&M sex, not-quite-jolly swordplay and rape in the book… which is absolutely correct.

    To defend myself, I’ll point out that the S&M and swordplay bits are in the first hundred pages, the rape is in background and the whole impression of the book is far less violent than the others. Growing up, for Girault and his friends, implies leaving behind the S&M and the swordplay. A curious thing, selective memory is…

    Still, I can be an idiot to most people, most of the time, see? 🙂 ]

  • Heavy Weather, Bruce Sterling

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1994, 310 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-09393-2.

    To make a weak joke right at the start of the review: Audiences worldwide stormed theaters in June 1996 to see the thunderous tornado flick “Twister.” I was there. It was fun. This movie showed me things I hadn’t seen before and was enjoyable despite the bland plot. In that respect, “Twister” stands among the most fun of 1996’s releases.

    However, an oft-repeated comment on the net was “read Heavy Weather instead.” Curious, I resolved to check, even if the decision wasn’t that hard to make: Sterling is one of SF’s best authors. His fiction has acquired impressive weight in recent years: Schismatrix is one of the best, disturbing, most impressive and complex novel to come out of the Eighties. Only the presence of Ender’s Game on the 1985 Hugo ballot prevented—

    —but this isn’t a review of Schismatrix (other that to say “Rush to your stores, the omnibus Schismatrix Plus is there!”) He’s not immensely prolific (about one book every two years) but what he writes is good, imaginative, fairly readable and original.

    Sterling isn’t an easy writer to categorize. He has been one of the main drives behind cyberpunk fiction, but unlike a few writers of this genre he hasn’t really stayed in the genre. Is Heavy Weather cyberpunk? There are no easy answers.

    For one thing, cyberpunk doesn’t automatically associate with tornadoes in my mind. Yet, tornadoes make up a rather large part of Heavy Weather’s plot: In an ecologically unstable future America, a bunch of young people, including genius mathematician Dr. Jerry Mulcahey, chase twisters for fun and profit. Mostly fun. Among this bunch of tornado hackers lives Jane Unger, rich heiress. As the book starts, Jane uses fancy technology to make her brother Alex escape from a Mexican clinic, bringing him into the “Storm Troupe” (Please do not groan when you realize that means the members of the group call themselves “Storm Troupers…” Okay.) Alex is not very good company: He’s physically sick, rebellious, unstable. Resentment abounds in the Troupe. Will he be able to contribute to the group? And what’s that about a permanent F-6 supertwister?

    Sterling mixes a lot of high-tech goodies into his novel: Truly cross-country vehicles, VR delta-planes, Library-of-Congress-on-a-disk, “Shadow Government” outlaws, the destruction of a major town, DNA remedies… Fascinating stuff from start to finish.

    The feel of Heavy Weather might be considered as straight cyberpunk: The intensely gritty atmosphere is far removed from squeaky-clean typical SF labs: The techno-toys are not treated with reverence, but as ordinary tools, prone to failure or uselessness. We suffer with the characters as they don’t bathe, wear decent clothes or have a decent sex life. The evolution of Sterling’s cyberpunk themes is interesting, and should provide ample material to future Eng. Lit. majors

    Yet, this is more than straight cyberpuke. We even get to like a few characters: The evolution of Alex is especially heartening, as is his consequent acceptance in the Troupe and his relationship with his sister. Most of all, there’s one very good upbeat finale, something that caught me a bit unprepared given the tone of the rest of the book. Characters are okay, readability excellent, ideas original. Recommended.

    As far as windy-disaster-type SF novels go, this is almost up to par to John Barnes’ superlative Mother of Storms. And it does beat “Twister” hands down for intelligence. There’s even a cow-bit!

    [Page 258 of the hardcover edition]

    Jane felt a chill existential horror as [their car] remained airborne, remained flying, and things began to drift gently and visibly past them. Things? Yes, all kinds of things. Road signs. Bushes. Big crooked pieces of tree. Half-naked chickens. A cow. The cow was alive, that was the strangest thing. The cow was alive and unharmed, and it was a flying cow. She was watching a flying cow. A Holstein. A big, plump, well-looked-after barnyard Holstein, with a smart collar around its neck. The cow looked like it was trying to swim. The cow would thrash its great clumsy legs in the chilly air and then it would stop for a second, and look puzzled.

    I’ve said elsewhere that the difference between visual and written SF is that the latter does deal with consequences. Here’s the proof, from the book’s two subsequent paragraphs:

    And then the cow hit a tree and the cow was smashed and dead, and was instantly far behind them.

    And then [their car] hit another, different tree. And the air bag deployed, and it punched her really hard, right in the face.

    Enough said. Now, go read the book!

  • Arc Light, Eric L. Harry

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon & Schuster, 1994, 551 pages, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 0-671-88048-9

    Though Science Fiction remains my favourite literary genre, there’s a special shelf in my personal library for techno-thrillers, a genre more closely associated with SF that most people assume. If Fantasy is the new-age-ish sister of SF, Techno-thriller is the weird cousin always playing around with guns and borrowing stuff with no intention of ever bringing it back.

    Naturally, there’s a whole range of techno-thrillers. At the lowest end, there’s the standard nice-but-unrewarding “Big Weapons, Terrorists, Explosions” plots, but it takes more than a few acronyms, nuclear weapons and middle-eastern villains to make a techno-thrillers. Moving out of Sturgeon’s 90%, we get authors like Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, Harold Coyle and Larry Bond, who write impeccable, believable 500-pages novels that read more like romanced histories of future wars than simple potboilers.

    Or, should I say, used to write such novels. Clancy has moved on to other things: His three latest novels have been disappointing for a number of reasons, spin-off products are diluting the “Tom Clancy” trademark and his latest fiction has been steadily skewing toward the political rather than the military end of the techno-thriller spectrum. Harold Coyle’s two latest novels have been about the Civil War. Bond and Brown’s latest offerings are markedly duller than their predecessors.

    Now here’s Eric L. Harry, with an invigorating novel of nuclear war between post-Cold War USA and Russia.

    Arc Light begins with nuclear war. Barely a hundred pages in the novel, the deed is done: a limited nuclear strike has devastated both countries. While no major civilian centers are hit, the military capacity of each country is vitally wounded: one of the book’s subplots follows the ordeal of two servicemen stuck in a nuclear launch silo underneath a blast area. The two governments react differently: Russia toughs it out while the USA impeach their president. (Well… He did contribute somewhat to the war by telling the Chinese that Russia was about to attack them…)

    The book goes on from there, topping even a big premise with ever-quirkier plot twists. President Livingstone is judged by the senate, servicemen are called back into service, the USA invades Russia… It all leads to a good techno/military/political thriller. The blurb states that this is the most electrifying debut since Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October and while this hyperbole should be taken with a bucketful of salt, there is at least ground for comparison.

    I was especially impressed by the human side of Harry’s novel, which oscillates between maudlin tearjerkers and scenes that just feel right. While the some scenes in the Melissa Chandler subplot are a bit too emotionally cheap, there’s terrific material in the scenes following the soldiers going to war. The variety of the viewpoints is also impressive: Harry doesn’t shy away from covering the action from different perspectives, from strictly military action to top-level political intrigue and espionage hijinks. The characterisation is good enough for the genre: it may not be particularly impressive, but at least it’s there. It helps that even the Russians antagonists are represented with some degree of nuance.

    On the flip side, not all subplots are equally interesting and the conclusion is a bit disappointing, in no small part due to the way the author painted himself in a particular corner. A similar situation was handled somewhat better in Joe Weber’s Defcon One.

    But overall, I was impressed and I think that most thriller fans will react in the same way. With his debut novel, Harry has already become an author to watch. His second book (Society of the Mind) is in stores now, and it seems to be pushing the techno-thriller genre in another direction, tackling issues about Artificial Intelligence. This type of material coming for a non-Science Fiction writer is always interesting to contemplate: you can be sure that I’ll take a look.

  • The Legacy of Heorot, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Simon & Schuster, 1987, 383 pages, C$17.95 hc, ISBN 0-671-64094-1

    Science-Fiction has a love/hate affair with the visual. The lurid covers of SF pulp magazines in the thirties traditionally represented bodacious babes threatened by evil bug-eyed monsters. While these covers probably attracted the most appropriate public for these magazines, it also had the effect of driving away anyone not in this age group. Fortunately, or so it seems, the illustrations have gotten better since these garish times. (Fortunately, bodacious babes still make appearances from time to time, but this time around, they’re the one threatening the bug-eyed monsters.)

    Then there is the long and sorry case of SF on television. From “Buck Rogers” to “Babylon-5” there HAS been a certain evolution. But SF-TV would be nothing without the overwhelming influence of its big brother, SF-Cinema.

    And therein lies the problem. For, to be quite blunt, most of SF-Cinema is unmitigated crap, produced by illiterate idiots for idiotic illiterates. In the past few months, I have heard two SF authors give up on SF-Cinema. (Robert J. Sawyer, in an interview with Sci-Fi Weekly (http://www.scifiweekly.com/) and Walter Jon Williams, in a Worldcon chat transcript, around the same http) And they’re right! Rare is the good, competent, intelligent SF film that pleases both the eye and the brain. (The most famous example, Star Wars is pleasant for the eyes, comforting in its simplistic story, very competent in sheer movie-making savvy but frustrating for lack of depth.)

    Exceptions exist, but by far the most successful SF movies of recent years have been action/SF hybrids, building upon the SF concepts to provide great visuals: “Terminator II”, “Jurassic Park”…

    …and “Aliens”, which brings us tortuously to the subject of this review. You see, “Aliens” is one of my favorite movies. Fabulously produced for a pitiful budget of something like 16 million US$, it has set a standard for SF/action flicks that has rarely been excelled since. Its suspense is extreme, the dialogue delightful (Quote heaven!), Sigourney Weaver’s performance exceptional… pile up the adjectives, man, I’m running out of them!

    The theme of “Aliens” is known: Bunch’o’marines pitted against ultimate enemy of man. They duke it out.

    Surprise, the theme of The Legacy of Heorot is known: Bunch’o’colonists pitted against ultimate enemy of man. They duke it out.

    “Aliens”: 1986. The Legacy of Heorot: 1987.

    TLoH might or might not be directly inspired by “Aliens”, but it doesn’t really matter. For the book is utterly enjoyable, even for fans of the movie. The action takes place on a planet orbiting Tau Ceti: Avalon is a planet ideal for colonization. No terraforming required. “Samlons” in the rivers, wildlife abound, the planet seems to contain no big surprises, even a few months after the foundation of the colony.

    “Seems” is the key word here. For there is something on Avalon that’s ready to attack… That “something” is a “Grendel”… a bear-sized frog able to out-race medal-winning sprinters and eat them up when they catch their tasty human prize. Nasty, nasty critters. As the uncredited “Washington Times” blurb states, ‘makes “Aliens” look like a Disney nature film.’

    As it might be expected, the colonists (led by the usual military expert so beloved of Pournelle and Niven) find a way to beat up the Grendel, then his half-dozen compadres in the immediate area. But-

    at this point, we’re at mid-book. What is happening, here? In two words, ecological collapse. You see, the Grendels were part of a natural ecosystem designed to keep a certain segment of the wildlife in check…

    And there lies the difference between “Aliens” and TLoH. One deals with the consequences of genocide. (Well, call it as you like. And no, I haven’t forgotten than the creatures in “Aliens” weren’t part of the natural ecosystem… Unless you’re one sadistic eco-designer.)

    There are the other differences too. The characters in TLoH are sympathetic and more fully realized than their counterparts in “Aliens”. While still not great stuff, (we get the misunderstood and under-appreciated military man Who Cried Wolf, the nerdy guy Who Gets His, the incompetent politician Who Dismissed Military Guy and the usual assortment of competent females) they still felt closer to reality than the marine squad in the movie.

    And the style… Niven fans know what to expect. Completely readable from page One to page 383. I was easily caught up in the action and the minutiae of a brand-new colony. Even though I suspect that Barnes did most of the writing, with the N&P duo providing substantial creative input, it’s a very good read. Even if the finale is somewhat confusing, this is the kind of book they talk about when they’re saying “page-turner”.

    As SF, it’s fairly light in concepts. The real strength of the book, like “Aliens”, is in suspense, entertainment and action. That will probably make it unsuitable for the literary crowd, but fine for most of us.

    I liked it, can I say anything more? It doesn’t aspire to greatness, but it’s a fine, fine, fine read for summer afternoons…

    I’m sorry if the preceding review praises TLoH at the detriment of “Aliens”. Fact is, I would probably choose the movie over the book… if you absolutely have to choose: These two works represent quite well, I feel, the potential strength of SF in both medium, given similar subjects.

    And now for the harder question: Why don’t they make more SF movies as satisfying as “Aliens”? Answer next week, kiddos… Don’t forget, marks will be deducted for excessive spelling mistakes, general stupidity and gratuitous use of the three-letter string “ID4”…

  • Starplex, Robert J. Sawyer

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1996, 289 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-00372-9

    My first meeting with Robert J. Sawyer was at Can-Con ’95, when I was hanging around the handout table. Enter RJS, asking “Hey is this the handout table?” Upon being answered in the affirmative, he proceeded to put a few of his own handouts there, then went to the dealer’s room to sign a few books.

    At the time, RJS was to me the author of “these dinosaur books”. Still, the guy impressed me. Since his panel was one of the few actually taking place at this point, I decide to see what was that all about.

    A month afterward, I had read all Sawyer books. Addicted. Unfortunately, nothing from Sawyer appeared since then… until now.

    (In the meantime, a few things happened to Sawyer: The Terminal Experiment won the HOMer, the Aurora and the Nebula. To name a few.)

    Starplex was bought full-price the day it appeared in bookstores. Damn the ten-percent discount, I couldn’t wait!

    And my, my, my… It was worth the wait. I’ll let the 12-years-old part of my personality review the book for a while:

    Gosh, wow! Zonkers! Sawyer RULES, man! I mean, totally incredible! Alien, time-travel, big explosions, space-fights, immortality, gods, end and beginning of the universe, dark-matter creatures, fun physics stuff, holy geezz! I thought my brain would explode and run down my nose! Like this is like very EXCELLENT, D00D! I’d buy copies for all my friends if my parents would give me the money!

    Ahem. The reason I like Sawyer’s books is straight from the golden age (12) of SF: THIS is what it must have felt to buy a copy of a magazine with a new Heinlein story. THIS is the good stuff. THIS is the new Golden Age and it’s MY Golden age. My critical faculties go out of the window under the assault of Sawyer’s imagination.

    If you don’t know about Sawyer’s books, well IT’S NOT TOO LATE! Starplex is his best yet, combining the original super-concepts with fair plotting and interesting characters. This book is easier to swallow than End of an Era, is more focused than Golden Fleece and doesn’t contain the potentially displeasing theological “edge” that The Terminal Experiment had.

    The usual Sawyer “tics” remain: The hero is the same, down to problems with his relationships. The conclusion is also anticlimactic, especially after the wild ride that preceded. The prose is journalistic: Nothing wrong (I don’t mind,) but then again, nothing like -for instance- Dan Simmons.

    Oh, and the blurb is as usual hopelessly wrong. (The blurb for The Terminal Experiment didn’t even mention the main plot of the story!) But don’t worry: You’ll get a better book than described.

    The designer of Starplex’s cover should be shot, or at the very least very hurt. I don’t think it’s possible to intentionally do a worse cover than this one. (Well, okay, I could, but that’s not my point.)

    In short: A treat for Hard-SF fans. Sawyer’s best book yet, and again a strong contender for next year’s awards. Might not necessarily win, but will probably be nominated for just about everything.

  • Executive Orders, Tom Clancy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Putnam, 1996, 800 pages, C$36.95 hc, ISBN 0-399-14219-3

    [This review contains serious spoilers for Tom Clancy’s previous book, Debt of Honor However, since Executive Orders is a direct sequel to DoH, nothing here isn’t revealed in the jacket blurb to EO]

    Reviewing books is difficult. For one thing, the honest critic has to assimilate the object of his review completely. The reviewer must watch the entire movie, listen to the record or read the book without falling asleep or having his attention distracted. Then there is the problem of forming coherent critical opinions about the said work of “art”. Finally, the last step may very well be the most difficult: Fuse all these strands of opinions into a sustained thesis, i.e.: a Review. (If the vocabulary’s confusing to you, don’t worry; it’s meaningless to me too.)

    The difficulty arises when the object of the critic’s attention is bland, featureless or just ordinary. Bad things are easy to review: Just get that trusty thesaurus out and let the insults fly. For good measure, style points can be awarded for questioning the intellectual stability of the publisher(s) and gratuitous ad-hominem references to the creator(s) sex life. Boring things are a boon to the reviewer, since s/he can condense his/her review to “Zzzz” and get the paycheck anyway. Good things are embarrassing, since the readers will eventually think you’re paid by someone to talk that way about the review’s subject.

    All this has no practical relevance to mega-bestseller Tom Clancy’s latest book except to say that this book is a reviewer’s dream. The story in itself is complex (always a plus when you’re trying to fill up wordage by resuming the plot) and wildly uneven, which lets this particular reviewer use one of his favorite expression. (it being “wildly uneven”, of course!) But beyond the story itself, the book-as-a-physical object is interesting, and beyond that, the theme of the book can open the doors wide open for a gratuitous analysis of the American psyche.

    Stay with me, you’ll understand what I mean.

    Clancy fans remember that at the end of his last book, Debt of Honor, a 747 crashed in the Capitol, reducing it to rubble, and incidentally killing off most of the US government (This meaning President, Staff, Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, Joint Chief of Staff, FBI and CIA directors, etc…) The occasion being celebrated in this meeting-of-the-honchos was the accession by Clancy’s all-American hero Jack Ryan to the Vice Presidency. Ryan miraculously escapes, and as DoH wraps to a close, he is now president-without-a-government.

    This is where bells begin to ring in most reader’s minds.

    After all, this isn’t only about Ryan rebuilding the government. This is also about Clancy himself rebuilding the government. Suffice to say that the line between fiction and propaganda in this case is very easy to cross. Many great authors have fallen into this trap, with unpredictable results. (SF fans will shudder, remembering latter-year Asimov and Heinlein efforts)

    At the same time, there is the chance for the author to make a few statements about America, and how it should work.

    Clancy mostly avoids the propaganda, but succumb to the irresistible lure of Making a Statement.

    Executive Orders is a novel about many things, the most central of these being the difficult apprenticeship of John Patrick Ryan, President of the United States. Coming from a humble background, stockbroker-cum-historian-cum-CIA Analyst-cum-occasional Field operative-cum-CIA DDI-cum-National Security Adviser-cum-Vice-President Ryan (Told you he was an all-American hero!) is politically inept. He doesn’t have a clue about how to deal with the media, and his radical policy changes (simplify the tax code, downsize governmental bureaucracy, things like that) aren’t popular inside the beltway. As if the hostile media wasn’t enough, enemies both stateside and external are planning violent acts against the seemingly weak president… Ryan has many friends, but will they be enough?

    Enough about the plot: How is the book?

    “Overlong” seems a good place to start. This has to be one of the most fluffy novels I’ve seen. Even at 860-odd pages and 9-point typography, there is an enormous amount of detail. The bad guys do not simply built their evil weapon: They assemble it, research its efficiency, put it in place… Clancy and his readers alike relish details but enough is enough! Not all plots threads are equally interesting. Surprisingly, this time the military subplots are the most boring.

    In fact, “Overlong” was also the biggest flaw of Clancy’s previous book The Sum of All Fears. (TSoAF) This time around, however, the payoff isn’t even near what TSoAF had to offer. While TSoAF was a slow fuse with a LOUD bang, Executive Orders doesn’t exactly fizzles, but the explosion at the end will let many readers wonder “Was that all?”

    Make no mistake, it’s a good book anyway. But it could have been one corker of a thriller if a competent editor would have slashed two hundred pages or so. Oh well… Maybe in a few years, we’ll get a “cut” version.

    [Mark my words: This will be the first 10$Can. mass-market paperback.]

    [January 1998:  Close; 10.99 $Can.]

    This is not a good book for Clancy neophytes: There are too many plot threads that essentially depends on previous books. At the very least, one should read DoH beforehand.

    The rest is classic Clancy: Okay characters, okay prose, superb plotting, the old friends are back, lots of details, good action sequences. Fans know what to expect, but they should be warned that it isn’t Clancy’s best effort.

    At least, Clancy manages to avoid turning his book into straight propaganda for his favorite political party. This is not to say that Clancy’s right-wing sympathies do not show up (they do, most notably on the subject of abortion and drugs) but they’re held down at an acceptable level. He does succumb to the lure of making a few comments about how the government should work. Nothing too revolutionary, of course: Simplify taxes, give a chance to the average worker, cut the bureaucracy… No flag-burning ideas here.

    A sequel is probable but not immediate. And finally, this might be the first time Clancy is accused of subtlety. (See last page)

    Okay. The book has been reviewed. My job is completed. You can either go to the next review, or stay a while to hear me blather about the subtext of the book. Fair enough?

    [Whistling]

    If you’re still hesitating, let it be known that I do not like make statement about subtexts, author’s intentions or “thematic concerns and symbolism.” Those kind of essays are best left to English Lit. Major, who probably don’t have much more of a clue about what it’s all about, but who can conceal this ignorance with better vocabulary.

    The reason I dislike doing it is that, frankly, I’m wrong most of the time. The author might not be trying to pass the message I’m perceiving, or is trying to say something I completely missed. Anyway…

    [End whistling]

    For those who stayed, here are a few more thoughts:

    The theme of Executive Orders is fa
    scinating. It shows good old America staggering under a heavy blow, but recovering in time to kick some numerically superior enemy butt. Essentially, it’s saying “America may be decadent, but we’re still able to make you do what we want.” I don’t dwell much further into that, except to remark, fascinated, that the basic plot of Executive Orders is uncannily reminiscent of Larry Bond’s The Enemy Within, in which Iran sends terrorists in America to distract the USA from their activities in the Gulf. Hmmm… Also, -but I might be picking at details,- the ultimate resolution of Executive Orders also echoes another Bond story. (“Expert Advice”, in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible.)

    Both Executive Orders and TEW, published at a few month’s interval, show that Fortress America is feeling threatened. (Cynics will say that they’re dang straight to be concerned!) It will be interesting to see how this thread evolves, especially when you think that in the next few months, we’ll see the first wave of novels written after Oklahoma City. [December 1996: And now, unfortunately, after the Atlanta bombing.]

    It also shows where thriller writers are going for inspiration, now that the Evil Empire is down (even if no particular attention has been given to the off-site backups). the drugs cartels of Columbia are less visible and Saddam himself gets an annual Tomahawk whuppin’: Home is where the action is.

  • The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Science-Fiction, John Clute

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dorling Kindersley, 1995, 312 pages, C$50.00 hc, ISBN 0-7894-0185-1

    Chance helps those who help themselves, they say. Or whatever. In this case, patience reward the deserving… or so I like to think.

    Explanations: When the SFBC came out with their own edition of the quasi-legendary Encyclopedia of SF at better than half the price of the 90$ volume, I was ecstatic: Having borrowed my university’s copy of the encyclopedia more time than I like to think about, I salivated over the prospect of owning my very own copy of the bible… er… encyclopedia.

    Same thing when the Illustrated encyclopedia came out. I spent many minutes in the bookstores, trying more or less spectacularly to keep my drool from dropping on the copies I was shamelessly studying. But the price tag of 50$ had a certain effect on my spending urge. Nevertheless! I vowed to myself: Once upon a time, this book WILL BE MINE! (I’m rotten at verb tense, but the store security people were really impressed by my delivery. They even asked to do an encore performance outside the store. No, really.)

    But time dragged on, the effect of Pepsi wore off, the summer job kicked in and the idea faded. Until a certain day when an SFBC notice arrived in the mail, saying something like “Oh, you haven’t bought anything from us in six months. Awww… Here’s a coupon: Buy one of this month’s book and get another free.” Surprise, surprise: The month’s letter contained a flyer hawking the charms of both encyclopedias at 37,95 each. I decided… to sleep on it.

    The morning after, it STILL seemed like a good idea. Off went the coupon. Final price? 47,02$ Can. for both books. Tee-hee-hee. That’s right. Both volumes for a bit more that half the cover price of the 1,300 pages encyclopedia. Ahem. Well, I did have to gloat somewhere, didn’t I? Fear nothing; Here’s the reviews:

    The 1,300 pages Encyclopedia of Science-Fiction belongs on every serious fan’s reference bookshelf. More than a list of SF authors and bibliographies, it includes critical commentary, movie reviews, coverage of most medias, general themes essays and a lot of non-US material.

    It is immensely useful: Even a few months after I’ve received it, I’m still using it regularly to check facts, dates or just for general entertainment.

    The biggest flaw is inevitable: Obsolescence. Published in 1992, it’s beginning to (!) show its age. Some major writers of nowadays (Egan, Sawyer, Stephenson, even Straczynski) are absent, or casually dismissed on the basis of a single book.

    (The book also contains quite a few errors, I’m told. My edition contains a 16-pages errata appendix, and some of the errors contained there are glaring. Researchers are advised to check there in every case after reading any article: Most major writers have an errata.)

    Anyway, this is a bible, and should be treated as such.

    The Illustrated encyclopedia of SF is an entirely different book. Do not be fooled by the author’s name (John Clute) because the IEoSF isn’t a subset of the EoSF.

    For one thing, this book would have been better titled An Illustrated History of Science-Fiction or somesuch. In addition of settling the confusion between the IEoSF and the EoSF, it would also better describe the scope of the book.

    Most of the IEoSF‘s bulk is composed of several retrospectives through SF’s history: Once by decade for themes, once by decade for historical context, once by four “eras” for magazines, one by half-decade for authors, once by decades for major titles and another time by decade for movies. Graphic works and television series are also covered historically, but in a less formal manner.

    This book works at several levels. At the lowest, “gee-whiz-what-nice-pictures,” it succeeds pretty well, reproducing great book covers and pictures of the authors. It makes a great coffee-table book for the SF fans in the family. (It also makes a great source for scanning material, but… ahem… I digress…) On another level, it offers many pleasant surprises for the knowledgeable SF fan: Classic books covers, oft-needed author’s portraits (“Hey, that’s Nancy Kress? She’s kinda cute!”), fun 50’s magazine covers. Finally, the commentary that “surrounds” the pictures is worthwhile in itself.

    Of course there are flaws. Not every author has a favorable picture of him/her; the covers offered are not always the most aesthetically pleasing. The definitely British origin of the book will jar a few readers’ perceptions. The critical content will probably please no one completely, and we often get an exasperating impression of superficiality from the bite-sized comments. Finally, like the EoSF, this book is firmly fixed in time, which is to say 1994. Although not a big problem yet, it will come…

    Purely subjective fannish nit-pick: The mention of “Babylon-5” as being a derivative of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” is indicative of sloppy research and perception from John Clute, but this particular judgment is colored by my intense devotion to the TV series… [In a recent interview with the Webzine Science-Fiction Weekly (www.scifi.com), Clute basically admitted that his opinion has changed since.]

    Nevertheless, this is a magnificent book. Even my uncle (far from being an SF fan) spent a good ten minutes just poring through the illustrations in the encyclopedia. Impressive to fans and non-fans alike, it offers what very well may be the most comprehensive historical view of the genre, and thus deserves a place on the bookshelf of even the most casual reader.

    Just be sure to get it back once you’ve loaned it.

  • The Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1992-1996, ???? pages, C$???.?? hc, ISBN Various

    Red Mars: Bantam Spectra, 1993, 519 pages, ISBN 0-553-09204-9
    Green Mars: Bantam Spectra, 1994, 535 pages, ISBN 0-553-09640-0
    Blue Mars: Bantam Spectra, 1996, 609 pages, ISBN 0-553-10144-7

    In the early nineties, a spate of books about Mars began to appear on the market. After being relatively ignored by SF writers since the first half of the century (when Edgar Rice Burrough’s romantic fantasy “Mars” series and Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles first appeared), the fourth planet was once again a ripe ground for extrapolation. Building on the initially-disappointing discoveries of the Viking missions, a new spate of Martian books began to appear, minus the little green men, canals or crystalline cities.

    This new breed of books was mostly realistic, and either concerned with the first expeditions to Mars or the use of Mars as a background to realistic adventures. Thus, we had Mars (Ben Bova), Moving Mars (Greg Bear), Climbing Olympus (Kevin J. Anderson), Beachhead (Jack Williamson), Martian Rainbow (Robert L. Forward)…

    But the “biggest” entry in this field was made by Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars. From the beginning, the trilogy prefaced by RM was destined to be a classic. One should only read the pages of lavish praise contained at the front of the paperback copy of RM to be convinced.

    What was surprising, however, was the author’s name. A trilogy about the terraformation of Mars had a natural feel to it, almost an obligatory part of the genre… but to have Kim Stanley Robinson write it?

    I would have expected Benford to write such a trilogy. Clarke, in his good days. Brin, perhaps. But Kim Stanley Robinson? My previous experiences with his short story collection The Planet on the Table had been underwhelming at best… While the Mars trilogy was getting good reviews all around, I was prepared to be bored.

    I acquired RM in 1994, when I bought the CD-ROM “Hugo and Nebula Anthology 1993” This superlative CD, published by Clarinet Inc. (www.clarinet.com), contained all 1993 Hugo-nominated fiction, plus all of the 1993 Nebula-nominated short fiction… It’s an incredible CD: Buy it. I had the intention of reading everything on it, but with my growing stack of (physical) books, and lack of time, and reluctance to read a 500-pages on a computer screen… I stumbled upon a mint trade paperback of GM in May 1995 for a ridiculous price. (Bought it and laughed all the way home.) So there I was, with the two books, and not about to make the same mistake as when I started to read Stephen R. Donaldson’s ‘Gap’ cycle three years before the last volume was published. So I waited. And when BM came out in hardcover, I took a deep breath, went to a trusty library in Orleans that has a permanent 10%-off policy on new hardcovers and plunked down the 32,04$Can. Therein ends the story of how I got the trilogy.

    Now, for the wrongness: There, I admit it: I was wrong. The Mars trilogy is one of the best thing I’ve read this year.

    A lot of SF books usually deal with a new planet/gadget/concept in two ways: The first, common with “sense of wonder”-type of stories, is about the discovery, the initial rush of ideas that occur to a competent scientist or the adventures of a team of explorers setting foot on a planet for the first time. The second attitude is to use the said gadget as a part of the background. Think of hyperspace: There are stories where the intrepid scientists first stumble upon the hyperdrive, and countless other tales in which characters take a hyperspace liner like we would take the bus. But few stories deal about the various problems a hyperdrive company would have in perfecting its product from prototype to unspectacular piece of machinery. In Martian terms, Bova’s Mars is the discovery story while Bear’s Moving Mars is the backgrounder-type of novel. (Which isn’t true, actually, but let’s not quibble with my piece of reasoning, okay?)

    If the reader retains only one thing of the massive 1,700+ pages saga that is contained in these three books, it’s the absolutely stunning display of subject range from Robinson. The Mars trilogy is a masterful virtuoso performance from one of the most talented authors in the English language. (How’s that for a blurb quote?) Robinson tackles on geology, history, environmental sciences, personal dynamics, politics, physics, rigorous scientific extrapolation, sociology… The reader is surprised, delighted and astonished at the sheer amount of meticulously researched detail.

    In fact, one is so impressed that it seems almost too restrictive to call the trilogy mere “science-fiction”. At the same time, one also takes comfort in the fact that this sort of grandiose intellectual accomplishment wouldn’t be possible in any other field than SF. (Except, perhaps, classified Pentagon work… ahem.)

    There is something in these 1,700+ pages for everyone. Hard-SF readers like me will foam at the mouth reading all the polysyllabic exposition terms. So-called literary aficionados will make small cooing sounds over Robinson’s careful prose. Readers who like a good story will skip the big words and be swept along with the onrushing tide of this epic.

    The Mars trilogy begins where Mars left off: The first historical mission is over, but now we’re going back, this time to stay. Red Mars takes the reader from this point to the first Martian revolution. The other books take the story forward.

    Red Mars is the best volume of the three. Mostly self-contained (you could stop reading after the first book, but who would want to?) it is the most pyrotechnical volume, and perhaps the most fascinating: SF often postulates that once mankind gets off Earth, it will suddenly become gentler and kinder… Not quite what happens in RM. People fight over power, money, rights, (in)equality. In fact, RM should be read for the simple statement that No, things are not going to be easy if we want to colonize Mars.

    I was fascinated by the chapter in RM where the original colonists build the Underwood base. Seen through an engineer’s viewpoint, it’s suitably nuts-and-bolt to satisfy even the most unbelieving reader. Other highlights include the catastrophic effects of the first Martian revolution, again seen through the coolly calculating eyes of Nadia, the Siberian engineer.

    Which brings us (clumsily) to the characters. While RM build most on the setting and the initial story, the two subsequent books really kick some dimensions in the characters. I have rarely felt an attachment to fictional constructs as I did at the end of Blue Mars, when I was almost moved to tears over the reconciliation of t
    wo major characters. Not every character is as powerfully evocative. Some will be annoying to many readers, but that’s quite intentional. (Since you asked, my favorite characters were Sax (The Scientist), Nadia (The Engineer) and Art (The… er… corporate spy.)

    The setting is also exquisitely realized, Mars taking on an almost-real texture. The changes in the planet’s atmosphere are sharply drawn, and also completely convincing. While Robinson takes a few risky assumptions regarding the composition of Mars’ crust, it makes for good fictional material.

    The sweep of the events described in the trilogy is impressive, covering more that a hundred years of history. The solar system at the end of the trilogy is completely different from the beginning. This is an epic to relegate mere grandiose stories to a lesser status.

    The three books are unequal. The first one is the most readable, as well as being the most exciting. The two others may contain less action, but fully develop the story. The conclusion is a bit disappointing, lacking a sense of grand finale that the series deserve, but at this point, any reader will feel disappointed at the close of such a rewarding trilogy.

    As stated before, the scope of Robinson’s intent is impressive. He delivers as entertainment a series of thoughtful reflections on our common future. His extrapolations on the consequences of widespread longevity are -as far as I know- unequaled anywhere else in SF.

    Facing such an ambitious intellectual achievement, it would be too easy to trivialize it on the basis of the few errors that Robinson made: One get the feeling that despite the fancy new words and political parties, things haven’t changed much in 100+ years. (This criticism is mostly invalidated by the last volume) Also, Mars seems a bit much like a really big park, where one can get from point A to point B effortlessly. The characters, at times, are like well-developed stereotypes (The Cynic Politician, the Mad Psychologist, the Nutty Scientist, the Unemotional Engineer…) Finally, the advances in robotics depicted are a bit… optimistic, shall I say?

    Nevertheless, these are small inevitable imperfections in the magnificent Persian rug that is the Mars trilogy. It is easily one of the most important SF work of the nineties. So powerful, that I fear the terraforming field of SF may live for a looooong time under this series’ shadow.

    Only the genuinely patient and inquisitive reader will retain the most from the Mars trilogy. For those with the time, however, it is a series not to be missed.

    [June 1998: The Memory of Whiteness (Kim Stanley Robinson, 1985) could have been so much better, especially given what Robinson was able to do with his latter (1992-1996) Mars trilogy. This particular novel describes a far-future solar system tour of a classical orchestra, mixing music and physics. It’s not all bad or boring, but it’s incredibly long in spots: Robinson hadn’t quite mastered the narrative verve he later exhibited in his other works, and the result is an intermittently interesting novel. The Memory of Whiteness is all about music, so readers not familiar with classical composers will feel slightly lost. But the remainder of Robinson’s imagination is good enough that even when you think you’re lost-you’re not. (Especially laudable is the noteworthy effort of describing coherently some very-advanced physics.) Interesting, but imperfect.]

  • The Enemy Within, Larry Bond

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Books, 1996, 483 pages, C$27.95 hc, ISBN 0-446-51676-7

    Fortress America is under siege: Everywhere, rebellious Americans are challenging the authority of the federal government. Bombs are exploding, the FBI is feverishly investigating, the public is scared…

    Fiction or Fact? In recent years, America has finally wizened up to the fact that terrorism isn’t something that only happened to Others. The danger is clear and might even be contained Within…

    Larry Bond is perhaps better known as the phantom co-author of Red Storm Rising, the gigantic WWIII superthriller by Tom Clancy. But Bond has since acquired a reputation by writing (along with phantom collaborator Patrick Larkins) tense, thick, very satisfying technothrillers.

    The first, Red Phoenix, dealt with a second Korean War. Vortex with a South African crisis. Cauldron with a renewed threat by a France/Germany union. All three were complex 500+ pages, tightly-typeset epics, with a huge cast of characters and multiple twists all the way.

    The Enemy Within takes a more intimate view: Mainly dealing with a Special Operations officer named Peter Thorn, it’s both less complex and more formulaic than his previous effort.

    It’s also less satisfying, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

    The premise is as simple as it is disturbing: In an Iran shaken by a power shift, a general plans to distract the USA’s attention by a series of carefully-planned terrorist acts on America’s soil. It’s up to Thorn to unravel the Why of these acts, who all look like they’re coming from extreme elements in the Unites States themselves.

    Bond is still in top-flight form when he’s dealing with machinery, weapons and weapons-effects. His mastery of the clinical, cold omniscient POV is nearly absolute: His prose neatly dissects the effects of three pounds of C4 explosive placed in the gas tank of a 18 wheeler.

    But when dealing with personalities, Bond still have lessons to learn. This isn’t as much a criticism of Bond as the genre itself: Technothrillers, much like SF, is a literature of gadgets and ideas. The Plot is King.

    In Bond’s previous effort, the love story was a carefully hidden subplot that was overwhelmed by the other events. Whatever happened, the love story was nice and everything, but it wasn’t why we read the book, right?

    In The Enemy Within, the Love Story is a major part of the story, as is the Revenge Story, the Betrayal Story and the Gonna Get’em Story. But they’re all centred on the Hero, contrarily to his other books where these Stories were dispersed on multiple subplots.

    A much more personal book, but also one that ultimately disappoints slightly. The Heroine gets in trouble, the Hero goes to the Villain for Revenge. yawn. We’ve seen this before, I believe?

    Still, techno-nerds like myself will delight in the meticulous technical details and the apocalyptic feel of a total telephone shutdown over the American Midwest. Internauts will find no faults in Bond’s use of the Net. The plot unfolds at a carefully controlled -if sometimes unequal- pace.

    But -in addition to the restricted focus- Bond manages to have a disappointing conclusion that looks quite a bit forced and also trivialises what had earlier seemed as a Big Problem.

    Sad, really. Bond had accustomed us to excellent thrillers, and he only delivers a better-than-average effort. He’s still on my must-buy list, with the hope that his next effort will be better.

    In the meantime, Fortress America will read about right-wing extremists, I guess…

    [September 1996 Footnote: Believers in synchronicity might want to read Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders for a subplot that echoes eerily of The Enemy Within, down to the Iranian villains using the Net for their dastardly devious acts of terrorism… and a climax that reminds me of Bond’s short story in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible. ]

  • I, Robot: The Original Screenplay, Harlan Ellison (based on Short Stories by Isaac Asimov)

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1994, 271 pages, C$20.00 hc, ISBN 0-446-67062-6

    The friendship between SF legends Harlan Ellison and the late Isaac Asimov is well known. But despite being good friends, the two had never collaborated directly on a book.

    Until I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay (IRTIS), that is. As related in Ellison’s foreword, Asimov had received numerous offers to put the material contained in I, Robot to the big screen. All offers were less than satisfactory: The anthology format suggested by a collection of short stories isn’t a big favourite of movie-going audiences.

    Enters Ellison, who writes a script combining fours short stories by Asimov into a script inspired in part by nothing else than “Citizen Kane”.

    Simply put, a journalist decides to investigate famous robot designer Susan Calvin. Who is she? Why was she at the president’s funeral? The journalist has to visit several person before he happens on the truth, a truth that is as unsettling as it is satisfying…

    The script, written in the seventies, has gathered dust on Warner’s shelves ever since.

    Now, everyone can read the result of the collaboration, illustrated by the exceptional art of Mark Zug.

    The result, simply put, fully lives up to its reputation of “the best Science-Fiction film never made”

    The script displays an uncanny fusion of Asimov’s Hard-SF ideas with Ellison’s usual flair in characterisation and literary qualities. For those of you who haven’t always been able to stomach Asimov’s usually dry prose and Ellison’s sometimes incomprehensible works will find here an unusually readable script.

    What impressed me the most about this script is that in addition of writing a story with great, sheer soul, Ellison has fulfilled the primary requirement of visual SF: Making us visit strange, impressive, real places. He doesn’t make the usual clichéed choices: Instead of making two people meet in a bar, he puts them in an arcology, etc… This might not sound like much put this way, but it’s handled superbly in the book.

    Of course, a good part of the credit for the visualisation of the script goes to Mark Zug, who has drawn/painted for this volume a series of absolutely beautiful work of arts. These add considerably to the worth of the book. In fact, the greatest compliment I can think of is a criticism: There aren’t nearly enough of them!

    In his introduction, Ellison states that the reader will be the judge of whether this would make a good movie. Well, for me at least, the verdict is clear: Yes. I’d pay without asking for an I, Robot ticket. In these times of insipid remakes of even more insipid past SF movies, I, Robot comes out as a contender with brains, looks and class.

    Definitely recommended reading for Asimov and Ellison fans, as well as everyone in between. This isn’t like sitting in the theater, but it’s the best thing we’re likely to get…

  • The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die, Stephen R. Donaldson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1996, 564 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-07180-7

    Capsule review: The Gap series offers a collection of riches rarely found elsewhere in SF, but for a very patient -and tolerant!- audience. Forget star ratings: This is Good Stuff.

    I originally wanted to make this a review of the fifth and final book of the Gap Series, but reconsidered in favour of reviewing the whole story instead.

    This is only fair, after all: This isn’t a series of unplanned, loosely-connected books. As Donaldson makes it perfectly clear in an afterword at the end of the first volume, five volumes were planned in this saga loosely inspired by Wagner’s The Ring opera cycle.

    The series starts off “innocently” enough. Well, in a matter of speaking: While the first book is only 200 pages long, it does contain acts of cruelty only matched by the second book of the cycle.

    Subsequently, the books get longer, and much more complicated. By the end of the fifth tome, the story is far removed from the original “love” triangle.

    Simply put, in the first volume, a woman cop (Morn Hyland) gets captured by a pirate (Angus Thermopyle) and then gets rescued by a valiant hero (Nick Succorso).

    “But that, of course, wasn’t the real story.”

    The real story is that Angus is really the Victim, Morn the Rescuer and Nick the Villain. But then again, that isn’t the real story…

    The Gap series fully moves on three axis: The one most familiar, the axis of action; the one so beloved of literary fans, the axis of (character) development; and finally, the favourite axis of conspiracy nuts, the axis of significance.

    In other words, the “What’s Happening”, “Why it’s happening” and “What it really means.”

    The “love” triangle has a meaning far, far removed from the three participants. All the way to forces controlling human destiny… but that’s a spoiler.

    I still have a few reservations about the length of the series. It would have been possible to compress it into four, or even three very dense books. The reasons lies in Donaldson’s style: Events are seen from the point of view of one character at a time, one chapter by character. Evens often happen three, four times in prose, seen from the POV of different participants.

    Donaldson also excels in atmosphere-building. He doesn’t write phrases like “and then he told her what had happened”. He tells it all, pages at a time. The dialogue doesn’t seem hurried: There are a fair number of useless lines. We are there. Characters constantly flashback to bits of phrases said earlier.

    While engrossing, this makes the series far longer than some will tolerate. Events don’t happen at a break-neck pace -which will no doubt displease many- but half the pleasure’s in the build-up.

    The conclusion is very satisfying, a change from some lacklustre finales we’ve been seeing recently (“Rama” for one). Some people die, some live, some are promoted, some get the retribution they crave…

    But nobody will feel cheated by the ending. No gratuitous death. An optimistic outlook. Destinies accomplished.

    Classification fans will have a tough time with the Gap series. What is it, exactly?

    This isn’t hard SF. Donaldson takes far too many liberties with science, and even goofs up on light-speed delays in communications. Characters are unusually developed. Gadgets are tools, not ends in themselves.

    This isn’t science-fantasy space-opera, even if it looks like one and is even inspired by one: The attention to detail displayed by Donaldson, the maturity of the books and the character-driven plot are not usual hallmarks of space-op.

    Or if it’s Science-Fantasy SpaceOp, it’s a darn good one.

    Characters, as mentioned before, are exceptionally handled. Even if far from sympathetic, they do engage our interest. (I personally found, however, that the “minor” characters -Hashi Lebowl, Min Donner, Koina Hannish, among others- were more interesting that the three stars of the cycle. Go figure…)

    After 2,500 character-driven pages, you can’t help knowing them. This is something I wouldn’t mind seeing elsewhere in SF… but not necessarily in other 2,500 pages epics!

    One final wish: The story is completed, done and over with. In clear, this means that it’s perfect as it is: No sequel, please.

    I’ve mentioned before that this is a very hard-edged story. I mean that: The violence here is explicit and Donaldson doesn’t shy away from extremes. If you can read past the first half of the third book, the rest is less violent.

    This isn’t Star Trek: Characters go through extremes that change them. And the extremes are extremes. Not a few casual SF, media SF and fantasy fans will be turned off by the subject matter. But those who can tough it out will find an extraordinary tale of power, abuse of power, betrayal and personal redemption.

    I am tempted to liken the Gap series to an exceptionally rough endurance contest: Only the fittest make it to the end. But no one who does will be disappointed by the journey.

    Now that the entire series is out (soon in paperback), readers who want to lose themselves in a marvellously textured world, who don’t mind a few lengths and who aren’t afraid of a darker tone will certainly want to read this.

  • Endymion, Dan Simmons

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1996, 468 pages, C$31.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-10020-3

    The original Hyperion (Considering both Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion as a single volume) was one of these books that comes one in every decade or so: A brand-new universe, incredible characters, suspenseful plot and a heaven-sent style. What was fascinating about it was the ingenious re-use of several traditional SF elements, re-used in a terribly fresh way.

    Thus, it wasn’t difficult to get excited about a sequel. Questions abounded: Given what happens at the end of Fall of Hyperion, is it even possible to have a sequel? Is Simmons able to maintain the same frenetic idea-throwing imagination present in the first book? Is this going to be another one of those insipid sequels?

    Well, the book has been read and it’s very probable that you’ll only half-like the answers.

    First off, an important caveat to the would-be buyer: Endymion is the third volume in a four-book series. Yeah, I was flustered too, especially when you consider that this isn’t explicitly mentioned anywhere on the cover…. Be reassured, however, that Endymion offers a real sense of closure, unlike other books that we shan’t mention…

    Endymion is the story of Raul Endymion, a young man assigned to protect a young girl named Aethena. The book, predictably, is a succession of adventures on various worlds where Raul protects the girl. Fair enough? Of course, things are more complicated than that, involving TechnoCore AIs, a renewed church, multiple deaths and resurrections (literally) and, of course, Simmons’ usually delightful prose.

    Casual and litt’reary readers alike will devour this entry of the Hyperion Cantos with gusto. However, chances are that most will feel a little disappointed with the meal. Why?

    For all it’s various qualities as an adventure novel, Endymion is just that; an adventure novel. Of course, portentous things happen and we get a few tantalising glimpses of What’s Going to Happen in the Next Volume, but that’s it. Most of Endymion is Raul and Aethena and A. Bettik battling the odds beyond any reasonable chance of survival. Fun, no doubt about it, but once expects more from Simmons.

    A good novel, certainly worth the price when it’ll come out in paperback, but smarter readers will read it when the sequel is published.

    Well, here we go for another year on the painful coals of anticipation…