Reviews

  • Death Drives a Semi, Edo van Belkom

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Quarry Press, 1998, 263 pages, C$19.95 tpb, ISBN 1-55082-214-4

    In his introduction to Death Drives a Semi, Robert J. Sawyer writes that Edo van Belkom is “the ideal of what used to be called, back when the term wasn’t disparaging, a pulp writer—he writes stories quickly, often to a given editor’s specification, always producing a quality, salable product on time.” Disparaging or not, “pulp writer” neatly encapsulate both what’s good and what’s not about this collection.

    Horror is a very curious literature that has become even stranger in the last decade. The nineties have seen the popularization of the genre through movies, television series and, more ominously, “young adult” novels. Much like post-STAR WARS Science-Fiction, Pop-Horror finds itself reduced to the lowest common denominator. The result, more obvious on the silver screen, is more successful at inducing laughter (GHOST IN THE MACHINE) when it’s simply not successful at all (I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER).

    Horror is losing potency, slowly being defanged by its increasing accessibility to everyone—including teens and pre-teens. We’re slowly ending up with a genre synonymous with tame, formulaic, lifeless (ho-ho) stories where everyone dies at the end, but readers couldn’t care less.

    This reviewer might already be too jaded despite only a passing familiarity with the genre, but the biggest problem with Death Drives a Semi is that for the most part, it’s nothing special. Many stories can be resumed as “Person discovers supernatural thing, supernatural thing kills person, another person comes in.” Most of the stories end up of the sort easily shown on prime-time television: few chills and even fewer scares. There is no feeling of dread, of disturbing visions. Horror without bite. Morality tales of dark irony, not horror.

    This being said, a few stories are successful in a Twilight-Zone type of way, mostly those who escape the “and then he dies”-type of pat ending. “Roadkill”, “Death Drives a Semi”, “Rat Food”, “And Injustice for Some”, “S.P.S.”, “Baseball Memory” are all superb.

    Furthermore -this is where the good side of being a “pulp writer” comes in-, even van Belkom’s most ordinary stories are a lot of fun to read. The man writes clearly and tells a story. A perusal through a recent “Best New Horror” anthology revealed that the “best” of the genre has evolved in a rarefied realm of smothering over-characterization and emphasis of atmosphere over point or story.

    Thankfully, none of that here. There are no “bad” stories in Death Drives a Semi. (Though “The Ice Bridge” is problematic, with its resolution having nothing to do with the main conflict of the story.) Van Belkom’s character are almost invariably well-defined, with just enough background to make them believable. Technically, this is a very instructive collection.

    But there is a difference between being technically perfect and being actually terrifying. That’s what’s missing from Death Drives A Semi: a willingness to go further than just the usual. “Blood Count”, for instance, stops just when it was getting interesting, just when we were in for some major supernatural disturbance. It would also be interesting to see van Belkom write some more about his “Zombie” world, here represented in “But Somebody’s Got To Do It” and “Roadkill”.

    Hopefully, Death Drives a Semi is the first collection of a writer who will go on to better and more horrific things. It’s only a matter of taking that last step that separates very good from great. In the meantime, Death Drives A Semi is worth your attention; borrow it at the local library or do your part for Canadian-published horror and buy the book.

  • Aggressor Six, Wil McCarthy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    ROC, 1994, 253 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-45405-7

    The Alien, in Science-Fiction, has been a symbol for many things, most of them contradictory. It has gone, from story to story, from ultimate enemy (The War of the Worlds, ALIENS, ID4, The Forge of God) to benevolent friend (ET, Stranger in a Strange Land) while going through stages of Enigmas (Schismatrix), Caricatures of human traits (Star Trek), All-Powerful Guardians (The Ophiuchi Hotline) and everything in between, as needed by the authors. Most of the above-mentioned stories are tales of First Contact and it is in this tradition, more or less, that Wil McCarthy’s Aggressor Six belongs.

    Technically, it’s not quite a “first contact” story, given that the first, first contact is vaguely described through flashback. But it’s certainly the account of the first meaningful exchange between humans and Waisters.

    But Aggressor Six is also a war novel and it begins as humanity is going down for the count. Human colonies have been implacably destroyed by the Waisters, who are now heading for the solar system. Meanwhile, a team of human experts on Waisters is put together to try to emulate the alien thought processes and find a way to beat the invasion.

    It is a miracle that Nietzche’s advice on fighting evil doesn’t figure on the first page of the book, because Aggressor Six is all about Becoming the Alien. That the process is intended by the characters doesn’t make it any easier: The protagonist’s superiors and colleagues are unsettled when he truly begins thinking like the Waisters.

    This was Wil McCarthy’s first published novel and it has a few regrettable deficiencies that we can blame on inexperience. For a 250-pages story, it has considerable lengths. Most of the middle section, for instance, is spent in internal monologues and not enough in external action. In his willingness to represent the strangeness of the aliens, McCarthy initially goes too far, eliciting confusion instead of comprehension. This confusion eventually abates, and the conclusion of the novel is well-handled. The aliens might be strange, but they have internal coherence.

    The end result is a novel that’s moderately satisfying, though perhaps more worthwhile for a hint of the author’s latter works than the actual narrative. The action scenes are well-done, and McCarthy manages to inject interesting ideas in his First Contact story. The Machine Intelligence sequences are particularly chilling, even though not exactly ground-breaking. Aggressor Six is a cut above the usual ROC material.

    Personal Trivia: I happen to remember Aggressor Six as the first novel I’ve seen promoted on the Internet by the author itself. It was, as I recall, in 1994 on rec.arts.sf.written. It took five years, but the promotion effort did pay off!

  • The Phantom (1996)

    The Phantom (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 1999) The presence of sultry Catherine Zeta-Jones in this movie immediately reminded me of The Mask Of Zorro, and that’s the frame of mind in which The Phantom is best-appreciated. A charmingly quaint adventure story set in the 1930s, this movie adroitly straddles the line between self-awareness and camp and the result is something that is far too sympathetic to dislike. Billy Zane pulls off a role that requires him to parade in a skin-tight purple jumpsuit (!) without embarrassing himself too much. Though inconsistent with its approach to the supernatural (The Phantom isn’t; the villain is) and a bit overlong in its middle part, this movie is a good choice for a family adventure film.

  • Favorite Deadly Sins (1995)

    Favorite Deadly Sins (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 1999) Very uneven collection of three sketches supposedly about deadly sins. The first one (“Lust”) is promising but ends on a “conclusion” that’s both pointless and senseless. (Hey! Isn’t it supposed to be about a deadly sin?) The second sketch (“Greed”) is not only the longest, but also the best. A sharp satire about the media, it’s worth watching by itself. (Though maybe five minutes overlong.) The third piece (“Anger”) stars the repulsive Andrew Clay, who pretty much sinks whatever value the sketch might have once had.

  • Orbital Decay, Allen Steele

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1989, 324 pages, C$4.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-49851-5

    Science-Fiction, for all its vaunted capacity to extrapolate logically into the future, is often an awfully unrealistic literature. Consider one of the genre’s flagship universe: Star Trek. In the first two television series, everything ran smoothly on the Enterprise: Few crewmembers disagreed with each others (when they did, it was a sign of alien possession), everyone had comfortable living space (no one complained about cramped quarters, at least), nobody was bored or burnt out, the food was great… In short, quasi-utopia in space. From Star Trek, we were meant to interpret this as a better future, with better specimens of humanity that never bickered, bawled or belched.

    Our “real” future is likely to be very different.

    Allen Steele is not your typical Science-Fiction writer either. His “real job”, before writing SF, was being an investigative journalist for an alternative paper. This, to say the least, differs somewhat from the usual SF writer, who either goes through science, engineering or Eng.Lit. degrees before putting pen to paper. This difference has permeated his fiction: Steele is interested in the blue-collar guy, the working man who makes it happen, not the scientist, the engineer or the politician who makes grandiose plans.

    Orbital Decay might be the novel that most clearly illustrates this difference yet. It’s the story of the blue-collar workers who actually have to build those fancy new solar power satellites and space stations. These workers aren’t exactly very bright, nor completely at ease with the law. Stuck away in a tin can without sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, they’ll soon rectify matters…

    Orbital Decay distances itself with glee from the squeaky-clean futures of SF: The only engineer in the novel is a space-sick spoiled brat who’s there for maybe three scenes. The commander of the construction project is a picture-perfect astronaut who believes that space is for a superior breed of man: he becomes insane. The government is installing a device to overhear all telephone conversations across the globe. The new hydroponic technician brings up marijuana seeds. Two (2!) of the main characters are on the run from the law.

    The resulting book is a novel that has plenty of potential to annoy the readers more comfortable with the “good old (conservative) stuff” of SF. Your reviewer (a straight arrow if there was one) anticipated the drug subplot with dread, even though it finally wasn’t as bad as expected. (The characters come to the same conclusion as anyone with a brain would foretell in five second: Drugs are dangerous in space, for even worse reasons than drinking is dangerous in a car.)

    Unfortunately, the stupidity of the drug subplot brought this reviewer to reflect on the other absurdities of the novel. So Bruce can’t request a tape deck for weight reasons, but can bring in a lot of cassettes? So none of the construction wroekrs can communicate down there while ham operators can do it with our current-day astronauts? So they’re limited to PG movies tapes while satellites around them are broadcasting the Spice Channel? Granted, the novel is now ten years old, but the concept of next-generation launchers like the Delta Clipper has been kicking around for a while… are we still supposed to believe that it still costs X,000$ per pound to ship stuff into space? Add to that the unlikeliness of a corporation signing up the first-arrived (like, uh, criminals on the run?) as space construction workers. What do they do now for oil rig crews?

    Don’t be mistaken: For all its faults, Orbital Decay is an acceptable novel, bringing a unique perspective to SF’s assumption. But it isn’t as good as it think it is. To challenge the basics, one must be sure to understand them correctly. But that, would say Steele, is exactly the kind of reaction he was aiming for. So don’t be discouraged by this review and pick up Orbital Decay. If nothing else, it’s a darn good read.

  • Lost & Found (1999)

    Lost & Found (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, April 1999) This film won’t win any awards, will probably be forgotten by most viewers one week after seeing it, but still remains adequate entertainment. Though low on hilarity and deficient in charm, it still remains a rather pleasant date movie and should be caught on television. David Spade is misused (too much sweetness, not enough bite), as are the two great French actors Sophie Marceau and the dapper-looking Patrick Bruel (both of whom should have spoken French when talking to each other.) The script could have used another re-write, to remove the annoying final tag, strengthen the sidekick and tighten the middle act. Ironically, the two sequences that remain in mind are musically-oriented, with Spade triumphing with a Neil Diamond song and the final dance montage. Let’s face it; no movie using Dee-Lite’s “Groove is in the Heart” twice is worthless.

  • Go (1999)

    Go (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In theaters, April 1999) I didn’t expect much from this film, and was thus pleasantly entertained by this slight, sharp, funny film. A succession of three interlinked tales, Go overcomes the shadows of both its teen target audience and its Pulp Fictionish approach to plot by producing a film that is entertaining from start to finish. Some great sequences (The Macarena, the thinking cat, the car chase) pepper a good script and the directing is up to the task. My chief complaint -and it took me some time to realize what it was- is that by the end of the film, you get the impression that none of the rather obnoxious characters had been changed by the events of the movie; they will remember the events of the film no differently than us, as an entertaining diversion…. Still, this caveat aside, Go is a pretty darn good choice for video rental. Go!

    (Second viewing, On DVD, November 2000) One of the best teen-comedies of 1999, Go‘s inconsequential nature grates upon a second viewing. As the audio commentary explains, the goal of the film is to “show young people doing stupid things and getting away with it.” While the stupid things are still as entertaining as before, their ultimate lack of impact is unsatisfying. The DVD includes many deleted scenes (some good, some not) and three music videos, the best of the bunch being for Philip Steir’s remix of Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride”. (Steir being a studio musician, the clip is presented as a deleted scene, as the characters from the Las Vegas segment impersonate a featured band.) Still worth a viewing, if only for the good writing, unusual characters and time-shifting structure.

  • Fear Of A Black Hat (1993)

    Fear Of A Black Hat (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 1999) Everyone is forever marked by the music of their teen years and as luck had it, I ended up being fifteen in 1990. Which probably helps a lot to appreciate Fear Of A Black Hat, an absolutely riotous (!) mock-documentary about the rise, fall, breakup and reunion of a black gangsta-type rap group. Skewering targets from Vanilla Ice, M.C. Hammer, Salt-n-Pepa (and, retroactively, the Spice Girls!), C&C Music Factory, etc… Fear Of A Black Hat is nothing short of hilarious. The best parts of the movies are undoubtedly the mock MTV videos. Though weak in its latter third and making an inconsistent use of the documentary approach, Fear Of A Black Hat is one of the funniest films I’ve seen recently and most assuredly one of the top musical comedies of the nineties. Do yourself a favor and look for this one.

    (Second viewing, On DVD, July 2006) Everyone’s got their own little favourite films, and this is one of mine. A rap mockumentary solidly modelled after the classic Spinal Tap, this takes on the rap industry of the early nineties. Like Spinal Tap, it’s a lost less funny now after fifteen year’s worth of self-parodying hip-hop… but it’s still worth a look. Good music, fast jokes, clever writing and loose acting make this a treat for everyone, though fans of old-school rap will get a lot more out of it. The long-awaited DVD release offers a bunch of extras, some of which are fantastic (don’t miss writer/director Rusty Cundieff’s absorbing audio commentary, or the compilation of music videos from the film) and some of which are lame (you could miss the “reunion” audio interviews, at least if it wasn’t for the cute interviewer). Fans of the film will be pleased by the DVD; I certainly was, and my expectations were high.

  • Engines of Creation, K. Eric Drexler

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Anchor, 1986, 298 pages, C$13.95 tpb, ISBN 0-385-19973-2

    (Also available online at http://www.foresight.com/EOC/)

    Read enough reviews, and you’ll inevitably come a review lamenting a bad book by referring to trees cut down senselessly. Far less often, however, will you find the opposite opinion. Given the environmentalist thinking of the past decades, it seems vaguely heretical -or at least very uncomfortable-, to actually suggest that dead trees were justified.

    Engines of Creation is the type of book that not only inspires this kind of devoted following bordering on fanaticism, but also includes the intellectual rationale to stop feeling guilty about it. Simply put; if what Engines of Creation proposes becomes true, we’ll be able to give back to nature what we’ve taken from it—with compound interest.

    Heady assertion, but the book is that convincing. Let’s review the basic argument: We will eventually develop tools and techniques to manipulate matter at the atomic level. It’s not even a new technique; biology is, after all, the domain of this kind of manipulation.

    Drexler spins this argument through its logical implications: We’ll be able to manufacture literally anything for a ridiculous cost. We’ll be able to build better immunological systems for our bodies. We’ll be able to feed, clothe and house everyone while simultaneously ending our dependence on natural resources. Limits to growth? Imperceptible.

    Optimistic previsions are often harder to believe than the standard doom-and-gloom prophecies. That’s probably why Engines of Creation is a meticulously constructed argument. Drexler begins by explaining the drivers of change and the roots of projection. He warns about the wrong ideas polluting our mental landscape and then hammers down the counter-idea to the widely-held belief that there are absolute limits to our growth.

    Engines of Creation is an invigorating book. It shows us a possible future that’s simply too good to miss. It’s also the kind of book that creates not only fans, but believers.

    But it’s a mistake to assumer that Drexler’s opinion of nanotechnology is unqualifiedly positive. In fact, he spends most of the book discussing the horrors of nanotechnology run amok and the ways to ensure that it stays firmly under control. He’s as terrified of nanotech as anyone else, maybe because he understands it so much. Drexler, however, isn’t a doomsayer. He acknowledges the problems, but also proposes reasonable theoretical solutions.

    This book is a joy to read for its clear writing style and the wealth of ideas blossoming from its pages. Beyond being the manifesto for the nanotech crowd, Engines of Creation is also a powerful book on the philosophy of science and technology, as well as a good volume of anticipation writing.

    But beyond the optimistic outlook and the limpid writing, is Engines of Creation credible? Scientific non-fiction books usually have a very short shelf life: Before anyone knows it, science has progressed further and the fixed content of a book becomes obsolete. It’s fascinating to see that even though Engines of Creation was written in 1985, there only one obsolete chapter in the whole book. It’s even more interesting to realize that it’s the most convincing chapter: It talks about the Internet, predicting quite accurately the rise of global communication in scientific research and the wonderful possibilities raised by the cross-linking of texts. “It might even become addictive” warns Drexler. Little did he knew. If he was right about that, what about the remainder of the book?

    It’s hard to over-praise Engines of Creation given its enormous cult following and the wonderful possibilities offered by the book. Suffice to say that it should be recommended reading for everyone. If there is even only a slight possibility that some of Engines of Creation becomes true, then we all need to be prepared for what’s coming up.

  • Fatal Instinct (1993)

    Fatal Instinct (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 1999) Curiously tame spoof of erotic thrillers (Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, mostly, obviously) best caught on TV, not rented: Even though constantly amusing, it’s not exactly hilarious and fails to make the most of its opportunities. Armand Assante is quite good, though the remainder of the cast fades in the background. Put it at a level above Robin Hood: Men In Tights, equal with The Silence Of The Hams but below any of the early Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker films such as Airplane!, Top Secret! and Hot Shots!.

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, September 2022) I had at least two reasons to be curious about re-watching spoof comedy Fatal Instinct, twenty-five years after an initial viewing.  For one thing, I have since watched many, many of the noir and neo-noir films parodied here – I could expect to catch many more of the film’s jokes.  For another, I was curious to see how the film’s comedy had aged: It wasn’t considered a top-notch spoof comedy back then, but the sub-genre got much, much worse in the following decade-and-a-half (before disappearing) and the result may look better in comparison.  As it turns out, a re-visit was worth the time on both counts.  Fatal instinct isn’t funny as much as it’s deeply silly, and that feels far better than the intolerable, laugh-free, mean-spirited form the spoof comedy took during the 2000s.  Amand Assante stars as a police officer moonlighting as a lawyer, but much of the rather solid plot chains sequences out of classic noir and neo-noirs, with director Carl Reiner (no newcomer to the genre, having helmed Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid) playing with form as much as with content.  (My favourite visual gag has the lead character’s car equipped with cinematic blinds and a ceiling fan.)  The blend of influences from 1940s noir to 1970s neo-noir to 1990 erotic thrillers is a great deal of fun (especially when it’s blending all three, such as two characters’ amorous activities are interrupted by a postman ringing twice) even when the film is not subtle about it at all.  Other than a very solid Assante, Sherilyn Fenn is quite good as the lead character’s secretary with a hidden past, although both Sean Young and Kate Nelligan both have their moments along the way.  (Other notable casting coups: A young Christopher McDonald as a romantic rival, as well as veterans Eartha Kitt and Tony Randall as judges.)  I suspect that part of the fun these days is playing pop-culture archaeology in decoding which film are being parodied, especially as many of them are no longer the references they once were.  I wouldn’t want to over-praise Fatal Instinct: it’s weak brew compared to the ZAZ spoof comedies of the 1980s.  But it’s a great deal better – particularly from a plotting standpoint! — than many of the subsequent spoofs that extinguished the genre, and it still makes for a smirk-filled late-evening watch.

  • Die Hard (1988)

    Die Hard (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Third viewing, On TV, April 1999) It’s always risky to sit down and watch an old favorite movie. Who knows if you’re not setting yourself up for a disappointment? Maybe your memory isn’t as good at you think it is, and “enhanced” the movie beyond its actual worth? Fortunately, Die Hard still possesses -even after countless imitators- the same qualities that made it an action classic: a tight script, a good premise, nicely-defined characters, a nasty and believable villain, comic relief, great pacing and -perhaps above everything- a superb performance by Bruce Willis. Though perhaps unintentionally ridiculous by moments -like Powell recovering his… er… virility-, Die Hard still stands as one of the action genre’s towering achievements.

    (Fourth viewing, On DVD, October 2001) The classics never get old, and so you can watch Die Hard on a yearly basis and still find yourself sucked into its magic. Are there any flaws to this film? Probably, but I can’t be bothered to find them. It’s just too much fun to watch uncritically. The “Five-Star” DVD edition is adequate, but somehow disappoints by not offering more, more, more about the film.

  • Blackbelt (1992)

    Blackbelt (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 1999) Many critics are prompt to blast even the finest martial arts movies, but they haven’t recalibrated their bad-movie standards with films like Blackbelt. It’s hard to know even where to begin in an enumeration of faults. The concept (rock singer, threatened by psycho, hires bodyguard) is cliché, the acting is… er… unconvincing (the opening generic takes the time to list martial arts credentials after the relevant names), the treatment of women is repulsive, the editing is awful, the choreography isn’t impressive, the sets look incredibly cheap (including a battle in a warehouse of… empty boxes?) and the script is strictly on autopilot. Watch something else. This isn’t even worth your time.

  • The Killing Star, Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avonova, 1995, 340 pages, C$7.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-380-77026-1

    Science-Fiction writer Jerry Pournelle once told Charles Pellegrino that he “must have fascinating nightmares.” With his third novel, Dust, Pellegrino almost ended the world on a note of ecological collapse. In his first effort, Flying to Valhalla, he spent some time discussing the planet-cleansing effect of relativistic bombs. The Killing Star bridges these two novels by destroying the human race with relativistic bombs.

    To be fair, it must be said that The Killing Star is a sequel to Flying to Valhalla, though no previous knowledge of the first book is required. It takes up the story where the first novel left off, with one extra-terrestrial anxious to inflict maximum damage to human civilization. Enter relativistic bombs.

    The concept is incredibly simple: Take something -anything- and accelerate it to near-lightspeed velocities. Arrange the trajectory so that your target is struck by the near-c projectile. The impact will produce an energy roughly comparable to pure mass/energy conversion (the closer to c, the closer the equivalent). For best results, send a projectile that spreads over a wide area at the very last moment. Total destruction quasi-assured. Best of all, aggressively speaking, is that by the nature of the weapons, you can’t see it coming until it’s far too late.

    Now, obviously, no nation on Earth has the means and willingness to build relativistic bombs, and -more practically- to send them away at near-c velocities. This is where implications become fascinating: only a much more advanced civilization would be able to do such a thing. Though we can speak for ourselves as incompetent, what if other extraterrestrial races out there have this capacity?

    Furthermore, what if they’re convinced that every race wants to do it to them? Wouldn’t they strike preemptively? Is that why the SETI project hasn’t intercepted any signals from other civilizations? Are we stupid enough to advertise ourselves to overly paranoid races? Are relativistic bombs heading our way as we speak? Pellegrino and James Powell make a convincing analogy about the galaxy being like Central Park at night. Sure, chances are that you’ll be able to walk through it unharmed, but as you crazy enough to shout “Hello! I’m friendly! Talk to me!” while doing it?

    This review is halfway over, and still hasn’t talked about the novel itself. That should tell you something both about the novel and the strength of the ideas contained within.

    Thirty pages in The Killing Star, humanity has been destroyed at the exception of a few isolated outposts under the sea, near the Sun, on comets or inside asteroids. The remainder of the novel is dedicated to the relentless hunter/killer game between alien predator and human prey.

    To be fair, the characterization in The Killing Star is better than the two other Pellegrino novels… probably an artifact of the collaboration with Zebrowski. It’s still not good enough to give life to the characters, but it’s better. (Admittedly, it’s always difficult to be convincing when trying to characterize the clones of religious prophets.)

    But purist of the hard-SF ethos will argue that characterization and complexity of plotting must take second seat to ideas and fulfillment of premises. In this regard, The Killing Star fares much better, bringing forth some intriguing ideas and presenting a convincing account of the ultimate alien invasion.

    But beyond that, The Killing Star is simply a lot of fun to read. Some of the sequences are breathtaking by their audacity. There are rich ironies in almost every chapter. It’s a grim but fair novel that rigidly adheres to science. Devotees of Clarke will find here what they want to read, with a harder edge and more suspense.

    But long after the details of the plot will be forgotten, it’s the central idea of aliens-as-conquerors -suitably modernized- that will endure. Whether this shows hysterical paranoia or healthy foresight will have to be decided by the reader’s prejudice, but you just have to thank Pellegrino and Zebrowski to present us with such rich material for speculation.

  • Deepdrive, Alexander Jablokov

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Avon EOS, 1998, 311 pages, C$19.00 hc, ISBN 0-380-97636-6

    Once in a while comes a book that’s not easily reviewable. Whereas most books are easily criticized as being good/bad, some aren’t as simply analyzed. Deepdrive is a case in point; a book with some terrific aspects that nevertheless fails at being a satisfying read.

    One of Deepdrive‘s best characteristics is the setting: In a future far removed from us, the solar system has been colonized by both humans and aliens. Strange creatures are transforming Venus. Aliens on Mercury fire a gigantic gun at the sun for mysterious purposes. Dozen of races people the systems alongside humans, most often doing things that other races can’t figure out. These aliens are here, but they can’t go elsewhere: The faster-than-light engines (“deepdrives”) they used to enter the system all self-destructed upon arrival, thus preventing these pesky humans from escaping. Spurred by suspicious rumors, several humans have tried to find out working drives, without success.

    Wonderful setting; does Jablokov do anything with it? The plot eventually set in motion resides around an alien called Ripi, a lone representative of his race who’s held in “protective custody” on Venus. Our story begins as a team of mercenaries is sent to recover Ripi. After all, maybe he knows the secret of the deepdrive…

    But, as we could expect, things go wrong, Ripi is found, lost, retrieved and let go again. Our mercs fight the police, squabble among themselves, discover each other’s secrets, disband, come together, etc…

    The above might have been a superb space adventure in the most classical sense, a fast-paced action-filled SF story with the fun hallmarks of the genre’s most enjoyable romp. Well, in the final analysis it is not.

    And it’s fiendishly hard to figure out why.

    My first thought was that the prose style was somehow lacking in readability, but that doesn’t turn out to be true: Though Jablokov doesn’t grab our attention like the masters (Heinlein, Varley, etc…) can, he’s similarly removed from the undecipherable prose of his more “literary” counterparts.

    Things get more complex when we look at the characters. Despite assembling a motley group of different personalities as his mercenary team, Jablokov has given us no real hero. I had to keep reminding myself that his protagonists were human, because they didn’t act in any manner similar to ours. In trying to be interesting, Jablokov might have gone too far in the realm of the bizarre and the alien. The result is that we can’t focus on anyone and can’t relate to any character.

    It gets worse when considering the story from afar. The recovery of Ripi is only the beginning of the adventure. The problem is that everything that follows is less interesting than the first hundred pages. It’s hard to be satisfied with a novel whose dramatic high-point comes at the beginning. I found myself scanning rather than reading because I just couldn’t get interested in the various events.

    The novel might have been too long to be snappy, it might have been too short to give us the chance to be interested in the characters. But whatever the reason, the result is not successful. Hollywood often has the tendency to recycle original premises in other films; I find myself wishing for a future novel doing exactly that from Deepdrive.

  • Mission to Mars, Michael Collins

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Grove Weidenfeld, 1990, 307 pages, C$20.00 hc, ISBN 0-8021-1160-2

    I have always been fascinated by space. My parents are fond of reminding me -to my great embarrassment- that as a very young lad, I regularly pointed upward at night, repeating “The Moon! The Moon!” to everyone within earshot. As a slightly older lad, I practically cut my reading teeth on Apollo mission clippings and a used copy of Jules Verne’s De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon)

    Is it any wonder I became a heavy science-fiction reader? After I had read all about the historical events and witnessed the first few shuttle flights, there wasn’t much left to explore in the real-world. And, up to a certain point, fifteen years later that’s still true: Humankind has ignored the promise of outer space, being content with circling the globe -if that- for strictly pedestrian reasons. It’s intolerable that most people accept the fact that there hasn’t been a human on the moon for twenty-five years.

    Historical records show that once Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Nixon and Agnew were already talking of taking the next step; going to Mars. Of course, we know what then happened to Nixon and Agnew, but the dream of going to Mars hasn’t fared much better.

    However, the nineties have seen a renewed surge of interest in plans for Mars. Only in Science-Fiction, we’ve seen almost a dozen novels dealing with Martian exploration, from the definitive Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson to awful franchise novels which shall remain nameless.

    But the book that arguably sparked this interest is Mission to Mars, by ex-astronaut Michael (“First Man Not to Walk on the Moon”) Collins. In this 1990 non-fiction account, Collins exposes why and how we should go to Mars, as well as the problems to solve until then.

    As could be expected, we get a solid description of the current state of our knowledge about the Red Planet, as well as practical considerations for making the trip. We don’t have Star Trek technology: Our closed-loop environmental systems are imperfect at best, and the weight of the spacecraft we’ll be sending there will remain a significant problem for a long time.

    Collins is no armchair commentator; he’s been up there and he knows what he’s talking about. Mission to Mars is peppered with candid -often tough- advice about a myriad of small and big subjects.

    The book really lift off, however, in its last third, where Collins writes a small docu-novella describing in fictional format the adventures of the first colonists. A testimony to the power of good science-fiction, this account repeats the arguments and issues of the first two-third of the book while making them more interesting and certainly more memorable. While no Hugo-winning piece of work, it is serviceable enough to serve as centerpiece to the book. (As for the “straight” non-fiction part of the book, the two highlights are chapters about submarines and Antarctica as related to a Mars Mission.)

    Though not exceptionally well-organized, Mission to Mars flows well. The index ensures that it will be usable as reference material.

    Where Collins fails, however, is to convince me that we should forego the Moon to go directly to Mars. I’ve suggested elsewhere that it’s this attitude that made us go on the Moon before we were ready to follow up exploration by colonization. In my mind -and Collins didn’t change it-, we should establish a permanent colony on the Moon even before thinking of going to Mars. If the goal is to move permanently into space -and I can’t think of any other overriding goal for humankind-, it’s far better to expand in the neighborhood than take a short trip in next country.

    But, personal preferences aside, Mission to Mars is a succinct compilation of the whys and hows of going to Mars. It’s worth the time for anyone who still looks above at night and wonder why we’re not already up there.