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Door Number Three
A slapstick tale of time-travel, aliens, reality and dreams
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Door Number Three
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By Patrick O'Leary
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Tor Books
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$14.95/$21.95 Canada
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Trade Paperback, Jan. 97
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ISBN# 0-312-86287-3
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Review by L.R.C. Munro
 ohn Donelly is a chain-smoking Jungian therapist with a crumbling almost-marriage, a dying mother and a whole lot of lapsed-Catholic guilt. The last thing he needs is to get mixed up with an alien, yet when the exotic looking Laura walks into his office and asks for help, that is exactly what happens.
Laura tells John the implausible story that she is the offspring of an alien and a human, and that she will only be allowed to remain on Earth if she can, within the year, convince one sane person that her story is true. John agrees to help, intending to cure her "delusions." However, the more he delves into Laura's life, the more he finds himself drawn into her reality -- one in which aliens eavesdrop on human dreams, time travelers blip around the continuum and alternate pasts compete for primacy on the time-plane.
Even as John searches for ways to rationalize the growing evidence that some of Laura's story might be true, he must also contend with his crumbling personal life -- the girlfriend who is leaving him, the consequences of his estranged mother's illness and the fact that he is falling in love with his strange patient.
Following up clues about Laura's life leads John to many strange and enteraining places -- the shores of a cold Canadian lake, a hilarious convention of inventors, Hollywood -- even the landscape of his own dreams. But ultimately John's only hope seems to be to get to the truth behind Laura's unbelievable tale, but to do so he must question everything he thinks he knows about reality, dreams, time and even love -- and possibly risk losing it all.
SF comedy for grown-ups
Door Number Three is, as the wildly complimentary cover blurbs say, an impressive debut novel and a very enjoyable read -- managing to be good fun, good character drama and good science fiction all at once. Author O'Leary has accomplished a rare feat in science fiction -- writing a novel that is funny without being silly or campy. He does this largely by having an intelligent, wry and self-deprecating first-person narrator in John Donelly.
It is also a pleasure to read a novel that focuses on mature character development. With its dysfunctional adult characters and modern sensibilities, Door Number Three is not the typical "coming of age" story so prevalent in the genre, but rather a "grow up already" story that makes some telling points about getting on with life in the face of past injustice.
It is also intriguing, if not entirely novel, science fiction. While time-travel, visiting aliens and alternate universes are largely explored territory, linking the elements together through dreams gives O'Leary the opportunity to play with the "reality" and to add some unexpected twists to the tale. O'Leary takes the time to ground his speculations in real physics where possible, in plausible pseudo-science otherwise, and he has clearly done his homework in current psychiatric theory.
Overall, Door Number Three is a genuine pleasure to read and highly recommended.
This book is full of surprises -- I rarely saw them coming, and was even more impressed to go back afterwards and see how thoroughly I'd been set up. Definitely a writer to watch for.
--LRC
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Tomorrow and Tomorrow
A young composer journeys to the final moments of the universe to resurrect
his wife...
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Tomorrow and Tomorrow
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By Charles Sheffield
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Bantam Spectra
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$13.95/$19.95 Canada
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Trade Paperback, Jan. 1997
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ISBN: 0-553-37808-2
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Review by Clinton Lawrence
Drake Merlin's wife, Ana, has contracted a very rare and incurable disease. But Drake believes that at some point in the future, there must be a cure for her. As she enters her last days of life, Drake persuades Tom Lambert, his family doctor, to help him arrange to preserve Ana in a cryogenic womb. Tom reluctantly agrees. And after she's safely frozen, he asks Tom to help place him in a similar cryogenic womb to awaken with her. Tom refuses at first, but promises to help if after eight years, Drake still wants to be frozen with Ana. Drake spends the next nine years using his vast talent as a composer to accumulate money, and gain the kind of prestige that might give someone a reason to wake him. Even more reluctantly than before, Tom agrees to help.
Drake is first awakened in the 26th century, where he helps a scholar write a history of music in Drake's time. But the scholar is suspicious about Drake's obsession for Ana. When Drake finishes his work, he flies to Pluto, where the cryowombs are now stored, and steals Ana's. But in his flight, he briefly opens the cryowomb. When he returns to the solar system, 300 years later, he's told that her brain cells have been damaged, and there's no way to restore her mind. The only hope lies billions of years in the future, at the eschaton, the moment of the final collapse of the universe when all the information that has ever existed will be available simultaneously.
A synthesis of evolutionary forces and eternal values...
As one might expect from a novel that spans the rest of the life of the universe, Tomorrow and Tomorrow covers a wide range of philosophical questions as it traces the future of humanity. Beyond the obvious themes of eternal love and immortality, Sheffield explores the meaning of identity through several devices, including cloning, the electronic storage of the mind and, eventually, the merging of multiple minds into composites. He also speculates on the nature of omnipotence, both in the main text and in the excellent appendix where he explains the underlying scientific theories behind the events in the novel. Most amazingly, he manages all this within the bounds of a very average length novel.
The novel maintains a good balance between the extraordinary measures Drake takes (measures apparently attempted by no one else), and Drake's essential character. Despite the fact that Drake's story is legendary in the various futures, in his own mind he's not doing anything heroic, only what he has to do in order to fulfill his own emotional needs.
If there's anything even slightly disappointing about this work, it's that so little time is spent in some of Sheffield's futures. For instance, Sheffield barely touches upon the implications of his world of the 26th century, where work done entirely by machines is considered to be without cost. But though further explorations would be interesting, Sheffield wisely keeps the focus on Drake's story.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a powerful synthesis of evolutionary forces and eternal values, and Sheffield tells his story with a very human focus. It's an outstanding novel.
I think this novel exemplifies the best traits of traditional science
fiction --Clint
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Excession
Has the Culture finally met its match?
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Excession
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By Iain M. Banks
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Bantam Spectra
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$12.95
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Trade Paperback
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ISBN 0-553-37460-5
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Review by Curt Wohleber
 he Culture may be as close to utopia as anyone could ask for. Its people enjoy lifespans measured in centuries and travel the galaxy on super-intelligent starships that hold hundreds of millions of passengers. People can change genders at will, secrete numerous drugs of choice and play with limitless numbers of high-tech goodies. Most of the time, life is a galactic playground. Every so often, however, something threatens the Culture's tranquillity and near-omnipotence, such as the Idiran War, in which billions died in single skirmishes.
In Iain M. Banks's latest Culture novel, all hell breaks loose with the appearance of a mysterious entity more powerful and threatening than anything the Culture has encountered before. The "excession" could destroy the Culture -- or provide the key to breaching the supposedly unbreachable "energy grids" that separate universes. On hand to complicate matters is the Affront -- a race of tentacled, methane-breathing aliens dedicated to cheerful cruelty.
By contrast, the Culture's high-end artificial intelligences -- called Minds -- are like a British prep-school class of wisecracking science nerds. When not running the affairs of the galaxy or plotting amongst themselves, they like to romp in the "Land of Infinite Fun," simulating entire universes within their mammoth brains. The Excession interests the Minds not only because it's one of the few things in the universe than can threaten them, but also because it presents an opportunity to do something about the misbehaving Affronters.
Entertaining but out of control
Like the other Culture novels (Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, The Player of Games), Excession is old-fashioned space opera with a modern gloss, bolstered by stylish writing, interesting characters, and antic humor. As usual, Banks packs in lots of weird and cool technology. Spacesuits argue with their wearers and have social lives when not in use. People can communicate across the galaxy by transmitting "mind-state abstracts" of themselves, which can have conversations with their recipients.
But Excession suffers from excess: too many characters, too many elaborate plot strands and too many exotic set-pieces that impress readers but don't do much to propel or clarify the storyline. More than half the novel goes by before readers get to the know the central characters well enough to care what happens to them, and it's even later before Banks manages to spark any real suspense.
Banks leaves enough questions unanswered to make the curious wonder if he found his story getting out of control and decided to jettison some themes and plot elements in midstream. Or perhaps Excession represents a setup for a really epic, universes-spanning saga.
With the increasingly godlike Minds dominating the Culture, and recognizably human characters -- "meat" as some Minds call them -- reduced to little more than pets and parasites, it will be hard for Banks to top himself and still tell a compelling story that his flesh-and-blood readers will be able to relate to. At the very least, it would be interesting to see him try.
A good read, but less memorable and satisfying than the other Culture novels. --Curt
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