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Noir
Dead men do tell tales
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Noir
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By K.W. Jeter
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Bantam Spectra
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$23.95/$32.95 Canada
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Hardcover, Nov. 1998
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ISBN 0-553-10483-7
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Review by Curt Wohleber
 ohn McNihil is an ex-copyright cop. He still freelances though, tracking down intellectual property thieves and surgically preparing them for the most hideous punishment that technology and human cruelty can devise. And he's the good guy.
The bad guy is Harrisch, an operative of the DynaZauber Corp. Harrisch wants McNihil to investigate the death of an executive named Travelt, who was a visitor to the sleazy sexual subculture called "The Wedge." Few people go to The Wedge in person. Like most, Travelt used a "prowler," a synthetic alter-ego that indulges in the sordid, sometimes dangerous pleasures of the Wedge, then returns to download its memories into the owner's mind.
Travelt's prowler is still on the loose, and Harrisch thinks it downloaded Travelt's own memories, including top-secret information that Harrisch is desperate to protect. McNihil refuses the case. He lost his job because of a botched investigation into copyright piracy in The Wedge, and his field agents had come back in pieces. But McNihil doesn't have a choice. He is snared both by his own curiosity and by a web of deception and betrayal involving Harrisch, a lethal seductress, a retired writer of crime thrillers, and McNihil's dead wife, who has been cybernetically resurrected and programmed to work off her unpaid hospital bills.
McNihil knows he's being set up, but he has a few tricks of his own. His investigation uncovers a sinister conspiracy, of course, and reanimates his own deceased conscience. Now McNihil must venture into The Wedge, not through a prowler but in the flesh.
Dark nights, big city
The term "film noir"--which means "dark cinema"--refers to the gritty, black-and-white crime movies of the 1940s and 1950s that continue to influence popular culture, from Tim Burton's Batman movies to episodes of The X-Files. Film buffs will enjoy spotting author K.W. Jeter's allusions to numerous noir and noir-inspired movies in this novel, and scholars could write entire books about Noir's debt to Blade Runner and the fiction of Philip K. Dick.
Noir evokes vivid images of a sinister urban world rivaling anything on film. It's a book that is original, impressive, beautifully written--and ultimately unsatisfying. Even allowing for the novel's deliberate excesses and absurdities, Jeter abuses his artistic license with too many contradictions and implausibilities. The plot is too flimsy to carry an entire novel, especially one this ambitious in theme and scope.
Disturbing and captivating for most of its length, Noir sputters at the end. A plot twist appears with no foreshadowing, stretching one of the novel's more doubtful premises past the breaking point. In The Wedge, which looks about as dangerous having a Grand Slam breakfast in the smoking section at Denny's, science fiction gives way to the supernatural, letting Jeter abandon logic and causality while he wraps things up. Many classic noirs have shaky plots. Perhaps for Jeter such quibbles are beside the point. Or maybe they are the point. If so, Noir is too smart for its own good. As one character tells McNihil, noir is about betrayal. But while the world may be corrupt, even the craftiest writer dare not betray his readers.
Well, maybe this time. But watch your back, Jeter.
I could not put this book down, except when I wanted to throw it against the wall.
-- Curt
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The Reel Stuff
Words are worth a thousand pictures
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The Reel Stuff
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Edited by Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg
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DAW Books
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$5.99/$7.99 Canada
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Paperback, Sept. 1998
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ISBN 0-88677-817-4
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Review by Douglas Fratz
 he Reel Stuff is an anthology of stories that served as the basis for 11 movies that were produced during the past 15 years. The selections here are intended to introduce SF fans to the stories behind the films, a number of which are superior science fiction literature. "Sandkings" and "Nightflyers" by George R.R. Martin, "Enemy Mine" by Barry Longyear, and "Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson, for instance, are four of the best SF stories of all time. "Sandkings," about a bored, affluent man in the far future who becomes obsessed with his pet colony of insectoid aliens, was filmed as an Outer Limits episode in 1995.
"Nightflyers," a hard-SF story about a group of scientists who charter a starship and its mysterious captain to intercept what they believe to be an alien spaceship older than human civilization, was turned into a 1987 movie of the same name. "Enemy Mine," the emotion-filled saga of two pilots--one human and one alien--marooned for years on a barren planet where they develop a friendship that lasts beyond death itself, was filmed in 1985. "Johnny Mnemonic," the story that both established Gibson as a starkly original new SF voice and launched the cyberpunk subgenre, was filmed in 1995.
Robert Silverberg's "Amanda and the Alien" was a memorable 1983 story about a spoiled teenager who saves her weekend from total boredom by bringing home a dangerous alien. It became a cable film in 1995. "Air Raid" by John Varley, although not one of his best stories, has the interesting premise that genetically degenerate future humans are using a time machine to snatch soon-to-die passengers from crashing airliners to revitalize the future gene pool. It was filmed in 1989 as Millennium. Stories of historical importance include "Second Variety" (1953) and "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966), two classic SF works by Philip K. Dick that were the basis for the movies Screamers (1996) and Total Recall (1990).
Stories that have the write stuff
The stories in The Reel Stuff provide stark evidence that the written word is often superior to the movies it inspires. In every case Hollywood has simplified these stories, substituting tired and uninspired clichés for interesting characters, unusual settings, original speculative insights and profound themes. The result has been movies that are diluted, shallow, dumbed-down imitations of the literary works.
For instance, the movie version of "Sandkings" made the protagonist into a stock mad scientist while cutting out most of the complexity and originality in the setting and plot, including what the sandkings really are. The result is a standard insectoid-alien-menace horror movie. The "Nightflyer" movie likewise deleted characterization, as well as the marvelous revelations about the starship's captain and the ancient, mysterious alien ship, to become a Hollywood murderous-alien-force-aboard-spaceship flick.
The "Enemy Mine" movie captured some of the flavor of the story, thanks to a marvelous performance by Louis Gossett Jr., but it substituted an action ending for Longyear's profoundly moving denouement. "Johnny Mnemonic" was wholly transformed into an action movie, providing barely a taste of Gibson's unique vision. In filming "Second Variety" as Screamers, most of the logical concepts in Dick's story were replaced with nonsensical things, such as the far-future mining planet setting where the company is at war with its workers.
It would be easy to go on, but the evidence is clear and depressing. Hollywood seems to believe only idiots will watch a "sci-fi" movie. The only alternative is to read these stories and imagine what great movies they could have made.
SF fans who've seen the "reel things" but never read these stories should get this anthology immediately and read the "real things."
-- Doug
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