Wildside Review!

A while back it was my pleasure to participate in the 'crowdsource proofreading project' for Steven Gould's new ebook edition of Wildside. It was a good deal; I got to read an old favorite and test drive a couple of ebook formats and all I had to do was report any errors I found.

Well, here's my promised review of the book.

Summary:

Young Charlie Newell discovers a doorway to an alternate version of earth where man never existed - the eponymous wildside. Flocks of Passenger pigeons still fill the skies, mammoth and bison still roam the plains, and dire wolves and saber tooth tigers still lurk in the tall grass.

If you found something like this, what would you do?

Make money of course!

Fresh out of High School, Charlie enlists four friends in his (environmentally concious) money making schemes.

Praise and Criticisms:

First of all, I've got to say that I really enjoy this book. I first read it twelve years ago when I was in high school. Re-reading it, although I have done so at least twice before, was a little bit like coming home again. I was also able to pick out more references to Monty Python as well as The Chronicles of Narnia this time around.

Normally I cringe when the label 'Young Adult' is thrown around, especially if it relates to a novel I still enjoy. However, I do admit that the clichéd flaws each character struggles with really lend this book an 'after school special'-esque feeling. There's the gay guy coming out to his friends, the alchoholic, and the guy with father issues who also has trouble getting a girlfriend.

The strangest thing about the 'wildside' of the gate is the ecology. You see, the alternate version of earth on the other side of the gate purportedly differs from the earth on our side of the gate in one key way: human's never existed there. Therefore, the pleistocene kill-off never hapened, and the climate is cooler because no one burned all of those evil fossil fuels.

Now I'm not go into a long debate about climate change, but I will point out that history tells us that earth's climate has never been static. Where I live it was a desert 6,000 years ago. How the Wooly Mammoth would have survived that, I don't know. Either way, I doubt that the adventurers in the novel would have encountered Woods Bison on the wildside. Not with sabre tooth tigers still prowling around. Bison antiquus was the ice age species and was better adapted to deal with dire wolves and saber tooth tigers. Why bison alone would have evolved into a more familiar species, I can't fathom.

But hey, it is, after all, an alternate earth. Who's to say how similar it has to be to our earth, just as long as it pushes your own political agenda…

And I suppose Charlie could have been mistaken in his identification.

My largest complaint, however, stems from something I had failed to fully appreciate before:

Spoiler alert!

Charlie fully expected to confront the government from the very begining! Sure, he didn't expect it to go to such an extreme, but to proceed with an action so likely to raise suspicion as to start selling Passenger Pigeons is kind of a dick move.

Or just plain dumb.

I mean, really? Charlie couldn't come up with a better plan to generate his start up cash?

I still like it, but it's not as good as Jumper.

Rating: ***/5

BTW, Columbicola extinctus and Campanulotes defectus are not extinct…

Proofreading an Old Favorite, Wildside by Steven Gould!

I just finished a long overdue re-read of Wildside by Steven Gould. While this is not my favorite novel by Mr. Gould, it is the book that first introduced me to his work, and that's not to say that it isn't one of my favorites. It's a great read! Look for a review soon. . .

Also, it gave me a chance to try out a few ebook formats.

That's right, I read it in an electronic format. You see, over on his blog, Steven Gould announced that he needed some volunteers to proofread Wildside since he had to scan and OCR the text before composing the ebook. I jumped at the opportunity of course (no pun intended). What happened to his original computer file I don't know, but he has already released Jumper and Reflex as ebooks, at very reasonable prices I might add.

I recieved copies in both Mobi and EPUB formats, but since I haven't bought a handheld reader yet, I read them on my computer. I think I prefer the EPUB format over Mobipocket. There is a handy plugin for Firefox that lets you read .epub files and lets you change the background colour, font, margin width, etc. The Mobipocket reader is available as a free download, and it looks slick, but it just wasn't as convenient for me.
And now to start proofreading Helm. . .

Update: Get it here.

Steven Gould's 'Shade'

Wow, a first review is kinda intimidating. But, this particular story really hit a nerve so I've gotta say something. So here goes: Shade by Steven Gould

This short story is freely available on TOR.com, Mr. Gould's publisher.

Some of you may be familiar with Doug Liman's stinker of a movie, Jumper, which came out earlier this year (the DVD is already $9.99 up here in Canada). Well, that horrible piece of SF cinema was based on one of my favorite novels of all time, Jumper by Steven Gould. Mr. Liman's trashing of this story will be the subject of a future post; this post is about a story set in Mr. Gould's original Jumper universe (believe me, this universe thing has gotten complicated since Steven Gould has also published a prequel to the movie that has nothing to do with the original novel).

Spoiler alert!

Shade is the third story set in the original Jumper universe following the eponymous novel and it's sequel, Reflex. In this short story we find Davy and Millie branching out and trying their hand at humanitarian aid work. The story actually is told from the view point of a young African boy living in a refugee camp.

Okay, so this plot is a broad departure from the format of the novels. But Mr. Gould did lay the ground work for the Rice's 'bleeding heart' philosophy and there is an opportunity for some 'Jump' based warfare in the later half of the story. To be precise, some rebels come to shoot at the refugees and, after taking a gun from one of the men, Davy decides not to shoot at the bad guys. Instead he uses a nifty jumping trick that he learned in Reflex to flood out the rebels with a lake's worth of water from Canada.

Come off it! Your high horse that is, Mr. Gould. How long do we have to put up with this 'don't shoot back at the bad guys' crap and it's equally facile corollary, 'or you'll be as bad as them'. Where does that come from anyway? Dear readers, go out and rent Dark Knight and see how stupid this philosophy is. Think of how many lives could have been saved if Bruce had simply killed the Joker first opportunity he got. Not satisfied with a fictional example? Okay imagine Hitler being assassinated before the final solution of the Jews was thought up.

What's more, Davy's water powered attack on the rebels, if it ever occurred in the real world, would be a crime against nature. Okay, yes, I'm Canadian, but that's not why I object to the theft of Canadian water. Rather, it's because I think Humans have messed with the ecosystem too much already. What right do we have to breed like rabbits till we choke the earth and fill it with our poisons until nothing can live on the planet. Okay, that's harsh. But the reality of the situation is that while Canada probably could spare the water (or so many Americans would like to believe), its sudden introduction to an African desert would be catastrophic for the local (and undoubtedly unique) flora and fauna. The arrogance to believe we have the right to support ourselves at the cost of all else is what has led us to our current state of ecological disaster.

I'm sorry, but this story simply doesn't work for me.

Rating:
**/5