Subject: REVIEW: "Spares", Michael Marshall Smith

From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Sep 1998 11:35:51 -0400

Spares by Michael Marshall Smith
	Review Copyright 1998 Robert M. Slade

In "The Adventure of the Creeping Man," Conan Doyle gave us the prototype
of all the "monkey gland eternal youth serum" science fiction stories.
Towards the end of it, Sherlock Holmes notes that the existence of such an
elixir of youth would give rise to "survival of the least fit."  The
spiritual and wise would accept the chance to move on to another possible
level of existence, while the crass and material would give anything to
prolong their current state.

So too in "Spares" does Smith point out that the insurance of having a
perfect and ready supply of transplantable parts would give rise to a
truly evil level of irresponsibility.

It is the truly insane parts of the book that sound initially reasonable.
Why not build a business empire on the productive, and waste, capacity of
bored husbands, boyfriends, and fathers whiling away the time they spend
waiting for shopping expeditions?  Yet it is those parts of the book that
sound outrageous that are most real.  While tracking down a prostitute and
a retarded teenager a man is viciously reminded of his dead wife and
daughter by a diversion?  Too real, much too real.

It is probably because of this ability to go to the true heart of a
superficially surreal scenario that allows us to accept the leaps Smith
does make into the twilight zone.  Many science fiction authors are
enamoured of building elaborate artificial worlds with annoying and
irrelevant detail.  In this case you become so involved that you don't
care *why* the trees are so greatly to be feared: you are only thankful
that the characters escape without encountering the vicious fauna.

There are, of course, a number of incomprehensible, but acceptable,
technologies, such as engines capable of driving several kilometre long
and 200 story high cities through the air.  But Smith also has a realistic
grasp of computers.  Storage, on disk or in non-volatile RAM, gives you
the essence of any computer, without the need for dragging all the
hardware along.  "Collapsing code" is not real, but seems to be a reductio
ad absurdum for the tendency to build higher and higher levels of
programming languages.  On the other hand, the protagonist seems to have a
serious understanding of computer source code, with little reason for it.

Only one serious mistake in siting the story in the United States rather
than Britain, aside from some minor dialect issues: North America simply
does not smoke that much anymore.

%A   Michael Marshall Smith
%C   10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY  10022-5299
%D   1996
%G   0-586-21775-4
%I   HarperCollins/Basic Books
%O   800-242-7737 fax: 212-207-7433 [email-masked]
%P   305 p.
%T   "Spares"