From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Feb 10 12:29:25 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!howland.erols.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: "White Shark", Peter Benchley Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 04 Feb 2000 18:02:30 -0500 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Lines: 70 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 949705353 22470 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2590 "White Shark" by Peter Benchley Review Copyright 2000 Rob Slade Peter Benchley can do *way* better than this. I mean, look at "Jaws," which everybody was reading on the beach that summer since they were afraid to go into the water because of possible shark attacks. Not, perhaps, the Great American Novel, but it had a rather astonishing sensitivity to good and evil for a modern work. Let's look at the technology, first. Actually, there are too many missing pieces in the technology, and biology, to say much for sure. That part of the story seems to be complicated and convoluted beyond all belief, and seems to indicate that Benchley changed his mind several times about things without bothering to go back and revise the narrative. At one point it is quite clear that a certain process has been taught and practiced, while not too far away it is unequivocally stated that the procedure was never taught. I suppose I don't have too much difficulty with the idea that cognition could be reduced to minimal levels while metabolism was slowed or suspended. However, the disparity between the phenomenal feats of strength and the lack of returning thought and memory seems excessive. Speaking of suspended, this is one of the uncertain areas of the book. The story seems to indicate that "Der Weisse Hai" is locked in a kind of pandora's box for fifty years, opened only by the foolish intervention of explorers. At the same time, there seems to be evidence that the thing could have exited at any time. Neither construction really makes much sense: a fifty year hibernation is clearly excessive, and a failure to escape is inconsistent with the later activities. Benchley also seems to be feeling a little guilty about his role in portraying sharks as monsters of the deep, and gives us a rather facile conservationist thread in this book. The big technical blowout (literally) comes in the climax of the book. I can quite believe that a rapid pressurization would cause excruciating pain in the ears. However, any diver knows that dissolving enough nitrogen in the tissues to create severe bends takes hours, not seconds. This is why divers have decompression tables. Explosive decompression just simply does not happen like that. The technical problems are not the only ones with the work. Many items in the book are introduced and then forgotten, giving the piece a ragged feel. As noted before, the author seems to have changed his mind on a number of issues and then seems to have felt that the reading public simply didn't deserve the courtesy of a little cleanup. One of the changes seems to have been the length of the book. The setup takes a long time, and a number of important characters are introduced way too late for a story of this size. Benchley appears to have intended to write a novel and then, half way through, decided that he was too bored and that a pulp paperback was good enough. %A Peter Benchley %C 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010 %D 1994 %G 0-312-95573-1 %I St. Martin's Press %O U$6.50/C$7.50 212-674-5151 fax 800-288-2131 %P 340 p. %T "White Shark" ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com Rescue those being led away to death, hold back those being dragged to the slaughter. Will you object, `But look, we did not know?' Has he who weighs the heart no understanding, He who scans your soul no knowledge? - Proverbs 24:11,12 http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade