Subject: Kronto Review: Peter James -- "Host"

From: [email-masked] (Leo Breebaart)
Date: 05 Nov 93 01:23:12 GMT

%T Host
%A Peter James
%I Victor Gollancz, 
%C London 
%D October 1993
%G ISBN 0 575 05619 3
%O hardcover UK#15.99

Capsule Review: "Host" is a techno-thriller aimed at a mainstream market.
It is a bit slow and long-winded in places, but it is amazingly
well-researched, it does not insult the reader's intelligence, and it
features the Internet in a rather prominent supporting role. If you are a
hardcore SF fan or computer freak you won't find much new in the book, but
you may find it, as I did, a very amusing read. Your non-techie friends
might even love it.

Disclaimer: I am basing this review on a free review copy the publishers
sent me.  Make of that what you will...

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It is a bit difficult to review "Host" fairly, because I am not really a
member of the target audience. Peter James has previously written a number
of successful horror novels, and this is his first try at a technological
thriller. The horror elements are still there, but basically this is just a
science fiction story aimed at the mainstream market.

As I said, the plot offers little that a science fiction fan will not have
read a thousand times elsewhere. Our hero is a brilliant computer scientist
who is obsessed with the idea of dying, or rather: the idea of *not* dying.
In order to achieve this goal, he is involved in two major scientific
efforts. One takes place in the field of cryonics: deep-freezing dying
people and waking them up when science has advanced enough so that their
illnesses can be cured. The other effort is even more ambitious: Professor
Joe Messenger would like to find a way to download a human consciousness
*entirely* into a computer, thus making the very concept of bodies
redundant. In order to accomplish all this, Messenger has developed a giant
neural-network computer, which may or may not be actually evolving into
consciousness itself...

I won't go into much more detail about the story in order to keep this
review spoiler-free, but basically James sets up a solid framework in which
these two scientific plot-lines interplay with each other, with lots of
thrills and chills resulting for Prof. Messenger, his colleagues and his
family.

Ok, from this brief outline you are now probably thinking that this is the
*last* book on earth you'd ever want to read, and I can't blame you. After
all, it's incredibly easy to write a book like this (and I've seen enough
examples) that would amount to complete and utter garbage. Pseudo
technological mumbo-jumbo, a laughable lack of understanding regarding the
possibilities and difficulties involved, with usually a nice
anti-scientific finishing touch ("Man should not Meddle with Things He Does
Not Understand"), and voila, another airport bestseller is born.

The pleasant surprise about this book is that Peter James does not fall
into any of these traps. Quite the opposite: the book's plot hinges firmly
on technological matters, and James tries to educate his readers at great
length. In this, he tries to do justice both to the larger concepts (What
is artificial intelligence? What is a neural network? How do cryonics work?)
as well as to the details (What does an e-mail session look like? What is a
Turing test?). True, he doesn't get *all* the details right *all* of the
time, and since this is science fiction, after all, there are a few major
liberties taken with the possibilities of current and future technology.
But the details he misses are really just small things, and the voodoo
handwaving involved with some of the larger plot devices is kept to a level
that is entirely acceptable. Another important issue to me is that James
does not let his personal philosophies (or even the philosophies of his
characters) intrude too much on the story. This in stark contrast to
Michael "Science is Eeeeeeevil" Crichton, for instance.

So, from a techie's viewpoint I think Peter James definitely deserves a lot
of praise for "Host". But when it comes to the nuts & bolts of the novel
itself, the plot and the writing, I am not as happy with the book as I
might have been.  I suppose it is a case of damned if you do, damned if you
don't, but Peter James spends a bit *too much* time explaining technical
matters. The first half of the book, in particular, is severely bloated with
page after page of explanations and situation set-up. In his eagerness to
give us a realistic setting for his novel, James forgets that a good
thriller should also have tension, excitement, and, well, *thrills* from
the very first page. After the first half, things start picking up a bit,
but the pace remains slow-and-steady until the last few dozen pages, and
Peter James simply never succeeds in truly sucking me into his narrative.
Perhaps this is because I have too much SF experience, and I nearly always
know exactly what is going to happen next, but a good writer should be able
to overcome that handicap.

I didn't mention Michael Crichton earlier without a reason. The last
techno-thriller I read before "Host" was Crichton's "Jurassic Park", and I
inevitably started comparing the two novels. When it comes to technical
stuff, Peter James is without a shadow of doubt far superior to Crichton.
Michael Crichton uses handwaving and voodoo all the time, his details are
gibberish, and the way in which he tries to impress his readers with
fancy-schmancy (and totally nonsensical) 'screen dumps' gets on your nerves
after a while. The funny thing is that on the surface Peter James is also a
better writer the Crichton. His plot is far more coherent, his sub-plots
are better worked-out, and he uses the cliche's of his trade less often
than Crichton does (although "Host" does feature one character who is so
very obviously only introduced in order to be killed off that it made me
wince). And the result of this superior writing style is that James can't
hold my interest, while Crichton kept me turning pages with hands that
were sweaty from tension. As a thriller, I definitely enjoyed "Jurassic
Park" more. I have no idea why this is so.

Back to "Host". One final thing that bears mentioning is the way in which
Peter James describes the computing environment his characters work in at
their university: it is a faithful rendering of a current, 1990's networked
Unix environment with e-mail, rlogin, telnet, and talk programs all playing
minor, but significant roles in the story. They are not just icing on the
cake: they actually *figure* in the plot, and they add a level of realism
that I have seldom come across in fiction, not even in 'real' SF. Peter
James is not on the net himself (though I understand he will soon be, and
is even planning to research his next book using the net), but the persons
responsible for advising him in this matter are, and they not only made
sure that James got his details in this matter right, but also convinced
him to throw in an occasional in-joke to "get the hackers going": I won't
spoil the major Easter egg for you, but if you read the book be on the
lookout for something that *only* a Usenet veteran would ever recognize as
something funny. It certainly kept me grinning all evening...

My only complaint about the Internet stuff in the book is that the editors
for some reason decided to display all the computer interactions in a
bold-faced version of the same proportional font used for the standard
text, and to not set this text apart from the main text. This is so stupid:
the effect is to make it very difficult to see what is going on. They
should have simply used a Courier font. The public already associates
type-writer text with computer interaction, and in this case it would have
been more authentic to boot. Oh well.

I have come to the end of my review. To summarize: I enjoyed reading this
book, both because of the Internet connections and because it is a decent
attempt to write a technically sound thriller for a lay-man's audience.
Overall I feel the book could have been improved by making it leaner and
meaner, but that feeling was not so strong it spoiled my pleasure.

--
Leo Breebaart  (leo @ cp.tn.tudelft.nl)