From archive Thu Jul 30 17:01:06 MDT 1992 Subject: MEMORIES by Mike McQuay From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (Evelyn C. Leeper) Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ Date: 14 Aug 87 15:33:08 GMT MEMORIES by Mike McQuay Bantam Spectra, 1987, ISBN 0-553-25888-5, $3.95. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1987 Evelyn C. Leeper There are some ideas that are around as stereotypes or cliches for ages before someone looks at them lopsided and says, "What if?" Certainly the traditional inmate of a mental institution who believes he is Napoleon is a familiar character. But not until now has anyone taken that idea and said, "What if he really WERE Napoleon?" Well, Mike McQuay has done so. MEMORIES is set in the same future that McQuay used in his first novel, LIFEKEEPER. That novel was basically a re- telling of BRAVE NEW WORLD, but in MEMORIES McQuay breaks new ground. Individually, the ideas are not new: consciousnesses traveling in time and inhabiting other bodies, the sorts of personalities that an ultra-regimented future will develop, the grandfather paradox. But McQuay combines them to make something new. It's not entirely successful; I felt that the love story tended to get in the way of the rest of the plot, and some of the co- incidences were too "deus ex machina." But on the whole MEMORIES gives us some interesting views of how characters from different backgrounds would react to the power to travel through time and (possibly) affect history. This novel, to some extent, follows the pre-destination theory of time travel; that is, whatever you do in the past was already done. In one sub- plot (and there are several) one character does what he did because he had done what he did. (I am being purposely obscure here to avoid giving any spoilers.) Unfortunately, part of the impact of that sub-plot revolves not only around the character not knowing history very well (which is believable) but, more importantly, around the reader not knowing history very well either. The reader may very well react with a "Well, of course that's what would happen!" when the light finally dawns on the characters. On the other hand, I found much of the main plot and other sub-plots not as obvious, and I believe that the interplay of the characters was much more the point of the novel than the plot. In the aforementioned subplot, the character's feelings are far more important than the actual events that transpire, the reasons for the actions more important than the actions themselves. There is much of the child's wish "Please make that it didn't happen" in this novel. Yet, just as in real life, people who think they can make things better often actually make them worse. All revolutionaries think they are making things better; some succeed, but many are trading the frying pan for the fire. In MEMORIES, many of the characters are trying to make things better. To the extent the results are pre-ordained, the results of their actions are often the exact opposite of their intent. Think of it as "conservation of effort": whatever effort is put forth, whether for or against a goal, will help to bring about the inevitable outcome. This conservation of effort is not so obvious as the TWILIGHT ZONE episode in which a man goes back in time to prevent an accident and ends up by causing it through the actions he takes to stop it. But it is there. As a time-travel story, MEMORIES has more than the usual number of ideas floating around in it. The characters are real, and their predicaments are real. Though I was not impressed by McQuay's LIFEKEEPER, I would recommend MEMORIES. Evelyn C. Leeper (201) 957-2070 UUCP: ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl ARPA: mtgzy!ecl@rutgers.rutgers.edu From rec.arts.sf-reviews Thu Oct 24 17:28:30 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!seunet!mcsun!uunet!think.com!mips!pacbell.com!pacbell!pbhyc!djdaneh From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: THE NEXUS by Mike McQuay Message-ID: <6885@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Date: 23 Oct 91 17:24:03 GMT Sender: djdaneh@PacBell.COM Lines: 45 Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com THE NEXUS by Mike McQuay A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper When television news reporter Denny Stiller first finds Amy Hale, the autistic healer, he sees in her a story and a ladder to success. (I was reminded of Billy Wilder's ACE IN THE HOLE, though the similarity does not extend much further.) That it takes him, and most of the other characters in the book, as long as it does to realize the extent and implications of Amy's power is a major problem--they have (in the story) days to figure out what the reader has only the time it takes to read a few chapters to do. When everyone does realize the ramifications of this discovery, the novel switches to an atmosphere very similar to Stephen King's FIRESTARTER, and becomes increasingly less convincing. The machinations of the government, the scheming of the television evangelist, and even the actions of the general public never ring quite true. And the ending is, alas, totally unbelievable. This may be McQuay's major weakness--four years ago when I reviewed his MEMORIES I also noted a tendency toward DEUS EX MACHINA. McQuay does use an unusual technique, though. His story is about television newscasting (among other things) and many key scenes, including most of those not involving the main characters, are written as television scripts. This is a bit unnerving at first, as I found myself saying, "But there could possibly have been television cameras present to film this." I'm note sure whether McQuay was commenting on our propensity to accept what we see on television as more real than what we read about, or to underscore how artificial and staged many "impromptu" moments are, or something else entirely. McQuay has a lot of good observations to make, and takes his pot shots at all the right people (in my opinion), but I never believed his plot and this reduced THE NEXUS to a polemic rather than a fully developed novel. %T THE NEXUS %A Mike McQuay %C New York %D May 1898 %I Bantam Spectra %O paperback, US$4.50 %G ISBN 0-553-28178-X %P 474pp %S Bantam Spectra Special Editions Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 18 15:26:53 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!worldfeed.gte.net!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: "Richter 10", Arthur C. Clarke/Mike McQuay Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 13 Aug 1998 14:14:22 -0400 Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Lines: 41 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2086 "Richter 10" by Arthur C. Clarke/Mike McQuay Review Copyright 1998 Robert M. Slade If reviewers actually like to rip a book apart, this is an embarrassment of riches. OK, first of all we have dorph. Made from endorphins. Natural. Organic. Therefore non-addictive, right? Nobody has heard of psychological addiction, eh? [Sigh.] Spot welding tectonic plates with hydrogen bombs sounds a little risky. H-bombs tend to be better at pushing things apart than holding them together. We have a digging machine that can throw dirt a full mile straight (*dead* straight) up in the air. Now, even though that is many, many orders of magnitude better than anything we've got today, what *really* astounds me is that the dirt, rocks, and other implements of destruction don't immediately fall right back down that same straight mile. With fantastically accurate data based on observations of the current state of the earth, a super-fantastic-really-good program is unable to simulate a massively cataclysmic geological event. However, making wild guesses on the state of the world before an event that we know nothing about, the same program is able to accurately work it out. And since when have you had to worry about an imaged simulation shaking itself to pieces? "Capt'n, we must shut'ter doon! The photons canna take any more o' this!" Oi vei. %A Arthur C. Clarke %A Mike McQuay %C 666 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10103 %D 1996 %G 0-553-57333-0 %I Bantam Books/Doubleday/Dell %O 800-323-9872 212-765-6500 http://www.bdd.com webmaster@bdd.com %P 407 p. %T "Richter 10"