ARTS w Page 5 'he Michigan Doily Saturday, October 31, 1981 Page 5 'Oath' plot too pat for pleasure By Stephen Miller CIENCE FICTION will neverbe S considered great literature. It just doesn't possess enough relevance to real life. Fortunately for those who make their living by writing SF, however, people don't want to drown themselves constantly in reality and great literature. A good book, a clever extrapolation, and a handful, of belgievable charaacters are quite suf- ficient. SF fills the need for escape, and challenges readers to flex their imaginations in the process. Certainly past works of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle call for a bit of imagination flexing; if not great literature, they are at least high level science fiction. But their latest collaboration, Oath of Fealty, is no more than a minor story based on some clever ideas and a few occasionally well-drawn characters.. The novel deals with the problems of a "hive community," Todos Santos, a 1,000-foot-tall building in Los Angeles. It is a new kind of city-an ar- cology-designed to be as self-sufficient as possible. Todos Santos has thousands of apar- tments, hundreds of stores, recreation facilities, medical facilities, a power supply, and virtually everything else necessary in a modern city. The residents-they call themselves Sain- ts-trade extensively with the outside world, but as time goes on they have fewer and fewer reasons for actually leaving their "Nest." As might be expected, confliict originates from various outside forces. An "eco-freak" group is bent on blowing the place up, and at times the Todos Santos security force is forced to waste a bomb-laden terrorist. The Los Angeles city government, resents the Saints, because they are exempt from taxes and other forms of control. A lot of money flows in to Todos Santos, whether from visiting shoppers or residents who work in Los Angeles, but little seems to flow out. The action picks up when three young people break into the building, skillfully eluding the sophisticated security devices. Carrying a suspicious-looking box labeled "dynamite," they enter a part of the building still under construc- tion using-conveniently enough-homemade equipment to scramble the monitoring computer. As they sneak around with their box, the chief security officer is aware of trouble in the area, but he is unable to get a fix on it. He has to act fast; hun- dreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment is at stake and maybe hun- dreds of lives. Unwilling to stage a SWAT-type maneuver that would probably end with a lot of dead people, he orders the tunnel flooded with poison gas. Now, the plot convolutions get tossed in thick and fast. When the guards recover the bodies, they realize it was all a mistake. The "terrorists" were a couple of kids; their dynamite was only a box of sand; it was all an elaborate prank. One of the trio managed to stay alive, and he tells the Todos Santos to brass that the other two were a city- councilor's son and his girlfriend. This really stirs up trouble. The war with Los Angeles has begun. Is it believable? Well, yes and no-mostly no. The detailing is usually very convincing, if sometimes obvious and heavy-handed. For example, one of the main characters is a TV documen- tary journalist. All he ever seems to do is observe details. Ostensibly this is his job, but it comes off as a rather clumsy method of fleshing out the story. In the same way, such ready-made" conflict as killing a city councilor's son is far too pat. Too many ready-made scenes eventually destroy the illusion of plausibility that any good book must maintain. That illusion doesn't have a chance in Oath of Fealty, and the characters soon cease to be interesting. The stings begin to tie together neatly 10 chapters before the book ends, as the Todos San- tos people make mince meat out of their enemies in LA. They can do no wrong; even the most hare-brained, illogical schemes work without a hitch. Overall, the novel is a failure; but its worst flaws are not the parts clumsily constructed by the authors. The fatal flaw is that Niven and Pournelle have created an' enormously complicated setting in Todos Santos itself, and they use its resources for toys. They tell a simplistc story, and throw in a lot of details to cover it up. The effect is akin - n eo' ' Tissp~ae c~ontributd bylte p 0 tshe to using an Apollo rocketship to zip down to the neighborhood Kroger's.. Large-scale, isolated communities lend themselves well to serious science fiction. But the idea is highly com- plicated, and if used merely as a cheap backdrop, it can easily get out of an author's control. This happened in Oath of Fealty, leaving the impression that the book was slapped together in a very short time. 2 INDIVIDUAL THEATRES 5th Ave. oflib"Trt 64700 $ 150 WED. SAT. SUN. TIL 6:00 PM ENDS SOON RICH and FA MOUS CANDICE BERGEN JACQUELINE BISSET WONDERFUL DIALOGUE! BRILLIANT ACTING! FRI, MON- 7:20, 9:40 SAT, SUN-1:20, 3:40, 7:20, 9:40 "GLORIOUS!" -GENE SHALIT Joe Perry Former Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry recently released his second albu, I've Got The Rock 'N' Rolls Again. He and his band, aptly called The Joe Perry Project, will perform Monday night at the Second Chance during the album's promotional tour. The Project consists oftguitarist Perry, Bassist David Hull (formerly with Dirty Angel), drummer Ronnie Stewart, and singer Ralph Mormon (ex- Daddy Warbux vocalist). The latest member to join the band is rhythm guitarist Charlie Farren. Farren co-wrote four of -the songs on the latest album. 7hel*?flh Lieutenan6 Woman She was lost from the moment she saw him ... (Rj 0Records MERYL STREEP Killing Joke-'What's THIS for'4 Malicious Damage-Jem) More than music, Killing Joke are about power. Their plans to make you dance could quite easily be mistaken *or an attempt to implode your ear- drums. Subtle, they are not; powerful, they are. Killing ° Joke could be destribed-only half-facetiously-as "Heavy Metal With a Difference." Like the metallic icon, Killing Joke's sound is designed to fill your skull and block your neural passages. , But if nothing else, Killing Joke prove that you don't have to be stupid to be loud, as. they tinker quite wantonly with our preconceptions of musical ~rranement. wthat their tinkering has come up with is a sound driven almost ex- clusively by a simple but explosively produced drum beat. Somewhere in the mix, a guitar and bass support the dan- ce-maniacal beat, but the only real challenge to the drum kit's status as the major diety in Killing Joke's pantheon of sound is the vocals-a pop melody stripped to the bones in order to stand firin against the wailing hysteria of the instrumentation. But it is that simple hook that makes all' the difference. While the dogfighting guitars and surroundsound beat make damn sure that you can't igdore What's THIS For while it's playing, it's that melody that makes sure'you'll be back for more. Welcome to music for the new theatre of cruelty. Max Roach- 'Chattahooche Red' Master drummer Max Roach has on- ce again proven that the essence of jazz is a direct expression of the self, rather than the mere flaunting of technical ability. Roach speaks to us through his drums, drawing on his Afro-American roots. In "The Dream," the words of Martin Luther King are fused with Roach's beating drums to form a powerful communication filled with a deep sense of hope and struggle. Roach's version of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," first recorded by Coltrane in 1959, is refreshing in its sharp staccato attack, while drums carry portions of the melody. Odean Pope's sax solo literally flies over the chords, leaving us to wonder where he's been long after he's gone. Drums are absent from Benny Golson's ballad, "I Remember Clif- ford." Pope plays a slow emotional sax solo, accompanied by Calvin Hill's un- cluttered bass line. And when Cecil Bridgewater comes in on muted trum- pet, they blend as smoothly as glass. The newer pieces are just as moving as the standards. "Chattahooche Red," by Cecil Bridgewater, ,has three separate movements. The first is slow, traditional, and melodic, featuring tympani drums and chimes. The second is modern and filled with sustained tones. And the third is a medium-tempo swinging piece with walking brass. If you haven't discovered Max Roach from his nearly 40 years of recording, Chattahooche Red is as good an album to start with as any. -Faith Birchall ,t , IVmIM-IVV, 7:L7 SAT, SUN-1:00, 3:25, 7:00, 9:25 99 q ANN A RBOR'S BEST DEALII WHY PAY MORE?? FRI & SAT LATE SHOW 994 FRI. AT 12:00 SEE.. . SAT. AT 12:00 SEE.. . THE CHINESE CONNECTION (R) 3rd, Sharp, funny weekend reunion of '60:s activists ten years later Directed by ,John Soytes. (R) AT 11:30 PM WEEKEND a, i n~ ' -Mark Dighton N,37 MAPLE 76-13041 .. . . . _.. ..-..... . . . . ... ... . __..._._. . . . . ..__.._. .._.__. . . . ..... ....... . . . .... y . " $2 TO 8:00 PM OETDE NIRO ROBERT ':.xw DUVALL UNITED 1 ARTISTS LJ MIDNITE FRI. i W. 1:1i5 3:20 5:30 7:40 9:50 A NAME WORTH REPEATING The University of Michigan's college newspaper - 'i~'""" R 4:30 1 I I