The Tiger

A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

We tend to associate tigers with jungle settings, but the Siberian subspecies lives in the subarctic and has no difficulty surviving minus 40 degree temperatures. It's the largest big cat in the world, but unlike its Bengal cousin does not have a reputation as a man-eater. Yet in 1997 a male killed and devoured two men in Primorski Krai, a region in the Russian Far East.

John Vaillant's book recounts these events, and the subsequent tracking down and killing of the tiger. It's a sensational topic, but the author's handling of it is sensitive and wide-ranging. His portrait of life in Primorski Krai, and of the ghastly effects of perestroika, is empathetic without being sentimental.

Particularly moving is his sketch of the first man to be killed. He was poacher, yes, but he was also a person who had not been ground under by the harsh realities of life in post-Soviet Russia. Whether or not he was a victim of bad luck, or caused his own demise by interferring with the tiger in some way, perhaps by pilfering some of its kill, remains unknown.

What is astonishing is the vindictive manner in which the tiger acted, seeking out this man's cabin, vandalizing everything he had touched, and then waiting for his return. There can be no question that the tiger was targetting him.

Vaillant's approach to this extraordinary tale is similar to that of Sebastian Junger in The Perfect Storm. Indeed, Siberian tigers are so fierce and implacable they seem like a force of nature. Vaillant likens an attack to having a piano dropped on you from a two-storey window. The difference is that tigers act with intent. They are endowed with ferocious cunning, a hypnotic gaze, an earth-shaking roar, and an almost supernatural ability to move invisibly through the forest.

As of December 2009, only 400 remain in the Russian Far East. Some of the proceeds of this book go toward their protection.

Go HERE to watch the author speaking about The Tiger. He won a G-G for a previous book, The Golden Spruce.

Zero History

More thriller than SF, Zero History is set mainly in London. It's not the latest Ono-Sendai cyberdeck that's being sought, but a particular kind of denim and a designer who markets her clothing in secret.

The narrative alternates between two characters last seen in Gibson's previous novel, Spook Country -- Milgrim, a recovering drug-addict, and Hollis Henry, formerly of the cult band The Curfew. They are now working for Hubertus Bigend and Blue Ant, two unifying threads in the trilogy.

Gibson's fine prose propels the story along magnificently until about two-thirds of the way through when Hollis's boyfriend, Garreth, rides in on his wheelchair. Although he likes jumping off very tall buildings, he is far less interesting than Hollis. His presence dilutes her role somewhat, and the ending he orchestrates is a little underwhelming.

Still, Gibson slides in a couple of pleasant surprises which nicely tie together the three books. These surprises are a reward, or Easter egg, for those who have read Pattern Recognition.

Best of all is the prose, a cutting-edge combo of clipped sentences and ornate descriptions, infused with with brand names and technological gadgetry. Even when Gibson writes about the present, it sounds like SF.

At just over 400 pages, this is his longest book yet, and good value for your money.

Misc. Observations

Gibson's always had strong female characters. Here, in addition to Hollis, there's a dispatch rider named Fiona, and Hollis's former bandmate and drummer, the foulmouthed Heidi Hyde, who likes nothing better than a good dust-up.

Gibson has a good ear for names. In this book: Oliver Sleight (Bigend's IT specialist), Michael Preston Gracie (rogue arms dealer), Winnie Tung Whitaker (DCIS special agent), Olduvai George (keyboardist), and Bobby Chombo (unpleasant Canadian hacker who appeared in Spook Country).

Some techy stuff: rattan bone, ekranoplan, darknets, RFIDs in US passports, using a Taser to disable a LAN.

And listen to this for Gibson's keen powers of observation:

Some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places, that had once belonged to cigarettes, now belonged to phones.

At the end Gibson not only thanks SF writers Jack Womack, Paul MacAuley, Cory Doctorow, and Bruce Sterling, but also fellow Vancouverite Douglas Coupland.

Bering

The Russian Discovery of America

Vitus Bering was a Dane who served in the Russian navy from 1704 until his death in 1741. He is best known for leading the Second Kamchatka Expedition, which sailed from the Russian Far East to the Gulf of Alaska.

This book is primarily an account of that astonishing journey, which started out from St. Petersburg and took four years just to cross Siberia. On the east coast another four years passed before two ships, the St. Peter and the St. Paul, finally put out to sea in June of 1741. They made landfall on several islands in the Gulf of Alaska and brief contact with native Americans. In the latter case the two groups only succeeded in perplexing each other.

The St. Paul returned to Kamchatka in October, but Bering's ship, the St. Peter, was hampered by bad weather and bad decision-making, and in November was wrecked on an island (later named after Bering), which was mistaken for the mainland. Bering died the following month at the age of 60. The survivors built a smaller vessel out of wood scavenged from the St. Peter and sailed to Kamchatka the following summer.

Misc. Notes

The author incorporates two recent sources of information. One was the exhumation of Bering in 1991 by a joint Danish-Russian expedition. The other was the discovery in 1996 of a dozen letters that Bering and his wife had sent home from Kamchatka.

Bering (the author says) was virtually a hostage of his officers. In an eerie foreshadowing of socialism his orders were sometimes overturned by a sea council. The fatal decision to land on Bering Island rather than continue sailing west was not made by the captain.

Bering Island was thronged with "wicked" arctic foxes. They "dragged apart all the baggage, ate the leather sacks, scattered the provisions, stole and dragged from one man his boots, from another his socks and trousers, gloves, and coat.... They even dragged off iron and other implements that were of no use to them."

The men survived by killing manatees, also known as sea cows. One was 30 feet long and weighted nearly four tons. The men not only ate the meat and fat of these gentle creatures, but also drank their milk.

Bering's "discovery" of Alaska led to an influx of Russian fur traders, and the eventual formation of the Russian-American Company, which constructed settlements as far south as California. "Russian America" came to an end in 1867, the same year as Canadian Confederation, when the US purchased Alaska.

Stellar Steller

Bering for me remained a rather distant and shadowy individual. As the author explains, there are valid reasons for his aloofness and expensive tastes, but these are attributes that do not endear one to a modern sensibility.

Most readers, I think, will find Georg Stellar a more interesting and praiseworthy figure. A naturalist and physician, he was the butt of much unprofessional behaviour by the officers and Bering himself. Yet Steller's interest in nature remained unquenchable, and his humane behaviour when shipwrecked was exemplary. He used plants and fresh meat to cure scurvy in his crewmates, and provided the kind of leadership that helped carry them through the winter.

Steller survived the expedition, returned to Kamchatka, and died a few years later in Tyumen. Today his name graces a number of species, including Steller's Jay and Steller's Eider.

His Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741-1742 is available in a 1993 edition prepared by the author of Bering, Orcutt Frost.