Canavan’s Comments (group member since May 15, 2018)

Canavan’s comments from the Spells, Space & Screams: Collections & Anthologies in Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Horror group.

J. said: I imagine that they're the ones with the most money sunk into them by the studios.

Yes, my thoughts exactly. There are only a handful of these that I’d be interested in seeing on the big screen.

Stuff I’ve watched in the last coupla weeks or so.

Vánocní sen (A Christmas Dream), Borivoj Zeman & Karel Zeman (1946) ✭✭✭
Miracle on 34th Street, George Seaton (1947) ✭✭✭✭½
The Far Country, Anthony Mann (1954) ✭✭✭½
The Man Who Knew Too Much, Alfred Hitchcock (1956) ✭✭✭✭
El Cid, Anthony Mann (1961) ✭✭✭✭
Chariots of Fire, Hugh Hudson (1981) ✭✭✭
The French Lieutenant's Woman, Karel Reisz (1981) ✭✭✭½
A Christmas Story, Bob Clark (1983) ✭✭✭✭
Nuts, Martin Ritt (1987) ✭✭½
Shadowlands, Richard Attenborough (1993) ✭✭✭✭
Miracle on 34th Street, Les Mayfield (1994) ✭✭✭½
Number 13, Pier Wilkie (2006) ✭✭✭
The Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson (2008) ✭✭½
The Narrative of Victor Karloch, Kevin McTurk (2012) ✭✭½
Archivo 253 (File 253), Abe Rosenberg (2015) ½
Count Magnus, Mark Gatiss (2022) ✭✭✭½
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Rian Johnson (2022) ✭✭✭✭½
The Recruit, Season 1 (2022) ✭✭½
Slow Horses, Season 2 (2022) ✭✭✭✭
Ticket to Paradise, Ol Parker (2022) ✭✭✭

J. noted: These are supposedly the most anticipated movies of the coming year

Hmm. Most anticipated by who, I wonder.

Just some of the stuff I’ve been listening to over the last week.

Presenting Joni James, Joni James (n.d.) ✭✭✭
MMMMitch!, Mitch Miller (1954) ✭✭
Christmas Sing Along with Mitch, Mitch Miller & the Gang (1958) ✭✭✭
Sing Along with Mitch, Mitch Miller & the Gang (1958) ✭✭✭
Blues at Midnight, Sun Ra and His Arkestra feat. John Gilmore (1959) ✭✭✭½
The Stage Door Swings, Stan Kenton (1959) ✭✭✭½
What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye (1971) ✭✭✭✭
Spirit, Earth, Wind & Fire (1976) ✭✭✭
Taught by Experts, Peter Allen (1976) ✭✭½
Rumours, Fleetwood Mac (1977) ✭✭✭✭
My Aim Is True, Elvis Costello (1977) ✭✭✭✭✭
No Pain for Cakes, The Lounge Lizards (1987) ✭✭✭½
The La’s, The La’s (1990) ✭✭✭✭✭
Born Again, Tom Scott (1992) ✭✭✭✭✭
Bebop United [Live], Tom Scott feat. Phil Woods (2006) ✭✭✭✭
Big Neighborhood, Mike Stern (2009) ✭✭✭½
Guided Tour, The New Gary Burton Quintet (2013) ✭✭✭½
Eleven, Mike Stern & Jeff Lorber Fusion (2019) ✭✭✭½
Happier Than Ever, Billie Eilish (2021) ✭✭✭½

Some theatre things we’ve seen in the last month:

Funny Girl, Jule Styne (Music), Bob Merrill (Lyrics), Isobel Lennart (Book), & Michael Mayer (Director) (1964/2022) ✭✭✭✭
Ohio State Murders, Adrienne Kennedy (Author) & Kenny Leon (Director) (1992/2022) ✭✭✭
Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, Mel Marvin (Music), Timothy Mason (Lyrics & Book), & Matt August (Director) (1998/2022) ✭½
Wicked, Stephen Schwartz (Music & Lyrics), Winnie Holzman (Book), & Joe Mantello (Director) (2003/2003) ✭✭✭✭½
A Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson (Music, Lyrics, & Book) & Stephen Brackett (Director) (2019/2022) ✭✭✭½
Kimberly Akimbo, Jeanine Tesori (Music), David Lindsay-Abaire (Lyrics & Book), & Jessica Stone (Director) (2021/2022) ✭✭✭✭

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays.

Stuff I’ve seen in the last week or so…

Viktor und Viktoria, Reinhold Schünzel (1933) ✭✭✭
Appalachian Spring, Peter Glushanok (1958) ✭✭✭
Dirty Dancing, Emile Ardolino (1987) ✭✭
Innocent Blood, John Landis (1992) ✭✭½
Naughty or Nice, David Mackay (2011) ✭✭
The Christmas Spirit, Jack Angelo (2013) ✭½
Window Wonderland, Michael M. Scott (2013) ✭✭½
Married by Christmas, Letia Clouston (2016) ✭½
The Christmas Train, Ron Oliver (2017) ✭½
A New Christmas, Daniel Tenenbaum (2019) ✭✭
Andor, Season 1 (2022) ✭✭✭✭½
Black Adam, Jaume Collet-Serra (2022) ✭✭
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ryan Coogler (2022) ✭✭✭
Enola Holmes 2, Harry Bradbeer (2022) ✭✭½
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, James Gunn (2022) ✭✭½
Nope, Jordan Peele (2022) ✭✭✭½
Wednesday, Season 1 (2022) ✭✭✭½

“Grand Central Station”, Delia Sherman

(view spoiler)[I might describe this as a rather sweet coming of age story dressed up as urban fantasy. Reminds me of stuff written by Charles de Lint. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭½

“Going Wodwo”, Neil Gaiman

I find it mildly interesting whenever present-day prose authors feel impelled to try their hand at poetry. They typically fail, as does Gaiman in this instance. Then again, I am not a huge fan of much modern poetry.

✭✭

“Byzantine Empathy”, Ken Liu

(view spoiler)[The stew of ideas in Liu’s story about charity, foreign policy, the power of centralized institutions, blockchains, etc., etc. is certainly interesting. I’m less certain, however, that it has resulted in a good story. I’m okay with didacticism, but too often while reading this piece, I felt as though I were wading through a very lightly fictionalized think piece. (hide spoiler)]

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“Okay, Glory”, Elizabeth Bear

(view spoiler)[“A man’s fortress can be his prison.”

This is in essence one of those cautionary fables about our overreliance on technology. Maybe a bit of a missed opportunity? The most interesting aspect of the story involved the evolution of Glory as an expanded AI, and here I feel Bear kind of dropped the ball and needed to flesh things out a bit more. (hide spoiler)]

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A few quick thoughts about this anthology. The best entries were those by Ursula K. Le Guin and Ray Bradbury, “Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea” and “A Sound of Thunder”, respectively. (As I previously noted, “Thunder” was unfortunately omitted from my edition of this collection.)

The editors included a few stories that simply didn’t work for me (e.g., Jack Dann’s “Timetipping”), but on the whole the tales were fairly solid. As always with these kinds of collections, there are stories that I personally might have included that the editors, for whatever reason, chose to overlook, but two such cases stand out for me here. First, I was really surprised not to see the Robert A. Heinlein classic “—All You Zombies—”. Second, of all the time travel tales written by Jack Finney, why chose “I’m Scared”? It’s one of that author’s least effective.

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“Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea”, Ursula K. Le Guin

(view spoiler)[For my money this is the anthology’s best and most thoughtful entry. It belongs to a subset of Le Guin’s Hainish stories that deal with churten technology that include “Dancing to Ganam” and “The Shobies’ Story”. In hindsight, I should probably have re-read those two stories before reading “Another Story”, the latter being a sort of culminating piece. All three share ideas about harmonious social interactions (related to the author’s concepts of “entrainment” and “transilience”) and about the choices we make as we move through time/life. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭½

“The Price of Oranges”, Nancy Kress

(view spoiler)[If there’s any sort of deep message here, it might be that in every era one can find both good and evil, and that the ethically correct response to this state of affairs is to try and achieve whatever good is possible.

Aside: Given the context in which the phrase was uttered, when Jackie tells Harry that it was time for her to “come out of the closet”, I didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“Traplanda”, Charles Sheffield

In her capsule review appearing above, Lena pithily notes that Sheffield’s story exemplifies the notion that “love is as complicated as space-time”. That kinda sez it all.

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“The Pure Product”, John Kessel

(view spoiler)[This is one of the author’s Moment Universe stories, in which time is broken up into quantum units and each “moment” is accessible to time travelers, who frequently exploit the eras visited. I thought this story more interesting than you did, Lena, but admit that I’m a bit fuzzy on the thesis Kessel is trying to advance, other than thinking that he’s trying to say something about how human behavior/values either do or do not change over time. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭

“Sailing to Byzantium”, Robert Silverberg

This award-winning novella takes both title and inspiration from W. B. Yeats’ famous 1928 poem about aging and love and transforms the poem’s metaphorical underpinning into something more concrete. This is apparently a much-admired story and while I thought highly of it, I came away thinking that it was very good but not truly great in that classic sense of the word — perhaps because I never totally empathized with the tale’s main characters in the way that I did with with the narrator of Yeats’ poem.

✭✭✭✭

“Fire Watch”, Connie Willis

I enjoyed reading it, but must admit that I’m a bit surprised by its enduring popularity. (It won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novelette (1982/83).

(view spoiler)[What I liked about this story: It’s well written. I especially enjoyed the story’s closing paragraphs. I also liked Willis’ characterizations — the paranoia, the heightened sensations and emotional responses, the confusion, etc., etc. — all of this struck me as a fairly skillful rendering of fallible humans operating under extremely stressful circumstances.

What I didn’t like: certain aspects of the set-up. The memory retrieval stuff, in particular, struck me as a bit of a clumsy contrivance. In addition, the notion of a practicum as expressed in the story seemed less a supervised practical application of acquired knowledge and more of a bizarre hazing ritual. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“The Woman Who Destroyed Us”, S. L. Huang

The more I thought about this story, the less I liked it. (view spoiler)[At its core this is a cautionary tale about the ethical pitfalls that arise when modifying behavior/cognition via stimulation of the brain. Huang seems to conclude that questions of medical ethics “can be complicated”, not exactly a huge revelation. I was also at least mildly troubled by the fact that she bases her musings on an actual beneficial intervention, direct brain stimulation, that will almost certainly never be able to effect the kind of narrowly targeted changes that she posits. Finally, there were aspects of the writing style that bugged me, e.g., the constant switching back and forth between first and third person. (hide spoiler)]

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Lena said: Last year I read two of his works, Babel 17 and The Einstein Intersection - four and two stars respectively.

I had a pretty high opinion of most of his 60s books (as best I can recall) — enough at least to make me take a stab at Dhalgren . Most of his post-60s stuff was just not in my wheelhouse, so I ignored it, although I remember reading a story or two from his 1984 collection, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand .

“Profile: Samuel R. Delany”, Jason Pontin & Mark Pontin

This is a kind of mixed career retrospective/interview of writer Samuel Delany. The questions posed to Delany, while not totally irrelevant, are largely softball in nature, and perhaps for that reason I thought the answers relatively uninteresting. I found the summary of his work odd in at least one respect. It’s rather glowing, so this reader was somewhat surprised when, at the tale end of the piece, the authors do a sort of about face and more or less diss Delany’s later non-SF works. (See the quote in Lena’s comment above.) It’s not that I disagree with their final assessment (e.g., I’ve never been able to make it more than 100 pages into Dhalgren ); I just found the judgment rather jarring given what precedes it.

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