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.

Graeme asked: Has anyone seen Obi Wan Kenobi on Disney+?

Yes. I sense I liked the series a bit more than you, Graeme, but admittedly didn’t totally embrace it. One of my bigger problems had to do with the Moses Ingram character, Reva. Ingram is a good actor (I’ve seen her in some other stuff), so I can only conclude that the problems I had making sense of her actions were attributable to lazy writing and/or poor direction. (On a side note, it was regrettable that Ingram was the target of racist attacks by moronic elements of the Star Wars fan base.)

I’ve been more enthusiastic about Andor, which is now about seven episodes into its 12-episode season. I can easily imagine hardcore fans rejecting the show: The pace is fairly slow, it’s not dominated by a lot of loud pyrotechnics, and the characters are a lot more “messy” than we’re used to seeing in this franchise. For me, however, those are good things.

Graeme, responding to Lena, said: Could be worth a look.

Yeah. I’ll at least take a peek at the series opener. Thanks for posting, Lena.

Lena mentioned: The Mayfair Witches

I’m not knocking anyone else’s opinion, but personally I never really connected with Rice’s stuff.

“Timetipping”, Jack Dann

Dann wants to say something about the nature of change, but I’m not bright enough to figure out exactly what that something is.

✭½

“Anniversary Project”, Joe Haldeman

(view spoiler)[This story is built on a semi-familiar premise — the attempt of advanced beings to understand/experience the feelings/actions of those who are supposedly less advanced. It reminds me in some respects of Isaac Asimov’s 1961 tale, “What Is This Thing Called Love?”, although Haldeman’s take on this theme is far more dour and far less fun. (hide spoiler)]

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Lena said: John Wick 4!

I know I’ll watch this, but I’ll hate myself for doing so.

“Leviathan!”, Larry Niven

(view spoiler)[Back in the late 60s and early 70s Larry Niven wrote a handful of time travel yarns featuring a guy named Svetz capturing various fantastic creatures. In general, I found the premise and execution thereof a bit dull and the characters rather bland and unsympathetic. This example (involving a version of Moby Dick) was no different. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭½

“Rainbird”, R.A. Lafferty

This one strikes me as a standard Lafferty story in terms of pacing, use of language, and waggish sense of humor. (view spoiler)[The author gives us a variant of the plot in which a time traveller travels back to provide advice to their younger self. The wrinkle provided here is that any tendency for individual, the inventor Higgston in this case, to repeat the action creates a loop which will eventually break down. (hide spoiler)]

I liked this story, but regard it as lesser Lafferty.

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And some stuff I’ve listened to:

Hey...Let Yourself Go!, Nelson Riddle (1958) ✭✭✭
C’mon...Get Happy!, Nelson Riddle (1958) ✭✭✭
Still Crazy After All These Years, Paul Simon (1975) ✭✭✭✭✭
How Dare You!, 10cc (1976) ✭✭✭✭
Rough Mix, Peter Townshend & Ronnie Lane (1977) ✭✭✭✭✭
Songs from the Wood, Jethro Tull (1977) ✭✭✭½
Heavy Horses, Jethro Tull (1978) ✭✭✭✭
Barber: Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 • Piano Concerto, Op. 38 • Souvenirs, Op. 28, Leonard Slatkin & St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (1991) ✭✭✭✭
Stolen Moments, Lee Ritenour (1990) ✭✭✭✭
Wes Bound, Lee Ritenour (1992) ✭✭✭✭✭
What, Again?!, Lou & Peter Berryman (1993) ✭✭✭½
Rivers, Patrick Leonard (1996) ✭✭✭½
Dawn Upshaw Sings Vernon Duke, Dawn Upshaw (1999) ✭✭✭✭
Halo, Juana Molina (2017) ✭✭✭✭
Parallel Motion, Yellowjackets (2022) ✭✭✭✭

Some stuff I’ve watched lately:

The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Charles Walters (1964) ✭✭✭
From Beyond, Stuart Gordon (1986) ✭✭✭½
Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Paul Mazursky (1986) ✭✭
The Resonator: Miskatonic U, William Butler (2021) ✭½
Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski (2022) ✭✭✭½
The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 1 (2022) ✭✭✭½
The Sandman, Season 1 (2022) ✭✭✭✭

Lena wrote: The Langoliers was much better. I still randomly think of those giant bowling balls crushing and chomping down the past.

Agree to disagree. ;-)

I think I’m on record as stating that Stephen King’s occasional forays into science fiction rarely work for me. “The Langoliers” is no exception. I could never take seriously the notion of reality being devoured by a bunch of cosmic Pac-Men. I know you’re going to say that Sturgeon’s story is just as (or even more!) silly. The difference (at least for me) is that it’s supposed to be silly.

“The Man Who Came Early”, Poul Anderson

(view spoiler)[This time travel yarn relies on Anderson’s expertise in Norse history. There is a certain strain of time travel fiction in which someone sent into the past is able, by dint of his or her modern knowledge, to effect great technological change (cf. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court). “Early” is an antidote to that kind of thinking, showing the technological and social obstacles one would have to overcome in order to bring about such changes. Interesting stuff, but the tale is a bit of a downer. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“A Gun for Dinosaur”, L. Sprague de Camp

Another dinosaur time travel story! And another re-read. (view spoiler)[As noted in the editor’s intro, “Gun” can be thought of as a response to Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” — it answers the question, what might dinosaur hunting be like if one didn’t have to worry (or at least didn’t have to worry too much) about time travel paradoxes?

I’ll start out by admitting that I more or less liked this story. The fact that the bad guy got his comeuppance at tale’s end was fairly satisfying. The dinos are pretty neat although de Camp necessarily relies on the scientific consensus re dinosaur classification and behavior as it existed in the 50s; a number of those views (e.g., dinosaur intelligence, the belief in aquatic sauropods) have been eclipsed. The story does have some real warts, however. The characters are in the main two-dimensional sterotypes. The ending has a kind of deus ex machina vibe. And while the narrator pretty much pooh-poohs the idea of big game hunting as being sadistic, the way he cavalierly refers to hunters as having wiped out all of the larger fauna on the Earth left a bad taste in my mouth. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“Death Ship”, Richard Matheson

Somehow or other I’ve managed over the decades to avoid reading this classic. (There’s an episode from the original Twilight Zone series that’s based on this story — I’ve somehow missed that as well.) (view spoiler)[All of which is to say that “Death Ship” ends in a nice twist that I completely failed to anticipate. Faced with a rather perplexing and gruesome scenario, the story’s three characters construct a hypothesis based on time travel; later, one of the trio proposes an alternative hypothesis involving telepathic aliens. In fact, neither hypothesis proves to be correct and the story turns out to be a version of the Flying Dutchman legend with sci-fi trappings. (hide spoiler)]

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“A Sound of Thunder”, Ray Bradbury

I read somewhere on the internet a while ago that “A Sound of Thunder” was the most reprinted story of all time. I’m not sure that’s really true, but it certainly has to rank pretty darned high in that regard. I suppose that when a story is parodied on The Simpsons, you know with utter certainty that it’s entered into the broader cultural mileau.

(view spoiler)[“A Sound of Thunder” is another dinosaur time travel story. It’s not the urtext when it comes to time travel tales in which mucking around in the past impacts the present, but it’s the exemplar of that subgenre that almost every reader is familiar with. The story doesn’t always make complete sense but its status as a classic is well deserved. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭½

I’m reading the Kindle edition of our 2005 September group selection and, for reasons I have not been able to determine, it’s missing (at least according to the ISFDB) a couple of entries: Jack Finney’s “I’m Scared” (1951) and Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” (1952). I do have access to each of those stories from other sources, so will still provide a capsule review of them for this thread.

“I’m Scared”, Jack Finney

This is another re-read. (In fact, that’s going to be something of a theme for me insofar as this anthology is concerned. The editors, as per the book title, don’t stray very far from the subgenre’s classics and I consumed a lot of these when I was younger.) (view spoiler)[Time travel was one of Finney’s favorite themes and “I’m Scared” is, in many ways, typical of those tales. Like all of his so-called science fiction, it’s light on the science part. The idea, for example, that the flow of time can altered merely by concentration pops up more than once or twice. The difference is that the vast majority of Finney’s narrators view escape into a gauzy and romanticized past as a positive good. “I’m Scared” represents the only instance I can think of where Finney pushes back against this notion of the “good old days”. I don’t necessarily disagree with the stance adopted by him in this particular tale, but somehow for me that makes it less effective. (hide spoiler)]

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“Time’s Arrow”, Arthur C. Clarke

(view spoiler)[A fair number of time travel yarns involve dinosaurs. Clarke’s story is one of the better examples in spite of the fact that the reader never actually “sees” the creature. (hide spoiler)]

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“Time Locker”, Henry Kuttner

This classic originally appeared in Astounding (January 1943) as by Lewis Padgett, which makes precise attribution a little tricky. Padgett was a joint pseudonym often used by Kuttner and his wife, C. L. Moore; together they co-wrote quite a few stories. You will therefore sometimes see “Time Locker” appear in anthologies as having been written by both Kuttner and Moore. Moore has stated, however, that Kuttner wrote all five of the Gallegher tales on his own.

(view spoiler)[Time Locker is a sci-fi whodunnit that is “of its time” (pun not intended?). For example, we have the familiar trope of the citizen inventor capable of building all manner of amazing devices ranging from atom bombs to anti-gravity engines all within the confines of his garage. And I couldn’t help but notice the rather cavalier way Gallegher’s alcoholism is treated; he’s sorta like a sci-fi version of Nick Charles of Nick and Nora fame.

The physics that underpin the story are kinda wonky, but mistakes or no the eventual explanation of Vanning’s death is a fun one. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“Pieces of Blackness”, Michael Kelly

I’m familiar with Kelly primarily through his work as an editor, but he’s typically quite effective when he decides to write his own stuff. (view spoiler)[“Blackness” is an oddly effective amalgam of horror and sexual guilt. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭

“Yesterday Was Monday”, Theodore Sturgeon

The lead-off is a re-read for me — which is perhaps not too surprising since this is one of those old chestnuts that’s been reprinted about a zillion times. (view spoiler)[Sturgeon imagines time as an infinite series of sequential stages through which we, as “actors”, move, with God as the producer and His minions serving as stagehands, simultaneously setting up and breaking down sets. It’s a rather whimsical notion, adroitly handled by the author with his typical light humor. The style, especially given that the main character is sort of a Joe Lunchbox type, is a bit reminiscent of Frederik Pohl’s stories from roughly the same era.

The story (adapted by Harlan Ellison and Rockne S. O’Bannon) was the basis for a 1986 Twilight Zone episode. Stephen King’s novella “The Langoliers” was a riff on this general idea. (hide spoiler)]

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