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.

Just some stuff I’ve been listening to for the past day or so.

Mr. Gone, Weather Report (1978) ✭✭✭✭✭
Sleeper Catcher, Little River Band (1978) ✭✭✭✭
Fear of Music, Talking Heads (1979) ✭✭✭✭✭
Rio, Duran Duran (1982) ✭✭✭
John Adams: American Elegies, Dawn Upshaw (soprano), John Adams & Orchestra of St. Lukes (1991) ✭✭✭✭
Something’s Burnin’, Peter Bernstein, Brad Mehldau, John Webber, & Jimmy Cobb (1992) ✭✭✭✭
Voodoo Dogs, Voodoo Dogs (2000) ✭✭✭✭½
Allegory, Adam Rogers (2003) ✭✭✭
Director’s Cut, Kate Bush (2011) ✭✭✭✭
The Idler Wheel Is Wiser..., Fiona Apple (2012) ✭✭✭½
John Adams: Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?, Yuja Wang (piano), Gustavo Dudamel & Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (2020) ✭✭✭✭½
Side-Eye NYC V1.IV, Pat Metheny (2021) ✭✭✭✭

J. said: Do we know what advances he has gotten? His publisher may already own the rights to his next two or three books and have him on the hook for a lot of money.

Well, I don’t know the details of Martin’s contract with his publisher. That said, I don’t believe that book advances (increasingly a practice of the past?) work the way you seem to imply here, J. According my inexpert understanding an advance is essentially money loaned to the author against the money eventually earned in royalties. Advances are returned in rare cases (e.g., an author refuses to edit a book) and they don’t vest ownership of future copyright with the publisher as opposed to author. Setting that aside, Martin is said to be worth over $100M. I can’t help but believe that any money previously advanced to Martin by the publisher would constitute chump change compared to what he has in the bank.

I get that fans are frustrated with the pace of Martin’s writing, but I think the idea that he can somehow be legally or financially (or, for that matter, socially) pressured into picking up the pace is a pipe dream. I have long ago resigned myself to the very real possibility that the author may never complete this series. Disappointing, but there are always plenty of other books to read.

J. said: One would think that his publisher might require more than "it'll be ready when it's ready."

Or they’ll do what? Drop him as an author? I don’t think they really have any leverage here.

J. said: George R.R. Martin Has “Given Up” Predicting When He’ll Finish A Song of Ice and Fire

I think Martin has been saying some version of this for a while now. As you imply, it’s kind of non-news.

J. asked: What do you think about the casting of Desire?

I’ve only progressed through the first three episodes. That character (actor) hasn’t shown up yet.

I’ve watched the first few episodes of the new Netflix series, The Sandman. The streaming service has recently dropped all of the episodes for Season 1. (I believe the show has already been renewed for a second season.) I’m reasonably satisfied with the results so far. The plot more or less adheres to that found in the comic books. The casting seems fairly solid (although I’m not quite on board with Patton Oswalt’s character). There have been a few moments when the show fails to adequately capture certain emotionally charged moments in comparison to the comic, which is odd; usually it’s the other way around. But I’ll keep watching.

“Furnace”, Livia Llewellyn

Well, this is certainly an interesting opener, full of fascinating and vaguely disturbing images. I just wish I had a better handle on the author’s intentions. (view spoiler)[The story begins as a description of a decaying town but then the focus somehow shifts to a fraught mother-daughter relationship where time seems to loop in a way that involves the morphing of forms. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“Butcher’s Blend”, Brian Hodge

Brian Hodge is a writer I typically like and, while this particular story earns a positive endorsement, it’s not a particularly enthusiastic one. (view spoiler)[In “Butcher’s Blend”, we get to witness the goings on at a brutal re-education center. While I’m open to stories along this line in general (perhaps more so given the current oppresive cultural and political climate), “Butcher’s Blend” is a rather cartoonish instantiation of the subgenre. The finale, because it involves the jarring intrusion of the supernatural, is relatively ineffective. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭

Some quick thoughts on this Carol Serling anthology. The content is terribly uneven. There are three very good stories here by William F. Wu, Alan Brennert, and Joe R. Lansdale. (My favorite is the Wu title.) The remainder range in quality from competent to bad. I’m frankly a little surprised that an anthology about a television series this famous and one edited by the wife of the series’ host wasn’t able to attract better material. I couldn’t help but notice in reviewing the ISFDB that the resumes of many of the included authors were pretty darned thin.

Overall rating for the anthology: ✭✭½

“El Moe”, Rod Serling

Carol Serling oughta be ashamed of herself for including this story. In fact, it’s not really a story at all; it’s a brief film treatment no doubt culled from the author’s old files. Using it in this anthology does a disservice to Rod Serling.

✭

“The Good Neighbor”, Whitley Strieber

(view spoiler)[Strieber’s contribution about alien visitors and property values starts out as one of those well-intended metaphors about human intolerance. The story takes an unexpected left turn near the end involving the migration of souls. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭½

“Family Man”, Laura Lippman

(view spoiler)[This is a rather muddled grass-is-always-greener tale. It’s easy enough to figure out what’s going on, but I’m a bit fuzzy on the why — i.e., if the author means to show us that our protagonist is a bad guy, the point might have been made far more elegantly. The ending, involving a credenza and a photograph of characters from an old television comedy, is clumsily handled. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭½

“Your Last Breath, Inc.”, John Miller

(view spoiler)[How many tales have we seen dating back 100 years or more about mysterious shops (e.g., H. G. Wells’ 1903 short, “The Magic Shop”)? In Miller’s entry the shop proprietors are engaged in the business of granting select customers a few last moments of life. That strikes me as a potentially fertile ground for a decent yarn. It’s too bad the bulk of the story is taken up with the tedious attempts of Mr. Sims to ferret out the “truth” behind the business. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭

“Ants”, Tad Williams

(view spoiler)[“Ants” is an old-fashioned crime yarn of a sort I used to encounter quite a bit during the 50s and 60s. A man kills his wife in a fit of rage and gets away with it...almost. Because, as we all know, there is no such thing as the perfect crime. The story evokes memories of a classic television series — not, however, The Twilight Zone, but rather Alfred Hitchcock Presents. “Ants” is okay, if not not particulalry compelling. Williams’ ideas about using ants to help clean up a crime scene struck me as silly. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭½

“The Soldier He Needed to Be”, Jim DeFelice

(view spoiler)[The author’s contribution explores some of the same territory examined by episodes of the original Twilight Zone series, perhaps most especially “Nick of Time”, in which William Shatner and Patricia Breslin allow their actions to be guided by a fortune-telling machine. In the television episode, the duo are able to break free, giving us a happy ending. In DeFelice’s story the final result is not so cheery. Not a bad story, but not particularly interesting. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭

“Ghost Writer”, Robert J. Serling

(view spoiler)[I’m not sure I even understand what this story is doing in this book. The intro and outro sections (written no doubt by Carol Serling) want the reader to believe that the story embodies some ironic or ghostly replay of history. But there’s zero evidence of that in the story itself. It’s merely a tricksy kind of tale in which the reader is slowly made aware of the fact that the unnamed president in question is Abraham Lincoln and the speech he is about to deliver is the Gettysburg Address.

Robert was older brother to Rod and was a year away from his death at age 92 from pancreatic cancer when this story appeared in Carol Serling’s anthology. I have the rather uncharitable suspicion that this was merely a trunk story that had a new title slapped on it (one more appropriate to the Twilight Zone theme) and was included in part to pad the anthology’s table of contents. (hide spoiler)]

✭

“The Wrong Room”, R. L. Stine

(view spoiler)[The genre is replete with stories about practical jokes gone awry (dating back as far as Michael Arlen’s “The Gentleman from America”, 1925). But Stein’s story strains credulity to such a degree that its impact is lessened. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭½

Lena said: I’m 21% in and this is a story of a young brother and sister being groomed by a pedophile.

This is a misreading of the author’s intent. That should become apparent if you continue with the novel.

I can’t help but notice that in today’s hyper-polarized climate any and all interactions between a child and adult are scrutinized with a laser-like intensity. The term “groom”, like “woke”, has become a meaningless pejorative.

Lena said: Lady Gaga will be the new Harley Quinn

This has a 2024 release date. I have no idea whether it will turn out to be true or not, but a few sources has reported that this sequel is going to be a musical.

Lena said: 15% into Mockingbird and so far it’s just life for a little girl in Georgia.

This is perhaps not surprising, Lena. The book, more than 1962 movie, focuses on Scout. It might be considered a Bildungsroman, tracing her moral growth and evolving awareness. If the movie shifts focus a bit, spending somewhat more time than the book on Atticus, then Aaron Sorkin’s more recent theatrical adaptation nearly abandons Scout altogether. The three children serve instead as a kind of Greek chorus.