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.

Ronald wrote (in part): Reflecting on the anthropomorphization of the ship in the story, I wondered if a story could be written in this day and age about a ship with artificial intelligence.

Off the top of my head I can think of the ships in Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, e.g., Excession . I am sure that other examples in science fiction can be found. It’s not quite what you’re talking about, but one could also cite bio-ships, i.e., starships that are wholly or in part biological entities. The most famous example here would probably be The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey.

“Tracked: A Mystery of the Sea”, C. N. Barham

(view spoiler)[Mike Ashley’s introduction to this story takes note of the author’s interest in hypnotism and clairvoyance. The story is really less a tale of the sea than it is an expression of Barham’s fervent conviction that these techniques could be used to detect/locate lost items, in this fictional case a particular ship that gone missing. The story fails (at least for me) in a couple of key ways. First (and apologies since I may have harped on this point before), I am not partial to stories that want to treat paranormal/supernatural events as purely scientific phenomena. For my money, once you strip the mystery and ambiguity from such events, you kinda take all of the fun out of things. Second, I presume that Barham wants the reader to empathize with the victims of this tragic maritime crime, but they spend so little time on stage (the author is far more focused on the clairvoyant), that we hardly care when they are consigned to the deep.

A brief aside: Over the centuries people have had a lot of misconceptions about hypnotism. Early practitioners like Franz Mesmer had some really screwy ideas about what underlay the effects they were seeing in those who were subjected to hypnosis. By the time of Barham, however, explanations of hypnotism had begun to approach something akin to our modern conceptions. So I was a bit surprised to see Barham’s espousal of this rather odd mix of hypnotism and clairvoyance. But a bit of digging showed me that Barham wasn’t the only person at the end of the nineteenth century who subscribed to this theory. I stumbled on an 1898 book by William A. Barnes entitled Psychology, Hypnotism, Personal Magnetism and Clairvoyance. (hide spoiler)]

✭½

“The Floating Forest”, Herman Scheffauer

(view spoiler)[A captain who yields to temptation in the form of insurance fraud suffers a rather outlandish fate. Scheffauer’s tale was written in 1909, but stylistically feels at least a quarter of a century older; the overwrought emotions, the florid language, the piling up of fantastic coincidence upon fantastic coincidence, etc. seems to hark back to some of the sensation works of an earlier time. Mike Ashley, in his intro to the story, compares the author to Poe. That’s perhaps too kind, in my opinion. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭

Lena wrote: The SNAFU author has a Go Fund Me Page

Thanks for posting this link, Lena.

Lena wrote (in part): I’m loosing interest in The Fisherman. The flashback is still going at 44% and it’s a multi character third person. That is much less captivating than the first person widower.

Lena, I ended up liking this novel more than you did, but I agree that the middle section is problematic. Here’s some of what I wrote about the book elsewhere:

(view spoiler)[ Minor quibbles aside, my big problem with The Fisherman is the middle section, Howard’s story. After spending the first portion of the novel slowly and painstakingly building reader interest in and empathy for the two main characters, Abe and Dan, they are abandoned for a huge chunk of time to deal with a cast of characters in whom we’re only marginally invested. I felt that this middle stretch just dragged on for too long. Not only is it too long, but it’s an awkward mix of tenses and points of view that Langan attempts to retrofix by introducing the idea (never well explained) that Abe knows more about the events surrounding Howard’s tale that he should given what the latter actually told the pair at the diner. (hide spoiler)]

“Held by the Sargasso Sea”, Frank H. Shaw

(view spoiler)[One could describe this Shaw story as being being about a mutinous crew getting its comeuppance in the Sargasso Sea. But really that aspect of the tale almost comes off as a bit of an afterthought. “Held” seems to me more of a dewy-eyed tribute to the age of sail, when men were really men, when able-bodied seamen weren’t mollycoddled by namby-pamby unions, and when the proper method of disciplining a crew member was a belaying pin to the side of the head. What do you get when you pamper and cosset this younger generation of unappreciative seamen? Mutiny! It was all a bit much for my taste, and I don’t think the story was helped by the rather absurd ending. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭

“Sargasso”, Ward Muir

(view spoiler)[The author makes use of once-popular misconceptions about the Sargasso Sea in his sea-going horror story. Once again, a ship (the Pennsylvania) encounters a derelict ship (the Wellington) and finds clues (this time in the form of a log) that outline the tragedy. And once again we have a denizen of the deep that we, the reader, don’t get a clear a view of. I’m starting to sense a pattern in these stories. But I don’t want to seem too dismissive. I actually kinda enjoyed this one. Specifically, I liked Muir’s use of the log to concisely portray the growing sense of despair and dread on the part of log’s writer and the Wellington’s crew. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“From the Darkness and the Depths”, Morgan Robertson

Robertson gives us a early example of scifi horror. (view spoiler)[The narrator of this novelette recounts his experience as first mate on a three-master south of Java at the time of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. The narrator is a bit ambiguous as to whether the tidal wave which hits the ship is the direct result of the Krakatoa eruption or whether the product of other submarine earthquakes coincident in time, but I don’t suppose that question mark really matters for story purposes. The catastrophe has the effect of perturbing and bringing to the surface an invisible creature which proceeds to pick off members of the crew.

I might have appreciated this story better, but for the presence of a few noticeable defects. For my taste, Robertson over-uses nautical jargon to the point of distraction. I don’t consider myself a total idiot in this arena, but I admit that at a certain point I gave up on looking up the meanings of all the boat-related terms the author felt compelled to share with the reader. Second, the story suffers from a problem I often see in early scifi — as Ronald noted, the “science” used to explain both the evolution of the creature’s invisibility as well of the means by which its visible image is eventually captured are for the most part wrong-headed. I can live with the errors, but Robertson compounds the problem by spending an excessive amount of time proudly explaining his erroneous science to the reader. (hide spoiler)]

My favorite factoid about the Krakatoa eruption involves the really bad 1968 disaster film, Krakatoa, East of Java, starring Maximilian Schell and Brian Keith. Critics widely mocked the film’s title since Krakatoa actually lies west of Java. I recently learned that the movie’s producers actually knew this, but opted to use “East” in the title anyway because they thought it was a more atmospheric word than “West”. You can’t make this stuff up.

✭✭½

“The Ship of Silence”, Albert R. Wetjen

In “The Ship of Silence”, the bark Doyen, sailing from Sydney to Callao, encounters a derelict ship, the Robert Sutter. (view spoiler)[The only only clues as to the Sutter’s mysterious fate are provided by that ship’s sole survivor, an ancient parrot. This is a nice opener for the anthology. I found the use of the parrot as a plot device surprisingly effective. I did have some quibbles about the story’s structure. The initial expository scene runs a bit long for my taste. And while I think Wetjen makes the correct call in leaving the reader guessing about the precise nature of the Sutter’s attacker, it is nevertheless true that once the parrot recounts his tale, so to speak, the story loses momentum. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

This month’s group read, Mike Ashley’s anthology From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea , is one of a recent series being published by The British Library. This will be the second one I’ve read (the first being The Platform Edge: Uncanny Tales of the Railways ). Ashley’s approach when collecting stories for these anthologies is to look for lesser known stories rather than focusing on the well-known chestnuts. Thus, in looking at the contents of From the Depths , I find that I’m only familiar with a handful of the included writers and have only previously read 2 of the 15 stories, “The Mystery of the Water-Logged Ship” by William Hope Hodgson and “No Ships Pass” by Eleanor Smith. While in general I applaud Ashley’s philosophy on story selection, I have to admit that the results can be a bit mixed. In reading The Platform Edge , for example, I found that sometimes lesser-known tales are lesser known for a reason — they’re simply not very good. Which is a long-winded way of saying that the reader might want to temper expectations a bit when dipping into one of these anthologies.

Lena said (in part): For the record, i was a big fan of The Mere Wife:

My own favorite adaptation of the Beowulf myth was John Gardner’s 1971 novel, Grendel .

Lena wrote: I found a video! Why Babylon 5 is Awesome

Thanks for the video link, Lena. I would agree with Mr. Coleman’s conclusions about the series with the possible exception of his admiration for Christopher Franke, who composed the music for the show. I always found his work to be kinda meh.

Graeme said: Indeed, game over in 5 seconds. Or perhaps, 1.

Batman v Superman manages to make the confrontation between the two titular figures marginally interesting through the use of (view spoiler)[kryptonite-based weapons (hide spoiler)]. In my opinion, however, there are other problems with this rather plodding film. But I will refrain from launching my standard Zack Snyder rant. ;-)

Lena said: One Babylon Five insider joke for Canavan.

Thanks. That is funny.

Lena said: Babylon 5 did everything well. It’s a landmark.

I will always fondly remember Babylon 5 as the very first series that I binge-watched.

J. said (in part): The Lady Thor comics aren't that good. There are a few interesting ideas, but they aren't really paid off.

Generally speaking, Thor in the comics works best when he isn't here and now.

I think you’ve make some good points, J. Here are a coupla thoughts in response. First, I defer to your no doubt vastly superior knowledge of the Marvel comics. I haven’t read any of the Lady Thor comics and so don’t have a basis on which to form an opinion one way or another. But I have over the decades read a few Captain America comics and, while I found the comic book character in the main to be desperately dull, by the time Chris Evans hung up his shield, I thought the MCU counterpart was one of the more engaging ones. That difference leads me to hope that the MCU version of Lady Thor may, just may, be entertaining and interesting, whatever the quality of the comic series. I think a lot is going to depend upon the script.

I think your idea of a Thor MCU movie that takes place at some vastly different time point is an intriguing one, but I am guessing that Disney might find that approach too risky. With the possible exception of the forthcoming Black Widow, pretty much all of the MCU films have been set in the “here and now”, to use your term. I dimly recall an interview (perhaps with the Russo brothers) during which they alluded to the problem you mention — Thor’s outsized abilities relative to those of the opponents he must face. This is an issue, not just with Thor, but with some of the other Avengers as well, notably Captain Marvel. The MCU writers have struggled to address this problem in the films, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so, by temporarily taking the relevant character off the stage, so to speak, or by somehow diminishing (temporarily or otherwise) their powers.

Lena said: Stranger Things!

Ross Duffer has said that Season 4 is going to differ from previous ones in that much of the action will not take place in Hawkins, Indiana. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I still haven’t seen a hard release date yet for 4. The Duffers were still filming as of March, so maybe by the end of 2021?

Lena wrote: Netflix messing with my mind again. What if no one could sleep?

This doesn’t look terrible, but I still might give it a pass. I don’t think it’s too spoilery to say this since the trailer pretty much gives away the whole plot of the movie, but (view spoiler)[the idea of the fate of humanity depending on one person, often — as is the case here — a kid, seems like an overused trope. (hide spoiler)]

J. said (in part):

I've seen maybe two trailers for movies that I'm looking forward to seeing.

There are actually quite a few movies that may (or may not) see release in 2021 that I’m interested in seeing. Here are a few:

The Way of the Wind, Terrence Malick
The Woman in the Window, Joe Wright
In the Heights, Jon M. Chu
Black Widow, Cate Shortland
Candyman, Nia DaCosta
The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jackson
Dune, Denis Villeneuve
Bergman Island, Mia Hansen-Løve
Eternals, Chloé Zhao
The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson
Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven
Breaking News in Yuba County, Tate Taylor
No Time To Die, Cary Fukunaga
The Last Duel, Ridley Scott
The Human Voice, Pedro Almodovar
Sherlock Holmes 3, Dexter Fletcher
The Matrix 4, Lana Wachowski
Spider-Man: No Way Home, Jon Watts
Mission: Impossible 7, Christopher McQuarrie
West Side Story, Steven Spielberg
Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro
F9, Justin Lin
Last Night in Soho, Edgar Wright
The Tragedy of Macbeth, Joel Coen
Apollo 10 1/2, Richard Linklater
The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion

Lena said (in part): The sex change thing sounds horrific. Portman is as welcome to be Thor as Claire Danes was in Terminator. Oh lord that sounds awful.

While I haven’t exactly been jumping up and down with excitement over news of Thor: Love and Thunder, I’m willing to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. I don’t think Portman was particularly good in either of the first two Thor entries, but that wasn’t all on Portman; those were two of the weaker MCU movies, period. I know that Portman has her detractors, but for my money she usually holds her own when she’s working on projects that seem to interest her. I really liked her, for example, in Annihilation. It’s not as though the idea of a female Thor is coming completely out of left field — I am told by people who follow such things that the idea of a Lady Thor tracks pre-existing developments in the Marvel comic book universe. And, finally, the fact that Taiki Waititi is directing the new Thor is somewhat heartening; he helmed what almost everyone considers to the best of the Thors, Thor Ragnarok.