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.

Lena said (in part): Marvel just put their big foot down and said movies are back, I believe them.

Thanks for posting the link, Lena. To be honest, my feelings on this matter are rather complicated. I do miss watching the big tentpole-type movies on the big screen. (And I admit to being a sucker for the MCU films. I’ve looked forward for quite some time to seeing what will no doubt be the last Black Widow movie.) On the other hand, I haven’t felt driven to see smaller-scale films in movie theaters; in the year before COVID, I doubt I saw more than 15 movies on the big screen. I was more than content to wait for the opportunity to stream them at home. I don’t foresee my feelings in this regard changing much as social restrictions continue to loosen. And I don’t think that I’m alone. I was of the opinion that, even before the pandemic, there were too many theaters relative to the number of films being released and that as a consequence some pruning was going to be inevitable. I wonder whether COVID will simply accelerate this.

Last thought: 2020 was (obviously) a bad year for movie theaters. But I would push back on any assertion that it was a bad year for movies. Granted that we didn't get to see many of the big spectacle-type flicks, but what we did get to see was pretty good. I had no trouble filling out a ten best list at the end of the year.

Real life has prevented me from participating in the last few group reads, but, since I own a physical copy of From the Depths , I was hoping to join the discussion of this one starting on the 15th.

Lena said: Lucifer season Five!

I tried this one a few years ago, but came away a bit disappointed after watching (iirc) most or all of the first season. Maybe I gave up too soon.

On a (somewhat) similar note, does anyone have an opinion on Joss Whedon’s new series for HBO, The Nevers? I watched the first episode and thought it promising, if a bit formulaic.

Lena noted: Oh my God!!!! Dexter is back!!!! This is fantastic because the books were shit.

And because the ending of original Showtime series was so lackluster.

D. said (in part): And fortunately, the new drugs seem to be working reasonably well with much less severe side effects.

Happy to hear this.

Lena said: It’s the fluffy language that it saved from that tag.

I take your point, but for me sometimes that almost seems to make it worse.

(view spoiler)[“He only shivers slightly at the start, as Docherty takes out his knife and starts to peel him, gently, delicately, comforting him: ‘Hush now. Soon be over. Soon be done.’” (hide spoiler)]

Like I said, that line’s gonna bother me for a while.

Lena asked: I was wondering what you would think on Watching. Do you agree has was abused himself? Did it imply that enough?

Yep, I agree with your interpretation here. A couple of other quick thoughts as long as I’m talking about this story again. First, I anticipate that some of the sentences in the last few paragraphs are going to uncomfortably rattle around in my brain for quite a while. Second, while I realize that different people view these matters differently, for me — while I ultimately gave the story a thumbs up — it comes perilously close to being torture porn.

“Watching”, Tim Lees

I read somewhere that good horror ought to make the reader feel uncomfortable. I’m not sure I agree with that as a general rule of thumb, but I certainly found this story to be a disturbing one. In fact, perhaps it ought to come with a trigger warning of some sort. ’Nuff said.

✭✭✭½

“Adrenaline Junkies”, Ray Cluley

(view spoiler)[Cluley provides us with a monster story, something you don’t see too many of in a typical Datlow anthology. As noted by Lena, the main (monster) thread is interspersed with flashbacks involving our narrator and her former lover, Suki. Lena found this a bit distracting (if I recall correctly), but I thought it helped the story, adding some needed depth to the narrator. I also thought there were a number of nice touches that elevated this kind of story above the ordinary (e.g., the suggestion that the Camazota were similar to those engaging in extreme sports in their addiction to adrenaline). A side note: In an interview, the author admitted that “Carpe the Fucking Diem” was an early working title for this story. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“Playscape”, Diana Peterfreund

(view spoiler)[As pointed out by Fiona and Lena, this story explores much the same psychological landscape that “The Night Nurse” does — maternal fear and guilt. In addition, the Peterfreund tale devotes quite a bit of time on the prevalence of victim blaming. Solid story. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

“Nor Cease You Never Now”, Ren Warom

This is the first story in Datlow’s annual that I would personally classify as a miss. The story examines the aftermath of a rather ill-defined tragedy. (view spoiler)[Warom wants, I think, to make the point that the way in which one re-experiences the memory of traumatic events is arbitrary and fragmentary. Perhaps, but if there’s little or nothing for the reader to hold onto, it’s hard to maintain interest. I also walked away from this story wondering whether its author wasn’t trying a bit too hard to be clever (the bit, for example, about the Edward Bulwer-Lytton quote). In the final analysis, I see this as a worthwhile, but failed experiment. (hide spoiler)]

✭½

Fiona said (in part): Melanie, re The Night Nurse

Yeah, that was roughly my interpretation as well, Fiona, (view spoiler)[although I thought that by story’s end it’s pretty much all downside with no upside for Esme, our narrator. I think in my original comment I put this tale in the Faustian-bargain-goes-awry category. (hide spoiler)]

Randy said (in part):

I have lots of unfinished anthologies. :)

For every anthology or collection I manage to finish, I probably leave unfinished a dozen. :(

“The Hope Chest”, Sarah Reed

I noted that with Laura Mauro’s “The Pain-Eater’s Daughter” I appreciated the themes more than the story-telling. With Reed’s story I found the exact opposite to be true. Reed’s writing style is fine, but the ideas here are extraordinarily ordinary. (view spoiler)[An almost cartoonishly evil person gets her hash settled by the person she killed. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭

“The Pain-Eater’s Daughter”, Laura Mauro

(view spoiler)[Mauro’s story seems like a riff on the ancient idea of sin-eating. It moves slowly from the idea that pain-eating is a gift that helps people, but one that imposes a terrible cost on the gift-giver to the more bleak notion that the “gift” may impose costs on the recipient as well. I thought the ideas expressed were interesting, but was less impressed with the story execution. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭

Ronald wondered: I wonder what horror stories from 2019 should have been in this book.

I read a fair number of short stories in a given year, but I still feel woefully unqualified to answer questions like these. I can think of two or three I might have included, but that’s about it.

We’ve only gotten about a third of the way through Ellen Datlow’s collection and I can already see that I’m likely to be an outlier in our little group. While not every story I’ve thus far read is a home run, neither have I thought any of them were out-and-out stinkers. Datlow’s conception of what constitutes horror is a relatively expansive one, and I think that rubs some people the wrong way. Or maybe it just means that in a collection of stories with vastly differently themes, styles, and approaches, some subset of those are bound to miss with any given reader.

Lena said (in part): I read more than half over four starts and am outraged

As I was reading the Robert Shearman story, I clearly remember thinking to myself, “Uh-oh, Lena’s gonna hate this one.” Lol.

I was saddened to learn that Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, social activist, and bookstore owner, died recently at 101. I’m not sure why, but I rarely read poetry these days. But back when I did, Ferlinghetti was one of the poets whose works I enjoyed. After hearing about Ferlinghetti’s death, I listened to “Baseball Canto”, one of his poems which first appeared in print in 1967. Good stuff.

Melanie said (in part): The Willows is one of my favorite all time horror stories but this just wasn't scary and was too soft.

I’m definitely not telling you that you should have liked it more than you did, Melanie. My only thought in reading your comment was that I had the impression that the author was going more for a sense of awe and mystery rather than pure fright/scariness. That’s in part why I compared “Birds of Passage” to Machen rather than Lovecraft.

“I Say (I Say, I Say)”, Robert Shearman

(view spoiler)[This story is a bit of a head scratcher. I found it interesting, both in terms of content and style, but frankly came away not quite sure what point the author was trying to make. Mebbe something about the negative consequences of conforming to roles/stereotypes. I dunno. The story reminded me a bit of the absurdism found in Samuel Beckett’s work. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭