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):

My nightmare for the show was that they would drag down whatever woman they chose to build up and then put a man on the throne. Guess what happened?


Oops. My apologies. Shoulda used some spoiler tags here...

I was never really all that invested in any of the fan theories about who was going to “win” the game of thrones as long as the end result more or less made sense. (view spoiler)[To the extent I allowed myself to think about it at all, there seemed only three realistic female possibilities — Cersei, Dany, and Sansa. I had long ago discounted Cersei (although she wielded a great deal of power) because it was clear that George R. R. Martin, even though his books were lauded for their unpredictability, was never going to allow such a thoroughly disreputable character to wind up on top. Fans of the TV series would have gone nuts if that had happened. And, although we will probably be litigating this issue until the end of time, it seemed pretty clear to me by the end of Season 7 that external events were more and more exposing Dany’s already-present character flaws and I suspected then that, as a consequence, the Dany and Dany+Jon fans were probably going to be disappointed in the show’s final outcome. That left Sansa; and in spite of her own flaws (everybody in this show was to a greater or lesser degree both flawed and fallible), I went into the last episode thinking she had a reasonable good shot at sitting on the Iron Throne. And, although that’s not the way that events ultimately unfolded, she did end up as Queen of the North. (hide spoiler)]

Lena said (in part):

The best four minutes of erudite ranting over Game of Thrones!

Boy, I hate to be that guy who is out of step with popular critical opinion, but all of this ultra-angry venting about Game of Thrones seems to me a little out of proportion. Were the last few seasons perfect? By no means. Were events and character arcs needlessly rushed? Certainly. But this idea that the show quality declined to the point where it was utter dreck seems less an assessment grounded in objective reality and more another instance of toxic fan reaction run amok. The South China Post critic repeatedly seems to liken the show’s declining quality to a catastrophe of epic proportions (“Oh, the humanity!” he declaims.) And I found his ad hominem attacks, particularly those aimed at George R. R. Martin, offensive and cruel.

I don’t mean to belittle the opinions of those who were (in my view, justifiably) disappointed with the way the series stumbled to its conclusion. But I just want to push back a bit on what I see as the sometimes unfair and decidedly personal nature of some of that criticism.

Additional comment on “Floodland” by Cameron Pierce

(view spoiler)[The talking fish with hands that appears in “Floodland” also shows up in some other Pierce stories (see his collection Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon). But if this creature has some general symbolic significance, I haven’t been able to concretely discern it. (hide spoiler)]

D said:

I may be in the extreme minority in that I am actually OK with most of the Game of Thrones ending having watched the finale last night. There are things I’m not happy about certainly but most of the characters ended in places that I was pretty pleased with.

I was fine with most of the decisions on how the various characters ended their journey. But (and I hate to keep harping on this point) I often found myself disappointed by the execution. (view spoiler)[As just one example, in the show’s final episode Jon kills Dany while they embrace; this is such a corny, overworked trope. Even at roughly 90 minutes, the episode seemed oddly rushed and perfunctory. Gwendoline Christie gets a nice moment as she completes the entry for Jaime in some sort of record book, but that’s one of the episode’s few relatively subtle moments. (hide spoiler)] Let me be clear — at the end of the day I still think that Game of Thrones was better than the vast majority of television series, but I think during its last three seasons the creative team fumbled the ball a bit and missed out on an opportunity to be truly great.

Herman Wouk died on Friday, 17 May, at the age of 103. I can easily imagine that younger readers might not be familiar with Wouk, but I fondly recall reading a number of his books in my late teens and 20s. Looking forward in time, I suspect that critical opinion might be less than kind when considering Wouk’s oeuvre. But he wrote at least one novel I would consider to be great, the 1951 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Caine Mutiny . Set largely in WW II’s Pacific Theatre, it’s a combination Bildungsroman, character study of men operating under stress, and courtroom drama. Perhaps his most popular books were the two featuring WW II naval officer “Pug” Henry, The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978).

“Draugar”, Bryan Clark

“Pull your oars til your bones crack and your skin splits, lest Odin take you for a lot of feeble Englishwomen and laugh when you plead entrance to Valhalla!” Dialog like that just makes me cringe. Clark has one other story to his credit, marking him as a bit of an amateur and I think that shows in this piece. Minor quibble: you “nock” an arrow, you don’t “knock” it.

✭½

“Sirens”, Dallas Mullican

I’m afraid that this story was a miss for me. The narrative cohesion kinda breaks down (for me, at least) in the concluding section — it was difficult for me to determine whether the narrator’s final experiences were somehow based in reality or whether he was in some sort of hallucinatory state. Mullican’s story has a distinctly Gothic feel to it, both in theme and in style — not a genre I’m overly fond of.

✭½

“Floodland”, Cameron Pierce

This is probably the first piece of fiction by Pierce that I’ve read, although I do vaguely recall reading an interview with the author in which he was discussing his 2009 novel, Ass Goblins of Auschwitz . Pierce is a big exponent of what has been called “bizarro” fiction, a literary subgenre which mashes up elements of satire, absurdism, and some other stuff. “Floodland” (I presume) exemplifies this type of fiction. I must admit I struggled with this one. It’s not that I dislike stories that incorporate absurd or surreal elements; but I generally prefer such fiction when it generates some underlying, unified theme or emotion. I didn’t get that from “Floodland”. The experience of reading the story was akin to being given a bunch of mismatched puzzle pieces.

✭½

Corinne said (in part):

GOT I'm caught up also.

(view spoiler)[Just to reiterate what I said previously, I can sorta see both sides in this dispute: While I firmly believe that groundwork was laid for Dany’s behavior in this episode, I think the show’s quicker pacing these last few seasons has impacted the writing, such that character arcs that earlier in the show’s history would have played out over the better part of a season are now compressed into a couple of episodes or even one. I also find it interesting that, whereas for the most part on-line debate is framed in terms of whether or not the writers did a good enough job preparing the viewers for the emergence of “mad” Dany, a minority of critics have argued that regardless of whether or not her actions were spontaneous, they need not be characterized as “mad”. Aaron Bady, writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, exemplifies this Realpolitik viewpoint:

[E]very scene leading up to the battle shows us a Daenerys who is a step ahead of everyone else; in her seething vengeful fury, there is complete clarity: she knows what she’s going to do, she blames others for making it her only option, and she’s angry at everyone for what she’s about to do [...] If Daenerys wants the Iron Throne—and she does want it, it’s the only thing she wants and has always wanted, her entire character is built on wanting that one thing to the exclusion of all else—then she can’t let herself be a Ned Stark, having it both ways and dying in the middle ground.

Similarly, Robert Farley, a military analyst writing for Slate, notes:

Political considerations necessarily infuse strategic calculations. For Queen Daenerys Targaryen, seizure of King’s Landing and the deposition of the usurper Cersei no longer cuts it. Aegon Targaryen (Jon Snow) has a better claim to the throne; he has a base of operations, a narrative of legitimacy, and his own army. Even if Jon doesn’t want to be King, people who dislike Daenerys will fight in his name. Dany is no longer the presumptive Targaryen heir and can no longer rely on her family’s right to the throne.

She can rely on Drogon, however. Her claim to the throne rests on demonstrating the power of her dragon. With Rhaegal—the dragon Jon had ridden—dead, she is uniquely capable of making such a claim. Daenerys need not be “mad” in order to see political value in burning King’s Landing to the ground.

We can be (rightfully) horrified at the moral lapses that such a strategy encapsulates, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is unsound in a political or military sense (at least in the short term). (hide spoiler)]

Steph said:

I'm aware it's not original but i'm not well versed in this trope at any rate, so I enjoyed the format of found footage and the atmosphere. I had a fun time with it.

I’m glad you enjoyed the story, Steph. I don’t think I liked it quite as much as you did, but I certainly didn’t dislike it. It reminded me a bit of Stephen King’s 1999 story, “1408”. And just to show how venerable this basic idea is, two other similar stories popped into my brain this morning, H. Russell Wakefield’s “Ghost Hunt” (1948) and Robert Arthur’s “The Believers” (1941).

“Carnacki: The Lusitania”, William Meikle

I’ve read a number of Meikle’s stories and have generally enjoyed them. This is, however, the first of his Carnacki pastiches that I’ve been exposed to. I should confess up front that I’m not a fan of Carnacki. I re-read the original William Hope Hodgson stories a few years ago and came away, for various reasons, relatively unimpressed. Paradoxically, because the present story is a really good pastiche (i.e., in the sense that stylistically and detail-wise it’s very like a Hodgson Carnacki tale), I found that all of the elements that I regard as Hodgson’s weaknesses were for the most part weaknesses in Meikle’s pastiche. (view spoiler)[A more minor quibble has to do with the story’s predictability. The title alone almost gives up the game. On the other hand, I found rather interesting (and uncharacteristic of Hodgson) Carnacki’s rather morose musings near the story’s end about the nature of time and fate. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭

Lena said, in part:

John Lithgow is one of the greats, I can’t think of any other actor than can be the bad guy (Cliffhanger) as convincingly as the good guy (Harry and the Hendersons).

Lithgow was positively chilling as the bad guy in Season 4 of Dexter. It may have been the best season of that Showtime series.

Still, I think Hillary and Clinton was really Metcalf’s show. I’ve seen her on stage in a couple of other things and she is very good.

Corinne asked:

WOW that looks like a widely successful Broadway experience. That is amazing.

I've only ever done day trips. (I live about 3 hours away) Did you sleep in NYC also? For a month?

I’m usually in NYC two or maybe three times a year. This time it was for a week, so we saw a show nearly every night (along with a couple of matinees).

“Fear Sun”, Laird Barron

“Fear Sun” is one of a handful of stories not written specifically for this anthology. It originally appeared in Lois H. Gresh’s Innsmouth Nightmares . (view spoiler)[It’s a rather odd mashup of Lovecraftian ideas, conspiracy theories, and thoughts about the amoral nature of the super-wealthy (thoughts he also touched on in his novella, “X’s for Eyes”). But it all seems to work. It’s a rather bleak work of fiction, but I enjoyed it. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭✭

I hope I’ll be forgiven for jumping the gun by a few hours. Tomorrow (the 15th) promises to be an incredibly busy day, and I’m not sure when (or if) I’ll have the opportunity to post.

“Widow’s Point”, Richard Chizmar & Billy Chizmar

I’m largely familiar with Richard Chizmar due to his connection to Cemetery Dance Publications and, more specifically, his editorship of Cemetery Dance magazine, founded back 1988. I’ve only read a few of his stories; I don’t think I’ve previously read anything by his son, Billy.

I found “Widow’s Point” to a competently written but rather unoriginal instance of the haunted house investigation story (except in this case, of course, we are considering a haunted light house). (view spoiler)[The reader is provided with the requisite background (suicides, gruesome murders, etc.), the investigator is locked in, and in short order odd occurrences start to pile up, all culminating in the usual outcome. It’s not a particularly bad horror trope, especially when well executed, but I think that the “found footage” narrative structure the authors employ is sometimes a bit clumsy and hence works against the very effects they are striving to create. There are too many lengthy info dumps and instances where people speak in ways no real person would. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭

“The Gray Man”, Mark Parker

It pains me to say this, but this the worst piece of fiction I have read in quite some time. It’s presence in this book exemplifies just why editors of anthologies should refrain from including their own stories. “Those who subscribed to the ‘life being stranger than fiction’ thing, sure knew what they were talking about.” That’s the kind of prose we’re talkin’ about here. The dialog is often ludicrously bad and unrealistic. And the plot is badly structured and makes almost zero sense. (view spoiler)[A young writer, in the wake of a break-up with an abusive boyfriend, travels to Pawley Island for a book signing. What follows is some stuff about an urban legend, the Gray Man, whose spectral appearance heralds the arrival of hurricane weather; the rather inexplicable reappearance of the protagonist’s ex; his ensuing death in a bizarre and unintentionally hilarious scene; and the arrival in quick succession of not one but two hurricanes, in spite of the fact that, as far as I can tell, the Gray Man never really puts in an appearance. (hide spoiler)]

½

I spent a fair amount of time in New York this past month, affording me the opportunity to see a number of Broadway shows.

All My Sons , Arthur Miller
A revival of Miller’s 1947 play in which the American Dream is juxtaposed with concerns about social and moral responsibility. It was Miller’s first hit. This revival features a strong performance by Annette Bening.
✭✭✭

The Ferryman , Jez Butterworth
Set during The Troubles, the play tells the story of the family of a former IRA activist, living in their farmhouse in rural County Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1981. It’s a trifle clichéd and long (at around 3 hours), but pretty compelling stuff. Oddsmakers currently are picking it to win in the best play category.
✭✭✭✭½

Kiss Me, Kate , Cole Porter
Kiss Me, Kate (1948) was Porter’s response to the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ground-breaking Oklahoma! , one the first musicals to more tightly integrate story and song. Ironically, Oklahoma is the other big musical revival this season. Kate involves one of those show-within-a-show tropes that showbiz folks seem to particularly enjoy. This revival (with Will Chase and Kelli O’Hara as the leads) features some nice choreography, particularly during the “Too Darn Hot” Number.
✭✭✭✭

The Prom , Chad Beguelin & Matthew Sklar
This is a musical comedy about four C-List Broadway actors who seek to revive their flagging careers by supporting a politically correct cause in a fictitious conservative Indiana town. It’s charming and amusing, but it’s up against a crowded field in the new musical category this season; Hadestown is the predicted winner in, although I’d like to see Beth Leavel from The Prom win in the best actress in a musical category.
✭✭✭✭½

Hillary and Clinton , Lucas Hnath
Ostensibly about Hillary’s run for the presidency in 2008, Hnath’s play is more an odd family psychodrama with minimal cast and set. The play is directed by Joe Mantello and stars Laurie Metcalf as Hillary Clinton and John Lithgow as Bill Clinton.
✭✭✭½

Ink , James Graham
Graham’s play is indirectly about the devolution of journalistic ethics in the last part of the 20th century as it recounts the purchase of The Sun by Rupert Murdoch, who, along with editor Larry Lamb, transformed it into a tabloid monstrosity that for a time enjoyed the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom. Depressing, but well acted with a great set design. The cast includes Bertie Carvel as Murdoch.
✭✭✭½

I’m caught up now with Season 8 of Game of Thrones, having watched Episodes 3, 4, and 5 on Sunday. Just one more to go. I found interesting the on-line fan backlash to script decisions made by Benioff and Weiss, particularly those unveiled in the most recent episode, “The Bells”. (view spoiler)[I’m on record as believing that the faster pacing we’ve seen in more recent seasons has hurt the show, particularly in the way character development is handled. On the other hand, I’m not very sympathetic to those fans who claim that Dany’s latest actions represented some sort of 180-degree turn in her character arc. The show writers laid ample groundwork showing both her ruthless impulses and her desire for power stretching all the way back to Season 1. On the other (third) hand, do I think her turning point in “The Bells” could have been handled better? Yeah, probably. (hide spoiler)]

I went out to see Avengers: Endgame this past weekend, in part because it was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid spoilery talk in the entertainment media. I’ve only been a so-so fan of the MCU films and, perhaps reflecting that bias, walked away from the experience thinking this most recent entry was a so-so viewing experience. (view spoiler)[I thought Endgame was strongest during its quieter moments, notably the first 20 or 30 minutes and the last 15 (i.e., after Thanos is dispatched). There’s an especially lengthy middle section involving time travel in order to recover the infinity stones that I found by turns tedious and baffling. And there followed the obligatory 30-minute nonstop huge battle sequence. I don’t want to sound too negative, however. The scriptwriters and Russo brothers did a good job leavening the film with the franchise’s trademark witty banter and with the employment of clever callbacks to many of the previous MCU films. I think everyone and his or her dog was aware in advance that Endgame represented an endpoint for both Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr., so it wasn’t a surprise to see their characters bite the dust. I thought both performers did well in their closing moments, particularly Downey. I must admit, I was surprised by what appears to be Black Widow’s departure (although I understand she has a prequel film slated for release). Her death scene was faintly ridiculous, and I found myself mildly piqued that one of the more interesting of the original Avengers was dispatched in favor one I’ve always found to be pretty bland. (hide spoiler)]

✭✭✭½

Mea culpa. I’ve done a crappy job of supporting the discussion of this month’s group read, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe . This lapse is all the more egregious given that I was the one who nominated this book. In my self defense, I will just say that I’ve been traveling extensively this past month. It’s not a great excuse, but it’s all I have. Again, my apologies, and I will endeavor to do better in the future.

Corinne said:

You guys heard the GRs Feedback Group is being deleted May 28th and instead a modern help tool will takes it’s place?

It’s difficult to know how to react to this change based solely on a perusal of the announcement — it’s not particularly forthcoming, containing the usual unilluminating buzz phrases (like “proactively maintained”). The other question I would pose is, why are they doing this? The implication is that this is all for our benefit, but my cynical nature deems as suspect assertions of that kind.