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.

“Saudade”, Steve Rasnic Tem

I enjoyed this story. The author does an excellent job of making us feel the main character’s sense of emptiness and loneliness. As with many of Tem’s stories it’s occasionally a bit obscure, but in a good way. (view spoiler)[I’m not sure I completely “get it”, but I liked the way Tem ties Lee’s encounter with his mysterious companion to the Chagall prints, as if he were somehow trying to recapture that time in his life that had meaning. (hide spoiler)]

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“Huddling Place”

What I like about this story is the way in which Simak is able to present big ideas through the actions and words of a few characters. I’m not sure that I’m totally on board with those ideas, however. (view spoiler)[Simak posits that the societal changes that occurred in “City” have led to an increase in agoraphobia in the population, although, the more I think about this, the more I think Simak has the causal arrow inverted: isolation doesn’t lead to agoraphobia; agoraphobia leads to self-imposed isolation.

I was a little surprised by the downbeat nature of the story’s ending. I hadn’t remembered that. And there’s a certain sense in which it doesn’t fit well with the more optimistic conclusion of “City”. (hide spoiler)]

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“Broken Record”, Stephen Graham Jones

I read this story this morning and spent the intervening time trying to put into words why I didn’t particularly care for it. I was largely okay with the surreal premise (even if it is a little simplistic). I think what bothers me is that the author doesn’t do anything interesting with it. There’s no larger statement about how events illuminate either Jaden’s character or make some greater statement about humankind. In short, in spite of the rather audacious foundation on which the story is built, I thought it was rather boring.

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Lena said (in part):

No worries, I hope you feel better soon.

It was really just routine surgery. No real discomfort. It was kinda freaky, however, having to limit my reading.

Lena said:

Thank you for the feedback, we’ll keep it scary for October and go SciFi for November!

Not that it matters, but I like this decision! ;)

I’ll post on “Huddling Place” tomorrow. I’m a bit behind on this one. I just had eye surgery performed and have had to curtail my reading as a consequence. Gads!

Fiona wrote (in part):

Has anyone checked out the first three episodes of Castle Rock yet?

I’m a little more skeptical at this point. I like the cast for the most part, but the plot is unfurling a lot more slowly than, say, Stranger Things or Channel Zero. I guess I’m cautiously optimistic.

I thought the start date for this group selection was 15 August, right?

Lena asked:

Are there adult versions of all Harry Potter books?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

This points to what appears to an Irish language edition of the first book in the Potter series. Why the Goodreads blurb refers to this as an “adult” edition is utterly baffling. Gotta be a mistake of some sort.

“Sister, Dearest Sister, Let Me Show to You the Sea”, Seanan McGuire

I think most of the participants reviewing this story have thought well of it; I’d agree with those assessments. I don’t have much to say about the story’s content that hasn’t been said by others. (view spoiler)[It’s a conte cruel of the sort that Stephen King might have written (someone else, I believe, already noted the passing similarity to the old Creepshow segment, “Something to Tide You Over”) crossed with a rather grim retelling of the old Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

A couple of quick points. I like the way author very economically outlines the dynamics of the relationship between the two sisters. I also liked the way in which the narrator links her own fate to the fate we all inevitably meet. (hide spoiler)]

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“City” (1944)

This is is first of the stories in Clifford D. Simak’s fix-up book of the same name, although I don’t think it’s the first of the City stories to be published. I think I mentioned earlier, Lena, that this is going to be a re-read for me, although I read this book so very long ago that the experience of picking it up now won’t be that different from looking at a work for the first time. I do , however, vaguely remember feeling that the first few stories were a bit weaker than the ones which followed.

(view spoiler)[“City” is one of those “if-these-trends-continue” stories that populate the science fiction genre; the genesis for this one would appear to be the urban flight one began to see in 20th-century U.S. society. Coupled with a few other predicted trends (atomic power, cheap and technologically sophisticated transportation, mass hydroponic gardening, etc.) and you end up with a decentralized society in which cities are an obsolete idea. Of course, one could write a couple of books on why things didn’t proceed along the lines suggested by Simak or on the logical holes in his train of thought, but maybe that’s beside the point. It is fun just to engage in these sorts of what-if exercises. By extension, it’s great fun to look back at some of the predictions made by Golden and Silver Age SF writers to see just what they got right and what they (more often) got wrong. Indeed, there’s a term for this: paleofuture. (A guy named Matt Novak writes on this subject for Gizmodo. You can check out his blog here.)

Simak recognizes that in any large-scale cultural/economic shift such as the one at the heart of this story, there are going to be societal losers, and one of the plot threads in the story deals with that segment; but for the most part Simak sees this paradigm change as an unalloyed good, which is not all that surprising given that he was by inclination kind of a Jeffersonian who lionized a pastoral vision of America.

For me the author’s execution doesn’t quite match the intrinsic value of the ideas he wants to talk about. The characters are a bit flat and the situations in which he places them sometimes seem artificial; there’s a lot of “speechifying” going on, a problem endemic to much SF from this era.

Other quick thoughts: First, I’ve really enjoyed the interstitial material thus far. For many of the SF writers who during this time period put together fix-ups for the paperback market, any such interstitial material was often largely perfunctory. It’s clear that Simak put some thought into his. It’s really kind of clever.

Second, I’m not one of those NWO conspiracy theorists, but I gotta say that the world-wide government organization, as described by Simak, sounds a little creepy. :) (hide spoiler)]

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I just started to scratch the surface of this book last night before dozing off. I’ll post on the first story this evening.

Kimberly said (in part):

M.R. James is probably my favorite of the "classic" ghost writers. He was the first credited with writing stories of ghosts being malevolent beings, instead of "romantic souls, still searching for love".

A couple of thoughts occurred to me after reading this. The first is a question of nomenclature that often pops up in discussions of James. Numerous commentators have remarked on the irony of James being famous for his “ghost” stories when those stories so rarely feature what most think of as the stereotypical ghost. It’s precisely because James’ creations are material beings that they are capable of manifesting the malevolent acts to which Kimberly refers. Some have suggested that they are more properly labeled demons or revenants or what have you. For myself, I tend not to spend too much time thinking about such categorization issues; I just concentrate on enjoying the stories. :)

Second, the claim that some fans make that James was first fiction writer who depicted supernatural creations as malevolent entities doesn’t really bear up under close scrutiny. I think it’s probably more accurate to state that James was representative of shift in Western supernatural literature during the late Victorian/Edwardian era away from some of the more Gothic tropes that previously characterized the genre. I don’t say that to diminish James’ influence on the field; I think in retrospect that it’s been huge.

Lena wrote:

I’m going to start City by Clifford Simak tomorrow if anyone would like to join me. There’s an audiobook available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tBBYneYcPIg
I know Canavan was interested.

Yes, I’m still interested. I may be a day or two behind you.

L.J. said (in part):

My biggest disappointment with the new movies is the lack of originality in the stories. If they weren't going to utilise the UE stories, at least don't rehash the original trilogy.

I personally thought this was more of a problem with the J. J. Abrams episode. Ironically, Rian Johnson was blasted by a large contingent of the fan base for the opposite reason — straying too far from the Star Wars orthodoxy.

Lena said:

I think most of us really wanted Mara Jade and Thrawn.

Yep. I would agree with that sentiment.

Ian asked:

What TV shows are everyone currently watching ?

I recently finished binge watching the six-season FX series, Justified. I thought it was a solid effort and would especially recommend it to those who are fans of Elmore Leonard’s writing. Leonard’s work has been adapted to both big and small screen numerous times. Sometimes the results have been pleasing (e.g., 1998’s Out of Sight); and sometimes not so pleasing (e.g., 1985’s Stick). This particular adaptation does a better job than most at capturing the flavor of Leonard’s dialog. (Leonard was actually fairly involved in this series as a producer until his death in 2013.)

Lena said:

I didn’t like it when they edited the old movies. And I’ll never get over them not going with the Timothy Zahn Books. But I’ve said that before so I’m chillin.’

Lucas’ fetish for re-editing his films ad infinitum is just plain odd. The bulk of the minor alterations strike me as pointless, yet innocuous; but many of the more substantive ones seem pointless and wrong-headed.

I’m more of an agnostic on the Timothy Zahn Extended Universe issue. I enjoyed some of those books and had hoped Disney might have opted to incorporate at least a few of the EU elements into the new scripts, but also understood why incorporating the whole EU would have been problematic.

“A Ship of the South Wind”, Bradley Denton

On the plus side of the ledger, I liked our two protagonists, Uncle JoJim and Charley. I just wish the story in which the author had situated them was a more engaging one.

(view spoiler)[The events of “South Wind” rest on a small kernel of truth — William Thomas was one of a number individuals who, during the mid-19th century, sought to develop wind-powered wagons with sails designed to take advantage of the strong prairie winds. In 1853 Thomas showed a “wind wagon” prototype with oversized wheels to the U.S. Army at Fort Leavenworth and subsequently formed an Overland Navigation Company. A number of tall tales evolved that involved these inventions, notably the story of a Windwagon Smith, a sea captain who sailed the Kansas prairie. This yarn in turn formed the basis of a 1961 Disney animated short. (It’s probably not a coincidence that Denton was born in Kansas. My guess is that he’s seen the Disney short, since minor details of the wagon in his story match those in the film.)

The bad guys here are almost cartoonishly bad. The idea of fictional baddies from this place and time who just happened to ride with Quantrill has developed over time into something of a cliche. And Thomas functions as kind of an enigmatic Deus ex machina, and not a particularly interesting one. (hide spoiler)]

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Graeme said:

Frankly the Harry Potter franchise is better than the Star Wars franchise which has for the most part degraded after the original three films.

I would agree with the first part of that statement, although I find it jarring to go back and watch the two Chris Columbus entries; the style seems so different from that of the films which followed. In fact, in a few instances I thought the movies represented an improvement over J. K. Rowling’s books.