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):

Truth Graeme. The old ones classic, then Rogue One, and the rest is shit. I’ve stopped going since Last Jedi.

I’ll advance what I’m sure is a minority opinion. I’ve never been a huge fan of any of the movies in the Star Wars franchise. Yes, Episodes 1-3 are notably bad, but 4-6, while more enjoyable, are merely pleasant popcorn movies; nothing more. I wasn’t wowed by either the Abrams or Johnson entries, but they were no worse than 4-6. In fact, Rian Johnson’s film, while no great shakes, was at least more interesting than any of its immediate predecessors.

Lena wrote (in part):

The Whalers Song by Ray Cluley DNF
I’m skipping this because reading about whaling will just upset me. I’d be blind to the story’s merits.

I’m going to try and get through this one today, but I get what you’re saying. After having read the first few pages of the story late last night I had to lay my book aside.

“The Tryal Attract”, Terry Dowling

For those who might be wondering, one of the characters referred to in the story, John Brooke, was an actual person, and the events Dowling cursorily relates surrounding Brooke are true. There’s a quite interesting Wikipedia article on the topic that can be read here.

Unfortunately, that article is more interesting than the present story. I thought this was for the most part a surprisingly conventional story — of the sort you’d expect to have been written during the mid-20th century or earlier. (Early on, “Tryal” even obliquely refers to these older stories, e.g., F. Marion Crawford’s “The Screaming Skull”.) Of course, conventional isn’t necessarily bad, and “Tryal” gets off to a semi-promising start. But I don’t think that the events in the tower room are handled very well; none of those interludes struck me as particularly effective. The story has a final reveal and, to be frank, I don’t think Dowling knew quite how to handle it; the story sort of rushes and stumbles through its final paragraphs.

✭½

“The Curious Allure of the Sea”, Christopher Golden

I give this story a few bonus points for originality, but I found myself resisting the concept (or maybe the writer’s execution of that concept?). I regarded some of the passages as more comic than horrifying.

✭✭✭

“Deadwater”, Simon Bestwick

This story was, I thought, a bit of an odd one with which to open an anthology whose subtitle is “Horror Stories of the Sea”. The story’s ties to the sea are rather minimal and, while I generally regard such boundaries as fluid and a bit artificial, “Deadwater” struck me as more of a mystery/suspense yarn than a horror story. That said, I like Bestwick’s writing and so, not surprisingly, liked this story. I appreciated the fact that events and behaviors are largely character-driven; I think that that’s an aspect of the author’s writing that has really improved over his career. My only other negative comment concerns the ending — it’s a little predictable and smacks a bit too much of standard revenge porn for my taste.

✭✭✭½

“The Deep Sea Swell”, John Langan

A thumb’s up, but I walked away from this story oddly disappointed. I thought it had the potential to be much better. “Swell” uses as its template older stories like Frank Belknap Long’s “Second Night Out” and F. Marion Crawford’s “The Upper Berth”, although it’s less effective than those classics.

✭✭✭½

“Fodder’s Jig”, Lee Thomas

There are two plot strands at work here, one being a fairly standard Mythos tale and the other a sort of soap opera-like family drama. I thought both elements were fair, but nothing more than that, and that the combination was sadly not greater than the sum of those individual elements. The writing too — fair, but a bit uneven. For example, Thomas sometimes has our narrator speaking in ways that no one in real life speaks.

✭✭✭

Stephanie wrote:

My copy just came in, i'm ready for next month :)

This one has been sitting on my tbr pile for a while. I’m really looking forward to this read; in fact, I’m trying not to build up my expectations too much. :)

Overall rating: ✭✭✭

This was a good read. I’ll reiterate what I said in an earlier post and say that Nadia Bulkin is an intelligent, gifted writer. I like the fact that in her stories there are often more things going on than just the surface events — her stories are often oblique (or perhaps not so oblique) comments on social or political topics. I occasionally found this aspect of her writing a bit too didactic, but that’s perhaps a minor quibble. I sometimes found it difficult to emotionally connect with her characters; not quite sure why that was and whether that says more about me than the quality or style of her writing.

Favorite story (if forced to choose just one): “Girl, I Love You”.

I really appreciated and enjoyed everyone’s comments!

“Absolute Zero”

A rather puzzling and not all together satisfying story in which a young man tries to understand how he fits into the world given his rather unusual parentage. Somewhat equivocal ending?

✭✭½

“No Gods, No Masters”

Another downbeat, although well-written, story by the author in which women are victimized. In this novelette, a demon-cursed family experiences their persecutor as a kind of Satanic, abusive stalker. We are, for example, treated to a really uncomfortable scene in which a young child re-enacts the sexual relationship between demon and female with her Ken and Barbie dolls. And another in which a woman desperately seeks help from others similarly suffering on an on-line forum. The different women in the story almost seem to represent different modes of coping with abusive men — ignoring the problem, trying to propitiate the abuser, seeking to escape the abuser, etc. But in the end, rather depressingly, nothing really works.

✭✭✭½

“Truth Is Order and Order Is Truth”

This is probably the most explicitly Lovecraftian story to this point in the collection. It benefits from the atypical point of view and its Indonesian backdrop.

✭✭✭½

I was forced to set aside Bulkin’s collection for the last week, so I’m going to try and polish off the last few stories over the next couple of days.

“Endless Life”

Bulkin shows us a universe in which the afterlife cruelly mirrors real life — the powerful and morally bankrupt somehow escape the consequences of their actions while the powerless are left behind to suffer. I get the message and acknowledge its emotional power; I just didn’t find the manner in which that message was conveyed all that compelling.

✭✭

“Violet Is the Color of Your Energy”.

I read this story a few years ago, so my memories are not all that fresh. In looking at my sparse notes taken at the time, I see that I liked it more than I remembered. I also observed that, like some of Nadia Bulkin’s other stories, this one occupies that middle ground between horror and science fiction. In fact, I found it impossible to read without thinking of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour out of Space”.

✭✭✭✭

For those not already aware, Harlan Ellison has passed away at 84. An obit from The New York Times can be read here.

L.J. noted:

So why doesn't fanfic have the same problem of potential deletion? Short stories/vignettes posted on blogs/websites have files on GR that don't get deleted. Why is there an issue at all?

An ISBN is sufficient to be considered a book in the eyes of Goodreads, but not always necessary. See here for the Goodreads help topic on what is and is not considered a book. Fanfic is specifically mentioned.

Graeme wrote:

Are they having capacity issues?

I’m no expert here, but having read a number of the threads this issue has over the years generated, I would venture to say, no, capacity isn’t the problem. The problem is (at least) two-fold. First, in order to properly track magazines/periodicals, the database would have to rather extensively re-tooled. The fact is that the way in which periodicals are tracked differs quite a bit from that for books. Second, the feeling seems to be that the librarians, already overburdened, would be drowned by the additional demands imposed by the inclusion of mags. As things currently stand, the database is already riddled with errors. How much worse might that be with the massive addition of mag entries.

Let me reiterate what I said earlier. I’m not defending the policy. But I understand it. They’re not just being capricious or conspiratorial.

J. said:

You asked, "... what is the agenda?" The answer is simple, Goodreads is Amazon. Amazon payed $150 million USD for Goodreads in 2013. They expect to get their money's worth. So which makes more money, periodicals or published collections?

Hmmm. It’s not obvious to me how the current policy works to Amazon’s monetary advantage. Perhaps more to the point, the policy predates Goodreads’ acquisition by Amazon by a good many years.

Graeme wrote:

From my POV, short story magazines should be included, especially as comics are included.
This is "good reads," is it not? - I mean what is the agenda?
If it has a story - include it.

Although I’m not necessarily defending the policy, I do understand the Goodreads agenda that’s behind it. They’re concerned about the database equivalent of scope creep.

“Girl, I Love You”

My favorite of Bulkin’s stories to this point in the collection. Bulkin’s stories often place some social issue in a supernatural setting and she does that here as well (examining the psychodynamics of bullies and their victims), but she’s more successful with “Girl” than with some of her other tales. I particularly liked the Michi’s observation on the “deadening” effects of Asami’s talisman: “Maybe burning other people’s raw nerves was Asami’s only access to the live wire of emotion.” It hints at the idea that, in their own way, bullies, like those they bully, are psychologically scarred. And a nice, satisfying ending.

✭✭✭✭

Lena wrote (in part):

GR Plans to delete short story magazines

This has been for quite some time an area where Goodreads policy has always seemed to be murky (at least to me). Reading the more recent posts on the thread that you pointed to, Lena, kinda reinforces my impression that different librarians interpret and enforce differently the GR policies on what may or may not be entered into the database. I would only add that even if a given fiction periodical is not allowed in the database, there is nothing to stop you from posting reviews on the stories in such a periodical and I would hope that you continue to do so.

“Seven Minutes in Heaven”

Bulkin’s meditation on death. If we could somehow stave off or reverse death, should we do so? This isn’t exactly new territory. Supernatural literature has been fascinated by this theme dating at least as far back to Leonid Andreyev’s “Lazarus”, but I’ll give Bulkin props for addressing the question in an artful manner. I would have ranked this one a bit higher but, as with some of her other stories, Bulkin lets “Heaven” drag on a bit longer than necessary.

✭✭✭½