So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[bdub76]

Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade, the eighth novel in Nancy Springer's series about Enola Holmes, the much younger sister of Sherlock Holmes.

I wrote about the seventh book a few weeks ago. That novel, The Black Barouche, was the first in about a decade and the first since the Netflix film series began. It was a novel that didn't depend on the reader's knowledge of the first six books, and also a novel that someone who had only seen the Netflix films would be able to pick up and read without finding anything particularly jarring. The Elegant Escapade, by contrast, is the third in a sequence of stories involving Enola and Lady Cecily Alastair (first, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady, the second, The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan), and, while quickly summarized in about two paragraphs in the prologue, a little familiarity with Enola's past adventures is helpful.

Lady Cecily, the daughter of baronet Sir Eustace Alastair, has, in previous books, been kidnapped before she was to be presented (so she's now seen as "soiled goods" and won't be presented to society) and, against her will, was attempted to be sold off in marriage to a cousin. Now, her father has locked her in her room until he can arrange another marriage for her and, after Enola attempts to visit and is rebuffed, she escapes the family home in London. Enola now looks for Lady Cecily while trying to keep her brother, Sherlock Holmes, from also finding her, because Enola is certain that her brother will return Lady Cecily to her beastly father...

Some Sherlock Holmes stories are mysteries. Some Sherlock Holmes stories are excuses for Sherlock to run around and do stuff. The Elegant Escapade -- and the connection of the title to the plot frankly escapes me -- is one of the latter. There's nothing here to solve, except where did Lady Cecily go and how will she escape her father's malign clutches. If The Black Barouche was a team-up book between Enola and Sherlock, this is more of a solo Enola story; Sherlock is present, but he's very much a supporting character and he doesn't do much to push the story to its conclusion. In an odd sort of way, he functions a bit like Enola's Watson -- as a sounding board and conscience -- though Enola also develops her own ally who helps to force a conclusion to the problem and offer a solution.

Spoiler

One thing really bothered me -- The Black Barouche and The Elegant Escapade essentially end the same way. The villain has done something to a young woman, and Enola's solution both times to free the young woman from his clutches is to blackmail him with evidence of various perfidies. In both cases, Sherlock tells her not to do it, she does it anyway, and even though he says he won't be a party to it he watches with brotherly glee as she does. I get it, Victorian society sucked for women, and the law bound them to situations that were difficult to escape from. Social embarrassment--shitty men not wanting their dirty laundry aired--is, in these stories, a way for Enola to help damaged women out of their bad situations. It was an interesting play once. I don't really like it as Enola's go-to solution, because it could backfire on her badly.

If you've not read an Enola Holmes book, this probably is not the one to start with. But it's pleasant enough, a book that runs on the characters more than the plot.

I've read the first two in the original series. The library should be delivering me the third one in about two weeks. These are great reads. I'll eventually catch up to you, but I'm reading Remarkably Bright Creatures right now.

 

[Christopher]

As to what you didn't mention, i.e., my favorite target of derision among all film adaptations of speculative fiction, I maintain that MGM's ham-handed monkeying with Baum's most famous opus was a mix of pointless changes for the sake of Technicolor appeal, and intentional dumbing-down of the whole premise of the story. And I wouldn't be nearly so pissed about it if it didn't create a "tail-wagging-the-dog" situation.

The fact that some instances of a thing fail does not in any way constitute an argument that it should never be done, and I'm sick of people advancing that obvious logical fallacy. That's like saying a batter with a .350 average should give up baseball because he misses the ball most of the time. It's actually exceptionally good to succeed that often. As Sturgeon's Law says, 90 percent of everything is garbage. That means everything is worth trying for the sake of the worthwhile 10 percent -- or 20 or 35 percent if you're really good.

But Star Trek doesn't (with the exception of the Abramsverse) generally involve reboots or reinterpretations of prior works. It's one big happy (albeit far from seamless) continuity.

Trek canon is, yes, but you're talking about one tie-in borrowing ideas from another tie-in, which is a completely separate conversation. It has never, ever been required that all Trek tie-ins be consistent with each other. Even when overall continuities like the Novelverse or the DC Comics or Star Trek Online have existed, they have been contradicted by simultaneous tie-ins from other licensees.

Besides, just because continuity exists, that does not make any less ridiculous to argue that it's somehow "wrong" not to have continuity. It's not a moral argument, for Pete's sake. Continuity is an option that storytellers have. It's a device that benefits certain stories. It's not an obligation.

but really, even at the peak of Richard Arnold's reign of terror, it was still a single continuity.

Oh, come on, that is obnoxiously revisionist history when talking about the tie-ins. Continuity among novels was something Arnold expressly prohibited. They had to be consistent with the shows, but they contradicted the hell out of each other.

In the case of Una's Illyrian heritage, of course it had to be retconned as something that was kept quiet, in order to harmonize it with the Federation-wide Augment-phobia that was established in DS9:"Dr. Bashir, I Presume" as continuing into the TNG/DS9/VOY era.

Which is exactly my point. When using elements from an earlier non-canonical story, you don't have to be consistent with the whole thing as a monolithic block, but can pick and choose pieces from different works and adapt them to fit together. The point is not slavish continuity as an end in itself, but using story elements in service to the needs of your own narrative. That means using continuity when it serves your needs and discarding it when it doesn't.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

My point about the peak of Richard Arnold's reign of terror was that even when inter-novel continuity was expressly forbidden, writers didn't go out of their way to contradict each other just for the sake of contradicting each other, and occasionally did manage to circumvent his prohibitions.

At any rate, the fact that there were some copy-editing problems in the Legacies trilogy, one of which involved a goof that contradicted canon, and the fact that certain details in what Ferguson had established about McCoy's relationship with his daughter were contradicted without any compelling reason, doesn't change one inescapable conclusion:

The Legacies trilogy is objectively better-written than Crisis on Centaurus. It is better TrekLit, because the established canon characters and technologies are portrayed more faithfully. It is better science fiction because there are fewer unnecessary lapses of plausibility. And it's better fiction by every measure I've ever been taught about the difference between good fiction and bad.

 

[Christopher]

My point about the peak of Richard Arnold's reign of terror was that even when inter-novel continuity was expressly forbidden, writers didn't go out of their way to contradict each other just for the sake of contradicting each other

That's a straw man that has nothing to do what the writers of Legacies did. They didn't contradict anything "for the sake of contradicting" it, and that's an offensively judgmental way of twisting it. They didn't have to acknowledge a thing from Crisis on Centaurus. The fact that they chose to acknowledge parts of it anyway, to incorporate some ideas from it into their alternative version where it was feasible to do so, was a tribute to the book.

I mean, hell, I contradicted Crisis on Centaurus's version of how Kirk and McCoy first met by offering a different version of their first meeting in The Captain's Oath. But my version was still influenced by CoC's version, having them meet when Kirk was McCoy's patient and becoming friends in the aftermath. Acknowledgment of an earlier work of fiction does not require consistency with it, because fiction is imaginary. It's about the ideas and feelings, not the superficial continuity nitpicks.

 

[bdub76]

It’s not reasonable for authors to have seen and read everything Star Trek that came before their novel and remember every bit of continuity. It’s best if they focus on telling an enjoyable and engaging story.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

And unquestionably, the authors of the Legacies trilogy told an enjoyable and engaging story. And as I said, they did a much better job of it than Brad Ferguson, simply because the people writing most current TrekLit, particularly those responsible for the shared continuity that sadly had to be brought to a close recently, are an order of magnitude better -- better at ST, and better at writing -- than those (with a few notable exceptions, e.g., Diane Duane) who were writing most of the TrekLit some 30-40 years ago.

 

[Lord Hierarch]

I finally returned to the box of pocket book trek novels and picked out two.

Across the Universe and Surak's Soul. An ENT novel that I didn't know was there.

AcroUni is TOS-era with Kirk and company stumbling on the relativistic starship Stephen Hawking 200 years after it began its voyage. 15 years pre-WW3. C'mon. They relocate them, stuff happens, Ewya resists, and overall I rather liked it. Certainly kept me glued for an hour. A breezy read. Part of me wonder's if my nephew would like it, he's 6, and we just read Brian's Hunt. Eh, maybe this'll be one of the books I save for him.

Surak's Soul was a surprise. I do dislike the "non-violence" T'Pol spouts as much as Archer's constant thoughts on Vulcan's slights to his dad and legacy, especially given how militant Vulcan is in this era. Truly Vulcans are the wild west of the Midwestern Alpha Quadrant. Outsanding rogues. The villain is called Wander and is entirely pacifistic, it feeds off non-sentient energies. Like a vegan.

A part of me thinks to the ROTF novel with the Mutes, Shroomies, Vertians, and I dunno. I feel like the Wanderer is like them being not perceiving lifeforms as sentient, but... I guess, IDK.

Solid 7/10's for both.


Boy do the ENT novels have terrible covers. Especially Broken Bow. I do not like the person who wrote that novelization. I can taste the.... whats the word when someone is clearly doing something they don't want to but do it and they want everyone to know they don't like what it is they're doing?

That. That's what I feel when I re-read Broken Bow.

Also, I re-read Broken Bow novelization. 2/10. The show did it better.

The show also had the creepy ass Suliban. Kudos to the makeup artists for that but dear god, everytime I see their pockmarked faces I get ants crawling over my skin and down my spine. Absolute revulsion. Perfection.

 

[Christopher]

AcroUni is TOS-era with Kirk and company stumbling on the relativistic starship Stephen Hawking 200 years after it began its voyage. 15 years pre-WW3. C'mon.

Hey, the Botany Bay was launched in 1996. Might not make sense in retrospect, but it's consistent with the Trek universe.

 

[KRAD]

Boy do the ENT novels have terrible covers. Especially Broken Bow. I do not like the person who wrote that novelization. I can taste the.... whats the word when someone is clearly doing something they don't want to but do it and they want everyone to know they don't like what it is they're doing?

That. That's what I feel when I re-read Broken Bow.

Also, I re-read Broken Bow novelization. 2/10. The show did it better.

That was Diane Carey, a veteran Trek novelist, for whom the Broken Bow novelization was her swan song as one, as the Enterprise producers were, um, not happy with that very issue you raise.

 

[Lord Hierarch]

Hey, the Botany Bay was launched in 1996. Might not make sense in retrospect, but it's consistent with the Trek universe.

SNW has a time travel episode coming up. I hope they show some space presence and a DY-100 or two. Or a moon base.

Or the seed pods.

 

[youngtrek]

I last night finished reading Matthew Coniam and Nick Santa Maria’s The Annotated Abbott and Costello: A Complete Viewer’s Guide to Their 38 Films (2023, McFarland & Co.).

Prior to this book, there was essentially just one “Abbott and Costello must have book” for fans, that being Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo’s Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1991, Pedigree Trade) (which I read back in 2017-2018 as I was watching the films for the first time on DVD). Well, there are now *two* “must have” books.

Like Furmanek and Palumbo, Coniam and Santa Maria look at each Abbott and Costello film, from 1940’s One Night in the Tropics all the way to 1956’s Dance With Me, Henry, plus solo Lou Costello The Thirty-Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959) and the later The World of Abbott and Costello (1965) compilation film (released six years after Lou Costello’s death).

They also include an appendix section titles “The Ultimate Abbott and Costello Top Ten”, in which they surveyed thirty-three “Abbott and Costello experts, fans, comedy buffs, film historians, and the authors of previous books about Bud and Lou” as to their personal top ten favorite A&C films, out of which they derived their “ultimate top ten list”. Among those surveyed were Coniam and Santa Maria themselves, Furmanek and Palumbo, Lou Costello’s daugher Chris Costello, filmmakers Joe Dante, John Landis (who also write the Foreword), and Michael Schlesinger, and noted film historian Leonard Maltin.

One thing I really enjoyed about The Annotated Abbott and Costello was that the two authors, Coniam and Santa Maria, split the thirty-eight films up, Coniam covering nineteen and Santa Maria the other nineteen. So instead of a single reference book co-written by two writers (like the previous Furmanek and Palumbo book), you get to experience two distinctly different voices as you make your way chronologically through the films.

The two decided on who would write about which films largely simply by personal preference, each choosing the ones they preferred to write about. And the two authors, while united in their love of Abbott and Costello, definitely have differing opinions in some cases (Coniam, for instance, is not as wild about Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as Santa Maria, and seemingly most other fans, are. Coniam much more prefers the more down to Earth 1940s A&C films with their truer to life situations and abundance of humorous talking routines from A&C’s burlesque shows.)

The other thing I really like about this book is how each of the chapters is laid out. First (roughly half of the chapter) there is an overview of the film (its production background, its cast, a plot summary, etc.) written by Coniam or Santa Maria, along with two or three black and white photos including the official film poster and usually a film still or promotional photo from the production of that film.

Then the second half of the chapter is a break down of the key Abbott and Costello routines and any other notable scenes in that film complete with DVD time stamps so that readers can find them easily. The authors also note where else the same routines can be found, in other Abbott and Costello films and also in what episodes of the comedy team’s two-season “Abbott and Costello Show” television series and their episodes of “The Colgate Comedy Hour” tv series.

(I must add here that I found the information about the “Colgate Comedy Hour” programs especially interesting as I can’t recall Furmanek and Palumbo’s book going into very much detail on those. While their tv series don’t get separate chapters of their own, they definitely are covered at the points in the timeline where they intersect with A&C’s film work, and it is described as work the two comedians evidently enjoyed much more than the films they were making at the time, largely because the “Colgate Comedy Hour” was done before a live audience, and their own syndicated series was something they had complete control over and, again, consisted largely of their tried and true old burlesque routines.)

Finally, each chapter ends with a single paragraph by the other author (the one who didn’t write the bulk of the chapter) giving his personal opinion of that film (so both authors do say at least a bit about every one of the thirty-eight films).

In addition to the thirty-eight, they also include a few “Abbott and Costello adjacent” films, like 1944’s A Wave, a WAC, and a Marine, Mail Call (also 1944), 10,000 Kids and a Cop (1948), and Fireman Save Our Child (1954). (Some of these are short films produced by Lou Costello’s production company. Fireman is a film that had been written and planned for Abbott and Costello to act in but then Lou Costello came down again with rheumatic fever and was sidelined for a year, something which happened several times over the course of those years. The film was shot with Hugh O’Brian and Buddy Hackett instead.)

As in the cases of Lou Costello’s serious health ailments and the impact it had on the two comedians working schedules (longer than usual gaps between films), Coniam and Santa Maria do cover that and other personal events, including a couple times when Budd Abbott and Lou Costello were not getting along with each other, but only as those things impacted upon their films (for instance, one particularly bad spat between them seems to have led to a couple of their films featuring the two actors almost entirely separate from each other, although apparently by the time they were actually shooting those films they had mostly put their animosity behind them). And, of course, certain major events are also covered like the tragic drowning death of Lou Costello’s infant son, Lou Jr. (called “Butch”), an event that understandably had a great impact upon Lou Costello going forward after that (but also bringing Costello and Abbott together again, off screen, in the founding of the Lou Costello Jr. Youth Center in Costello’s hometown of Patterson, New Jersey (which still exists today).

Anyway, yes, I highly recommend The Annotated Abbott and Costello by Matthew Coniam and Nick Santa Maria to all Abbott and Costello fans. And also to fans of other classic film comedians like Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, or the Marx Brothers. (Matthew Coniam also wrote The Annotated Marx Brothers, which I’m sure is also a great book.) I gave The Annotated Abbott and Costello five out of five stars on GoodReads.

—David Young

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I really like Diane Carey's "Piper" novels, and her "April-era" novels. Although I have absolutely no recollection of her infamous "Broken Bow" novelization. (And what's wrong with its cover?) Of course, I could have done without the hard-Libertarian ideology, especially put into the mouths of Vulcans.

And Mr. Young? Who is on first?

 

[bdub76]

Finished Garden Spells for book club. I’d describe it as what would happen if Lifetime produced the Good Witch and added some practical magic. I also finished up the Road to Neverwinter. This books captures the D&D humor from the movie and character voices. My only problem with it was that it was too short. I wish there was more. Of course, some scenes read like a D&D session, but given it was a D&D book, I won’t hold that against the author.

Now, I’m half way through Remarkably Bright Creatures. This one feels very Hallmarky to me. It’s our book club read for next month.

I’m half way through the third Enola Holmes book. The take on flowers is pretty smart. This is clearly a YA book, but the voice and writing are nice. Finally, I’m half way through the collection of short stories for Star Trek Explorer. These have been an enjoyable read. Lots of Q.

 

[John Clark]

On the Warhammer: Beast Arises series - currently Predator, Prey by Rob Sanders.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I finished The Unsettling Stars, More Beautiful than Death, Sarah E. Ladd's The Curiosity Keeper, and Roseanna M. White's The Nature of a Lady.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Not reading much of anything at home right now. Writing on my novel (about the adventures of a child-prodigy organist) instead. Just finished a 12-page chapter covering the beginning of a very busy fall semester of my protagonist's senior year of college.

On my lunch breaks, I'm reading the June 2023 issue of Model Railroader. I'm surprised that, as big as Star Trek has grown, we've never seen a character who builds model trains in his spare time.

 

[bdub76]

Not reading much of anything at home right now. Writing on my novel (about the adventures of a child-prodigy organist) instead. Just finished a 12-page chapter covering the beginning of a very busy fall semester of my protagonist's senior year of college.

On my lunch breaks, I'm reading the June 2023 issue of Model Railroader. I'm surprised that, as big as Star Trek has grown, we've never seen a character who builds model trains in his spare time.

Where would they fit the trains? Maybe virtual trains on the holodeck?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Well, of course, we all know there's room for a three-ring-circus aboard a Galaxy-class ship. And Hell, you could take the throttle of a full-size locomotive of your choice in Quark's smallest holosuite.

Seriously, though, you don't need a basement-filling empire like Bruce Chubb's Sunset Valley (either version); you could build John Allen's "Timesaver" switching puzzle, in HO scale, on a 1' x 6' piece of shelving. (Computer versions of Timesaver exist; I wrote one for DOS, in GW-BASIC, when I took an experimental game-writing class at CSU Long Beach.)

Wanting to read something other than science fiction, and other than my own opus, I'm re-reading a Hornblower book that I inherited from a great aunt, Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies. I'd forgotten that it's only nominally a novel; really, it's a cycle of novellas.

 

[donners22]

My library's eBook platform randomly has a TOS book, The Fearful Summons, so I'm working through that.

It's a weird experience. Firstly, it's an awful-quality eBook, with missing punctuation and page breaks. Secondly, the writing is odd at times, with very crude sexual innuendo and swearing (which I recall being rare in Trek books from that era) and a clunky narrative. It's not among the worst Trek books I've read, but it's not in the forgettable middle ground that most occupy.

 

[bdub76]

More than half way through Remarkably Bright Creatures. So far it’s a story I can see on the Hallmark Channel.

And now more than half way through short story collection for Star Trek Explorer. More hits than misses, so I look forward to the next collection.