Review by Elizabeth C. Bunce
Most people know Daphne du Maurier as a suspense writer, creator of psychological and gothic thrillers like Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, and My Cousin Rachel. But what often gets overlooked is her great science fiction, exploring the boundaries between the known and familiar, and the disturbing edges of twentieth century scientific progress. Her classic post-war story “The Birds” was transformed into a Hitchcock horror film that bears only superficial similarity to the isolation, drama, and sheer apocalyptic gloom of the original, in which residents of an English coastal village watch their doom coming ever closer, thanks to terrifying radio news updates, and is well worth a read (perhaps not now… or perhaps particularly now, depending on your predilections!).
Her 1969 novel The House on the Strand explores the psychological effects of time travel, through the lens of unlikeable characters doing uninteresting things. The time machine in du Maurier’s novel is a drug (or “concoction,” as she calls it), or a series of drugs, whose differing effects are never fully (or even partially) explained. Dick Young is an out-of-work publisher housesitting for an old college chum for the summer, in an old house on the Cornish coast (setting of so many of du Maurier’s stories). The old college chum, Magnus, has been experimenting with a time-travel drug, and urges Dick to make his own “trips” into the past.
What follows is a dense tapestry of Cornish landscape and history, although the details and characters take some considerable time to sort out, and Dick never interacts with any of the figures he observes. His instant attachment to the characters of the past is only slightly explained in contrast to his wife (whom he dislikes). A midpoint plot twist introduces a potential murder plotline, and du Maurier definitely keeps the reader guessing (or perhaps hoping) what might happen next. None of my expectations were ultimately borne out, to my disappointment, and the main character never grew any more sympathetic. There is a comeuppance, of a sort, at the very end, satisfying in its own way. It’s easy to read this as an inspiration or forebear for later time travel stories to come, especially Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, set in the same time period, or Michael Crichton’s Timeline.
(tough to make, but in the hands of someone like Tarsem Singh who did the underrated The Fall there would be some cool, trippy otherworld sequences) and 
(come on, aren’t we due for a great carnie movie?). Now, let’s do the countdown.
they’ve already got a pretty cool cinematic western. John Marston plays the typical western hero of a former rogue looking for redemption and trying to save his wife and child. It’s been done many different times, but if you have good actors, good scenery and good dialogue to go with this story, it could work. I can’t tell you much more about this particular story; I just know that I’m still surprised that a video game actually moved me.
and how they would look cool fighting Nazis as well. Then, I kept reading it over and over, and since 
already went back to World War II, there’s not much space for The Invaders. There won’t be more Bucky. There won’t be the original Human Torch, Toro, Union Jack or Namor, the Sub-Mariner. The Powerpuff Girls already have a TV show and a movie. However, if you’re looking for a silly parody of super groups as an alternative to The Avengers or I have to assume an eventual Justice League movie, then look no further than Captain Carrot, Yankee Poodle, Fastback, Pig Iron, Alley-Kat-Abra and Rubberduck. If they can fight the Nazis, that might be the perfect movie.
could effectively show the terror of an incurable disease spreading and the feeling of helplessness that follows. For the protagonist Kivrin, trying to not reveal you’re from the future adds a great layer to that tension, having to remain disconnected while not being sure if she’ll ever leave this doomed time.
in two previous Borg.com posts, so you know how much I like it. I also think that it would make a fantastic film noir. You have the femme fatale in Miss Misery, you have a guy that doesn’t know what’s good or bad anymore and you have crime galore. If that’s not a great film noir, with bonus super powers, I don’t know what is.
might be one of my favorite baseball books of all time. I took it in the third round of a baseball book draft. (I knew it would last until then, so I grabbed 
and 
with my first two picks). The story of the Ruppert Mundys and the forgotten Patriot League as told by “Word” Smith (thanks, Wikipedia) would run circles around Moneyball the movie. I think the fictional 14-year-old manager (I think that’s the age – goodness, I need to buy a copy of this book to read again and so I can look up such queries) would make a better representative of sabermetrics than the “fictional” Peter Brand.
the book was my fifth round choice in the baseball draft – and just another perfect example of how I dislike movie adaptations of books that I enjoy. As much as I would like to see this list made into movies now that I’ve written this post, my gut tells me it’s probably better if they’re not.
