Happy birthday to us! It’s SFFaudio’s third birthday today and we’re celebrating with cake. Want a piece? I sure hope it’s chocolate. That’d be nice, but secretly I’m looking forward to all the cool birthday presents more, let’s hope they’re all unabridged this year!
Thanks so much to all the SFFaudio contributors and readers! We actually could have done it without you, but what fun would that have been?
Ringworld
By Larry Niven; Read by Tom Parker
Audible Download – 11 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 1999
ISBN:
Themes: / Science Fiction / Hard science fiction / Physics / Space travel / Aliens /
I’ve started this review several times. I’m honestly not sure what to say about this classic novel. In a word, it’s wonderful. What else can I say? It was originally published in 1970, and won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. Of course, the awards and all the accolades since were well deserved.
Blackstone Audio published this unabridged version in 1999, and I found it on Audible. Tom Parker does a fine job with this straight narration of the material. Not fantastic, but better than adequate. Once I eased into his flow, I had no problem maintaining attention, but I think a bit more could be asked in the characterization department.
The main character in Ringworld is a 200 year old human named Louis Wu, who is approached by a Puppeteer (one of an alien race) who in turn is building a team to visit a star system that has an fabricated ring around it. The complete team includes Louis Wu, the Puppeteer, a Kzin, and a human female. The reasons for all these choices become clear during the novel.
Niven’s style is such that you can be awed then amused on the same page. His characters are very comfortable with life. They talk physics like we discuss where to have dinner. After more than thirty years, the story remains interesting and the ideas fascinating.
I highly recommend this audiobook, whether you’ve experienced Ringworld already or not.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Lots of interesting new releases out this month…
V for Vendetta
By Steve Moore; Read by Simon Vance
Available in Cassette, CD and MP3-CD editions
Click HERE to listen to an MP3 sample.
First King Kong now this, Blackstone Audiobooks is offering another unabridged Movie Tie-In audiobook…
Callahan’s Legacy
by Spider Robinson; Read by Spider Robinson
Available in Cassette, CD and MP3-CD editions
Click HERE to listen to an MP3 sample.
It looks like the powers that be at Blackstone have allowed Spider Robinson to read another of his novels. Woohoo! I sure hope they get the rights to his upcoming collaboration with Heinlein too…
CBC Audio has released it’s fun 2004 summer Science Fiction humor miniseries…
Steve, The First
By Matt Watts; FULL CAST
2 CDs – [RADIO DRAMA]
Product ID: ERART00166
The show has a cool cast: Don McKellar, Mark McKinney and Matt Watts to name a few. I heard it when it aired originally on CBC Radio One.
And hey look, they decided to release Steve the Second too:
Steve, The Second
By Matt Watts; FULL CAST
2 CDs – [RADIO DRAMA]
Product ID: ERART00167
This is very neat, finally CBC is starting to release some of it commerically viable titles. I missed this one. I thought I’d missed it for good.
Podiobooks.com is releasing so many titles its hard to keep up, here’s the latest batch:
Doctor Janeway’s Plague
By John Farrell
A science-fiction thriller about an astronomer who discovers that a cosmic ray source may be responsible for an ancient plague. Perhaps this is comparable to Scott Sigler’s latest novel?
Nina Kimberly The Merciless
By Christiana Ellis
A fantasy novel about a teenage barbarian princess who’s not going to let anyone else control her. Look out world she’s got a sword and knows how to use it!
Singularity
By Bill DeSmedt
A Science Fiction novel that takes as its premise that the real life cataclysmic Siberian explosion of 1908 was caused, not by a meteor or a comet, but instead by a microscopic black hole. Sounds intruiging!
Pirate Jack
By Alessandro Cima
A modern young man sets off on an adventure through time to find pirate treasure and bring it home and save the family boat business. Previously available from CandlelightStories.com. A fun adventure novel that’s perfect for children too.
Recorded Books has a few new SF&F books we’d like to hear too:
A Brief History of the Dead
By Kevin Brockmeier; Read by Richard Poe
Available in both the CD and cassette formats – 8.75 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Listen to an excerpt in the RealAudio format HERE.
All residents of the City have recently died, and they will remain in the City only as long as someone still living on Earth remembers them. On Earth, the population has been devastated by a terrible pandemic. Laura Byrd, isolated at an Antarctic research station is the only person to have survived the pandemic. But she’s running out of time, supplies —and worst of all her memories are fading.
Hot new player Tantor Media has released a title I’ve been really looking forward to:
Woken Furies
By Richard K. Morgan; Read by William Dufris
Available in CD, and MP3-CD editions – [UNABRIDGED]
The third Takeshi Kovacs novel. Returning to his homeworld Harlan’s World, Kovacs meets his eternal companions – betrayal, mystery, and revenge. Dufris is an SFFaudio favorite narrator so this should be an especially delicious treat!
A new hour long production of Metropolis airs on BBC Radio 4‘s Friday Play this coming Friday. That’s on at 9pm UK TIME March 24th 2006.
“Thea von Harbou’s novel became husband Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent movie classic.Its terrifying vision of the future was born in an age of booming heavy industry. Peter Straughan’s new version finds its hero, F.T. Fredersen, caught up in a nightmarish world all too recognizably drawn from the one we find ourselves in today.”
Also of interest on BBC4 is the upcoming Book At Bedtime (a weekday evening book reading show) which will be airing an abridgement of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.
“When an Oxford academic is anonymously gifted a volume inscribed with the mark of Vlad Drakulya, there begins a terrifying and increasingly desperate quest for the monster’s last recorded resting place.”
Read by Colin Stinton and Barbara Barnes it airs at 10:45pm UK TIME. It’ll run for 5 days from March 20th to March 31st 2006.
Anansi Boys
By Neil Gaiman; Read by Lenny Henry
2 MP3-CDs – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0060836857
Themes: / Fantasy / Gods / Legends / Humor /
“It begins, as most things begin, with a song.”
Some children revere their fathers like gods, Fat Charlie Nancy sure didn’t, this despite his father actually being one. You see Mr. Nansi, made Charlie the butt of his many practical jokes – that is until he and his mother up-and moved away from the impecunious god. Now living in England as an adult Fat Charlie Nancy is engaged to be married and has a solid job working for a talent agent. His only problem is his future mother-in-law, who despite Charlie’s every attempt, still treats Charlie like a maliflous odor. It is very unfortuate therfore when a phone call reveals that Charlie’s father is dead. Even in death Mr. Nancy can embarass his son. In this case it is in the way he’s died. It seems Mr. Nancy died while on stage, in a karaoke bar, with his hands on another bar patron’s breasts. It is only when Fat Charlie returns to America for the funeral that he learns he may not be the only orphan that his father has left. Apparently all these years Fat Charlie has had a brother he’s not known about! A brother named… “Spider”?!? Spider, along with inheriting his father’s easy charm also got his father’s ‘special gifts’?!? When Charlie and Spider eventually do meet Spider decides to move into Charlie’s flat. This is followed by him framing Charlie for embezzlement and stealing his fiance. Fat Charlie’s only recourse is to fight dieties with dieties. So it’s off to America again where he’ll get an arachnivorous avian ally in the fight against his brother.
If you liked American Gods you’ll like Anansi Boys too, I know I sure did, and for much the same reason – and perhaps for one more. I’d always thought American Gods was inspired by Douglas Adams’ Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul; given that both novels feature the Norse god Odin walking the streets of modern world and being a bit out of sorts about the fact I think that’s a pretty safe assumption. Need more proof? Gaiman, in his early career actually wrote a book about Adams, entitled Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy it was part biography of Adams, part biography of his most famous novel. With Anansi Boys though, Gaiman proves himself truly and fully the worthy heir to Douglas Adams legacy. Gaiman writes as cleverly as Adams did, and now with Anansi Boys he starts making the jokes Adams could have made – something for the most part absent from American Gods. Though not aiming for all out hilarity, as Adams often did, Gaiman makes Anansi Boys quite, quite funny, and in ways that can only be described as Adamsonian. Both Gaiman novels are set in the same universe as each other but one needn’t read American Gods first to enjoy and follow Anansi Boys.
Lenny Henry, the narrator, is an English television actor and comedian. He’s an absolute delight to listen to. When I heard George Guidall’s reading of American Gods back in 2001 I was floored, so I was disappointed when I found out that he wouldn’t be reading Anansi Boys. But imagine my delight when I was floored again by Lenny Henry’s reading of Anansi Boys – Guidall and Henry’s reading styles couldn’t be more different, but they are both of that oh-so-stunning quality you hate to stop listening even for a minute. I pity those who sat down and read the paperbook version of Anansi Boys, they’ve really missed something special. Harper Audio has used light accenting of music here and there. It is quite wonderful.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The First Men in the Moon
By H.G. Wells, performed by a full cast
2 Tapes, Approx. 2 hours – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Alien Voices
Published: 1998
ISBN: 0671872281
Themes: / Science fiction / Aliens / Sociology / Space Travel /
Oars slap against water and thud against wood, waves lap against a small boat bobbing in the ocean, and shore birds scree along the not-too-distant shore. You close your eyes and are transported to another time and place, a sonic virtual reality in which two fisherman sit to either side of you, discussing the catch and the mysterious steel sphere that falls from the sky. Such richly detailed soundscapes draw you into this adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, and whisk you along from the familiar sounds of earth to the speculative sounds of deep space and the moon.
The acting is uniformly excellent, as well, with Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie leading a talented cast with their spot-on characterizations of Professor Caver and Mr. Bedford. These two form a buzzing, absent-minded scientist and cool, craven capitalist odd-couple who develop a spaceship built around gravity-blocking shutters and then fly it to the moon. The civilization they discover beneath the moon’s surface is, well, substantially alien. This tale isn’t quite Wells’, but it is told with such ebullience and impressive audio depth that you can’t help liking it. In fact, the genial enthusiasm that suffuses the entire production proves both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the work: It makes for fun listening, but it winds up blunting some of Wells’ sharper observations about humanity and reason.
On the plus side, this adaptation does an admirable job of streamlining Wells’ sprawling narrative to lead us effectively from the thrill of invention to the uncertainty of exploration, from budding friendship to estrangement, and from difficult first contact to horrifying understanding. But there are several missteps along the way. For one thing, the voyage to the moon has been clumsily appended with a comet rendezvous that cheerily ignores even Newtonian physics and leads to an incomprehensible predicament with the Caverite shutters. What’s more, a staged “revolution” on the moon is utterly unconvincing, and even more disappointing, the Grand Lunar is transformed from a rational genius to a power-mad egomaniac.
But the most important transformation is thematic. Wells’ original compares human terrestrial civilization with the formic lunar one to contrast life as we know it with his vision of a completely rational society. Both have distinct horrors: We have war and poverty, the Lunarites have de-evolved sub-races and casual deactivation of inconvenient units. In this production, the comparison seems more like one between Capitalism and Communism, and it reverses the threat at the end to be something like a Red Scare, which makes no sense when you consider which society has the more demonstrably violent past.
On the whole, this is a fun production and a treat to listen to. Enjoy it for what it is, but do not attempt to substitute it for a reading of the original.
Posted by Kurt Dietz
