Jesse Willis – Page 457

Review of A Colder War by Charles Stross

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

A Colder War
By Charles Stross; Read by Pat Bottino
1 CD – 80 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612482
Themes: / Science Fiction / Horror / Alternate History / Politics / War / Evil / Cthulhu Mythos /

“Warning. The following briefing film is classified SECRET GOLD JULY BOOJUM. If you do not have SECRET GOLD JULY BOOJUM clearance, leave the auditorium now and report to your unit security officer for debriefing. Failing to observe this notice is an imprisonable offense. You have sixty seconds to comply.”

The biggest single threat to NATO may be the Shoggoth Gap. The wild card is Lt. Col Oliver North, President Reagan’s man. Roger Jourgensen, CIA operative, is at the center of this crisis. If all the political wrangling doesn’t work out perfectly there will be hell to pay, or worse, far, far worse.

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! A modern novellete in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, rich in detail, frightening in execution! Stross’ stunning tale will pull you back into that old cold war era embalming fear and then magnify it into non-euclidian infinities. Imagine David Cronenberg directing Dr. Strangelove based on a script by H. P. Lovecraft. Imagine an alternate history in which nuclear bombs are not the ultimate weapon, but instead they are merely a stepping stone to eldritch technologies accessible through certain trans-dimentional forces first encountered in 1920s Antarctica, technologies which neither the USA nor the USSR can quite contain. Stross has admitted A Colder War is directly inspired by Lovecraft’s novel At The Mountains Of Madness. The amount of research and historical mastery Stross sprinkles throughout the narrative creates a verisimilitude necessary for truly effective alternate history. Insert the CD and then shudder in horror as the concept locks you in for the duration.

Pat Botino’s tremulous voice isn’t at all typical for professional narrators, but when it comes to subverting heroic self-assurance, he’s got no equal. Here it works extremely well. The production is loud and straight, the way I like it. A few voice effects are used to distinguish documentation bookmarks of each section. Nothing flashy, nothing distracting. I’d be satisfied if every straight reading single narration audiobook was done this way. For a while now I’ve been telling just about anyone who would listen that editor and producer Alan Kaster at Infinivox has been picking out the best modern short science fiction and tunring it into fabulously read audiobooks. This latest wave of Infinvox’s GREAT SCIENCE FICTION STORIES includes three Charles Stross audiobooks.Lobsters, Antibodies and A Colder War. Each of these is available for just $7.99 right now on the Infinivox website. There’s nary a better value on the web!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Do you like Ninjas? Do you like Mystic Ninjas?…

Do you like Ninjas? Do you like Mystic Ninjas? How ’bout Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas? Yah, we like them too! In fact we’ve flipped over them. With just half a dozen podcasts under their black belts The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas have stealthily stolen our hearts! Summer Brooks, Joe Murphy and David Moldawer are talking old school Science Fiction and Fantasy with a special emphasis on the literary. Podcasts on venerable Science Fiction and Fantasy released so far include:

PODCAST # 5 – The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
PODCAST # 3 – Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny
PODCAST # 2 – Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
PODCAST # 1 – Hyperion by Dan Simmons

posted by Jesse Willis

SAUL’S AUDIO CDS is the distibution arm of Saul …

SAUL’S AUDIO CDS is the distibution arm of Saul Snatsky, Seattle, WA resident and Science Fiction writer. Saul has recorded 6 of his own short stories and put them onto 6 CD-Rs. They are for sale on eBay, Amazon.com and his WEBSITE, where he even takes PayPal. At $2.00 each they are an incredible value! Available are:

Quantum
By Saul Sntasky; Read by Saul Snatsky
1 CD – 65 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Saul’s Audio CDs [AMAZON.com]
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0976167409
After a futile search for extraterrestrial life on far-flung planets, the crew of the Galaxy Cygnus spots an alien ship on the surface of an improbable world circling a neutron star. They contemplate landing to investigate, and thereafter they find that reality is little more than a roll of the dice.

Time Cycle
By Saul Sntasky; Read by Saul Snatsky
1 CD – 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Saul’s Audio CDs [AMAZON.com]
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0976167417
Published in Analog Science Fiction magazine, June 1973 (long ago when Saul still had hair), this is its first appearance in audio format. Jack, reluctant time traveler, lands on pre-biological Earth with the mission of finding out how life started. He is soon in a struggle to save his own life as he finds out more about the origin of life itself.

Charena
By Saul Sntasky; Read by Saul Snatsky
1 CD – 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Saul’s Audio CDs [AMAZON.com]
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0976167425
Published online in Aphelion Webzine, issue #40, 2001, it now appears on CD for your enjoyment. Earth has decreed that a distant world should be settled. Standing in the way are indigenous giant arachnids. Charena becomes one of them via a cybernetic transformation and attempts to short-circuit their mating by attracting and killing males. However, the law of unintended consequences plays out and Charena learns what it really means to “know thine enemy.”

Magic Pill
By Saul Sntasky; Read by Saul Snatsky
1 CD – 26 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Saul’s Audio CDs [AMAZON.com]
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0976167433
When something sounds too good to be true it usually is, and a “magic pill” to fix America’s obsession with weight loss seems to be in that category. Listen to the story and see what happens when two planets “passing in the night” confront opposite but very serious problems.

Altered Ego
By Saul Sntasky; Read by Saul Snatsky
1 CD – 43 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Saul’s Audio CDs [AMAZON.com]
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0976167441
A war criminal hides his mind inside a powerful computer for 10 years to escape justice. When he awakens he finds that his host has not been shut down for scheduled maintenance and a battle of wits and ego ensues with a result neither of them could have predicted.

The Martian
By Saul Sntasky; Read by Saul Snatsky
1 CD – 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Saul’s Audio CDs [AMAZON.com]
Published: 2006
ISBN: 097616745X
Separation may make the heart grow fonder, but it can also cause irreconcilable differences that run even deeper. Harry Roth, a descendant of three generations of Martian colonists from Earth, visits the home world again and meets his former lover, who still has a romantic interest in him. Unfortunately he bears a heavy weight that he can unburden himself of no more than Earth’s stronger gravity. This story illustrates a problem that is likely to occur, if not in this form, then another, and will have greater consequences than our ancestors’ coming out of Africa.

To contact Saul you can reach him at [email protected] or Skype him at [email protected]

posted by Jesse Willis

James Patrick Kelly was interviewed about his ne…

Online Audio

James Patrick Kelly was interviewed about his new podcast novel Burn. The interview is available from New Hampshire Public Radio‘s website as a .WAX or an .M3U. Its a terrific interview that gives deep insight into the story and Kelly’s reasons for doing it.

posted by Jesse Willis

The host of the Spaceship Radio podcast, Andy Do…

Online Audio

The host of the Spaceship Radio podcast, Andy Doan, has just been interviewed by Podcast 411 host Rob Walsch. For those who haven’t been paying attention, Spaceship Radio is the podcast specializing in bringing public domain radio dramas of Science Fiction to your iPod. Click HERE to listen to the interview. And check out my picks for the best of the Spaceship Radio podcasts done so far…

SSREP25 First Contact – Based on the story by Murray Leinster. Done a little different than the short story but well done.

SSREP17 Simon Jones – A cool interview with Simon Jones, AKA Arthur Dent of the BBC’s Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, and an exclusive to Spaceship Radio as far as I can tell.

SSREP14 The Cold Equation (SIC) – Based on the story “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin. This is the Science Fiction story like no other, it cleaves its readers into one camp or another. Essential listening.

SSREP09 The Green Hills of Earth – Based on the story by Robert A. Heinlein. It is elegiac Heinlein at his very best and a well done adaptation to boot.

posted by Jesse Willis

Good news and bad news for fans of Science Ficti…

Online Audio

Good news and bad news for fans of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror audio dramatizations today. First the bad news…

Zombie Astronaut, one of our favorite mp3 webzines, has sadly shuffled off it’s undead coil. The aural delights have ceased due to ZA’s overwhelming popularity. It seems that the bandwidth traffic made for a giant expense in the anonymous host’s pocketbook. It is a bitter shame that mere $$ have downed this floating corpse when even death itself didn’t stop it. Alas.

The good news:

An interesting podcast in a similarly horrifc vein is available, it’ll help relieve some of the loss of ZA’s passing….

Tales Of Horror is an excellent source for genre Radio Drama, unfortunately its episodes are being removed at a fairly fast clip, no doubt due to some bristly copyright issues. Cool episodes still available include:

Tales Of Horror Episode 11 – From the BBC Radio series Chillers an AWESOME adaptation of John W. Campbell‘s classic “Who Goes There?” If you download no other, download this one!

Tales of Horror Episode 4 – From the CBC Radio series Nightfall “The Club of Dead Men” A Canadian student at Cambridge, spends the night in a room once used for meetings by members of the Everlasting Club. Spooky.

Tales of Horror Episode 2 – From the CBC Radio series Nightfall “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs an accursed curio from India destroys lives with its promises of three wishes. Much adapted, but likely never better that this.

posted by Jesse Willis