Scott D. – Page 53

Recent Arrivals from Galaxy Press

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 24
By Various, Read by Various
Audible Download – 14 Hours 46 Mins – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2008

Listen to the best new science fiction and fantasy short stories from up-and-coming writers. Established in 1983 by L. Ron Hubbard expressly for the aspiring writer, Writers of the Future has become the most respected and significant forum for new talent in all aspects of speculative fiction. The elite character of the contest is evident from the roster of judges: Kevin J. Anderson, Doug Beason, Gregory Benford, Orson Scott Card, Brian Herbert, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Eric Kotani, Anne McCaffrey, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, Tim Powers, Robert Silverberg, and K. D. Wentworth. Since its inception, the contest has helped place more than 250 novels and 2,500 short stories on bookshelves around the world. The Writers of the Future Award has also earned its place alongside the Hugo and Nebula awards in the triad of speculative fiction’s most prestigious acknowledgements of literary excellence.

If I Were You
2 CDs – 2 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
By L. Ron Hubbard, Read by multicast
Publisher: Galaxy Press
Published: 2008

Circus dwarf Little Tom Little is the king of midgets, loved by crowds and carnival folk alike. Only he doesn’t just want to be a bigger circus star, he wants to be just like the circus’ tall and imposing leader. Trouble begins the moment that a set of ancient books containing the secret of switching bodies finds its way into Tom Little’s tiny hands. When he magically trades his small frame with that of the circus chief, finds himself in a giant-sized heap of trouble—his craving for height has landed him smack in the center ring surrounded by forty savage cats! ALSO INCLUDES THE FANTASY STORY “THE LAST DROP”

The Great Secret
By L. Ron Hubbard, Read by multicast
2 CDs – 2 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Galaxy Press
Published: 2008

Fanner Marston was raised a slave as a child, became a petty street thief as a teen, and now masters his own craft and crew as a grown man. He’s also gone completely mad. Driven by privation, with a vicious greed and slavering lust for power, Marston alone of forty men has survived the perilous trek through a blistering desert to the magical city of Parva, where legend says a secret awaits which will give him absolute control over the Universe. However, Marston finds the key to all power is not at all what he expected. . . . ALSO INCLUDES THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES “SPACE CAN,” “THE BEAST” AND “THE SLAVER”.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

SFFaudio Review

Something Wicked This Way Comes
By Ray Bradbury;
Performed by Jerry Robbins and the Colonial Radio Players
2 CDs – 2 Hours [AUDIODRAMA]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433210792
Themes: / Horror / Fantasy / YA / Carnival / Americana / Ray Bradbury /

A good title might not have the verbal worth of a picture, but it’s certainly up there. And the title of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes is way up there. Not only is it delightful to say out loud, it also provides an insight into the language and theme of the story.

By evoking Shakespeare, Bradbury’s title announces his nervy aspiration to transform the language of America’s heartland into something approaching poetry. Hearing our rattle-trap vernacular transposed into song-like perfection is among the greatest attractions of this performance. Not that it always works, mind you. Sometimes, the witty exchanges between characters devolve into a series of confusing monosyllables, and sometimes the sheer weight of the mighty words flattens the actors beneath them. But the portentous speech of the lightning rod salesman in the opening scene is as perfect a transfiguration as the symphonic thunderstorm in Beethoven’s “Pastorale”.

But beyond simply the sound of the story, the title references MacBeth’s supernatural temptation, and thus foreshadows the wickedness to come. As MacBeth is undone by the crones’ magic, so are the residents of Greentown, Illinois undone by the magic of “Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show”. But since Bradbury writes not to noble Elizabethans, but to working class Americans, his heroes and victims are not men who would be kings, but aging fathers who wish to be younger and abler for their sons, fatherless young boys who dream of being old enough to be on their own, and solitary schoolteachers who yearn to relive their lives in better company. I think these differences say a lot about who we are as a people. The familiar and familial desires that lead Bradbury’s protagonists into peril seem comfortingly domestic compared to the brutish ambition that drives MacBeth.

Beyond the title, there is magic only Bradbury can conjure, such as the wonder and awe of his mythical boy-heroes. Such beings appear in many of his works, but Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are two of his best. They climb down trellises in the middle of the night to feed on moonlight and shadow, train whistles and silence. They revel as much in books as in footraces, as much in fantasy as in fact. They are breathless and happy, serious and trustworthy. These characters are to real boys as their poetic utterances are to natural language: Graceful distillations of an awkward truth.

And I love the depiction of Will’s father. As with the other elements, the relationship between Will Halloway and his father is a Platonic ideal form of what is so often messy, confused, and rueful in our own lives. How I wish I could be that father—wise and patient, kind and indulgent in all the right ways—to my own son.

One final note on the story: I have always been a little disappointed by the ending. I know, I know, the weapon against evil employed here has its roots in folklore, but it still feels a bit like defeating Godzilla with a wiffle-ball bat. After the scene in the library between Will’s father and Mr. Dark, it is a bit anticlimactic.

But the novel is still a landmark, and this dramatic production is itself very good. Child actors are somewhat hit or miss with me, but the ones who play Will and Jim mostly hit. In the gentler scenes, the actor who plays Will’s father is excellent, although he sounds a little young for the part. If he can’t quite carry the load of some of the scenes of heavier conflict, I think Bradbury’s prose is partly to blame. Such lofty words don’t easily come off with the down-to-earth punch we’ve come to expect.

All in all, this is a very good production of an American classic. It should be played and replayed, savored and shared with the ones you love.

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Recent Arrivals

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

The Little Book
By Selden Edwards; Read by Jeff Woodman
13 CDs – 15 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: Aug 2008
ISBN: 9780143143512

The Little Book is the extraordinary tale of Wheeler Burden, California-exiled heir of the famous Boston banking Burdens, philosopher, student of history, legend’s son, rock idol, writer, lover of women, recluse, half-Jew, and Harvard baseball hero. In 1988 he is forty-seven, living in San Francisco. Suddenly he is—still his modern self—wandering in a city and time he knows mysteriously well: fin de siècle Vienna. It is 1897, precisely ninety-one years before his last memory and a half-century before his birth.

It’s not long before Wheeler has acquired appropriate clothes, money, lodging, a group of young Viennese intellectuals as friends, a mentor in Sigmund Freud, a bitter rival, a powerful crush on a luminous young American woman, a passing acquaintance with local celebrity Mark Twain, and an incredible and surprising insight into the dashing young war-hero father he never knew.

But the truth at the center of Wheeler’s dislocation in time remains a stubborn mystery that will take months of exploration and a lifetime of memories to unravel and that will, in the end, reveal nothing short of the eccentric Burden family’s unrivaled impact on the very course of the coming century. The Little Book is a masterpiece of unequaled storytelling that announces Selden Edwards as one of the most dazzling, original, entertaining, and inventive novelists of our time.

The Last Theorem
By Arthur C. Clarke and Frederick Pohl; Read by Mark Bramhall
10 CDs – 11 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books on Tape
Published: 2008

Two of science fiction’s most renowned writers join forces for a storytelling sensation. The historic collaboration between Frederik Pohl and his fellow founding father of the genre, Arthur C. Clarke, is both a momentous literary event and a fittingly grand farewell from the late, great visionary author of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Last Theorem is a story of one man’s mathematical obsession, and a celebration of the human spirit and the scientific method. It is also a gripping intellectual thriller in which humanity, facing extermination from all-but-omnipotent aliens, the Grand Galactics, must overcome differences of politics and religion and come together . . . or perish.

In 1637, the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat scrawled a note in the margin of a book about an enigmatic theorem: “I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” He also neglected to record his proof elsewhere. Thus began a search for the Holy Grail of mathematics–a search that didn’t end until 1994, when Andrew Wiles published a 150-page proof. But the proof was burdensome, overlong, and utilized mathematical techniques undreamed of in Fermat’s time, and so it left many critics unsatisfied–including young Ranjit Subramanian, a Sri Lankan with a special gift for mathematics and a passion for the famous “Last Theorem.”

When Ranjit writes a three-page proof of the theorem that relies exclusively on knowledge available to Fermat, his achievement is hailed as a work of genius, bringing him fame and fortune. But it also brings him to the attention of the National Security Agency and a shadowy United Nations outfit called Pax per Fidem, or Peace Through Transparency, whose secretive workings belie its name. Suddenly Ranjit–together with his wife, Myra de Soyza, an expert in artificial intelligence, and their burgeoning family–finds himself swept up in world-shaking events, his genius for abstract mathematical thought put to uses that are both concrete and potentially deadly.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone on Earth, an alien fleet is approaching the planet at a significant percentage of the speed of light. Their mission: to exterminate the dangerous species of primates known as homo sapiens.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

SFFaudio Review

Journey to the Center of the Earth
By Jules Verne; Read by Simon Prebble
7 CDs – 7.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781433243806
Themes: / Science Fiction / Classic / Geology / Dinosaurs /

In listening to Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, I was struck by how much modern films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and National Treasure owe to this book. Although it was written way back in 1864, while the War Between the States was in full swing and the earth was a very different place, in many ways its thoroughly modern, at home alongside recent sci-fi novels like John Crichton’s Jurassic Park.

In summary, Journey to the Center of the Earth is a fast-paced and lively pseudo science/exploration story that manages to be mostly interesting and entertaining. Unfortunately, it also crosses over into unbelievable territory about three-quarters of the way through and ends with a classic deux-ex-machina, but I found I can live with it.

Journey to the Center of the Earth takes aim at the theory that the earth grows hotter the nearer that you travel to its center. Verne posits the idea that the earth’s core is inhabitable and houses massive cavities, caverns so huge that you cannot see their roof. At its center is a sea large enough that you can travel across its and lose sight of land all around. Science has of course since proven this idea impossible, but it makes for a fun story if you divorce it from reality.

Journey to the Center of Earth has a compelling opening that reminded me of The DaVinci Code–Professor Liedenbrock and his nephew Axel, the heroes of the story, find a coded note written in runes within the pages of an Icelandic saga. They puzzle through it and discover that it is a note written by Arne Saknussemm describing a passage he has found to the center of the earth. The opening is located in the interior of a dormant volcano in Iceland. Liedenbrock and Axel recruit an Icelandic guide and the three men embark on their journey.

I found Verne’s descriptions of overland and sea travel to Iceland interesting, and the first scenes of the descent fascinating. Verne vividly portrays the vast depths and terrifying downward drops of the volcano draft, and creates excitement and dread in two sequences in which Axel gets lost in the inky blackness and the three men nearly die of thirst.

Unfortunately I thought that the tale started to unravel once the men near the earth’s center, which contains ice age creatures, dinosaurs, and even early men. If the story didn’t literally jump a shark it certainly started to lose me once Liedenbrock and Axel’s small boat passes very nearly over an Ichthyosaurus. I was also puzzled with the abrupt ending–Liedenbrock and Axel gain great fame from their expedition, while others treat their claims with skepticism. But, inexplicably, no one ever bothers to re-trace their footsteps and verify their claims.

Still, you could do worse than pass the time by giving it the book a listen. It’s also skillfully read by English-accented, professorial-sounding narrator Simon Prebble.

Posted by Brian Murphy

Recent Arrivals: Recorded Books, Macmillan Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Carnival
By Elizabeth Bear; Read by Celeste Ciulla
11 CDs – Approx. 12.25 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781436119511
Garnering rave reviews from multiple publications, Elizabeth Bear is a rising voice in science fiction. Michelangelo Kisanagi-Jones and Vincent Katherinessen, former abassador-spies, have been ordered to New Amazonia to bring back information about the planet’s cheap, renewable energy source. But secretly, one of the men devises other plans.

Paul of Dune
By Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson; Read by Scott Brick
17 CDs – Approx. 18.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781427204844
Frank Herbert’s Dune ended with Paul Muad’Dib in control of the planet Dune. Herbert’s next Dune book, Dune Messiah, picked up the story several years later after Paul’s armies had conquered the galaxy. But what happened between Dune and Dune Messiah? How did Paul create his empire and become the Messiah? Following in the footsteps of Frank Herbert, New York Times bestselling authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are answering these questions in Paul of Dune. The Muad’Dib’s jihad is in full swing. His warrior legions march from victory to victory. But beneath the joy of victory there are dangerous undercurrents. Paul, like nearly every great conqueror, has enemies–those who would betray him to steal the awesome power he commands… And Paul himself begins to have doubts: Is the jihad getting out of his control? Has he created anarchy? Has he been betrayed by those he loves and trusts the most? And most of all, he wonders: Am I going mad? Paul of Dune is a novel everyone will want to read and no one will be able to forget.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

SFFaudio Review

Spin
By Robert Charles Wilson; Read by Scott Brick
Audible Download – 17 Hours and 33 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: 2008
Themes: / Science Fiction / Hard SF / Medicine / Time / Space / Physics /

This Hugo Award winning novel (2006) is a novel of two parts in my mind. The first, which involves the covering of the entire Earth with a complex membrane, is some of the most exciting hard science fiction I’ve read in a long time. Picture yourself lying on a lawn, looking up at the stars… and they go out. As awe-inspiring as a Clarke novel, Wilson tells us what the world’s scientists come up with as they try to answer the big questions. What is happening? Why is it happening? Is there a “who” behind it? An outline of this book could be written that would look like a knotted string, each knot being an important and sometimes jaw-dropping idea. “The Spin”, as the phenomenon is called by the characters, grips the Earth tightly and apparently permanently. Initial discoveries find that the membrane has created a time difference between life on Earth and life in the rest of the universe. A minute passes here while years pass out there. A few days of time here, and empires would rise and fall outside, if they existed. Do they?

The second part of this novel is the connecting material, or the rest of the string. I didn’t find this as interesting as the Big Idea stuff while I was listening. In retrospect, I do appreciate what Wilson illustrated with his characters, but the plot won’t be what I remember when I talk about this novel in the future. Frankly, about halfway through the novel, I wanted to skim the sections that focused on the characters, not because they were poorly written, but because I simply couldn’t wait for what was really interesting me about the novel – more info about “The Spin”. Of course, I can’t skim an audiobook, so I dealt with the suspense and just kept listening. (Note to self: Add “lack of ability to skim” to the list of plusses for audiobooks. If I had read this book in print I would have skimmed – this way I got the whole novel.)

The story is about three main characters. Jason and Diane Lawton are the twin children of an entrepreneur. Tyler Dupree, the first person narrator, is a close friend. The three, as children, witness the beginning of “The Spin” together, lying on a lawn at a party attended by their parents. The event alters their lives, and the lives of all humans, but time marches on, the kids grow up, and, though each one lets “The Spin” define their lives, they each deal with the new reality in a completely different way. It is there that my appreciation for this aspect of the novel lies; how different we all are, and how different our reactions to the very same event. Some turn to religion, some turn to science, some to their business, and some to help their fellow man.

I’m not a person who dislikes a good character driven story. If I’m reading a piece of fiction that’s not genre, I’m likely to be reading something from the general fiction section of the bookstore, as opposed to mysteries or military thrillers. But still, I found it difficult to focus on parts of this novel, probably because I was listening to a story largely about people reacting to “The Spin”, rather than a story about the people that were actively trying to figure it out. Though one of the three main characters is indeed a scientist that is deeply involved, I wasn’t hearing a story about those scientists and exactly what they were doing. In other words, a lot of really interesting stuff is happening off stage while the novel was focused elsewhere.

Scott Brick narrates, always a plus from my perspective, and is a great match with this book. He does very well with science “ooo wow” moments, and there are plenty here. A quibble for the accuracy department: a mispronounced word that unfortunately is used often during a portion of the book. “Oort cloud”.

All in all – another fine audiobook from Macmillan Audio – it is available exclusively as a download from Audible and iTunes.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson