Reviews – Page 129

Review of Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey A. Carver

SFFaudio Review

Battlestar Galactica
By Jeffrey A. Carver, based on the teleplay written by Ronald D. Moore and Christopher Eric James, based on a teleplay by Glen A. Larson
Read by Jonathan Davis
4 CD’s – 4 hours [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published: 2005
Themes: / Science Fiction / War / Robots / Military / Government / Space Travel / Mythology / Religion /

Has anyone else noticed how good television has become during the past ten years? Well, 13 years. In 1993 Babylon 5 first aired, ushering in a new wave of science fiction and fantasy television that is both smart and damned entertaining. Following B5 was Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. Many would put Farscape and Stargate in the same category. I haven’t seen enough of either to make that judgment. We could quibble about the list of this new wave all we want, but currently at the crest of that wave is the Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica, which is, without doubt, the best science fiction show currently in production.

This audiobook is an abridgement of the novelization of the first Battlestar Galactica show, which was a 4-hour mini-series that originally ran in 2002. I admit that even typing that makes me wince. An abridgement of the novelization of a television show. How much farther from Shakespeare can a person get? Not exactly high falutin culture here.

But this story is edgy, tense, and complex. It opens with a complacent human race that has gotten used to life without their enemy, the Cylons. The Cylons were human-built machines that rebelled, then accepted an armistice agreement around 40 years before the beginning of this audiobook, which is primarily about the sudden unexpected attack on humanity by the Cylons. The attack leaves the Battlestar Galactica as one of the very few ships that survives, and the immediate aftermath sets up several storylines that are followed in the television series.

Jonathan Davis, who keeps pretty busy with the many Star Wars audio titles, narrates, and does his typical and excellent job with it.

I’m a fan of this series, and was happy to receive this audiobook. Though the audio offers nothing new over the miniseries itself, it was an enjoyable way to experience the story while driving. I’m not sure if Audio Renaissance plans to continue releasing Battlestar Galactica titles, but because of the nature of the series, they would have to release every episode since each one is dependant on what takes place before.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz By L. Frank Baum

SFFaudio Review

The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz
By L. Frank Baum; Read by James Spencer
MP3, OGG or AAC files download – 3 hours, 36 minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: TelltaleWeekly.org
Published: 2005
Themes: / Fantasy / Young Adult / Adventure / Magic /

Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident. Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

And that, taken from the introduction, is exactly what author L. Frank Baum and narrator James Spenser deliver. The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz is a delightful and thoroughly wholesome romp through a safe fantasy landscape who’s denizens are, with the exception of the title character, all exactly what they appear to be. A refreshing and satisfying listen, it is sure to please children of a certain age and the adults who listen along with them. I especially liked the repetitive ritualistic scenes that happened about once a chapter. Dorothy, the Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion each and always decry their bad luck whenever an obstacle blocks their journey along the yellow brick road or proclaim with delight their renewed hope at acheiving their respective goals. One curious point, the Tin Woodsman, who is very prone to tears, keeps rusting up when he cries. In point of fact tin does not rust when exposed to salt water.

Narrator James Spencer brings this classic to life, making about a dozen distinct voices for the many characters. His Scarecrow is thoughtful, his Cowardly Lion loveably fierce, his Tin Woodsman empathetic, his Dorothy girlish, and his Oz is truly a humbug! Sound quality is superb and there was no compression degredation in the MP3 edition I listened to. Priced at $6.00, you are looking less than $0.03 per minute. This is the best audio edition of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz in existence.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Soldier of the Legion by Marshall S. Thomas

Soldier of the Legion
By Marshall S. Thomas, performed by a full cast
MP3 Download – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Timberwolf Press
Published: 2002
Themes: / Science fiction / Military / Space opera / Aliens / War

“Dat Spitz fight lak hell,” said Perrault…
“An’ dat Buck fight lak two hells,” was Francois’s answer.
— Jack London’s Call of the Wild

War is hell. Ever since Sherman put it so precisely, the rest of us have been forced to merely tip our hats and let the matter rest. Then along comes Marshall S. Thomas’s Soldier of the Legion which can’t help but pick at this scab. But even if comparing war to hell weren’t a holey sock at the beginning of the book, it would be by the end of it. Every time the slightest skirmish breaks out (which is roughly every other chapter), out trots the tired old dog of hell (Cerberus, a holdover from when the Greeks ran the place) to do his duty.

The opening hellish battle is a perfect encapsulation of the kind of mindless action and equally mindless discussion the rest of the audio play offers, proceeding from lurid descriptions of made-up, inexhaustible weapons to the effects of those weapons on the human bodies of the irredeemably evil bad guys (the Systies). Blood splatters, it sprays, it explodes, it flows, it gushes. Sometimes gore does, too, but mostly it’s blood, blood, blood. Then nearly naked women appear, and the hero tries to contain his drool and his bullets as an embarrassingly unconvincing argument breaks out among the blond-haired, blue-eyed heroes.

The rest of the book is exactly the same, with each breakout of violence a laughable attempt to supersede the hell of the previous engagement. The troops fly to another planet, kill dinosaur-like aliens in a deep cave (double hell), save and kill primitive peoples, return to a settled world to “spy” ineptly and engage in a covert operation that plays out as stealthily as a frontal assault (hell squared), and then return to a primitive planet to battle an even worse enemy than they first thought (hell convolved with hell). But it is all just a repetition of the first chapter. In between battles, there will be awkward, pointless conversations; breasts naked and otherwise that the hero will fall in “love” with; love scenes that consist of people telling each other how much they love each other and will die and/or kill for each other; and sexless sex scenes that dither about without titillation or consummation. All acted with a style reminiscent of that seen in movies where people get paid more for how they look without clothing than for how they emote. It’s uncomfortable enough to make you actually look forward to the empty-headed shooting.

Add to this an unthinking first-person narrator called “Thinker” and the attempted multiple use of the adverb “scarily” without ironic intent, and you have a brackish, gritty brew. The story ends, after its single interesting set-piece, with our heroes literally hanging from a cliff over (you guessed it) hell, but I would rather be tasered than be forced to listen to the sequel. This book is like a live grenade: If it comes at you, get the hell out of the way!

This book is available at Timberwolf Press on Audio CD and MP3-CD, or from Audible.com as a download.

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Review of Anne Manx on Amazonia

Anne Manx on Amazonia
By Larry Weiner; Performed by a Full Cast
2 CD’s – 2 hours – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Radio Repertory Company of America
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0977134202
Themes: / Science Fiction / Private Eye / Cloning /

Anne Manx on Amazonia is the fourth installment in the Radio Repertory Company of America’s ongoing Anne Manx series. All four titles are available on their website, but don’t worry if you haven’t heard them. You’ll probably want to hear the other three after hearing this one, but you won’t have to to understand what’s happening.

In a nutshell, here’s the plot:
On Amazonia, they have a very unique way of replacing their queen. They clone her. The first attempt to clone the current queen fails, so they toss the baby out and try again… only the clone survives. Fast forward several years, and the flawed clone (who obviously survives) gets Anne Manx to help her get back to Amazonia. Woven throughout this is the rich, ongoing story of the conflict between Anne Manx and Richmond, her evil nemesis.

Anne Manx is played by Claudia Christian, of Babylon 5 fame. Richmond is played by Patricia Tallman, who was also on Babylon 5. Both of these actresses succeed in bringing their characters to vibrant life. The queen and her two clones were played by Barbara Harris, who was simply wonderful. I never had a problem distinguishing which character was speaking – they were three distinct people. I don’t doubt that Barbara Harris would make a superior audiobook narrator if she ever chose to try it.

To the great performances and excellent script add the sheer quality of production. RRCA is producing quality entertainment.

Anne Manx on Amazonia is funny, action-packed, and touching. Fine writing, a wonderful cast, and first-rate production make this the best installment in the Anne Manx series. Don’t miss it!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

SFFaudio Review

The Raven
By Edgar Allan Poe, Read by Bill Mills
MP3 file – 19 min. [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: REB Audio books
Published: 2005
Themes: / Horror / Poetry / Mourning / Depression

“Once upon a midnight dreary,
While I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…”
— A.E. Poe, The Raven

That’s how the poem begins, drawing a pall of melancholy over us with its first syllables. This audio book, however, takes a little more time getting there. As if reflecting the distance from this mood we might be starting, the first tones are of bouncy pop music as the company and title are introduced. Then comes Bill Mills’ voice, warm, and rich as hickory smoke, leading us down into darkness with a brief, stylish bio of the author.

When the first line finally arrives, I have to admit, I cringe for just a second. The slow, broken delivery—scattering audible periods where the text shows, at most, commas—has just a whiff of Shatner-reading-Lucy-in-Sky-with-Diamonds over-interpretation. But that passes in an instant, and I find myself discovering new wonders in nearly every spoken line of a poem I’ve read probably a hundred times. I have a tendency to dismiss rhymed poetry as lightweight, as my brain usually prefers humming the tune to learning the meaning behind the words, but Mills’ reading is a perfect foil for that. He treads a careful path between chanting the regular meter and disregarding it entirely, cleverly emphasizing the story the words tell while still respecting their poetry. What he presents is a tale of a man just tumbling off the edge of hope into a free fall of depression, a man who speaks the name of his lost love into the darkness outside his soul only to have the darkness reply with morbid hopelessness.

The one thing marring this production is the background track. Behind the serious lead vocals vamps a cartoon ghoul-band of horror excess: Howling wind, howling wolves, crackling thunder, soaring choirs, and crashing orchestras. It isn’t destructive, but it is ridiculous. That said, this is still an excellent recording. I highly recommend following Mr. Mills down this twilit path, no matter how many times you think you’ve seen it before.

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Review of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Review

The Time Machine
By H.G. Wells; Read by James Spencer
MP3, OGG or AAC files download – 3 hours, 2 minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: TelltaleWeekly.org
Published: 2004
Themes: / Science Fiction / Time Travel / Math Fiction /

I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery. If only I had had a companion it would have been different.

Sounds suspiciously like the plot of every Doctor Who episode doesn’t it? But The Time Machine isn’t just about exciting time-travel adventures, it’s also about the class struggle in Great Britain in the late 19th century, the widening gap between rich and poor, what Humans have control over and what they don’t. Doctor Who has been known to tackle these ideas too, one of it’s serials even has H.G. Wells as a character, but the fact that The Time Machine did it first, and so well, speaks volumes.

Scientifically explained SF stories of time travel take their cue for explanation, when they do it at all, from this novel. Prior to its publication stories of travel in time went unexplained, the Connecticut Yankee, of Mark Twain’s comedic time-travel novel got a knock on his head that sent him back to Middle Ages England – and that was explanation enough in its way. But The Time Machine isn’t played for comedy, Wells’ futures are allegories for his worries about capitalism and communism, for his notation about gender blurring in the industrial age and his realization that not only are all men mortal, but so in fact is Mankind itself!

In just three hours Wells posits two futures: 1. A relative near term future humanity which has bifurcated into two distinct species (Eloi and Morlock) – they stand as the evitable result of aristocrat and proletariat class calcification present in the political theory at the time of it’s writing. 2. A vision of a far future Earth, showing the inevitable and unavoidable physical reality of the universe. Were this not a public domain text, and were not the plot so familiar to us we’d have to think ourselves blessed by this excellent reading. As it is, and as cheap as it is this classic of science fiction can be judged only by it’s audiobook. Thankfully the reading keeps pace with the text.

Sound quality is excellent, but the reader, James Spenser, doesn’t have much to do in the way of voices. He does however a marvelous job engendering anticipation, fear, disgust and sympathy through pacing. Spencer’s lack of an English accent for this Englishman’s tale doesn’t really matter, only one character in the novel is named, she couldn’t sensibly be called English and she doesn’t even have a speaking part. Much of the difficulty in this story comes from the stilted way it is rendered. Told in first person by an unnamed witness to the recounting of the main events, we are regaled second hand with the time traveler’s adventures in time. I can charitably call it “quaint.” Arthur C. Clarke later took up this kind of storytelling with his “Tales Of The White Heart” series of short stories, likely I think in homage to Wells. I’ve heard several audiobook renditions of The Time Machine now, of the non British reader’s Spencer’s is “the definitive edition.” And at just $5.00 it’s a deal.

Posted by Jesse Willis