SFFaudio essential – Page 6

Review of Blake’s 7 – Cally: Blood & Earth / Flag & Flame (Vol. 1.4)

SFFaudio Review

Blake’s 7 – Cally: Blood & Earth / Flag & Flame (Vol. 1.4)
By Ben Aaronovitch and Marc Platt; Directed by Dominic Devine; Performed by a full cast
1 CD – Approx. 60 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: B7 Productions
Published: August 24, 2009
ISBN: 9781906577070
Themes: / Science Fiction / Space Opera / Telepathy / Survival / Noir / War /

Blake’s 7 – Cally contains two plays on one CD. I am reviewing them individually and in the order they appear on the disc.

Blood & Earth
On Auron, every clone lives in a world buoyed by the constant murmur of telepathic support, gossip and opinions. When Ariane Cally’s plane crashes in the middle of a wilderness park she finds herself cut off not only from rescue, but the voices that have sustained her all her life. Her only hope is the mysterious Aunty, the single voice she can still hear, a woman who claims to have been the second Cally ever to be born on Auron. From Aunty she will learn the true and secret history of her people, but only if the wilderness doesn’t kill her first.

You’d think that any audio drama featuring four characters, three with the same and similar voices there’d be some difficulty in following the story of who’s talking to who, what’s happening and to whom. No such problems exist in Blood & Earth and neither does the story suffer in the telling. Jan Chappell, who was the original Cally from the TV series Blake’s 7, takes on a new role as a new Cally – one of the original clones of the Auron colony. In this adventure she’s mentoring one of her sister clones who has crash landed in a wet and remote jungle. Meanwhile, another Cally is on a search and rescue mission high above the jungle looking for the crashed Cally any other survivors. The theme of telepathy is a hard one to convey very successfully in an audiobook – but the Blake’s 7 producers have done a terrific job with it in this audio drama. In between the action we get a good sense of the culture of Auron – how a few early decision in the colony’s history have determined the colony’s present and how they may determine its future.

Cast:
Jan Chappell AUNTY
Amy Humphreys ARIANE CALLY
Barbara Joslyn JORDEN CALLY
Julian Wadham COMMISSIONER VAN REICH

Flag & Flame
Twins are special; Auronar clone twins doubly so. They’re grown that way. Pilot Skate Cally and Operative Merrin Cally are a Flight Team on the Auronar cruiser Flag of Hope. They’ve been in each other’s heads, living each other’s lives, the same feelings, differences, orders and taste buds, since they were first poured out of a vat. But after High Command sends Skate on a one-way mission investigating Federation incursions in the Dancer Cluster, Merrin faces a bleak new future on her own, uncovering the dark half of the sister she thought she knew.

In this play, somewhat reminiscent of an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica, clone sisters Merrin Cally and Skate Cally are teamed up for a top secret scouting mission that needs to operate under a strict radio silence. Skate Cally, having had her uniform ‘sanitized,’ is placed into a space fighter that has also been stripped of insignia and identifying numbers. Meanwhile, Merrin Cally is taken to the bridge of Auron’s carrier flagship. She’s there to communicate everything Skate sees in the mysterious Dancer Cluster, their target. This is an excellent setup for an audio drama, we get both sides of the conversation, vivid description and ripe storytelling. Robert A. Heinlein’s 1957 novel Time For The Stars utilizes this same meme (genetically identical siblings sharing a telepathic bond) and so similar tensions apply – but unlike Heinlein’s adventure, Flag & Flame delivers a message of moral ambiguity. The cast does great work with the tight script, both Callys have distinct voices, and a subtle telepathic modulation tells us which viewpoint we’re in. After hearing this second dramatization set on Auron I have plenty of questions. Presumably these will be filled in with future B7 installments (when one Cally joins up with Blake and the Liberator’s crew).

Cast:
Susannah Doyle SKATE CALLY
Natalie Walter MERRIN CALLY
Michael Cochrane COMMANDER GRESHAM

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential The Martian Chronicles
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Stephen Hoye
8 CDs – 9.3 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433293498
Themes: / Science Fiction / Mars / Mythology / Colonization / Aliens /

All right, then, what is Chronicles? Is it King Tut out of the tomb when I was three? Norse Eddas when I was six? And Roman/Greek gods that romanced me when I was ten? Pure myth. If it had been practical, technologically efficient science fiction, it would have long since fallen to rust by the road.

-Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

I’ve never been a big reader of science fiction, largely because, rightly or wrongly, my perception is that SF worships at the altar of technology, and is fixated upon cold, clinical subject matter for which I have little interest. But if the SF genre contained more books like Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, I might view it a lot differently.

The Martian Chronicles tells the story of mankind’s colonization of the red planet. Driven by curiosity and the impending destruction of a worldwide atomic war, men send rocket expeditions to Mars in hopes of settling the planet and finding a place to carry on their civilization. It’s not a traditional novel, but a collection of short stories originally published in Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and a handful of other defunct SF magazines, which Bradbury ties together with a series of vignettes.

The Martian Chronicles was first published in 1950 and Bradbury set the first story, “Rocket Summer,” in a fictional (and then-distant) 1999; this latter printing advances the timeline to 2030. The Martian Chronicles certainly has some SF surface trappings, and the tale “There Will Come Soft Rains” (a haunting story about the aftermath of an atomic war) probably fits that category. But it’s certainly not hard SF. Bradbury doesn’t dwell on the Martian technology nor describe how it works. What little there is described in Bradbury’s inimitable short strokes of brilliant, poetic color: Houses with tables of silver lava for cooking bits of meat, pillars of rain that can be summoned for washing, metal books that sing their stories, like a fine instrument under the stroke of a hand.

In the introduction to the 2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc., production of the book, Bradbury says that the larger themes and deeper meanings of his work were buried in his subconscious as he wrote. It wasn’t until he saw an onstage production of The Martian Chronicles, juxtaposed with a viewing of a traveling Tutankhamun exhibit at the Las Angeles Art Museum, that he made the leap—he had written a myth, not a science fiction story:

“Moving back and forth from Tut to theatre, theatre to Tut, my jaw dropped. ‘My God,’ I said, gazing at Tutankhamun’s golden mask. ‘That’s Mars. My God,’ I said, watching my Martians on stage, ‘That’s Egypt, with Tutankhamun’s ghosts.’ So before my eyes and mixed in my mind, old myths were renewed, new myths were bandaged in papyrus and lidded with bright masks. Without knowing, I had been Tut’s child all the while, writing the red world’s hieroglyphics, thinking I thrived futures even in dust-rinsed pasts… Science and machines can kill each other off or be replaced. Myth, seen in mirrors, incapable of being touched, stays on. If it is not immortal, it almost seems such.”

Rather than explaining the hows and whys of rocket travel, or the describe the atmospheric conditions of the red planet, Bradbury uses The Martian Chronicles to explore the age-old problems of colonization/colonialism, our fears of the unknown, our longing for simpler times, and the limitations of science and technology. It’s intensely elegiac, an ode to the quiet towns and neighborhoods of the 1920s and 30s, before the sprawl of cities and suburbs and the opening of the Pandora’s Box of atomic power.

The heart of the book is the short story, “And the Moon be Still as Bright,” which concerns a fourth rocket expedition to the red planet. The first three missions have failed. Mars is empty, its cities ghostly and vacant. The Martians have been hit hard by chicken pox, infected by the crew of one of the previous expeditions. When several crewmembers of the latest expedition get drunk and vandalize a beautiful Martian city of glass spires, one of the crewmen, Jeff Spender, turns on them in a murderous rampage.

Later, atop a hill, Captain Wilder approaches Spender in an effort to get him to surrender. Spender, who initially seems crazy, is revealed as the man with the clearest vision. He knows what modern man is like, a professional cynic who wants to tear down and rebuild in his own image, citing Cortez’s mission to Mexico (which wiped out nearly all traces of the Aztec Empire). Spender has read the Martians’ books and seen the relics of their culture, and discovers that it is a perfect balance of science and religion, nature and man (Martian) in harmony, with neither side dominant. Says Spender:

“[The Martians] quit trying too hard to destroy everything, to humble everything. They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle. They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It’s all simply a matter of degree. An Earth Man thinks: ‘In that picture, color does not exist, really. A scientist can prove that color is only the way the cells are placed in a certain material to reflect light. Therefore, color is not really an actual part of things I happen to see.’ A Martian, far cleverer, would say: ‘This is a fine picture. It came from the hand and the mind of a man inspired. Its idea and its color are from life. This thing is good.’”

It’s interesting to note that the Martians are not perfect, and in striving for balance they may have lost something. In “Ylla,” the second story/chapter of the book, a Martian woman upsets her husband to the point of murder. As the Martians are telepathic, Ylla is able to “speak” to the astronauts as they draw near in their silver rocket. She learns their burning desires and their strange songs. Despite the harmonious, tranquil, idyllic environment all around her, the brown-skinned, golden-eyed Ylla wants to be swept away to earth, crushed in the embrace of the white-skinned, dark-haired, blue-eyed Nathaniel York. For all its piggishness and destructiveness, the race of men is passionate, burning with the desire to live and explore.

As with all of Bradbury’s tales, The Martian Chronicles contains its share of humor, terror, heartbreak, and hope, and is written in Bradbury’s beautiful, one-of-a-kind style. It holds a deserved place as science fiction classic, even as it transcends the genre and defies our attempts to categorize it.

Posted by Brian Murphy

Review of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Todd McLaren
18.5 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 2009
Themes: / Fantasy / Conan / Sword and Sorcery /

What do readers want out of fantasy fiction? Epic quests to banish evil from the world? Coming of age stories of young wizards and warriors growing up and into their great, latent powers? Many do: I enjoy these types of stories myself, from time to time.

But when my heart yearns for pulse-pounding, savage adventure, curvaceous women and thrilling sword fights, forgotten, vine-grown cities, and ancient, monstrous evil guarding hoarded gems and gold, I turn to Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Cimmerian.

Now, thanks to Tantor Media, we have the luxury of listening to pure, unaltered Howard as well. The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian is the first of three planned releases by Tantor collecting all of the original Conan tales. This 15 CD set (18.5 hours) includes the first 13 Conan stories, in the order Howard wrote them. Narrator Todd McLaren delivers the stories with passion and precision.

The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian was originally published in 2005 by Ballantine Books/Del Rey, followed shortly by The Bloody Crown of Conan and The Conquering Sword of Conan. Taken together, these three books for the first time included all of Howard’s original, unedited Conan stories. For those who may not know, Howard’s tales first appeared in Weird Tales magazine in the 1930s, and were later published in edited form, along with pastiches of variable quality, by Lancer/Ace books in the 1960s and 70s.

The stories in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian include:
• The Phoenix on the Sword
• The Frost-Giant’s Daughter
• The God in the Bowl
• The Tower of the Elephant
• The Scarlet Citadel
• Queen of the Black Coast
• Black Colossus
• Iron Shadows in the Moon
• Xuthal of the Dusk
• The Pool of the Black One
• Rogues in the House
• The Vale of Lost Women
• The Devil in Iron

Rather than provide a simple plot summary of the short stories listed above, I thought I’d use this platform to talk about Howard’s place in fantasy fiction and the broader field of literature. Many fantasy readers turn their nose up at Howard. They think his stories are all surface, pure story with no depth. Or they mistakenly conflate Howard’s Conan with the dumb brute of the films Conan the Barbarian or Conan the Destroyer. These folks are of course wrong.

It is true that many of Howard’s tales were written for quick publication in the pulp magazines of the era. As a result, some are rather formulaic. But Howard at his worst captivates with his seemingly effortless ability to produce breathless action. He had a talent for depicting whirling combat and wonderful images in a few words, and for poetic turns of phrase.

At his best, Howard wrote with surprising depth worthy of closer analysis, even study. His most ubiquitous, well-known theme was civilization vs. barbarism. Howard believed that as nations became civilized they grew correspondingly decadent and corrupt. Men who fight savagely and shed their blood to carve out shining kingdoms grow soft in times of peace and plenty until greed and sloth set in. Old kingdoms weaken through internal strife until they collapse from within or are invaded from without. In Howard’s works and in the mind of the author himself, the howling “barbarians at the gates” were always waiting to pounce when kingdoms grew weak, and Conan himself was one of the horde. Honest rule by might and the axe was preferable to the soft lies and deception of civilized men, whose faces were masks concealing their falsity.

To quote Conan from “Beyond the Black River,” “Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.”

Other critics have noted existentialist strains running through Howard’s stories, as well as a hard-boiled realism that leant even his most fantastic, otherworldly tales a feeling of grounded, earthly reality. Howard also infused his stories with the myth of the American frontier. Born in Texas in 1906, Howard listened with rapt and wistful attention to old men who had witnessed first-hand the closing of the frontier, settling virgin wilderness and fighting Indians in savage wars for territory.

In my opinion Howard’s best Conan tales don’t appear in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian: “Beyond the Black River” and “Red Nails” represent Howard at his peak, and are scheduled to appear on Tantor’s later discs. But “The Tower of the Elephant” is worth the purchase price alone, and “Queen of the Black Coast,” “The Scarlet Citadel,” “The Phoenix on the Sword,” “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” and “Rogues in the House” are all terrific as well. “The Vale of Lost Women” is the only true dud here (it went unpublished in Howard’s lifetime, and was probably better off left in a footlocker), while “The Pool of the Black One” didn’t do a lot for me, either.

In addition to Howard’s stories, Tantor also includes a wonderful introduction by Patrice Louinet, which does a far better job than I describing Howard’s themes. “If the true work of art is something that at once attracts and disturbs, then the Conan stories are something special, an epic painted in bright colors, featuring heroic deeds and larger-than-life characters in fabled lands, but with something darker lying beneath,” Louinet writes.

The one problem with the set? Tantor inexplicably failed to include track listings. You have to skip around to find the stories, and while it didn’t bother me too much for this review (I listened straight through), you’re out of luck if you ever want to just pop in a disc and listen to “The God in the Bowl,” for example. Ah well. I know Tantor has corrected this oversight and plans to include track listings on its future releases.

Still, this omission aside, Tantor Media should be commended for releasing the audio versions of the books that every true Howard fan should have in his or her collection.

Posted by Brian Murphy

Review of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Hyperion
By Dan Simmons; Read by Various
19 CDs – 21 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781423381402
Themes: / Science Fiction / Artificial Intelligence / Aliens / Religion / Starships / Simulations / Transportation /

Seven people, all headed to the planet Hyperion to visit the Shrike, find themselves on the same ship. Regular pilgrimages are made to the Shrike, but these seven have been granted a visit to the Shrike together. To find out why this is, they all agree to tell each other their personal stories of what brought them. The result is a Canterbury Tales in space. A priest, a soldier, a poet, a scholar, a detective, and a consul each tell their story; all separate, all intensely personal, all very different, yet all involving the Shrike in some way.

The book is set in the distant future, and the ideas are plenty. There’s farcasting, where doorways are created to other worlds. One character has a house where every room is on a different world. Costs a fortune, but it can be done. There are artificial intelligences, starships, and sims. Against this backdrop is the Shrike, an alien creature that lives in the Time Tombs, and the seven on a pilgrimage who land in a city on the planet Hyperion, then make their way to see the Shrike over land. “Pilgrimage” is definitely the right word here, because the whole book has a mythic-religious quality. Each person is dealing with very difficult stuff, and what each person hopes to gain from the Shrike when they finally get to see it is nothing short of intervention of a higher power.

Audible Frontiers did a wonderful job with this audiobook. It used to be available only through Audible, but now Brilliance Audio is offering a hardcopy version on CD, which is how I listened. Each story is told by a different character, and each one uses a different narrator. The narrators were all excellent, so this is a perfect presentation of this book.

All seven of the stories are fascinating, well-written stories. There isn’t a weak one on the bunch. This is a top-shelf science fiction novel, up there with the greatest books of the genre.

Highly recommended, without question an SFFaudio Essential! The single caveat is that you must plan to read the next book in the Hyperion Cantos, (called The Fall of Hyperion), because the story doesn’t end with the end of this book. The Fall of Hyperion is also available from Audible (digital) and Brilliance Audio (CD), as are the two books that complete the series, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. This is the only one I’ve read, but I expect I’ll be reading them all.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Quarter Share
By Nathan Lowell; Read by Nathan Lowell
17 MP3 File Podcast – Approx. 8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: February – March 2007
Themes: / Science Fiction / Space Travel / Galactic Civilization /

When Ishmael Wang is orphaned by a flitter crash, he must make some hard decisions about how to survive in a Company-owned universe. With limited time and fewer options, he lands a job as the newest hand on the Solar Clipper Lois McKendrick and learns there’s more to life than making coffee. Join Ish, Pip, Big Bad Bev, and the rest of the Lois McKendrick’s crew as they sail the galaxy in search of profitable trade.

I listened to this podcast novel with no intention of reviewing it. But after putting $10 in the tip jar at Podiobooks.com it kind of seemed dumb not to give you another $0.02 with my opinion of it. It was just too good not to recommend. The story follows Ish Wang, a young kid without enough education or cash to make his way off the planet he’s orphaned on. He experiences a lot of other hurdles too. But, through perseverance, the kindness of a few strangers and a generous natural ability, he finds his place in the universe; and that place is as an able spaceman aboard a merchant spaceship called the Lois McKendrick. Nathan Lowell’s universe depicts a galactic civilization that is probably the least Science Fictiony ever created. Sure they’re traveling in interstellar spacecraft at faster than light speeds, but that doesn’t mean the beds don’t have to be made and the coffee filter doesn’t have to be scrubbed out. There are things to do to make this ship and crew run for heaven’s sake! Making friends and making profit aren’t usually the major plot points in a Science Fiction novel set in space. But, then again Nathan Lowell’s characters aren’t your typical space navy types either. Their more realistic for one. Their more dynamic than virtually any cosmic deckhands than I’ve spent time with in any other novel. there are now 5 novels in this series and a new 6th is forthcoming. I’ve just heard this one, the first, but the very next assembly job I take on will be made all the more enjoyable by having a Nathan Lowell audiobook in my ears.

This podiobook is read by the author, he tells this tale as if it were his very own life story. I would swear he must have been in the merchant navy at some point. What else could explain his vivid and fascinating depiction of such duty? I listened to most of Quarter Share while assembling a gazebo in my mother’s front yard. Let me give you a piece of advice. If you’ve got a gazebo to assemble you really want to have Quarter Share in your MP3 player. Quarter Share is a novel about work. Work, done well, by good, honest and hardworking people. I’ve never heard a novel that spent as much time talking about work, the minutae of it, or for that matter one that tells me how good coffee gets made (it’s all about having a clean pot dontcha know). If Nathan Lowell ever swings by these parts I’ll invite him over. Maybe we’ll even swing by my mother’s gazebo. He can make the coffee.

For more testimonials about how awesome Quarter Share is be sure to check out the official comments thread for it over on Podiobooks.com

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Blake’s 7 – Point Of No Return and Eye Of The Machine

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Blake’s 7 – Point Of No Return and Eye Of The Machine (Vol. 1.2 & 1.3)
By Ben Aaronovitch and James Swallow; Performed by a full cast
2 CDs – Approx. 70 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: B7 Media
Published: November 2008
ISBN: 9781906577063
Themes: / Science Fiction / Politics / Crime / Artificial Intelligence / Terrorism / Noir /

‘Blake’s 7 draws much of its inspiration from the legend of Robin Hood. It follows a small band of outlaws, under a figurehead leader, leading a rebellion against a tyrannical regime.’
–A History and Critical Analysis of Blake’s 7 by John Kenneth Muir

This is the second release in the first season of Blake’s 7 prequel stories. For more information on the original the Trilogy Box Set and Volume 1.1 of the prequel series read our reviews HERE and HERE.

Point of No Return and Eye Of The Machine are two more rousing and unconventional adventures in the Blake’s 7 reimaginging. As is typical with most excellent series the music, sound design and acting are absolutely stellar. But, it is the writing which amazes me the most. There are two ways you can go with remakes of old television series. One is to write it so that the dumbest people in your audience won’t have any trouble following it (New Doctor Who I’m looking at you). The other is to re-imagine, re-construct and re-engage with those who loved a smart Science Fiction series for its intelligence. I’m happy to say that this new Blake’s 7 series is in the latter category. Feelings of surprise and utter engagement followed from the opening moments of a rainswept city soundscape to the final credit sequence. I was rapt, imagining the goings-on as vividly as if they were projected onto 1,000 foot screen. Here are my thoughts on each of the two episodes in this set…

Point of No Return – (Episode 1.2)
Written by James Swallow, directed by Andrew Mark Sewell

Point of No Return depicts a critical juncture in the life of Major Stefan Travis. Travis is a Blake’s 7 baddie, the Guy of Gisborne to Roj Blake’s Robin Hood. In this prequel story we find Travis assigned to investigate Carl Varon. Varon is a kind of proto-Blake – a political troublemaker who claims to have been setup by the powers that be. The evidence is against Varon is damning. There’s a laundry list of horrific charges against him. Plus, there’s all the video evidence. So what’s Travis’ problem? Just that Varon may be entirely innocent. Travis has two duties. 1. A duty to the state. 2. A duty to the truth. Which will he choose?

Actor Craig Kelly plays Travis. To my ears his voices sounds pretty similar to the original TV series actor Brian Croucher. What benefits Kelly here is that he gets a much meatier role than poor Croucher (the TV Travis) ever got. He also benefits by playing against a veteran like Peter Guinness. Guinness has a Jekyll And Hyde-like role in this story, we get him as the innocent man in jail and as a political terrorist (during some video playback sequences). Jake Maskall has the least to do here, playing Sub-Lieutenant Garcia. His role being to mostly act as a naive assistant to Travis.

Eye Of The Machine – (Episode 1.3)
Written by Ben Aaronovitch, directed by Andrew Mark Sewell

Eye Of The Machine also follows a baddie (but one of the less bad baddies). Kerr Avon (the Will Scarlet of Blake’s 7) in this prequel story is a brilliant and geeky post-graduate student at Oxford in 2230. The university’s campus, like so many on Earth, is roiling with political protest movements. Avon wants nothing to do with politics, but a fellow student is hot for two things – political change and Kerr Avon. Meanwhile Avon’s brilliance in his chosen studies has caught the eye of a respected cyberneticist professor. Professor Ensor is working on an artificial intelligence breakthrough – he needs a mind like Avon’s. Will Avon’s attendance at Freedom Party meetings or the ambitious Professor Ensor be his undoing?

Colin Salmon (playing Avon) is a movie star with stage acting chops. Anna Grant (played by Keeley Hawes) is fast talking and passionate. She’s terrific. Ensor, is played by Geoffrey Palmer, a veteran of virtually every television series made in the U.K.. In this he’s slimy, mean-spirited and perfect. The script jumps back and forth between the events as they unfolded chronologically and sometime shortly after ‘what happened’ wherein Ensor and Grant give one sided answers to an interrogator’s questions. Both Episode 1.2 and 1.3 use just three actors each but we don’t need even more. These scripts are perfectly polished audio drama gems. Highly recommended.

Posted by Jesse Willis