SFFaudio – Page 718 – News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.

Audible’s new imprint: Audible Frontiers

SFFaudio News

Audible Frontiers is a new imprint (announced today but delivering titles for about two weeks now) from Audible.com. These are Audible.com exclusive titles, produced for audible by audible. Each title in the collection appears to include “Bonus Audio” which is typically a short commentary by the author about the audiobook in question. There are precisely 30 titles available today. Many are series novels, but many are novellas, most have accolades, and nearly all of them are BRAND NEW to audio.

There are plenty of titles in that 30 that I’m looking forward to hearing. We’ll have a full new releases post on them all soon.

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Audio Column – “Orson Scott Card Selects” – First subject – Star Born by Andre Norton

SFFaudio Online Audio

Orson Scott Card Selects is a new feature audio column on Audible.com in which the future Grandmaster of Science Fiction selects “classic sci-fi and fantasy” that he thinks you’ll really like. His first selection is … Wonder Audio’s version of Star Born by Andre Norton! WOOT!

Check the site out HERE. Or have a listen |MP3| to Card talk about why he loves Star Born!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Silver Key blog: Check out an audio book and listen, or I’ll gut you and feed your innards to the dogs!

SFFaudio News

Brian Murphy always has something interesting to say on his The Silver Key blog. His thoughtful essays on fantasy, movies and books are always fun to read. Recently he posted a cool rumination on what makes his commute a pleasure. I’m posting it below, and in full, because it’s so awesome. But don’t keep that from you visiting his site for more great posts:

My passion for audio books is overflowing right now. Today on my usual semi-torturous hour-long commute to work (each way) I finished Bernard Cornwell’s The Lords of the North. My God, if that wasn’t the most enjoyable commute I’ve had in years, I don’t know what was.

The Lords of the North and the rest of The Saxon Stories are amazingly entertaining tales on their own. But couple them with an amazing voice-over performance by UK actor Tom Sellwood, and, well, you’ve got yourself a hell of a fun car ride. I happened to glance around on Interstate 95 this morning (tearing myself away from the bloody tale of Danes and Saxons battling for control of 9th century England) to glance at the faces of the commuters around me. Some were pinched and angry, but most simply looked distracted or bored. Given what they were likely listening to–the wasteland that is AM/FM radio–I can’t say I blame them.

To hell with radio. Give me a good audio book any day. While the sap in his gas-guzzling SUV next to me had NPR droning away on the dial, I was listening in on the conversation of Uhtred Ragnarson, true Lord of Bebbanburg, and Danish warlord Ragnar Ragnarsson, as they shouted the joys of “Women and War!” while riding on horseback through Northern England circa 881. While the 20-something chick to my front in her Honda was rotting her brain listening to the vapid Destiny’s Child, I was “seeing” the clash of shield walls, bloodied axes and swords, and screaming men. In my mind’s eye I was watching viking longships under sail in the open sea, the bright light of morning gleaming off shield bosses and helmets, and smelling and hearing great feasting halls flowing with ale and bursting with loud song and the poems of skalds.

And best of all this experience is “free” of charge. Audio books are expensive and the only ones I actually own are The Lord of the Rings (unabridged), as read by Rob Inglis. But you don’t have to spend money: I get my audio books from my public library, which is part of a 10-town consortium from which I’m free to interlibrary loan a large number of audio titles. It’s a great use of my tax dollars and I’ve certainly derived a lot of pleasure these last few years on my drive to work. I only wish I had discovered them sooner.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Star Trek: Vulcan’s Soul Book 3: Epiphany by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz

SFFaudio Review

Star Trek: Vulcan’s Soul Book 3: Epiphany
By Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz; Read by Richard Poe
10 CDs – 12 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9731419315176
Themes: / Science Fiction / Star Trek / Vulcans / Romulans /

For a long time, Star Trek on audio was limited to the excellent yet abridged productions published by Simon and Schuster Audio. The Simon and Schuster recordings are packed with music and sound effects, but Recorded Books has published this trilogy of unabridged Trek novels (this is the third) in their single narrator style.

Die-hard Trekkers will find the whole trilogy interesting, as it explains in detail the origins of the Remans, which were introduced in the film Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). It also tells the story of Spock and Saavik, a romance that has been explored in Star Trek novels, but not on the screen, though Captain Jean-Luc Picard mentions attending Spock’s marriage ceremony in the Next Generation episode, “Unification”. He doesn’t mention who Spock married in that episode, but Sherman and Shwartz included the ceremony in their previous novel (which is not part of this trilogy) entitled Vulcan’s Heart.

The trilogy as a whole follows two connected storylines; one from the distant past, and one in the “present”. In the past, the story follows the family of the Vulcan Karatek as they leave Vulcan and travel across the stars to find a new world to colonize. In the “present”, which is set after the Dominion War but before Star Trek: Nemesis, Spock diplomatically deals with the Watraii, a race with grievances against the Romulan Star Empire.

In this book, Karatek’s family and other Vulcan exiles are imprisoned on Remus, indentured to hard labor mining the various ores the inhabitants of Romulus need. The present thread finds the crew of the Enterprise-E fighting Commander Tomalak and the Romulans as they try to find the origins of the invading Watraii and their claims on an artifact that predates the Romulan sundering from Vulcan at the time of Surak.

Richard Poe once again does an excellent job, voicing the various characters of the story; not imitating the actors, but mimicking their speech patterns. He even voices the women well. This is an excellent series of books for those Trekkers who like reading about Star Trek history.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson and Scott A.