A good week at SFFaudio!
Space Boy
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
2 CDs -2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207648
Is it space travel that children dream of, or merely visiting other worlds? Todd had always set his heart on being an astronaut, but when he meets an alien and travels to another world, he doesn’t use a spaceship; he just hangs out in his own back yard.
In Space Boy, Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game, takes listeners into a strange and wonderful future, where people from another world regularly visit Earth, usually without being noticed. And when humans travel to their world, they find themselves dangerously weak and powerless, until Todd finds a way to set both worlds to rights.
By turns funny and painful, Space Boy is Card at his best, exploring human nature for the entertainment of readers young and old.
A Civil Campaign
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
16 CDs – 19 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207099
Lord Miles Vorkosigan has a problem that all his new power can’t solve: unrequited love for the beautiful Vor widow Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Ekaterin is violently allergic to marriage as a result of her first exposure. But as Miles learned from his late career in galactic covert ops, if a frontal assault won’t do, go to subterfuge.
Miles has a cunning plan, which, of course, has to be worked out in between District succession scandals and plans for the Emperor’s wedding. And if no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, just imagine what all Miles’s friends and relatives can do to his romantic strategy.
Master of Space and Time
By Rudy V. B. Rucker; Read by Scott Grunden
5 CDs – 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433207709
Madcap inventor Harry Gerber is hopeless when it comes to surviving in the real world. So he uses his genius to twist the laws of science and create his own tailor-made universe. Assisted by his straight-men co-conspirators, Joe Fletcher and the comely Sondra Tupperware, and powered by gluons—the stuff that holds our very atoms together—Gerber creates a blunzer, enabling him to change the very nature of reality.
From a mirror-image world where sluglike parasites make slaves of humanity, to trees and bushes that grow fries and pork chops, to a rain of fish, Master of Space and Time takes listeners on the ultimate joyride. But once the gluons at the core of Harry’s creation run out, disaster looms for Harry and his friends.
High physics and high jinks combine for a wild voyage that blurs the line between science and magic.
Blood Fever
By Karen Marie Moning; Read by Joyce Bean
8 CDs – 9 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423341932
MacKayla Lane’s ordinary life underwent a complete makeover when she landed on Ireland’s shores and was plunged into a world of deadly sorcery and ancient secrets.
In her fight to stay alive, Mac must find the Sinsar Dubh – a million-year-old book of the blackest magic imaginable, which holds the key to power over both the world of the Fae and of Man. Pursued by Fae assassins, surrounded by mysterious figures she knows she cannot trust, Mac finds herself torn between two deadly and irresistible men: V’lane, the insatiable Fae who can turn sensual arousal into an obsession for any woman, and the ever-inscrutable Jericho Barrons, a man as alluring as he is mysterious.
For centuries the shadowy realm of the Fae has coexisted with that of humans. Now the walls between the two are coming down, and Mac is the only thing that stands between them….
posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show
We all might want to have a listen to the BBC Radio 4 Book At Bedtime slot for next week. They’ll be airing a tale in five parts, Monday to Friday October, of a reading of a new ghost story from author Susan Hill. This is the author of The Woman In Black, which became a popular West End play (it is still running there, 18 years after it debuted). Thanks to our eagle eyed U.K. contributor, Roy, for the head’s up.
The Man In The Picture
Edith Nesbit’s classic fantasy novel The Enchanted Castle is a delightful children’s story, but one that is likely to have limited appeal for older listeners. Fantasy scholars, however, will find much of interest in it. Here is an author that C. S. Lewis listed as an influence and this is the story of a magic ring that, at first, seems merely an invisibility ring but turns out to be much more. Peter Eastman, the reader of this public domain audiobook, does a better than average job of handling the near impossible task of doing several different children’s voices.
