SFFaudio – Page 872 – 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.

Author Focus: Mike Resnick

SFFaudio Commentary

The prolific Mike Resnick is one of the winningest Science Fiction writers in history. He is also as a long-time participant in Science Fiction fandom. Like many of his peers, in the 1960s and 70s Resnick wrote sleaze sex paperbacks under pseudonyms. His most praised work so far has been his Kirinyaga cycle, which was inspired by his many visits to Africa. His daughter, Laura Resnick, is also an award-winning SF author. Unfortunately for us Mike Resnick still only has has a small percentage of his fiction available on audio. Here’s as much as we’ve been able to find:

Audiobooks:

One Perfect Morning With Jackals & Kirinyaga (Tales of Kirinyaga #1)
By Mike Resnick; Read by Pat Bottino
1 Cassette – 83 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 1997
ISBN: 1884612237
[READ THE SFFaudio REVIEW]

For I Have Touched the Sky (Tales of Kirinyaga #2)
By Mike Resnick ; Read by Pat Bottino
1 cassette – 71 minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 1997
ISBN: 1884612253
Once before, the Kikuyu tried to become something that they were not, and they became not city-dwelling Kikuyu, or bad Kikuyu, but an entirely new tribe called Kenyans. Those who came to Kirinyaga came here to preserve the old ways – and if women start reading, some of them will become discontented, and they will leave, and then one day there will be no more Kikuyu left.

Sci-Fi Audio – The Hugo Nominees 2002
Edited by Jeremy Bloom; Read by Various
2 CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Frequency Audio Magazine / SciFiAudio.com
Published: 2001
ISBN:
This collection includes Resnick’s Old MacDonald Had A Farm and is read by Hour 25 Online host Warren James. The bio-engineered “butterballs” were saving the Earth’s impoverished billions from starvation. Even vegetarians couldn’t object to that, right? These animals exist only to be eaten… But when a reporter visits the factory farm where the butterballs are grown, he finds that things aren’t quite as simple as they seem.

Escape Pod #055 Down Memory Lane
By Mike Resnick; Read by Alex Wilson
1 MP3 File – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: May 26th 2006
Escape Pod editor Steve Eley picked this story along with 3 other Hugo nominated short stories for podcast in the Spring of 2006. The podcast of this story has lead to a successful movie rights purchase for Resnick.

Escape Pod #073 Barnaby In Exile
By Mike Resnick; Read by Paul Fischer
1 MP3 File – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: September 28th 2006
Editor Steve Eley picked this melancholic tale for podcast. The story is reminiscent of Pat Murphy‘s classic Rachel In Love.

Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia
By Mike Resnick; Read by Paul Michael Garcia
8 CDs or 1 MP3 CD – 10 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9780786167906 (CD), 9780786174218 (MP3-CD)
[SFFaudio REVIEW FORTHCOMING]

Birthright: The Book Of Man
By Mike Resnick; Read by Adams Morgan
11 CDs or 1 MP3 CD – Approx. 13 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0786192941 (CD), 0786190531 (MP3-CD)
“Birthright: The Book of Man is a brilliant novel of science fiction that carefully constructs a blueprint of mankind’s history—social, political, economic, scientific, and religious—for the next 18,000 years.”

We Could Do Worse: A Millennial Collection of Alternate Histories
Edited by Martin Greenberg; Read by various narrators
4 Cassettes – 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Dove Audio
Published: 1999
ISBN: 0787119024
Includes as story called Over There by Mike Resnick, read by William Windom
[SFFaudio REVIEW FORTHCOMING]

Interviews with Mike Resnick:

Recorded at Chi-Con 2000 |MP3|
Recorded at ConJose 2002 |MP3|
Recorded at WindyCon 2006 |MP3|

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Time Traveler becomes CONTRIBUTING EDITOR for SFFaudio

SFFaudio News

The Time Traveler Stop the Time Machine! I’m getting off. That could be taken more than one way, but we won’t go there (vibrations and all that).

Jesse Willis has asked me to join SFFaudio.com as a contributing editor. Obviously he thinks since I’m a time traveler, I’m a master of time. Also obviously, he’s insane. Because after I told him I had a day job, a family with little ones, a podcast TimeTravelerShow.com, a business WonderAudio.com, and already a reviewer for SFFaudio.com, he still wanted me on board. Since time travel obviously addles the mind, I said in my dopiest voice “Okay!” Jesse suggested to try it on a trial basis to the first of the year. But unless the time patrol catches up to me, I’ll be around for a lot longer. Since Scott Danielson, co-creator of SFFaudio decided to depart this site, and Jesse hasn’t learned how to clone himself, yet; I’m here to step up and lend a hand.

Actually, I’m thrilled! This has been my home on the net for awhile now, and it just gets better and better, don’t you think? My first task as an editor is the receiver of review materials. Yes, I get to get the audiobooks to distribute to our legion of reviewers (well several anyways). If you have materials to be reviewed please contact me at [email protected]. Jesse and I are discussing some really exciting future content for this site. We hope you check back often, encourage you to use the RSS news feed, and find the best listens in Science Fiction and Fantasy audio.

Oh yeah! Since the time patrol is breathing down my back, I’ve created a shtick that I’m just as chronologically challenged as the rest of you. Some of you might think this as a shtick within a shtick, which is like a time paradox wrapped in an enigma. Anyways, under this new alias, you can call me Rick.

posted by The Time Traveler (aka Rick)

Update on StarShipSofa – in case you missed our first rave.

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Starship Sofa podcast, the UK’s answer to The Kick Ass Mystic Ninjas, and hosts, Tony and Ciaran, have nearly caught up to the Ninjas in terms of show output. Starship Sofa just posted their 18th show, and the Ninjas are at show #21. In terms of awesomeness, they are neck and neck. Check out this list of shows!

Shows so far:

Show # 1: Classic Author: Alfred Bester |MP3|
Show # 2: Classic Author: John Brunner |MP3|
Show # 3: Classic Author: Algis Budrys |MP3|
Show # 4: Classic Author: Cordwainer Smith |MP3|
Show # 5: Classic Author: Stanislaw Lem |MP3|
Show # 6: Classic Film: Dark Star |MP3|
Show # 7: Classic Author: Philip K. Dick (Part 1) |MP3|
Show # 8: Classic Author: Philip K. Dick (Part 2) |MP3|
Show # 9: Classic Author: Philip K. Dick (Part 3) |MP3|
Show # 10: Classic Film: Capricorn One |MP3|
Show # 11: Classic Author: Henry Kuttner |MP3|
Show # 12: Classic Author: Robert Silverberg |MP3|
Show # 13: Classic Author: Joe Haldeman |MP3|
Show # 14: Classic Author: L. Ron Hubbard |MP3|
Show # 15: Classic Author: Harlan Ellison |MP3|
Show # 16: Classic Author: Douglas Adams (Part 1) |MP3|
Show # 17: Classic Author: Douglas Adams (Part 2) |MP3|
Show # 18: Classic Author: Robert Sheckley |MP3|

To subscribe to the podcast plug this feed into your podcatcher:

http://starshipsofa.libsyn.com/rss

posted by Jesse Willis

ITV Podcast interviews J.G. Ballard

SFFaudio Online Audio / Podcast

There is a fascinating interview with J.G. Ballard available from The South Bank Show. This is a show produced by ITV, the U.K.’s Independent Television Network. The programme is hosted by the always erudite Melvyn Bragg whom you may already know from his other podcast BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time.

Together, Bragg and Ballard’s discuss the creation of fiction, Ballards experiences as a medical student, his childhood growing up in a Japanese concetration camp and the particular importance of Science Fiction.

Ballard also talks about the influence of surrealism in his early novels, which all deal with natural catastrophes: The Drowned World, The Crystal World, The Drought.

Subscribe to the show via this feed:

http://download.itv.com/southbankshow/podcast.xml

posted by Jesse Willis

Mike Resnick interview on ERB podcast – Dateline Jasoom

SFFaudio Online Audio / Podcast

Dateline Jasoom, a podcast about the imaginative works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, has an interview with legendary SF author Mike Resnick. Mr. Resnick has written over 50 novels, numerous short stories, has edited 45 anthologies, and won 5 Hugos as well as a Nebula award. Mike was an assistant editor in his younger days for the Hugo award-winning fanzine ERB-dom. He talks about that as well as his early novels that were a pastiche of Burroughs that he is now very discomforted about.

Download the show direct |MP3|, or insert this feed into your podcatcher to subscribe:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DatelineJasoom

posted by The Time Traveler

Review of The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks

Science Fiction Audibook Review

The Algebraist
By Iain M. Banks; Read by Geoffrey Amis
21 CDs – Approx. 24.25 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Clipper Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 9781419353772
Themes: / Science Fiction / Space Epic / Galactic Empires / Aliens / Worm Holes /

This is a space opera on the epic scale. Fassin Taak is a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers. The Nasqueron Dwellers are a very old race, almost as old as the universe itself. They are inhabitants of gas giants all across the universe. Intra-galactic traveling is done by way of wormholes. The Outsiders from beyond the galaxy are sending in military forces and destroying wormholes. The leader of the Mercatoria, the reigning galactic empire, sends Fassin on a quest to find a fabled book. The book is called The Algebraist. As legends have it, it’s a book written by the Dwellers and in it is contained information of a hidden network of wormholes that is held in secret.

The Mercatoria is a corrupt empire headed by the Archimandrite Luseferous. Luseferous is the most evil villain to ever inhabit a galactic empire. Darth Vader couldn’t pack this guy’s lunch. He creates living punching bags out of the heads of his attempted assassins. He can modify the chemical effects of his semen to make courtesans love him or die for him. He’s a false advocate for the official galactic religion. We learn through the course of the book his internalized philosophy that makes his atrocities believable.

This is a long audiobook but it sustains one’s interest through its entirety. The narrator is Geoffrey Amis. Mr. Amis has a fine narrative voice but it doesn’t express a lot of range to differentiate the individual characters. This is a vast canvas with a large cast of characters and this lack of range makes the individual characters harder to remember.

My American bias surfaced into a silly thought. I was thinking how strange it was that the narrator portrays every character in the book with an English accent. Well, the characters aren’t really speaking English in the book but some sort of galactic standard. The author just conveys the dialogue as English as a logical convention. It occurred to me that the many aliens and cultures would have varying accents (as well as languages). I believe it would be impossible to convey alien accents without reference to our own human accents. This would create some rather silly aliens that might be useful in a humorous story, but would undermine a serious work. So the narrator did right to stick to his native accent. I mention my American bias, because if this were read with an American accent it would never have stricken me as strange that all the characters speak with the same accent.

Overall this space opera is a many-layered fugue and Iain Banks pulls out all the stops.

posted by The Time Traveler