SFFaudio – Page 971 – 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.

Review of The Adventures of Superman: Doomsday and Beyond

The Adventures of Superman: Doomsday and Beyond
Written and Directed by Dirk Maggs; Starring a Full Cast
2 Cassettes – 2.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
ISBN: 0563401974
Publisher: BBC
Published: 1993
Themes: / Fantasy / Superhero / Comics /

A review by Jake Black

In my previous review I talked about my experience with Superman, and that it was the reason that I’m doing these Superman-related reviews for SFFAudio. This week’s covers the 1993 audio play Superman: Doomsday and Beyond which dramatically retells the story of Superman’s death and return. I have to admit that I know this story inside out. It was what got me really reading comics, and especially familiar with the Superman comics. Since then, I have heavily followed them.

The story covers over 1000 comic book pages. I was skeptical as to whether or not the audio play could handle such a lengthy story in two cassettes. The play gives it a noble try, and succeeds – mostly. The “death” portion (the epic battle with the demonic Doomsday) is given very little attention. It doesn’t seem as intense as the comics did. It almost cheapens the death of the Man of Steel. Similarly the funeral portion is dramatically edited from the comic book version.

However, the “return” stuff is very loyal to the source material. It covers all of tape two, and approximately a quarter of tape 1. Some of the comic book elements, like the superhero mourning, and Lois’ encounter by the “sympathetic” Jed, were cut from the tapes for time reason, and while they aren’t necessarily missed on the tapes, though they do add a lot to the comics. One very importance difference is the absence of Green Lantern Hal Jordan. Jordan’s involvement in the story set his character’s evolution in motion such that we are just now seeing the end of it in the white-hot Green Lantern Rebirth story, currently published by DC. But, the story is handled well. And it does include some cool moments from the comics prior to this story like Lois’ and Clark’s engagement, and how “they saved Luthor’s brain” to clone him (which is also still an important story in the comics.)

The overall sound is great. Like the previous Superman audio play, these tapes sound great on all of the different players on which I played them. Loaded with sound effects, which mostly sound great, there are a couple of irritations: Superman’s heat vision is an annoying buzz like those cheap ray guns that you’d get from the grocery store for $1.49; and the alien ruler Mongul’s ship is full of travel alarm-clock buzzing.

The voice actors are fantastic, as well. Superman’s voice is a bit too tenor-ish, but I’m getting pretty used to it. The rest of the characters sound great – especially the Australian Lex Luthor II, the new “Man of Steel” John Henry Irons, and the nefarious Cyborg. The only huge complaint I have of the voices is Superboy’s – the teenage clone of Superman. It is clearly an adult trying his best to sound 16 – but it becomes a really bad, really irritating impression of Bill and Ted. It’s really awful!

With the mix of music, sound effects, and a talented cast of voice actors, these are a lot of fun. I enjoyed them more than the other “Adventures of Superman” audio play I listened to previously. I think that the storytelling method may be a bit confusing to people who aren’t familiar with Doomsday, the four false-Supermen, etc. but the overall story is fantastic. If nothing else, it is a great trip down memory lane for a Superman fan who loves this story!

Review of The Fisherwoman’s Daughter by Ursula K. Le Guin; R…

SFFaudio Review

The Fisherwoman's Daughter The Fisherwoman’s Daughter
By Ursula K. Le Guin; Read by Melissa Stewart
63 minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AssistiveMedia.org
Published: 2004
Themes: / Non-Fiction / Writing / Motherhood / Feminism /

Ursula K. Le Guin’s wide ranging article for The New York Times Book Review is now available to be heard, for free, on the excellent AssistiveMedia.org
website. Melissa Stewart’s straight reading is good, though she stumbles here and there over a word. The real meat of this piece comes with Le Guin’s insightful commentary on the history of female authorship. It covers everything from Virginia Woolf to Louisa May Alcott. Le Guin even discusses her own work. Check it out.

REALAUDIO LINK: http://www.assistivemedia.org/amrams/FishermansDaughter.ram

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey

To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey©
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Cory Doctorow
FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD – 23 Minutes 37 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
LINK: http://www.craphound.com/audio/Doctorow_-_Billy.mp3
Publisher: www.craphound.com
Published: 2001
Themes: / Science Fiction / Dystopia / Humor / Satire /

Billy Bailey was the finest heel the sixth grade had ever seen — a true artisan who kept his brand pure and unsullied, picking and managing his strategic alliances with the utmost care and acumen. He’d dumped BanginBumpin Fireworks (a division of The Shanghai Novelty Company, Ltd.) in the _fourth_ grade, fer chrissakes. Their ladyfingers were too small to bother with; their M-80s were so big that you’d have to be a lunatic to go near them.

First published in Interzone, To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey© is set in a world in which advertising has taken over every institution. This dystopic tale is a fun little story. Billy Bailey® is a 6th grader, who’s something like a smarter Dennis The Menace®, but that’s probably selling Billy short. Dennis The Menace® is just a fictional character. In this REAL world, REAL people are by far the more profitable brands. If you’re a 6th grade boy in elementary school, you want to wear Billy’s© shoes, drink what Billy© drinks and say what Billy© says. Billy Bailey® is at the top of the brand list. Everything Billy Bailey© does is predicated on what he thinks will most benefit his brand. The Billy© brand is all about playing the rake, the prankster who always beats the authority figure, which in this case is Billy’s school principal. But when Billy® gets tarred with a pathetic M-80 down the toilet prank in his Pepsi Elementary© girls bathroom, Billy® must fire his agent and come up with a whole new corporate strategy – he better re-brand his image if he wants to keep his sponsors.

Doctorow does this as a plain reading. I don’t expect all authors to be gifted readers – that’s why they pay the professional narrators – but that isn’t the problem. The problem here is with the recording. It isn’t terrific. It sounds as if was cobbled together from more than one recording. Apparently it was recorded using the built-in microphone on his iBook©, but in the multiple sessions it took to record it must have been at different distances from the mic, because the sound is inconsistent. You can also hear the pages as they turn, and what sounds like a squeaking computer chair with other occasional background noises. Despite this, it’s more than worth the money – it is after all completely FREE!

Doctorow’s story is interesting and original. It tackles the invasion of capitalism into children’s lives, and does it with a biting satire. See, even in our world, a corporation has only corporate legal responsibilities and no moral ones. Seeing as corporations have all the legal status of persons in our capitalist society it is no small wonder that people might come to think of themselves as corporations. Heck, our celebrities really are corporations! This is a very sad world. Everyone uses catchphrases to define their personal “brand”, and everyone is jockeying for sponsors. Morality has been completely subverted by marketing. Those who are successfully marketed are good and those that aren’t…. well, they aren’t even worth thinking about – just has-beens or never-will-bes.

On Cory Doctorow’s website he says he’s planning to read all of his stories and release them as free downloadable MP3s. This is a wonderful idea, and I’ll be sure to listen in however he does it, but maybe he should take a page from James Patrick Kelly’s FREE READS website and consider recording in a professional studio. Apparently it costs about $200 per session, but the sound quality and consistency in one makes the recording archive quality. Kelly’s stuff is free too, but he does ask for PayPal donations.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Adventures of Superman

Science Fiction Audio Review

The Adventures of Superman
Written and Directed by Dirk Maggs; Starring a Full Cast
2 Cassettes – 2.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
ISBN: 056339370X
Publisher: BBC
Published: 1994
Themes: / Fantasy / Superhero / Comics /

A review by Jake Black

I’m not really an avid listener of the sci-fi audio, and so it was a bit of a surprise to be invited to write two reviews for SFFAudio. However, the two they asked me to do focus on Superman, and that is a subject with which I am extremely familiar. I have spent the last three plus years working as a contributing writer for the official web sites for Smallville, wrote an issue of the comic series based on that show, and have worked on a ton of assorted academic and comic-related projects centered on the Man of Steel.

This week we’re beginning my reviews with an evaluation of the BBC Radio play The Adventures of Superman. Created in 1994 for radio airplay across the pond, the audio play was presented on two cassettes with a total running time of over two-and-a-half hours. The story is lifted straight from the comic books of 1986-87; a series called Man of Steel written by John Byrne, which relaunched Superman from the beginning. It is Superman from his first appearance in Metropolis. He meets Lois Lane and Lex Luthor for the first time. He discovers the origins of his powers, and creates the dual identity to help others. He fights street thugs, the Kryptonite-infested Metallo, the failed clone Bizarro, all the while trying to bring down the corporate magnate Lex Luthor.

The dialog and story are nearly completely lifted from the comics word for word, albeit with the occasional addition of descriptive dialog to help the listener imagine what everything looks like – clothing etc. While I understand the necessity for such expositional dialog on the tapes, it was a bit cheesy – “How could anyone dress like that, with tan pants and a black t-shirt!” etc.

The voice talent used for the play are all very talented, and create captivating characters with their voices. Nearly all of them match very closely with the voices I’d created for characters like Lois Lane, Jonathan and Martha Kent, and Lex Luthor, while the menacing Metallo and Bizarro are both well cast, too. The only voice I really didn’t like much Clark Kent/Superman played by Stuart Mulligan. While he does his best to drop his voice when he is Superman, it is too high a tenor voice to be taken seriously as either character from the beginning. Lana Lang (voiced by Shelley Thompson) is also a bit of a disappointment as she is a bit too much of a “southern belle” to be from Kansas. But, perhaps, that is due to this being a British piece with actors not knowing the distinctive regional dialects for the USA.

The play is full of nice additions, like sound effects for everything – footsteps, car horns, police sirens, gunshots, etc. However, the sound effect given to Superman’s heat vision is awful. It is similar to the little ray guns that light up and you can buy at the grocery store for a dollar. In spite of this one set back, the mix between dialog, music, and sound effects is perfect. I played it on several different players, and in all cases – including the car – the sound was pure, crisp, and all around nice. It didn’t need an extra boost of volume from any of the players I listened to.

All in all, if you are a Superman, these tapes are a lot of fun. Non-Superman fans may not enjoy them quite as much, but they do provide a good introduction to the character, his background, and his friends and enemies. I’m not totally convinced that they will bring new converts to the ways of the Last Son of Krypton, but they are, overall, entertaining, faithful to the subject matter, and well produced.

Review of The Tower Of The Elephant and The Frost Giant’s Daughter

Robert E. Howard’s Conan – The Tower Of The Elephant & The Frost Giant’s Daughter
Adapted by Roy Thomas & Alan B. Goldstein; Performed by a FULL CAST
33 1/3 RPM LP – Approx. 46 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMATIZATION]
Publisher: Moondance Productions
Published: 1975
Themes: / Fantasy / Aliens / Battle / Mythology / Gods /

Alan B. Goldstein had a dream, to bring the Robert E. Howard 1930s pulp magazine hero, Conan The Cimmerian, to audio. In 1974 he contacted Glenn Lord, agent for Howard’s literary estate and proposed a radio series based on Conan. Permission was granted and a pilot was adapted from one of Howard’s shortest Conan tales – “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”. After the pilot was completed, Goldstein brought it to Marvel Comics editor Roy Thomas. Thomas loved it and expressed an interest in contributing to the project. So together, with Alan B. Goldstein working as producer and Roy Thomas scripting, they decided that a second Conan audio adventure should be made.

Actors Owen McGee and Paul Falzone were again hired to reprise their roles as “The Narrator” and “Conan” respectively. And thus was born the second audio dramatization “The Tower Of The Elephant”. Unfortunately their vision of a Conan radio series was dashed. By the late 1970s, radio dramas were virtually dead. Only these two stories were ever adapted for the aborted Conan radio series. But Goldstein would go on to produce at least one more Conan record – but that, my Hyborian friends, is another story.

Side One – “The Tower Of The Elephant” – 27 Minutes 29 Seconds
Conan is in Zamoria’s City Of Thieves, Arenjun, where in a local tavern he overhears a boastful kidnapper. Before dispatching the cur Conan discovers the whereabouts of The Tower of the Elephant and of the fabled jewel rumored to be secured within it. Soon after Conan is at that bejeweled tower, determined to rob it of it’s jewel – but he has much to contend with – he must surpass another thief, ravenous lions and a giant spider. And what he finds in the tower’s interior is like nothing else in this age undreamed of. Howard’s prose is frothy, wondrous and direct. The performances here are letter perfect and the power of the original short story is successfully translated.

Side Two – “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” – 17 Minutes 41 Seconds
This, the shorter of the two dramatizations, again takes its stylistic cues from Howard’s pulp roots; nearly every word of this adaptation is taken directly from the original text itself. “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” is set in the high mountains that border Vanaheim and Aesgard where Conan has just fought a fierce battle, lying exhausted and near death on the battlefield, a near-naked woman suddenly visits him. Her voluptuous body re-ignites his will to live but when she mocks him, he chases her for seeming endless leagues across the snow-covered mountains. Conan finds it strange that she does not seem to feel the cold that chills his bones, dressed as she is shouldn’t she be frostbitten? Of course it is all a trap, this “woman” is no mortal, she’s lead Conan to her two massively dangerous looking “brothers”. The performances and narration paint a vivid mental film full of both preternatural storytelling and mythological virtue. Structured more as an incident than a plotted adventure the layered mythology of Howard’s invented Hyborian world casts a spell upon the listener. We feel Conan’s weariness and we follow along hotly in his footsteps as he’s tempted by that fleet-footed Valkyrie. It all has a dream like quality and it’s juicily full of pulpy goodness. I truly wish Alan B. Goldstein had got his dream and these two audio adventures had become the first two episodes in the Conan radio series.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Very Bad Deaths by Spider Robinson

Very Bad Deaths
By Spider Robinson; Read by Spider Robinson
10 CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0786182431
Themes: / Science Fiction / Serial Killer / Psychic /

Many listeners don’t like it when the author narrates his own story. I’ve never understood this, especially when it comes to science fiction, which has a long history of this. Early Caedmon titles featured Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov reading their own works. Live readings are common events at science fiction conventions. And I find that I usually like author-read audiobooks. The author lends an extra dimension to the reading that a third-party narrator simply can’t provide.

Every now and then you run across an author/narrator who is good enough at narrating that you’d like to see him narrate some other author’s books too. Harlan Ellison is that good, for example. And so is Spider Robinson. He reads in such a comfortable, personable way that it’s easy to imagine that this guy you know popped in for lunch and is telling you this story over the kitchen table. I enjoyed his reading so much that I wondered first how good his Callahan Chronicals would be read by him (not that Barrett Whitener did a bad job – he didn’t), and further, how Spider would be narrating another author’s work, like, say, a Heinlein novel. The answer? He’d be pretty damn good. I found myself eager to return to this audiobook every time I was forced to put it down.

Along with Russell, who is the loosely autobiographical main character, the story involves a serial killer with a fetish for inflicting pain, a psychic roommate who is appropriately named “Smelly”, and a female cop who is not a lesbian. The story flits from the past, where Russell first met Smelly, to the present, where Smelly seeks him out to tell him that he read the mind of the serial killer as he flew over his house in an airplane and they better by God do something about him.

The story is mainly about these characters going after the serial killer, having many conversations about whether they should go after him. Robinson keeps it interesting throughout, but doesn’t hesitate to move off the plot for some tangential opinion dumps, or some science fiction references, or some puns. The story moves, and is personal, enjoyable, often funny, and touching. And the bad guy is flinchingly bad. Enjoy this one.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson