aliens – Page 37

Review of Vortex Blaster by E.E. "Doc" Smith

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Vortex Blaster
By E.E. “Doc” Smith; Read by Reed McColm
1 MP3-CD or 6 CDs – Approx. 7.5 hrs [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books in Motion
Published: 2007
ISBN: 159607793X (MP3-CD); 1596077921 (CDs)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Aliens / Atomic Power / Galactic Civilizations /

I was pleasantly surprised listening to this new audiobook. My past experience with Smith’s books has been less than stellar. On more than one occasion, I’ve cast his novels down unfinished in favor of something else. E. E. “Doc” Smith is one of the most revered names in SF. So I’ve always thought I must be missing something. Anybody who knows my tastes or my podcast knows that I love old SF (as well as new). I’ve always found his overly heroic heroes and his wimpy, fainting females hard to care about. So when I received this new title, my expectations were not the highest.

Neil “Storm” Cloud is the main protagonist and the “Vortex Blaster” of the title. Uncontrolled atomic vortexes have been appearing on planets throughout the galaxy. The vortexes contain radiation and wildly incalescent temperatures. They only grow larger over time and threaten to destroy any worlds they appear upon. Think of them as nuclear tornadoes that never dissipate. Luckily, Cloud has a unique gift—a computational mind that is capable of astonishingly complex mathematics. As the novel opens we find out that he’s been working, without results, on a project to figure out how to stop the vortexes. He has just lost his wife and kids to one of these atomic infernos. Nearly suicidal and distraught, he leaves the project when he has a sudden inspiration on how to stop the phenomena. He has to be in the center of the vortex and has to set off a duodec explosion equal to the energy of the nuclear storm. And because of his unique computational mind, he’s the only man that can do it—and thus becomes the Vortex Blaster. Cloud’s new ability makes him very much in demand. He’s soon traveling across the galaxy to put out the worst vortexes until he finds himself set upon by space pirates, warring aliens, and a mad scientist.

If this all sounds rather pulpy and fun— it is. Vortex Blaster mixes ripsnorting adventure with a jaw-dropping sense of wonder. No one would accuse “Doc” Smith of being a great prose stylist. But if you’re picking up an audiobook called Vortex Blaster, you’re probably not reading it for the style. Actually, Smith is a much better writer than I’d previously thought. “Storm” Cloud is a seasoned, sometimes cynical protagonist. In the second half of the novel he meets Joan, a telepathic genius, and romance ensues. Joan is resourceful and smart – no young, thin beauty. Each of his aliens have unique characteristics too. The entire novel is leavened with wit and humor to contrapose the serious tone.

You may wonder if this title is part of his famous “Lensman” series. It is definitely a stand-alone novel but it is set in the same universe as the Lensman stories. Vortex Blaster is tangentially related, but can be enjoyed without reading any of the other books in the series.

As narrator for this title, Reed McColm handles the vast array of human and especially alien characters with unerring deftness. He nails the aliens individual eccentricities through voice and accents. He handles the narration for several “Doc” Smith’s audiobooks that are published by Books in Motion. Mr. McColm’s talents are a perfect fit to E.E. “Doc” Smith’s super science space epics.

posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

Review of The Stonehenge Gate by Jack Williamson

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

The Stonehenge Gate
By Jack Williamson; Read by Harlan Ellison
7 CDs – 8.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9780786146550 (Cassette), 9780786174119 (MP3-CD), 9780786167784 (CD)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Stargate / Journey / Slavery / Evolution / Aliens /

Click here for audio sample.

This is Jack Williamson’s last book, at least it’s the last book published in his lifetime. The man has had a long career, a very long career. Jack’s first story was published in the fairly new Amazing Stories in 1928. Jack has been able to adapt his fiction to the changing and maturing literature that we call Science Fiction, again and again.

One admirable quality of Jack’s work that remained consistent over the nine decades in which he wrote, was his ability to tell a good yarn. His stories can always hold your attention, and he never forgot to have a beginning, middle and an end. This may sound like a trait that all writers should have, but it is really not the case. This always kept Jack’s works above the average SF writer.

In The Stonehenge Gate, we have four poker buddies that find a gateway into other worlds. The four characters are academics who are excavating a site under the sands of the Sahara. Will is an English Professor who narrates the story. Ram is an African professor who has a strange birthmark that mimics the shape of the Stonehenge Gate that they find. Stranger still is that the birthmark seems to be hereditary.

They soon pass into many new worlds throughout this novel. The majority of the novel takes place in a world inhabited by a preindustrial society with institutionalized black slavery. The characters have to grapple with functioning in this world while supporting abolishinest causes. There’s a dark quality to this part of the journey that has more than a passing nod to Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness.

Harlan Ellison’s narration is spectacular. This is likely the only audiobook that is written by one SF Grand Master and read by another. Of course, there aren’t any SF Grandmaster’s that have also won an Audie award like Harlan has. Harlan throws himself into his acting. He’s energized and seems to be convincingly living the parts he’s portraying to a greater degree than can be said of most voice actors.

How does this book stack up against the rest of the Williamson cannon? I don’t believe this is one of Jack’s best books nor one of his lesser efforts. Placing it somewhere in the middle. But in the case of Jack, that’s a pretty damn good book.

posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

Review of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

The Forever War
By Joe Haldeman; Read by George Wilson
8 CDs – 9.5 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 1999
ISBN: 0788739832
Themes: / Science Fiction / Hard SF / Military SF / War / Time Travel / Aliens / Love /

“Tonight we are going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.”

The guy who said this was a sergeant who didn’t look five years older than me. So if he’d ever killed a man in combat, silently or otherwise, he’d done it as an infant.

This is Vietnam all over again but now it’s in space. In a world where dreams come true and Science Fiction has become part of the School’s National Curriculum, then Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War becomes compulsory reading material. It’s little wonder it sits at No.1 on Gollancz list of “Science Fiction Masterworks.” And rightly so. Here is a story still fit and ready for duty thirty-three years after winning the Hugo award for “Best Science Fiction Novel.”

William Mandela is a gifted and brilliant college student and so is ideal fodder for the army’s war against an unknown alien race called the Taurans. Mandela is drafted into a harsh training program that kills more recruits than it can mould into soldiers. He is educated and trained to the highest of army standards, becoming one of Earth’s elite foot soldiers in a war against the alien Taurans. He is also a reluctant soldier caught up in this futile war, a war Earth’s economy can not do without. Add to this collapsars, light speed travel, time dilation, ever changing societies and you have Science Fiction at it’s flawless.

Read by George Wilson with the skill of a seasoned veteran. His voice never invades your senses or pulls you away from the gripping tale Haldeman has delivered, and that’s crucial for an audiobook. Wilson got his start in broadcasting as a news director with American Forces Radio and Television in Thailand. He was also instrumental in forming an improvisational comedy group that performed in New York theaters and nightclubs.

The Forever War was first serialized by the science fiction magazine, Analog. Its then editor, Ben Bova, thought the middle section was just too harsh in its descriptions of war and war life, so Haldeman drafted a more mellow alternative and it’s this edition that was used in the book’s first full publication.

There are any number of occurences Haldeman has used in The Forever War from first hand knowledge. He severed in Vietnam as a combat engineer and both Haldeman and his protagonist, Mandela returned fron war to very different attitudes than the ones they left behind. Haldeman knows war, knows it up close and bloody (3 men in his 4 man unit were blown to bits in an ordinance explosion). Haldeman can also identify the boredom that inevitably comes between the battles. In combat situations his descriptions are raw. And like Mandela, every word of The Forever War had to fight to survive under Haldeman’s brutal editorship.

Everyone… here are your instructions. You are to listen to The Forever War ASAP – and that’s an ORDER!

posted by Tony Smith from StarShipSofa

Destructomundo! How Do You Stop It?!!?

Online Audio

Greetings once again fellow vault-dwellers I have some terrible news.

That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die.

Yes, it is true, Destructomundo!, the podcast panel made up of Adam, Ted, Derek, and James, who would normally bring you advice on how to survive an “end of the world scenario” may have finally met a threat to the world that **GASP** cannot be survived! This due, to the Lovecraftian terror that nobody knows how to pronounce, and his eldritch friends. Cthulhu and his mythos are the latest topic on Destructomundo! Also listed are a cavalcade of slightly less dangerous scenarios…

Episode 024 Cthulhu |MP3|
Episode 023 Louisville Zombie Attack |MP3|
Episode 022 Anarchy |MP3|
Episode 021 Technopause |MP3|
Episode 029 Time Travel |MP3|
Episode 019b Supernatural Evil – Part 2 |MP3|
Episode 019a Supernatural Evil – Part 1 |MP3|
Episode 018 Dystopia |MP3|
Episode 017 Doppelgangers |MP3|
Episode 016 Mutants |MP3|
Episode 015 Rocks From Space |MP3|
Episode 014 Bunkers |MP3|
Episode 013 Post Apocalypses |MP3|
Episode 012 Dystopia |MP3|
Episode 011a/011b The Fourth Reich |MP3| & |MP3|
Episode 010a/010b Zombie Apocalypse |MP3| & |MP3|
Episode 009 The Antichrist |MP3|
Episode 008 The Last Man On Earth |MP3|
Episode 007 Doom Cults |MP3|
Episode 006 The Big List |MP3|
Episode 005 Science Run Amok |MP3|
Episode 004 Supervillians |MP3|
Episode 003 Aliens Attack! |MP3|
Episode 002 Rise of the Robots |MP3|
Episode 001 Road Warriors |MP3|

Be sure to only put these hardened MP3s into your “MIL-SPEC” iPod or MP3 player. Subscribe via this insanity inducing feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/destructomundo

posted by Jesse Willis

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

Review of Star Trek: Captain’s Glory by Shatner with Reeves-Stevens

Science Fiction Audiobook Review

Star Trek: Captain’s Glory
By William Shatner with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Read by William Shatner
3 CD’s – 3 hours – [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0743539621
Themes: / Science Fiction / Star Trek / Space Travel / Aliens /

40 years of Star Trek. In the last year I’ve heard quite a bit about that, and it really is amazing when you sit down and think about it. In 40 years, there have been five television series, ten movies, and hundreds of novels, and even though the last series was cancelled, the franchise still has a very strong fan base. Truly something. Why is it so popular? To me, the answer is simple, and threefold. First, it was the first television show I ever watched that spoke to me about bigger issues. Sure, it wasn’t always lofty, it wasn’t always touching. But sometimes it was, and I liked it. Second, it was optimistic. It presented a future where many of the daily troubles we deal with are ancient history. And third, despite the optimistic future, the characters were people, even if they were aliens. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are still amongst my favorite all-time characters, even after all the fiction (science or not) I’ve consumed since discovering the series back in the 70’s.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are all in Captain’s Glory, the latest Shatner/Reeves-Stevens collaborative Star Trek novel. Like most of the previous Star Trek Simon and Schuster Audio titles, this one is abridged, and presented with sound effects and music. William Shatner narrates, and does a fine job with it. Of course, he performs Kirk to perfection. Since Kirk is the main character, that works out real nice, but the novel is populated with characters from all the incarnations of Star Trek on the screen (except for Enterprise) and don’t expect good impersonations. Janeway, Picard, Riker, Troi, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and others are all here.

The authors do a good job using characters that should be there in the timeline. The story takes place after Star Trek: Nemesis, but at the same time on a timeline that belongs to these novels alone. Scotty was moved forward in time in a TNG episode, and Kirk was in a movie. (Listen to Shatner’s The Return to find out how and why Kirk is still alive…) Spock is long-lived and appeared in a TNG episode, as did McCoy, even though he was quite old. This novel refers often to events that occurred not only on the screen, but also in previous novels in the ongoing series.

The story is classic Star Trek material. An entity with incredible power cruises through the galaxy, causing all kinds of havoc. Warp engines are failing all over the quadrant as the entity does its thing. Then Kirk and friends get involved. When his son is taken (see previous books), all bets are off as Kirk’s actions to get him back pit him not only against the entity, but against Starfleet and Picard.

The abridgement is quite well-done. I had no problem following any of it, and I enjoyed it a great deal. I felt that this was the best of the Shatner novels, with the exception of The Return. It was good fun.

Wow. I just wrote an entire review of a Star Trek novel without mentioning how much I hope the next movie isn’t a prequel. Maybe next time.

Links:

SFFaudio’s very own Star Trek page – if it’s Star Trek, and on audio, you can find it here.

Simon and Schuster’s Star Trek page – an informative page on the hundreds of Star Trek novels published by Simon and Schuster

Posted by Scott D. Danielson