Tag: aliens

Review of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

SFFaudio Review

Science Fiction Audiobook - A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice BurroughsA Princess of Mars
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by John Bolen
6 CD’s – 6 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 2001
ISBN: 1400100186
Themes: / Science Fiction / Mars / Aliens / Swordplay / Classic /

There are few classic novels with as much influence as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. First published in 1912 (serialized in All-Story magazine with the title Under the Moons of Mars), Burroughs sparked the imagination of many of science fiction’s golden age writers, including Ray Bradbury and his Martian Chronicles. The audiobook cover is a detail from the 1919 Grosset & Dunlap cover.

A Princess of Mars is an imaginative adventure novel in which John Carter, a Virginian military man who starts the story running from Indians in the Arizona desert, is magically transported to Mars. Burroughs does not go into detail on the mechanics of the transportation, but does go into great detail about the inhabitants of Mars, called “Barsoom” by its natives.

There are two races on Mars – a four-armed green warrior race, and a red human-like race. The princess of the title is Dejah Thoris of Helium, whose beauty captures John Carter when he sees her taken by him in chains by some four-armed Barsoomians.

The novel is filled with damsel-in-distress/derring-do-male-hero sensibility that is laughable at times, but still the story holds up as a classic of the genre. Burroughs’ description of an alien culture is a forerunner of an entire category of science fiction, and I found it entertaining on that level. I also felt a great deal of nostalgia, because I read this book a few times as a early teen, along with the other ten Mars volumes, and a Tarzan or three.

John Bolen performs the whole book as John Carter, with a southern gentlemanly manner that the character demands. This means not only Carter’s attitude, but his southern accent, which took me a few minutes to settle into.

Check out Tantor’s science fiction and fantasy section for more Edgar Rice Burroughs titles.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of The Pocket and the Pendant by Mark Jeffrey

Fantasy Audiobooks - The Pocket and the Pendant by Mark JeffreyThe Pocket And The Pendant
By Mark Jeffrey; Read by Mark Jeffrey
13 MP3 Files – 10 Hours 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: markjeffrey.typepad.com / Podiobooks.com
Published: 2005
Themes: / Science Fiction / Young Adult / Physcics / Immortality / Time Travel / Aliens / Time / Ancient Astronauts /

“On April 8th at exactly 3:38 in the afternoon the world STOPPED.”

It is one of the fundamental constants of the universe – every second thrift store one enters will contain a lonely shelf somewhere in the back with a battered paperback copy of Chariots Of The Gods? by Eric von Däniken on it. That is a terrible, terrible book. I encourage you – only partially in jest – to burn down any store that has one. Chariots Of The Gods is a massive failure in every way but one, it’ll help me tell you about a certain 1970s pop culture concept – the “ancient astronauts” theory. This is a speculative/delusional hypothesis that posits that extraterrestrial aliens are responsible for the ancient civilizations of Earth. Basically it argues that ancient people with their distinctive lack of heavy diesel powered machinery, could not possibly have constructed things like the Pyramid of The Sun at Teotihuacán and so the relics of archeological wonders throughout the world must have been constructed by aliens with a ‘higher’ technology. It is of course a ridiculous notion, wholly unsubstantiated by any evidence that wasn’t manufactured by fraudsters. That said, it can occasionally makes for a cool basis for fiction.

Mark Jeffrey’s The Pocket And The Pendant uses the concept of ancient astronauts to very good effect. This is the story of Max Quick a very odd little boy and his companions, other children who’ve found themselves trapped living in a frozen instant of time. Has this time “pocket” has been caused by the strange aircraft in the skies above the USA? What about the almost magical books that everyone who isn’t frozen seem to be after? Only the aptly named “Mr. E.” knows the answer. Weaving together a carefully researched history with an intriguing and well executed scenario Mark Jeffrey has put together an engaging and satisfying adventure that while aimed at a younger audience never talks down to it. Basically Jeffrey does for science fiction what Harry Potter does for fantasy – I’d say he does it better by layering in facts and mythology from many sources. He takes the whacked out theories of Zecharia Sitchin and asks “what if they were true?”, mixes it up with action like The Matrix, the premise of the Doctor Who “Key To Time” arc and with a couple dutiful nod to the 1959 and 1985 The Twilight Zones.

Jeffrey is very inventive with solving the problems he’s created. But there was one thing that bothered me about the story, if Max and his companions are trapped in time how can they see? Let me explain, this is basically the same nitpick I had with H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, without light hitting a retina you can’t see. If time is stopped then the light has stopped (in The Invisible Man the title character’s retinas are transparent!). I’m nitpicky.

Jeffrey reads the novel himself, doing accents, adults children boys girls and aliens. The sound quality is very good and well leveled, but there is one caveat, a constant musical score underlies the reading (almost always keyed to characters and events in the tale). In this case it is fairly benign, and certainly allows an atmosphere of emotion to build in the story – but not having heard the tale without music I’m not sure if it wouldn’t have been better just as a clean reading.

SFFaudio COMMENT: This is the second “Podiobook” we’ve reviewed on SFFaudio, and the quality is WAY, WAY UP THERE, not just in terms of podcast novels, but in terms of novels on audio. Combine this fact with the price, which is just a request for a donation if you enjoyed the experience, and you’re literally crazy by not listening to them. The worst that can happen is you listen, enjoy the heck out of it and then feel guilty for a few years because you were to cheap to throw a few $$$ towards the producers. Go ahead now, give yourself a gift, subscribe to Morevi: The Chronicles Of Rafe And Askana and The Pocket And the Pendant you’ll marvel at your own generosity.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Ender’s Game: Special 20th Anniversary Edition by Orson Scott Card

Science Fiction Audiobooks - Ender's Game by Orson Scott CardEnder’s Game: Special 20th Anniversary Edition
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki, Harlan Ellison, Gabrielle de Cuir, David Birney and a FULL CAST
9 CDs – 10.5 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published: 2004
ISBN: 1593974744
Themes: / Science Fiction / War / Children / Military / Politics / Spaceships / Space Station / Aliens /

Andrew ‘Ender’ Wiggin isn’t just playing games at Battle School; he and the other children are being tested and trained in Earth’s attempt to find the military genius that the planet needs in its all-out war with an alien enemy. Ender Wiggin is six years old when his training begins. He will grow up fast. Ender’s two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world–if the world survives.

Many male children covet uniforms and the manly art of war – and on the surface that is what Ender’s Game appears to be about, a wish-fulfillment novel for the pre-teen set. But it isn’t only that. Science Fiction is an accumulative literature, perhaps more so than any other kind. Good creations stick in SF and accumulate and grow. Robots once invented, need not be reinvented. Faster than light travel, time travel or Asimov’s “three laws” are tools which once created need not be ignored as outside the scope of another SF novel, quite the contrary in fact. Simply ask yourself; in what other literature could a constructed story device like an “ansible” (invented by Ursula K. Le Guin in 1966 but used in Ender’s Game) be mentioned without renaming it? But it is not just the story props that SF shares, the concepts and themes of science fiction can never be fully appreciated in isolation. Every science fiction story is in dialogue with another.

Ender’s Game is especially engaged with two other superlative science fiction novels that preceded it, namely Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, and like those two masterpieces of science fiction Ender’s Game has something new and unique to say. Whereas Starship Troopers can be viewed as the relationship between a teenager’s individualism and his relationship to society (a neo-Hobbesian social contract concept typical of mid-career Heinlien), and The Forever War as a discussion of that same relationship but with a college aged young man and his more skeptical worldview (the post Vietnam influence) Ender’s Game engages neither an adult’s nor a teen’s relationship to his society its war. Instead Ender’s Game is that relationship from a child’s perspective. It is also, paradoxically, not a grunt’s view of a war, as was the case with both Heinlein’s and Haldeman’s novels, but rather is about how the supreme commander of an interstellar war is created.

Orson Scott Card has not ignored the disconnect between a child’s desire to play at war and the brutal cost of killing, and the burden of ultimate responsibility. We primarily follow Ender and his classmates as they train to command Earth’s military in a genocidal war against a hostile alien threat, but the parallel story of his two siblings back on Earth compels equally. Each character in this novel is in a chess match of emotional and philosophical conflict with one another and their society. There are a few better hard science fiction stories, and a few better soft science fiction stories, but there are fewer science fiction stories as well constructed and emotionally satisfying as this one.

The 20th anniversary of the novel’s re-publication brought about this audiobook. It is regrettable that the cover art of this edition is as generic as it is because the folks at Audio Renaissance have quite literally have brought greatness to the text. They’ve included an introduction and a postscript read by Card himself, both of which place the novel and the audiobook in its context as well as enlightening us to the author’s method of its construction. Multiple readers lead by Stefan Rudnicki work perfectly to vocally illustrate each chapter, character and scene. Stefan Rudnicki, Harlan Ellison, Gabrielle De Cuir, David Birney and the rest of the readers have given us an audiobook perfectly rendered. In what is the pattern for the Enderverse novels adapted for Audio Renaissance readers trade off at the ends of chapters, and when two unplaced voices are unattributed – except by what they actually say – two actors engage in conversation. Multi voiced readings have never been better.

And so it is with great pleasure that we enter this Special 20th Anniversary edition of Ender’s Game as the first into the ranks of the SFFaudio Essential audiobooks.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Here at SFFAudio, we have considered several different ways to present what we think are the finest audiobooks out there. At one time we had a favorites list, then we considered rating each audiobook using a 5-star system. The SFFAudio Essential designation is what we landed upon. An audiobook earning a place on the SFFAudio Essential list is a five-star gem of an audiobook – a great place to start if you are new to science fiction and fantasy audio, and a necessary addition for collectors.

Review of Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Science Fiction Audiobooks - Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott CardSpeaker for the Dead
By Orson Scott Card; Read by David Birney, Stefan Rudnicki, Gabrielle de Cuir, John Rubinstein, Scott Brick, Amanda Karr, Lisa Nemacheck, Don Schlossman
12 CD’s – 14 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1593974760
Themes: / Science Fiction / Relativistic Space Travel / Sentient Life / Families / Communities /

Have you ever wished your computer was an intelligent entity you could interact with? Yeah . . . me either. And why don’t we? Because one day when you sit down at your terminal the computer will ask you, “Shall we play a game?” And you’ll say, “How about some Halo 2?” And it will reply back, “How about Global Thermonuclear War?” And unless you think fast and figure out some child’s game that will teach the computer the pointlessness of nuclear war, you’re in a lot of trouble.

There are many other examples of the basic evilness of intelligent computers, like Hal 9000, the recently released Stealth and the entire world of The Matrix.

But in the world of Ender Wiggin there is Jane, restoring hope to all us social skill-less speculative fiction nerds that one day we can be adored by a digital babe. (And don’t give me that “I’m not a nerd, I’ve got skills” stuff–how many other artificial intelligence characters that I didn’t list have you thought of already? Hmm?)

As a sentient, non-human being that interacts with Ender via an interplanetary network of computers, Jane is the ultimate information resource. Not only is she not threatening humanity, Jane is pleasant, caring, and humorously informative. She is easily one of the most likable non-human characters you’ll read, but that isn’t why you should listen to this book.

You should listen to this book because it is a masterwork on human behavior. Orson Scott Card is often praised as a master developer of characters, but if every other book he has written had flopped, this book itself earns him that recognition.

Andrew (Ender) Wiggin was unable to return to earth after he destroyed the Formics in Ender’s Game. Racked by guilt after learning he destroyed a (relatively) innocent form of life, he wrote a book explaining the whole situation, and by doing so became the first “Speaker for the Dead.”

Fast forward a few thousand years. Andrew is only a couple decades older, thanks to the relativistic effects of space travel, and a mythology has developed about him. He is known historically as “Ender the Xenocide,” whose name evokes the same warm fuzzy feelings we associate with the name “Hitler.” “Andrew Wiggin” is also remembered, but as the writer of the near-canonized The Hive Queen and The Hegemon and initiator of the profession of speaking for the dead.

Those around him don’t know that both the Xenocide and the original Speaker were the same person, or that Andrew is him. Andrew is drawn to the colony planet Lusitania to help preserve another sentient species (the piggies). Speaker for the Dead picks up with events that lead to conflict between the piggies and humans, and Ender’s decision to go to Lusitania to help. There he meets the family of a man whose death he is to speak, and who are in the middle of the piggy problems via their scientific/anthropological roles.

As Ender comes to know the family we come to know and love them too. We learn what understandable need or desire or pain is behind their choices. For example, at no point do you agree with the mother’s behavior as years of angry distance from her children starts to bear bitter fruit. But you also see how love, pain and loss have distorted her reality. You despise her behavior, feel compassion for her suffering and understand her intentions. That is reality in all its rich, painful complexity.

But Speaker for the Dead does something even more amazing. It accurately shows the process of change. Change for an individual is a complicated enough process. Showing how a family changes is much more complicated. I am astonished at how accurate that process is portrayed in the book. I have yet to read another book that comes close to describing family change as well as Speaker for the Dead.

Having David Birney and Stephan Rudnicki both narrate the book is like have Shaq and Michael Jordan both on your team in a pick-up game. Those are the only two listed on the CD case, which is really unfair because there is an entire cast and not one person falls short of absolute excellence in their narration. They are the U.S. Olympic Team of readers. The others include Gabrielle de Cuir, John Rubinstein, Scott Brick, Amanda Karr, Lisa Nemacheck, and Don Schlossman.

And while I’m complaining about the case, couldn’t they have put a relevant picture on it? That funky tower thing and the planet surface below it looks like Capitol, but that’s a whole other set of Orson Scott Card stories. I guess the publisher wants the association with the original book cover, but Jane or a pequenino, or any other image actually related to the story would have been nice.

And why stop my spiral of increasingly trivial complaints there? I decided I really don’t like cardboard flap-around cases for the CDs. They are harder to handle, which matters if you are listening while driving, and I think it is easier to scratch a CD in that than in the hard plastic cases with soft sleeves.

I find that I especially like listening to books I have read in the past. If you’re already a fan of Speaker for the Dead, the audio version is a must.

Posted by Mike