Amelia Beamer – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #077 – READALONG: Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #077 – Jesse talks with Julie Davis and audiobook narrator Wayne June about Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.

Talked about on today’s show:
AudiobookCase.com, Fred Godsmark, Audio Realms, Wayne June is “naturally creepy”, narrating audiobooks is hard work, how do you read to people?, word pronunciation and Lovecraft’s invented language, I, Cthulhu by Neil Gaiman, Gaiman is a modern master, The Rats In The Walls by H.P. Lovecraft |READ OUR REVIEW|, devolving and retro-volving and retro-retrogression, “it’s a sentence but what does it mean?”, H. Beam Piper, reading for the ear, reading aloud is a juggling act, physical copies of audiobooks vs. downloads, The Essential Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde: The Definitive Annotated Edition edited Leonard Wolf, Kevin J. Anderson on Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, as a parable for addiction, the temperance movement, religion, “an almost theological work [or treatise]”, “the war in the members”, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde as an homunculus, Mr. Utterson, Cain’s heresy: “I am not my brother’s keeper.”, Dickensian writing, Charles Dickens and Henry James, how evil is Mr. Hyde?, what about those vague debaucheries?, the Greek origin of the word “obscene”, Lovecraft’s indescribably unspeakable prose, The Statement Of Randolph Carter by H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing From Another World, Michael Caine and Cheryl Ladd version of Jekyll & Hyde, The Story Of The Door, the difference between doing good and not doing evil, evil as being self-centered (and prideful), natural selection vs. evolution, ladders vs. branches, progression vs. change, evolution vs. free will, the notoriously optimistic Victorians, Alan Moore’s The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Hulk and Two-Face, Brad Strickland on Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Marxist and feminist critiques, BBC Radio 4 radio drama version of Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, Let The Right One In (movie) vs. Let The Right One In (book), Poole (the butler), Inspector Newcomen, Jekyll (Je-Kill, I-Kill, Jackal), Forrest J. Ackerman‘s real middle name, Geek-ill, Edinburgh, Soho, a “fine bogey dream”, cocaine usage in the 19th century, Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell, Jayne Slayre (The Literary Classic…with a Bloodsucking Twist) by Charlotte Brontë and Sherri Browning Erwin, Assam And Darjeeling by T.M. Camp |READ OUR REVIEW|, zombies and vampires, The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer |READ OUR REVIEW|, mindless sexualized creatures, if you were an urban fantasy author what would you bring together and what would your urban fantasy name be?, the science of lycanthropy vs. the science of zombification, airships, Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, Jim Butcher, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, parallel worlds, proto-urban fantasy, Territory by Emma Bull, The Castle In Transylvania by Jules Verne, Melville House books, translated by Charlotte Mandel, can you do a Transylvanian accent?, Amy H. Sturgis, calling Jules Verne a Science Fiction writer is probably inaccurate, Around The World In Eighty Days by Jules Verne, Phileas Fogg is the most English of all Englishmen, The Vampyre by John William Polidori, Ken Rusell’s Gothic, Switzerland, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe, the strange case of Strange Case, “it’s full of Octobery goodness.”

Airmont - Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Classics Illustrated - Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

Dr. Jekyl And Mr. Hyde - Chapter 9 - The Transformation In Dr. Lanyon's Office - illustration by William Hole

The Twilight Zone 14 - Robert Louis Stevenson

Guy Deal illustration of Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer

SFFaudio Review

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers. Thrust into extremes by the unfolding tragedy, Kate and Michael are forced to confront the decisions they’ve made, and their fears of commitment, while trying to stay alive. Michael convinces Kate to meet him in the one place in the Bay Area that’s likely to be safe and secure from the zombie hordes: Alcatraz. But can they stay human long enough?

Beamer creates scenes, and cuts adequately between them, but when confronted by the surrealistic circumstances she provides (like being trapped in a Zeppelin bathroom with two lesbian zombies) her characters seem more like emotional marionettes, than like real people. It’s almost as if Beamer was actually role-playing a series of improvised scenarios, rather than plotting it out like a novel. When one of the characters discovers that these zombies respond to the crack of a whip, for example, Kate downloads an “Indiana Jones App” to her iPhone and subdues them with it. Clever? Sure. Novelistic? Notsomuch. Thus the tension of a zombie confrontation – will she or won’t she be able to get 3G service high above Oakland – isn’t very satisfying.

Shortly after this audiobook arrived I listened to it’s author, Amelia Beamer, being interviewed on the SFSignal Podcast #006. She talked about how she found the relentlessness of zombies almost endearing. It was a neat idea. And then she said she intended it to be a romantic comedy with zombies. And that was enough to put it in my bathroom audiobook stack. So, for the last week or so I’ve been brushing and flossing my teeth to this novel. I didn’t go in expecting much other than zombies and loving and a few laughs. It has the first two. The loving is actually sex and the zombies are less dead and rotting than they are contagious and sex crazed. If you did a count you’d probably find as many individuated zombies as there are sex scenes. Come to think of it there were probably about just as many tattoos as there were sex scenes and zombies. Where this novel really doesn’t fulfill it’s promise is in the humor department. I didn’t laugh, or smile, or even smirk. Thinking about it, it wasn’t that there were jokes and they weren’t funny, but rather I that the humor was supposed to come from the absurd situational specifics and the slacker/poser cast’s bumbling their way through it all. It has relationships, and people thinking about their relationships, and it has some zombies but I didn’t find it funny.

Getting into specifics now – there’s something odd going on with the meta-Americanness, or rather some subset of it, within the novel’s characters and setting. Even though both Kate and Michael both pretty quickly recognize the infected as zombies, Beamer’s characters seem highly reticent to kill them. Instead they far prefer restraining their wrists, sitting on them – any form of bondage – as in, tie them up or tie them down. Yeah … well … okay. So, I have to think that, in combination with the whips, and the sex and all the tattoos, that taken as a whole this is not so much a zombie novel as a kind of contemporary fiction novel, set in a slacker BDSM San Fransisco subculture, with some zombie additions. Maybe that’s what I signed up for, but I was wrong to do so.

At first I liked some of the references to local stores and products. This is something that is done far too little in most fiction, as far as I’m concerned. It’s one of the things I like most about William Gibson’s prose, he has a reverence to specifics. But as it all went on in The Loving Dead, and as the characters repeatedly reminded each other that they’d read Max Brooks (World War Z |READ OUR REVIEW|), worked at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, it seemed like it wasn’t so much fun – instead it became increasingly clear that it was what was on their minds all the time. It seemed like the real zombies in this audiobook were the characters, living their quiet lives of desperate consumption, performing a narrative for themselves and expressing it in text messages. If I believed in a soul I’d call it a soul-numbing audiobook.

On the final disc we get a flash cut to ten years after the zombie apocalypse first hits. It’s an interesting experiment, to take a doomsday scenario way down the road and see what life is like in the aftermath. One of the redeeming features, of David Moody’s otherwise lackluster Hater |READ OUR REVIEW|, is also in The Loving Dead too. The author takes one significant aspect of a premise to it’s logical and (hopefully inevitable) conclusion. As such, it has some novelty value if only for that. For some true vanilla zombie goodness I’ll get back to reading Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead.

Narrator Emily Durante, a new voice to my ears, is a good reader, I can see that, even despite my not loving The Loving Dead, she provided a steady voice to a patchy and punctuated narrative.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: Brilliance Audio

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Recently arrived from Brilliance Audio…

First up, two books in the Vampire Earth series. According to wikipedia, this series depicts an Earth “occupied by aliens from a world known as Kur”, they’ve “taken over the world, destroying human society and enslaving the survivors. The novels follow the life of David Valentine, a young man who enlists with Southern Command, one of the few remnants of the old U.S. government scattered around, as he follows his heart even when it conflicts with orders.”…

Tale Of The Thunderbolt (Book 3 in the Vampire Earth series)
By E.E. Knight; Read by Christian Rummel
10 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 12 hours[UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: May 2010
ISBN: 9781441815675 (cd), 9781441815699 (mp3-cd)
Possessed of an unnatural and legendary hunger, the Reapers have come to Earth to establish a New Order built on the harvesting of enslaved human souls. They rule the planet. They thrive on the scent of fear. And if it is night, as sure as darkness, they will come. It’s the 48th year of the Kurian Order. The alien, vampiric Kur and their avatars, the Reapers, control most of Earth – their new feeding ground. Humanity is scattered and survives only at their new masters’ whims. But the Resistance is attempting to reclaim Earth. David Valentine, member of the elite Cat spy force, is in enemy uniform aboard the aging gunboat Thunderbolt. Whispers have reached him of the discovery of a long-lost weapon in the Caribbean – the first glimmer of hope for humanity to finally defeat the Reapers. Control of the ship lies in the hands of a tyrannical captain, and nothing short of full-scale mutiny can win it back. With only a few loyal sailors at his side, Valentine embarks on a terrifying journey through the deadly waters of the Gulf, searching for the weapon that will guarantee that this year – the 48th year of the Kurian Order’s domination of Earth – will be the Kurians’ last… Bonus Audio: Includes an exclusive introduction by author E.E. Knight.

Valentine’s Rising (Book 4 in the Vampire Earth series)
By E.E. Knight; Read by Christian Rummel
10 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 10 Hours 44 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: July 2010
ISBN: 9781441815729 (cd), 9781441815743 (mp3-CD)
Possessed of an unnatural and legendary hunger, the Reapers have come to Earth to establish a New Order built on the harvesting of enslaved human souls. They rule the planet. They thrive on the scent of fear. And if it is night, as sure as darkness, they will come. Ozark Free Territory, 2071: The Kurian Order has reigned for 50 years. Using the dreaded power of their Reaper avatars, the alien, vampiric Kur hold dominion over the Earth and its inhabitants. Yet there are those who would rather die fighting than surrender to the unquenchable thirst of the enemy – those like David Valentine. Returning to the Ozark Free Territory, Valentine is shocked to find it overrun by Kurians under the command of the merciless Consul Solon. In a bid to turn the tide, Valentine leads a courageous group of soldiers on a desperate mission to drive a spike into the gears of the Kurian Order. Valentine stakes life, honor, and the future of his home on a rebellion that sparks the greatest battle of his life – one that he may not survive… Bonus Audio: Includes an exclusive introduction by author E.E. Knight.

Peter Straub likes this one, he calls it “a zombie novel like none other. Crisp, smooth and stylish, it zips along from scene to scene, accumulating tension, humor and insight as it accelerates.” And, I’ve liked a lot of Peter Straub’s audiobooks. Could this just be the zombie novel that won’t soften up my brains?

The Loving Dead
By Amelia Beamer; Read by Emily Durante
7 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 8 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: July 2010
ISBN: 9781441868343 (cd), 9781441868367 (mp3-cd)
Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers. Thrust into extremes by the unfolding tragedy, Kate and Michael are forced to confront the decisions they’ve made, and their fears of commitment, while trying to stay alive. Michael convinces Kate to meet him in the one place in the Bay Area that’s likely to be safe and secure from the zombie hordes: Alcatraz. But can they stay human long enough?

Back when I heard about this being released as an Audible.com exclusive in 2008 I wrote: “Recipe for happiness: Give it a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1958, wait 50 years, make audiobook…” But now it seems like wait two more years and you get DOUBLE HAPPINESS with a DRM free version! I think this title may be headed straight to the top of my to-be- listened-to stack…

The Big Time
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Suzanne Toren
4 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: August 2010
ISBN: 9781441875129 (cd), 9781441875143 (mp3-cd)
Have you ever worried about your memory because it doesn’t seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? Have you ever thought you might be changing because of forces beyond your control? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, then you’ve had hints of the Change War. It’s been going on for a billion years and it’ll last another billion or so. Up and down the timeline, the two sides – “Spiders” and “Snakes” – battle endlessly to change the future and the past. Our lives, our memories, are their battleground. And in the midst of the war is the Place, outside space and time, where Greta Forzane and the other Entertainers provide solace and R and R for tired time warriors.

WARNING: MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION AHEAD! … John Ringo is virtually a one man army, specifically, with regards to massing hefty audiobooks. Here’s the latest weighty release. It’s from the Legacy of the Aldenata (aka Posleen War) series…

Gust Front (Book 2 in the Legacy of the Aldenata series)
By John Ringo; Read by Marc Vietor
21 CDs or 2 MP3-CDs – Approx. 26 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: June 2010
ISBN: 9781441866141 (cd), 9781441866165 (mp3-cd)
Our choice was simple: we could be cannon fodder, or we could be…fodder. We could send our forces to fight and die (as only humans can) against a ravening horde that was literally feeding on its interstellar conquests — or remain as we were — virtually weaponless and third in line for servicing. Amazingly, thanks to a combination of raw valor and alien tech transfer, in the first two campaigns Terrans fought the Posleen to a standstill. The brief pause gave the survivors of the Barwhon and Diess Expeditionary Forces a chance to get some distance from the blood and misery of battle against the Posleen centaurs. With the Posleen invasion only months away these shell-shocked survivors might be the only people capable of saving the Earth from utter devastation.

Posted by Jesse Willis