BBC7’s The Seventh Dimension has a Brian Aldiss short story!

Online Audio

BBC 7's The 7th DimensionI missed telling you about a cool tale broadcast last Sunday. Though I have been remiss, all is not lost, you can still listen to this specially commissioned reading through the “Listen Again” service of BBC Radio 7. The story is Song Of The Silencer and it is a “chilling account” of man’s attempt to make order out of chaos by constructing an ‘ultimate machine.’ First Published in 1979. The reader is Nigel Anthony, a winner of both Sony award and Radio Times awards for radio performances.

BBC Radio 7 - Song Of The SilencerSong Of The Silencer
By Brian Aldiss; Read by Nigel Anthony
1 Broadcast – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED?]
Broadcaster: BBC7 / The 7th Dimension
Broadcast: Sunday May 20th, 2007 @ 6.30pm and 12.30am (U.K. Time)
Humanity has built a massive computer out in space simply called the Ultimate Machine, that perfectly mimics the human brain — but some are predicting disaster once it is activated.

SFFaudio in Salt Lake City, Utah May 2th – 27th 2007

SFFaudio News

CONduit XVIICONduit is an annual general interest Science Fiction and Fantasy convention held every May in Salt Lake City, Utah. Conduit 17 (called “Shadows Of Conduit”) runs this year between May 25th and 27th. We’ll be there, represented by our resident Web Kzin, SFFaudio co-founder, and professional SF author Scott D. Danielson.

If you’re going to be there too, look for Scott at one or all of these panels:

Friday, 3:00PM Podcasts: SF On The Web
Panel: Pam Oberg, Scott Danielson
Imagine listening to your favorite authors, artists, actors, and professionals talk about their work while you are at work or driving to work. Imagine listening to a convention panel, a decades-old radio interview, or a group of fans raving about the latest games while you
clean, jog, or mow the lawn. Enter the brave new world of podcasts. Our panelists discuss what podcasts are, where to find them, what to expect, and will even peer into the shadowy realm of iTunes voodoo.

Friday, 4:00PM The Viability Of Artificial Intelligence
Panel: Eric Swedin, James Brown, Scott Danielson (M), Eric James Stone
Research into artificial intelligence has been criticized for not advancing at the same rate as much of computing. Some have theorized that this is because we are simply incapable of creating intelligence — at least in the way we understand it. Will we ever see a Neuromancer?

Saturday, 11:00AM Take Me To Your Leader
Panel: James Brown, Scott Danielson, Eric James Stone (M), Ann Sharp
The Aliens Have Landed! Now what? Let’s have fun talking about what
impact the alien invasion (or a friendly visit) would realistically have on Earth. And what WOULD an alien really say at first contact?

Sunday, 10:00AM The Movies Of M. Night Shyamalan
Panel: Eric Swedin, Scott Danielson, Janus Daniels
The Sixth Sense. Unbreakable. Signs. The Village. Lady in the Water. M. Night Shyamalan has been hailed as the next Alfred Hitchcock. Is that accurate? Will he be able to keep the freshness of his directorial vision or is he destined to be just another Hollywood director? What are the themes that frequent his work? We discuss this intriguing newcomer to the movie scene.

The NEW Blake’s 7 Audio Drama IS HERE!

Doctor Who television series screenwriter Ben Aaronovitch has written in to say: “The first chapters of the B7 Audio are now being streamed off the SciFi Channel UK site.” Ben is the author of this Blake’s 7 revival, and the first three chapters of his series are available for streaming listening RIGHT NOW! Here are the details…

Blake's 7 The Audio Adventures

Blake's 7 Audio AdventuresBlake’s 7 The Audio Adventures is based on the original Blake’s 7 television series that aired between 1978 and 1981 in the UK. It is set a few hundred years in the future and follows the exploits of revolutionary Rog Blake as he leads his band of reluctant rebels against the forces of the totalitarian Earth Federation. The Federation rules Earth and numerous other planets in our galaxy with brute military force, mass surveillance, brainwashing, blackmail, and drugs. Framed as a child molester Blake is sentenced to a penal planet, but he and his fellow prisoners escape and find a tool that just might even the odds for the oppressed masses. Its very much Robin Hood in space, created by the man who invented the Daleks! The B7 universe is full of strong characters, hard-boiled morality and a general melancholic tone. I love this stuff!

The Sci-Fi Channel’s site suggests you use Internet Explorer 7 to listen in-browser. But it seems to work just fine with my Firefox 2.0.0.3. I’ve heard the first three chapters, and these three parts race through the plot of the first and second episode of the television series. This is quality audio drama folks.

Rebel – Chapter 1: Hard Targets
By Ben Aaronovitch; Performed by a full cast
Streaming Audio – 7 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Sci-Fi Channel UK
Published: May 2007

Rebel – Chapter 2: Enemy Of The State
By Ben Aaronovitch; Performed by a full cast
Streaming Audio – 9 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Sci-Fi Channel UK
Published: May 2007

Rebel – Chapter 3: First Contact
By Ben Aaronovitch; Performed by a full cast
Streaming Audio – 7.5 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Sci-Fi Channel UK
Published: May 2007

Review of Antibodies by Charles Stross

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Science Fiction Audiobook - Antibodies by Charles StrossAntibodies
By Charles Stross; Read by Jared Doreck and Shondra Marie
1 CD – 54 Minutes 16 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612474
Themes: / Science Fiction / Singularity / Conspiracy / Artificial Intelligence / Parallel Worlds /

– Click HERE to hear a sample –

“Damn it, Bob, I really had high hopes for this world-line. They seemed to be doing so well for a revelatory Christian-Islamic line, despite the post-Enlightenment mind-set.”

The announcement of the solution to the traveling salesman problem heralds the imminent destruction of humanity. No more salesman; no more problem. The story begins when a computer programmer is notified by RSS feed that all NP-complete problems lie in P, and thus computer encryption is forever compromised. Knowing the disaster for what it is, he flees, but with this being such a hard-takeoff he might not make it.

Stross’ ideas are hard, cold, pure, and funny, but it is his storytelling – the effectiveness of the complete tale – that elevates his perspective SF ideas into Science Fiction excellence. This is the kind of fiction I love; thought provoking with shrewdly surprisingly but necessary consequences of the premise. Stross goes from alpha to omega faster than you can guess, and in so doing delivers a solid entry into SF’s growing dialogue about The Singularity. Antibodies reminded of Isaac Asimov’s similarily elegant short story Living Space. Also refreshing is a humourous conspiracy that explains why Microsoft Windows-based computer viruses are so prevalent.

Allan Kaster, who runs the Infinivox wing of Audiotext, has put deep thought into this tale’s production. The narrators, Jared Dorek and Shondra Marie, pair up to deliver the action in this first-person perspective masterpiece of SF. Marie reads all the female voices and Dorek all the male. When each speaks the role of the hero and heroine, they do so in an amalgamated accent that is implied by the text. The production is carefully woven with transition music designed to show textual scene transitions and time passing. But it is the story that elevates this audiobook to SFFaudio Essential status. With a running time just shy of one hour you aren’t likely to have a more quintissential Strossian experience on audio.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Saturn’s Race by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Science Fiction Audiobook - Saturn's Game by Larry Niven and Steve BarnesSaturn’s Race
By Larry Niven and Steve Barnes; Read by Scott Brick
10 Cassettes or 12 CDs – 13 Hours 54 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books On Tape, Inc.
Published: 2000
ISBN: 0736659374 (cassette), 0736671366 (cd)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Artifical Intelligence / Consciousness Uploading / Cyborgs / Politics / Population Control / Life Extension /

Chaz Koto is a citizen of Xanadu, a near future perfect society hosting the wealthiest men and women on Earth. Along with his fellow citizens, he bears the burden of a dark secret that the outside world would be shocked to hear. Lenore Myles is a student who travels to Xanadu and becomes involved with Koto. When Koto unwittingly lends her his access codes, Lenore stumbles upon the grisly truth behind Xanadu’s glittering facade.

The title is deceptive. The planet Saturn plays no role in the plot and nobody in the book is racing anywhere. This is an earth-bound adventure set in the near future. I figured out what the title meant near the end of the book, but the rest of the novel was relatively predictable. For instance, there is a revelation that happens within the first couple of chapters but it was so broadly telegraphed in the first scene the involved character shows up in that I was bored by the revelation rather than surprised by it. Ultimately Saturn’s Race is one of those novels that just fails to gel. There’s a plot, plenty of interesting ideas and a resolution, but frankly the plot is mediocre, the ideas relatively minor, and the resolution comes through only on the most basic level.

For me, the most memorable concept used in Saturn’s Race is that of “metaphors.” Basically Niven and Barnes illustrate that metaphors, like computer languages or a computer graphic interface, are used as handy tools to leverage work. It’s why poetry can say so much with so few words – the words are densely packed, brimming with meaning. It is also why a little pointer dragging a few color pixels across a screen can unmake or move a file in ways far quciker and easier than by command line interface. In other words computer programs are really elaborate metaphors for the manipulation of data. This is brought to life in the novel when a character runs an artifical intelligence program that simulates Rex Stout’s corpulent detective Nero Wolfe. It’s a neat idea. But ultimately the novel didn’t move me as I had hoped it might. Overall, this is passable faire, but I doubt I’d need to listen to it again anytime soon.

The cover art for Saturn’s Race is almost incomprehensible. Is that a seahorse on there? I can’t tell. The paperback version has a painting of two genetically-modified sharks on the cover. That would have been more apropos. Reading the book is the ubiquitous Scott Brick. Scott does his very best to bring energy to the lackadaisical pace. For the most part it works, since the novel doesn’t bore in the listening, though I’m sure I’d have stopped reading were I experiencing the paper edition. Saturn’s Race is still available to be purchased from the Books On Tape website. But who knows how long that will be for? BOT was forced to dump a good chunk of its older science fiction titles when it got purchased by the aptly titled Random House a couple years ago and this fact has made many of its excellent unabridged titles quite valuable on the secondary market. The same loss may happen again soon to the remaining BOT library. I don’t think out of print copies of Saturn’s Race will be selling for thousands any time soon, but if you think you ever might want a copy acting sooner rather than later may save you some money.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Voice from the Edge Vol. 1: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

SFFaudio Author of the Month Review

Science Fiction Audiobooks - The Voice from the Edge: I Have No Mouth and I Must ScreamThe Voice from the Edge Vol. 1: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
By Harlan Ellison, read by Harlan Ellison
5 CD’s – 6 hours [UNABRIDGED stories]
Publisher: Fantastic Audio
Published: 2002
ISBN: 1574535374
Themes: / Science fiction / Collection / Series / Post-Apocalypse / Artificial intelligence / Utopia / Dystopia / Magic Realism / Love / Hell /

ed. – This is one of two Harlan Ellison collections that were released by Fantastic Audio. The second is called The Voice from the Edge: Midnight at the Sunken Cathedral.

There are two basic reasons to invest in a short story collection by a single author. The first is to experience first hand the stylistic, thematic, and technical contributions the author has made to his genre and to literature in general; the second is to sample the dynamic range the author covers, to gauge the extent of his palette.

This audio book delivers the first in spades. With Harlan Ellison’s friendly, yet curmudgeonly introduction, we are thrust immediately into the gritty rawness he helped bring to science fiction. Such stories as the harrowing, lurid, complex title story, the gleefully offensive misogyny and sociopathy of “A Boy and His Dog”, the pop-cultural, pejorative ranting of “Laugh Track”, and the sophomoric sexual preoccupation of “The Very Last Day of a Good Woman” clearly delineate the dark, adult-oriented themes he introduced, as well as his predilection for unlikable anti-heroes who often leave us feeling a bit less comfortable about ourselves. And on such material, his distinctive narrative style shines. He curses with conviction, and his voice handles guilt, revenge, and damnation with seeming familiarity.

In the overall story choice, we also have a remarkable demonstration of the range of Ellison’s writing. Compare the patient, redemptive power of “Paladin of the Lost Hour” to any of the stories mentioned above, and you’ll see what I mean. Throw in the sly, haunted twist of “The Time of the Eye”, the overwrought post-modernism and tedious beatnik vamping in “’Repent Harlequin!’ said the Tick-Tock Man”, the sublime, hellish search for love in “Grail”, and the puzzling juxtaposition of the truly horrific and the trivial in “The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke”, and you cover quite a swath of not only the science-fiction spectrum, but the fiction spectrum in general.

Unfortunately, the use of a single narrator for all these stories blurs their uniqueness, especially since that narrator is Harlan Ellison. His delivery style can be enjoyable, but it is so raw, so exaggerated, and so pervasive that it tends to flatten the relief of the work itself. I can’t say that I question the wisdom of having Ellison narrate, for on any single story his voice adds the confident insight that only an author can bring to his own work. But this is a collection, and the diverse stories deserve a wider range of vocal performance to truly showcase their differences. My advice is to make the best of this paradox by taking the collection slowly. The quality of the material, the exceptionally crisp sound and the fine, user-friendly packaging make this an audio book you should not miss. Just make sure to pace yourself.