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)
Click here for audio sample.
Superman Returns
By Marv Wolfman; Read by Scott Brick
8 CDs – 9.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0786145455 (Cassette), 0786171332 (CD), 0786175729 (MP3-CD)
Click here for audio sample.
V For Vendetta
Novelization by Steve Moore; Read by Simon Vance
11 Cassettes, 8 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 9.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0786144637 (Cassette), 0786170777 (CDs), 078617711X (MP3-CD)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Dystopia / Terrorism / Anarchy / England /
This audiobook had a long and treacherous road to release. Perhaps even worse, it has a questionable provenance. V For Vendetta, the unabridged audiobook, is several steps removed from the original source material. Worse still, the adapted property has been completely disowned by its original creator, celebrated graphic comics writer Alan Moore. He quite literally had his name removed from the movie credits, the novelization, and consequently this audiobook – in short he wants nothing to do with it.
Alan Moore is a famous figure in comics, and his opinion carries much weight among comic book readers. Because of all this, V For Vendetta, the novelization of the movie of the same name, is in serious jeopardy of being dismissed. But given the original material’s quality and the near classic vintage – the character and setting for “V” was originally birthed in early 1980s – you might be inclined to give this audiobook a try anyway. And for that you will be rewarded.
The road to release began with The Wachowski Brothers, the creators of the film The Matrix, optioned the story. They purchased the rights and scripturally adapted the graphic novel of V For Vendetta for the screen. After the film began production their script was then again adapted, this time as a movie novelization (or as the industry calls it a movie tie-in novel). The novel was written by Steve Moore, who, while no familial relation to Alan Moore, is very much his friend. Then Blackstone Audiobooks stepped in, hiring Simon Vance to voice an unabridged audiobook version of the Steve Moore’s novelization of The Wachowski Brother’s script of their movie which was originally based on Alan Moore’s original comic book series (that was collected into a graphic novel). See what I mean about a treacherous road? At any point along this journey the story could have been ruined. But what happened instead is that it has been IMPROVED! Indeed I think story-wise this is the best version of V For Vendetta…
Soon after the opening of the novel a mysterious figure named “V,” who dresses in a Guy Fawkes costume, promises to destroy the British Parliament buildings on November 5th, one year hence. It is a bit unlear at first, is the fascist governing party the target of this threat, or perhaps it is the people of England in general? Only one woman has even a clue. Her name is Evey. With war raging round the world, an English supremacist party called “Norsefire” has fully secured governmental authority in England. Some time ago, Norsefire successfully seized the initiative, and now England’s remaining citizenry are in a stranglehold of their own making. At the start of the novel the government controls media and a petrifying secret police force seemingly made up of little more than street thugs prowls the streets after dark. In the recent past the last of the last of the concentration camps has closed – their grisly work completed. The populace has been lulled into their docility by a combination of mindless television drama, propaganda posing as opinion, and horrifying news stories about how much worse everywhere else is. So when an anarchic revolutionary destroys London’s Saint Paul’s Catherdral in pyrotechnic display, the compliant populace is only slightly stirred. The government explains that it was just a “scheduled demolition” and many Britons even believe it. But when “V,” a seeming superhero/supervillan goes on BTN the sole governmental television network, and announces a violent campaign to be capped in by the destruction of parliament buildings in one year’s time the populace begins to question if “England shall prevail” or whether it even should.
Like George Orwell‘s classic dystopia 1984 the totalitarian regime in V For Vendetta rose to power by exploiting people’s worst fears and firing-up their prejudices. Interestingly the viewpoint character is not V himself. V’s personal history, past a certain point, remains mysterious right to the end. Despite a completely third person perspective we basically follow a young woman named Evey through this tale. V saves Evey early on in the novel from a rape by government agents known as “Fingermen.” Evey’s journey is not unlike that of the population, for which she can serve as an emotional example. One other character, a police Inspector named Finch, as dutiful and honest a detective as one’d want, offers another view of that same populace coming to grips with the type of society in which it lives. Finch is assigned to pursue the mystery of V, and in so doing unravels the history of the party’s origins and V’s vendetta. About two-thirds of the way through Evey’s journey with V and his vendetta Evey is captured and tortured. Her only solace during her ordeal is a scrap of toliet paper with a moving biography of her neighboring victim. The payoff from this is extremely surprising, utterly transendant and I think probably even true. There isn’t enough praise to go round for this one, Alan Moore for originally writing it of course, the Wachowski Brothers for recognizing it and popularizing it and Steve Moore for preserving and enhancing it. They all deserve major public honours here.
On the audiobook end, Simon Vance is my new favorite British narrator. The Shakespearean inspired “V-speech” that he delivers near the beginning of this audiobook is without parallel in my experience. It’s deliciously composed, elegantly constructed and with Vance’s performance, wonderfully delivered. The film version of this same speech is very good too, but I actually found myself better able to follow it via Vance’s excellent enunciated delivery. Steve Moore, the adaptor of the film’s script, has done something special. He’s taken many inspired liberties with the script by filling in as much detail as he could to flesh out the story – nearly every effective new addition to the story was taken from the original source material the comic book version of V For Vendetta. Finally, I can thankfully say that the plot detail involving the destruction of the British parliament buildings (including London’s Big Ben) is preserved from the film version. This is extremely important. To be sure there is a scene of the destruction of the British parliament buildings in the original graphic novel but the timing of it there is far less effective in terms of a story’s arc. Though it might be controversial to say, I think it is true: The Wachowski Brothers, in their adaptation of Alan Moore’s story, clearly understood the power of terrorism better than Alan Moore himself did at the time of the comic’s writing. The goal of terrorists is to show that an authority cannot control the terrorists. When a terrorist threat, like the destruction of a weighty architechtural symbol, is made and then carried out that effect is achieved. Some fear comes from a lurking dread of some muzzy non-specific threat but true political power stems from being able to call every shot, make the predictions on destruction and have them all come true every single time. In rejigging the story to make the destruction of the British parliament buildings happen near the end instead of the start, the already powerful story of V For Vendetta is vastly improved. An SFFaudio Essential.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The Incredible Shrinking Man
By Richard Matheson; Read by Yuri Rasovsky
1 MP3 disc, 7 CDs, 6 cassettes – 8 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0786178515(MP3), 0786175761(CD), 0786137924 (cassettes)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Atomic Radiation / Illness / Transcendence / Miniaturization / Horror
Scott Carey is a man suffering from a freak accident during which he was exposed to radiation dust and pesticides. He begins to slowly shrink. He finds not only the physical challenges of getting smaller but the social as well. In fact it is in this social arena where must of the intensity of the book comes from.
Scott Carey has a good life with his beautiful wife, Lou. When he begins to shrink tension between him and his wife grows, and their relationship begins to change. Although we feel sympathy for Scott’s plight, we don’t necessarily like him. He’s one pissed-off little guy. Ultimately this is a story of impotence. Not just sexually but for all aspects of his life. He can no longer satisfy his wife sexually (even though he still has his sex drive). He cannot meet his family’s economic needs except by selling his story to tabloid-styled newspapers. And he has a daughter that he has to fear because she may crush him just by playing with him.
Yuri Rasovsky does a great job on the audiobook. In an early dialogue scene with Scott and his wife Lou, the character voices sounded very much the same. My first response was that Yuri didn’t differentiate between characters much. On second reflection, I realized this was intentional. Later in the book as Scott is shrinking, he begins to sound like a little boy when talking with his wife. This helps create the vulnerable and impotent stature of Scott, making him less of a man. It was no accident that Matheson used “Lou” as a nickname for Scott’s wife, Louise. It demeans Scott’s masculinity even more.
Richard Matheson is a wonderfully expressive author, drawing emotion out with every turn. Granted, they are mostly dark emotions.
Matheson also adapted this novel to a screenplay for the classic movie. I watched the movie right after finishing the audiobook to see how a master adapts his own work to screen. It’s an experience I strongly recommend. Some of the most powerful scenes in the book do not make it into the movie. There’s a gang of youths that beat Scott. There’s the drunken child molester that picks up Scott hitchhiking and mistakes him for a boy.
And there are scenes that work better in the movie than in the book. These are the action scenes when Scott is fighting cats and spiders. Those scenes in the book become tedious because they take so long to explain.
But the book surpasses the movie again with an ending that is more poignantly transcendent.
Magic Street
By Orson Scott Card; read by Mirron E. Willis
11 CDs – 13.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0786178264
Themes: / Urban Fantasy / Fantasy / Shakespeare / A Midsummer Night’s Dream / Dreams /
Orson Scott Card’s Magic Street is an urban fantasy that links Shakespearean characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a middle-class black neighborhood in Los Angeles. Already not sounding like your cup of tea? Don’t scratch it off your list just yet. If Orson Scott Card wrote a book about a snail moving under a plant in a garden we would probably all marvel at the character development, be enraptured by the pacing of the story and how the plot develops and empathize with the moral dilemmas the snail must face! This excursion into urban fantasy, while not what we’re used to from Mr. Card, still gives us what we value in his writing.
Under inexplicable circumstances a boy named Mack Street is born into the world not yet alive and is immediately abandoned. Later found, he is raised by a couple of unlikely yet caring individuals. As he gets older Mack begins dreaming the deepest wishes of the people in his community. However, each time he experiences a “cold dream” the wishes invariably come true in a tragic way. Unable to understand the magic or speak to others about it, Mack keeps it a secret.
Then one day Mack discovers an entrance to fairyland. As he begins to interact with the magic of that world, his origin and purpose come into view. Mack and his community must act fast to guide events away from a tragic end.
The magic in the world is not explained until late in the story. The reader learns about it as Mack Street himself discovers the explanations. For me it was a bit taxing to go through so much of the story without being able to understand the meaning of the magical events, but the unfolding of the magic world is central to the story and, in a way, really facilitates identifying with the characters.
One of my favorite things about the book is the end. While the story intertwines itself with some of Shakespeare’s more light-hearted work, Magic Street is no comedy of errors. As the story reaches its climax it looks to be a tragedy of Shakespearean ilk. Disciples of the Bard can argue whether the ending is truly “Shakespearean” or not, but it concludes in a wonderfully complex way that leaves you feeling mournful of what was lost, but also that all is right and balanced.
It seems people either love or hate the story. Among the detractors are those disappointed to find the story departing from the genres they typically associate with Mr. Card. It certainly isn’t the fantasy of the Alvin Maker stories, but it isn’t trying to be. It’s an urban fantasy, and if you loathe urban fantasy you’ll dislike this book.
More critics, though, seem to focus on the racial issues. Mr. Card is not black and has written a story about black characters in a black community and does not shy away from discussing racial issues as he imagines them discussed among the characters. I don’t really know how to evaluate the validity of criticisms of how he approaches race, but I wonder what someone might think reading the same dialogue if they thought the author was black himself (I suspect they would be less critical). In any case the story is about people who are black and middle-class, and not about black, middle-class people. The characters are compelling because of what the reader shares with them as human beings, not because they are a case study of some part of Black America.
Mirron Willis was the reader for the story and did an excellent job. Among other projects he made a few appearances on ER as Detective Watkins, and on Star Trek: Voyager he appeared a couple of times as Rettik. Willis has won two Audiofile Earphone Awards and, coincidentally, he performs in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
The synopsis on the back of the disc case dramatically reveals that Mack pursues “a forbidden relationship”. I think there must be a list of pre-approved comments to put on CD cases to entice people to buy it. I’ll wager that, as we speak, said list is attached to a dart board in someone’s office with a small hole in the words “forbidden relationship”, because it didn’t come from the story.
Magic Street is another story from Orson Scott Card that has been beautifully translated into audiobook format that is well worth your time.
Posted by Mike
Rally Cry: The Lost Regiment #1
By William R. Forstchen; Read by Patrick Lawyor
11 Cassettes, 12 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 15 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 0786145056(Cassette), 078617199 (CDs), 078617658X (MP3-CD)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Military / Civil War / Aliens / Early Civilizations / Alien World /
In this exciting Military Science Fiction book, we find a regiment of Union soldiers swept away into a tunnel of light to find themselves on an alien planet. These are battle-hardened and battle-weary soldiers who have paid the terrible price of war. Their leader, Colonel Andrew Keane, has not only lost an arm but also his only brother in conflicts with the South.
Their first encounter on this new world is with a society of humans. The society originally came from Earth through that same tunnel of light that brought Keane and his men to this planet. These people were transplanted out of Medieval Russia. The nobles and the Church rule over the peasant serfdom. Conflict ensues as these two different societies battle with weapons from different eras.
There is also a nomadic alien race that lords over the humans of this planet. They are coming to take one out of every five humans as their tribute. What do they do to these humans? Mostly they eat them.
This is the first novel in a long series known as The Lost Regiment. The action is strong and convincing. Patrick Lawford reads the novel with a good range of voices and accents. The story is written in third person omniscient, so we get into the heads of many of the characters. Each character has their own motivations that justifies their actions.
The only disappointment was the lack of alien-ness to the aliens and setting. Sure the aliens are tall fangy creatures that eat humans, but their culture is not much different than many primitive nomadic warrior tribes. They measure their virtue in bravery and prowess in battle. Maybe it’s not fair to expect an alien culture to be different, after all I haven’t encountered any real ones. Maybe primitive cultures of different planets would share many of the same traits, if they are universally advantageous to that species. The setting also lacks in alieness and is very much like Earth except that it has two moons.
Overall, this is a rousing tale with plenty of action. The battle scenes are exciting without glorifying war. The characters suffer real losses, and we feel their anguish. If you are Civil War buff or like Military SF this is a book not to be missed.
The audiobook is only available in library editions. This means the packaging is sturdier and more permanent. Unfortunately this makes the price expensive. A more affordable download version is available at audible.com. Better still, make a request to your local library to carry it (with dozens of other SFF titles, of course).
Blackstone Audiobooks‘ release of King Kong, from way back in 2005 (read our review of it HERE) is something I’ve just now finally got my grubby mits on. I was especially excited to get a hold of it because of last disc in the 5 CD set – it contains the “special features” – and they are, quite possibly, the most special of features ever to have been added to an unabridged audiobook. The narrator/producer, Stefan Rudnicki, has tracked down some of the biggest names in Science Fiction and Fantasy Fiction and asked them to give their opinions of the original King Kong. The resultant disc is some of the most interesting and insightful film commentary I’ve ever heard. The creators of the Peter Jackson King Kong DVD were utter fools not to have hired Rudnicki to produce just this sort of material for the bonus features. Not only does “disc 5” give fond memories of an absolutely iconic fantasy film, it also dispenses deeply insightful criticism and sharp commentary from those who were influenced by the film. There are even some funny related real-life stories. Harlan Ellison, for example, talks about his overwhelming need to watch the original film whenever it airs on TV – as well as his hatred for remakes of ‘perfect movies’ in general. Stop-motion animation god Ray Harryhausen steps in to talk of how the original character of Kong became the tipping point for his amazing life’s work. And Orson Scott Card boldy dismisses the original film as irrelevant to his life and work. Indeed this is perhaps the finest collection of commentary on Kong ever collected – and that it could be recorded in the commentators’ own words, and in their own voices (except for Williamson) makes this a true treasure for the ages. Kudos to Blackstone Audiobooks, they could have just cashed in on the Kong-kraze but instead they kicked it up a notch, creating something worthy of its own page in the first printing of The Encycolpedia Galactica (publication date 2362).
Well played Blackstone, truly well played.