computers – Page 3

Review of The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

SFFaudio Review

Here’s a review of The Veldt, story #20 in our 7th Anniversary Review Spree!

The Veldt
Contained in The Illustrated Man
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Paul Michael Garcia
8 CDs – 9 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781433297199
Themes: / Science Fiction / Automated House / Computers / Children / Simulation /

In a house that cost them “thirty thousand dollars installed”, George and Lydia Hadley and their two children lived happily. Their shoes were tied with automatic shoe-tyers, their bacon was automatically fried, and, most importantly, their children were kept entertained. Life was good in their soundproof Happylife(tm) Home. Of course, things go terribly wrong. In the nursery, the kids seem to be spending a lot of time in Africa. With the lions.

The story was published in 1950, and though nobody’s tying my shoes, here in 2010 I can identify strongly with some of what Bradbury says here. At one point, George gets so upset that he decides to shut the house down:

“Lydia, it’s off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies as of here and now. The more I see of the mess we’ve put ourselves in, the more it sickens me. We’ve been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!”

And he marched about the house turning off the voice clocks, the stoves, the heaters, the shoe shiners, the shoe lacers, the body scrubbers and swabbers and massagers, and every other machine he could put his hand to.

The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical cemetery. So silent. None of the humming hidden energy of machines waiting to function at the tap of a button.

Every so often I experience the same kind of angst and run around shutting things down. Things don’t end up so well for George, though. Maybe I better just leave it all on… and let the kids play with the lions. moohoowahahaha!

I’ve heard this story many many times, but I don’t know that I’ve actually heard an audiobook version before now. They’ve always been radio dramas, and this story has appeared several times: It was a Dimension X episode (1951), an X Minus One episode (1955), and Episode 11 of Bradbury 13. It was also televised as an episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater in the 1980’s.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Press Enter_ by John Varley

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio’s 7th Anniversary Reviewathon continues!

Press Enter_
By John Varley; Read by Peter Ganim
2 Hours 53 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2008
Themes: / Science Fiction / Mystery / Murder / Computers / Hacking /

This novella won the Best Novella Hugo in 1985 and the Best Novella Nebula in 1984. In 1984 I was 16, and my prize possession was a Commodore 64 computer. I recall programming on it, writing stories, and playing games. hmm. Not much has changed since then but the hardware, it looks like.

A story published in 1984 in which computers play a huge role is a history lesson. Floppy disks, modems, BBS’s – made me long for the good ole days. What was science fiction in 1984 now reads like historical fiction with an SF twist.

Victor receives a phone call one day from a computer, which tells him to run next door to his neighbor’s house. It will keep calling until he does it, says the computer. So he does, entering the house of a man he didn’t know well and finding him dead, an apparent suicide. Police and others are called in because this dead neighbor was into a lot of stuff: surveillance of neighbors, hacking into government systems, manipulation and theft of big money, all through his computers and his phones. Peter Ganim narrates the mystery well.

This is the longest story I’ve reviewed so far this month; it clocks in at 2 hours, 53 minutes. I LOVE novellas, and there is so much great science fiction out there at this length. Hollywood, take note! If you are mining for material, check out the science fiction novella.

Audible Frontiers has published many novellas, including more by John Varley (The Persistance of Vision is really excellent) and some by Connie Willis and Allen Steele.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Human Weakness by Karen Traviss

SFFaudio Review

The 7th Anniversary Reviewapalooza continues! May contain nuts.

Human Weakness
By Karen Traviss; Read by Jen Taylor
Contained in Halo: Evolutions
90 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: 2010
Themes: / Science Fiction / Military SF / Artificial Intelligence / Computers / Aliens /

I have died more deaths per minute in Halo than anyone else I know. I spawn, look around, and thud. Or boom. Or thump thump thump. I spend a LOT of time waiting to spawn. Don’t like to brag, but my rate of death has to be some kind of record.

So I listened to this Halo story by Karen Traviss. “Human Weakness”, it’s called. It’s a good story about an artificially intelligent computer that is left behind when The Flood arrives and the humans run for their lives. The story is about something called “The Gravemind”, a borg-like malevolent entity that assimilates data, and it’s attempt to infiltrate the left-behind AI. No matter how much the Gravemind tries to convince the AI to allow it access, the AI refuses. Interesting! Not too many humans in this story.

I mentioned this to a friend of mine whose Halo death rate is respectable. I told him that the AI’s name was Cortana, and he knew exactly who that was. Then I realized that she’s the girl that talks to me at the beginning of Halo 3. That sent me to the Halopedia, where everything started coming together. I haven’t played much Halo in story mode, obviously, but I’m more interested in doing so than I was. A big storyline!

And oh yeah! The narrator was top-notch. Her name is Jen Taylor.

The description of the Halo: Evolutions anthology:

When humanity expanded beyond the safety of Earth to new stars and horizons, they never dreamed what dangers they would encounter there. When the alien juggernaut known as the Covenant declared holy war upon the fragile human empire, millions of lives were lost—but, millions of heroes rose to the challenge. In such a far-reaching conflict, not many of the stories of these heroes, both human and alien, have a chance to become legend. This collection holds eleven stories that dive into the depths of the vast Halo universe, not only from the perspective of those who fought and died to save humanity, but also those who vowed to wipe humanity out of existence.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo

SFFaudio Review

A Hymn Before Battle
By John Ringo, Read by Marc Vietor
12 CDs – 15 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781423395089
Themes: / Science Fiction / Military SF / Battle / Aliens / Computers /

First published in 2000, John Ringo’s A Hymn Before Battle is the 1st book in his Posleen War series, also known as the Legacy of the Aldenata. It is 2001 and America is at peace. Former Lieutenant Mike O’Neal is now a website developer. Despite throwing in some web development jargon I was impressed that it didn’t sound dated, even after nine years. Mike is recalled to a top secret briefing where it is revealed that aliens have contacted the heads of the major governments. Their message warns that there is a rampaging alien horde, the Posleen, are coming this way through the galaxy and they need our help. Unfortunately for the alien’s Galactic Federation, they have no ability when it comes to war. One race go so far as to revert to a virtual non-sentient state whenever they attempt to take another’s life. Needless to say, they are losing the war against the sauroid aliens, the Posleen. They are nearly as afraid of the humans as they are the Posleen. But with their backs to the wall, they have decided to enlist mankind to fight their war for them. The fact that we would be over run by the Posleen in a few years is enough to rally all the nations to join the cause.

Mike O’Neal, together with many others, including a sly reference to an SF author of space combat novels refered to only as “David”, are tasked to develop the weapons, vehicles and systems that mold Galactic technology to human use. Mike’s own project is the development of the ACS, the Armoured Combat Suit.

The first battle is fought with several international forces attempting to defend one of the worlds of the pacifistic worker race, the Indowy. Perhaps something that might not have been included in books written more than a year later, is the tactical collapsing of inhabited alien megascrapers as weapons. The versatility and vastly changed tactics the Armoured Combat Suits bring to the combat scenes are well thought out, even to the point of a rather grisly flaw caused by the armour being too strong.

The action is well described as Ringo build up the range of abilities embodied by the ACS’s. Lots of characters are introduced and their personalities brought to life by the narrator, Marc Vietor.

It must be said, Marc Vietor dives into the alien words and names with gusto. Ringo surely didn’t have narration in mind when he named Ttckpt Province, or Tulo’stenaloor, First Order Battlemaster of the Sten Po’oslena’ar. For a couple of chapters I was even reading along from the Baen Free Library/WebScription edition. This impressed me as I could see how Vietor added lots of texture and emotion to the dialog and prose, that you might not otherwise have from reading the text alone.

The story doesn’t just follow Mike O’Neal. There are two other plot threads that clearly are building towards something much larger for later books in the series. A Hymn Before Battle sets the stage with, what I presume are it’s major players, for the following books in the series. I look forward to reading more in this series, and to more of John Ringo’s other works.

Posted by Paul [W] Campbell

BBC4 & RA.cc: Stephen Fry – In The Beginning Was The Nerd

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’ve been enjoying quite a lot of Stephen Fry on television lately. He’s been following in the footsteps of Douglas Adams in the recent series Last Chance To See, doing an autobiographical examination of a fascinating disorder in Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive and criss-crossing the USA in Stephen Fry in America. But the programme that I’ll draw your attention to is a very nice hour long documentary that aired on BBC Radio 4 a couple weeks back. I picked it up through RadioArchive.cc, and I recommend you do the same.

Fry brings quite a bit to the show, delving back into computer history, talking about Alan Turing (and how that connects to where the Apple company’s logo came from), sliding tangentially into Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops and plenty more besides. The “Y2K disaster” seems more and more relevant these days, not because of the disaster itsel (which didn’t happen) but rather because the fixity of poorly informed media opinion is more and more likely despite our increasing ability to digitally record and rehash our poor predictions. We just don’t do it – except with programmes like this!

Stephen Fry – In The Beginning Was The Nerd
By Stephen Fry
1 Broadcast – Approx. 56 Minutes [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: October 5, 2009
The Western world, with a few notable exceptions, poured billions of dollars into electronic pesticides to defeat the Y2K bug. Only to find that for the most part it could have been defeated by turning the systems off then on again. So, why the silence when the bug didn’t bite? The answer’s in the programme. Politicians, experts and businessmen all profited in status or cash from the threat. In the media – to paraphrase the crime reporters – it bled so it led. In the USA, government brazenly claimed victory for its defeat. In reality, the enemy was almost totally imaginary. But it’s useless blaming the great and the good. It was inevitable. We’d been told repeatedly that this brilliant new technology would change the world. Then we were told it could all stop on the stroke of one spookily special midnight. We were the newly addicted, suddenly faced with the prospect that our supply was fatally endangered. There was only one thing we could do. Panic. Then spend millions fixing it. Sorry, that’s two things.

Here’s a 15 minute selection from the doc:

You can pick up the rest, via torrent, from RadioArchive.cc.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 018

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s another LibriVox short story collection for you. As usual there are a few repeats sprinkled among the first time recorded tales. Of those latter tales I’ve made a few notes:

Narrator Bellona Times has a nice setup and a decent voice for Breakaway. This tale is Science Fiction for astronauts. An utterly unselfconscious telling of the first Earth to Moon mission – written and published more than a dozen years before it actually happened.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s satire Some Words With A Mummy an amateur Egyptologist gets his hands on an ancient Egyptian mummy. He decides to unwrap it, with startling results. This isn’t Poe’s greatest story, it seems to be very much of its era, but because it is still Poe it is still very good. Narrated by the ever capable Gregg Margarite.

Mex was written by what appears to be a Laurence M. Jannifer (under a pseudonym). It is hard to follow as narrator Daniele races through the standard LibriVox introduction then does some very strange things to what should be Mexican accented English.

I hadn’t even heard of Walt Sheldon prior to the two tales released in this collection. First up, Two Plus Two Makes Crazy has a great title! It depicts a Logan’s Run-like society as seen from the tech department. Fun.

A wacky physics professor stars in the other Sheldon tale: This Is Klon Calling. This one is a mite predictable, but it is entertaining nonetheless. Both Sheldon tales are read by the ever talented Gregg Margarite.

Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 018
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and case) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves sociological and technical speculations based on current or future science or technology. This is a reader-selected collection of short stories that entered the US public domain when their copyright was not renewed.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-018.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Belly Laugh
By Randall Garrett; Read by glenford2000
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
You hear a lot of talk these days about secret weapons. If it’s not a new wrinkle in nuclear fission, it’s a gun to shoot around corners and down winding staircases. Or maybe a nice new strain of bacteria guaranteed to give you radio-active dandruff. Our own suggestion is to pipe a few of our television commercials into Russia and bore the enemy to death.

Breakaway
By Stanley Gimble; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
She surely got her wish … but there was some question about getting what she wanted. From Astounding Science Fiction December 1955.

Cully
By Jack Egan; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
By all the laws of nature, he should have been dead. But if he were alive … then there was something he had to find. From Amazing Stories, January 1963.

Earthmen Bearing Gifts
By Fredric Brown; Read by Bookman
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
“Mars had gifts to offer and Earth had much in return—if delivery could be arranged!” First published in the June 1960 issue of Galaxy magazine.

Mex
By Laurence M. Janifer; Read by Daniele
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
Talented William Logan [Laurence M. Janifer], though he hails from Dodger territory, tells a quiet story from down near the Mexican border, where men are very close to ancestral memories and to the things which dwell in the shadows. Logan is one of the more interesting of the newer writers. From Fantastic Universe January 1957.

The Putnam Tradition
By Sonya Dorman Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
Through generations the power has descended, now weaker, now stronger. And which way did the power run in the four-year-old in the garden, playing with a pie plate? From Amazing Stories January 1963.

Some Words With A Mummy
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 36 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
Some amateur Egyptologists get their hands on an ancient Egyptian mummy. They decide to unwrap it, with startling results. First published in the April 1845 issue of American Review: A Whig Journal.

Summit
By Mack Reynolds; Read by M.White
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
Almost anything, if it goes on long enough, can be reduced to, first a Routine, and then, to a Tradition. And at the point it is, obviously, Necessary. First published in Astounding Science Fiction’s February, 1960 issue.

This Is Klon Calling
By Walt Sheldon; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
One sure way to live dangerously is to become a practical joker. Should you have any doubts about it you might ask Professor Dane. From the Aug-Sept 1953 issue of Fantastic Universe.

Two Plus Two Makes Crazy
By Walt Sheldon; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 3, 2009
Walt Sheldon is bitter-bright in this imaginative short satire of Man’s sell-out by a group of staunch believers in the infallibility of numbers. From Fantastic Universe March, 1954.

Posted by Jesse Willis