FREE LISTENS Review: Anthem by Ayn Rand

SFFaudio Review

Free Listens BlogAnthem
By Ayn Rand
Source: Thought Audio
Length: 2 hr, 12 min
Reader: Michael Scott

The book:Set in the future following a catastrophic war, the society portrayed in Anthem is collectivism taken to the extreme. Individuality has been nearly wiped out. The first person singular is outlawed and forgotten, replacing “I” with “we”. People do not not have names, but designations containing a societal quality combined with a number. Equality 7-2521 is a man who feels the pull of individualism and is punished for it. When in the course of his duties, he discovers an old tunnel from before the wars, he gains a chance to break free.

Rand’s portray of this society has much in common with works produced during the rise of communism, such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World. Unlike these other examples of the sub-genre, I found Rand’s dystopia lacking in realism and therefore less compelling. Anthem‘s society is a city all on its own without any sense of a larger world other than an ill-defined wilderness. Surely other pockets of humanity would have survived even the most horrific war and become a rival society to out-compete the anti-technology society portrayed here.

The other main problem that I have with the book is that the danger it forecasts in collectivism is no longer the pressing spectre it was to Rand, who had lived in Stalinist Russia. In the present, we are more in danger of the opposite, a world of complete individuals with no sense of brotherhood or the collective good. Just as science in Anthem is impossible because no one can become any greater than others, science in a world where every technique or discovery is patented and jealously guarded is equally impossible. Likewise art is equally difficult when the artist or writer is not allowed to be different as when anything mildly derivative runs the danger of a copyright lawsuit. For this reason, I see Anthem not as a story for our time, but as a historical document of the fear that collective society once held.

Rating: 7/10

The Reader: Scott has a deep, announcer-sounding voice that is very pleasant for listening. This stentorian voice, however, is one of the drawbacks as well. Scott speaks with such confidence and power that it is sometimes discordant with the position of the protagonist, who has been trained to see himself as just like everyone else. The steady patterns of his cadence and the radio-quality voice are great assets to make the words very understandable, so only true purists need worry about the incongruity of the voice. Some edits are audible through digital artifacts, but otherwise the audio is professionally produced with very little background noise.

Note: Thought Audio’s books have sometimes been free and other times behind a pay wall. If you would like this book, but find you cannot download it, try the always-free LibriVox version.

Posted by Seth

Classic Tales: The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster

SFFaudio Online Audio

classic-tales-onesheet-final.jpgThe Machine Stops
By E.M. Forster; Read by B.J. Harris
1 | MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Classic Tales
Podcast: November 2008

A must-listen reading of the story about the future where people live below the earth’s surface, rarely interact personally, and do all their interaction by machine.

Sound eerily familiar?

I listened to part 1, read by the talented B.J. Harrison, and then took my dog out for a walk so I could be sure of connecting with the real world. If you’re interested, but can’t listen now, download it anyway, because B.J. only leaves two or three episodes up on his feed and then moves his stuff over to Audible.

Check out past episodes here.

Posted by Julie D.

Spider Robinson reads The Persistence Of Vision by John Varley

SFFaudio Online Audio

Spider On The Web - Spider Robinson’s podcastJohn Varley’s Hugo and Nebula award winning 1978 novella The Persistence Of Vision is the latest unabridged story to be recorded by Spider Robinson for his Spider On The Web podcast.

Wow! Could your life get any more thrilling than this?

The Persistence Of Vision is the perfect tale for these times. With those bread riots we’ve all got planned for next week and all. Now, all we’ll have to do is let a few of our nuclear power plants do The China Syndrome-thing, get the survivors together, form a few farm collectives, shave off all our body hair, and then paint ourselves a nice shade of purple.

Science Fiction Audio - The Persistence Of Vision by John VarleyThe Persistence Of Vision
By John Varley; Read by Spider Robinson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Spider On The Web
Podcast: November 2008
Wandering the roads and rails of a future USA, our narrator learns the art of living in a dead economy. Only a mysterious wall on the New Mexico/California border and a collective of the blind-deaf keep his wandering feet from moving on.

And, here are the details for the new Audible Frontiers version (which is done by a different narrator and is minus the sounds of pages turning)…

Audible Frontiers Science Fiction Audiobook - The Persistence Of Vision by John VarleyThe Persistence Of Vision
By John Varley; Read by Peter Ganim
Audible Download – 2 Hours 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: September 2008
Listen to a sample |MP3|
On the surface, this Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic is about a drifter who comes to stay in a New Mexico commune founded by a group of deaf-blind people. But beneath the story, author John Varley examines deep, universal issues. What is the nature of communication? What does an individual gain – or lose – by subsuming himself to the whole? Can an outsider ever truly “belong”? Varley says that he has had more response to this story than anything he has ever written, that some readers have even told him it changed their lives. Listening to The Persistence of Vision, it is easy to understand why.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Maria Lectrix: The Creature From Cleveland Depths by Fritz Leiber

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Maria Lectrix podcast, and it’s proprietress Maureen O’Brien have finished recording and releasing into the public domain a new/old short story by the immortal/deceased Fritz Leiber!

Says Maureen: “Here is a modern tale of an inner-directed sorcerer and an outer-directed sorcerer’s apprentice … a tale of— THE CREATURE FROM CLEVELAND DEPTHS”

Science Fiction Audiobook - The Creature From Cleveland Depths by Fritz LeiberThe Creature From Cleveland Depths
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Maureen O’Brien.
8 MP3 Files – Approx. 1 Hour 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: October 2008
Provider: Archive.org
Every time Gusterson dropped a new free idea into the fad-ridden mainstream world of underground cities and cozy crowds, it crystallized into something really strange, and things got out of hand. So he shouldn’t have mentioned the reminder machine….
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3|
Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3| Part 7 |MP3| Part 8 |MP3|

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Release – The Status Civilization by Robert Sheckley

New Releases

The Status Civilization by Robert SheckleyThe Status Civilization
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
5.5 hrs. – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Availiable at Audible and iTunes

Four on Seven

SFFaudio Online Audio

Four on Seven

BBC Radio 7 - BBC7The 7th Dimension
Readings:
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Brave New World

Plus The Scarifyers #2!

The Fall of the House of Usher: Edgar Allan Poe‘s classic tale of gothic horror, a masterpiece of “dramatic irony and structural symbolism” (whew, okay…) and no doubt his most famous work. Suffice it to say that this is one creepy story that seems to exist in some dark phantasmal dream. What is the power that the House has over the Usher Family? Told in 2 parts beginning on Thursday, September 25. Read by Sean Barrett.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Washington Irving‘s spooky tale of two rivals and an encounter with a ghastly horseman with…you guessed it…no head. Am I spoiling too much here? A traditional favorite and hey, just in time for Halloween. Oh, by the way, nothing wrong with the movie versions but the original’s a must read…or a must listen, as the case may be. Told in 3 parts beginning on Sunday, September 28. Read by Martin Jarvis.

Brave New World: Aldous Huxley‘s nightmare vision of a dystopian future. Often compared to Orwell’s 1984, critic Neil Postman contrasts the two: What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one…Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us. Heavy stuff. Told in 10 parts beginning on Monday, September 29. Read by Anton Lesser.

The Scarifyers series continues on BBC 7 with adventure #2, The Devil of Denge Marsh written by Paul Morris. When a government minister melts in Margate, it’s a job for Lionheart and Dunning. Terry Molloy (Dunning) described the series as being like Tin Tin and Dick Barton meet The X-Files. True to form, this one features an encounter with…no, it’s too horrible to tell! Presented in 3 parts beginning on Sunday, September 28. Produced by Cosmic Hobo. Full-cast audioplay. Stars Nicholas Courtney and Terry Molloy. – Trailer #1Trailer #2

Note that all BBC 7 programs are available to listen to online for six days via the Listen Again feature.

Posted by RC of RTSF