I’ve been listening to StarShipSofa‘s Sofanauts reports on Worldcon 2009 so I knew Paul Krugman and Charles Stross were at the convention. But, what I didn’t know was that they had had a public conversation there.
Here it is |MP3| There’s also a transcript available |TRANSCRIPT|.
[via BoingBoing]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Imager (The First Book of the Imager Portfolio)
By L.E. Modesitt, Jr.; Read by William Dufris
2 MP3-CDs – 18 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9781400161805
Themes: / Fantasy / Magic / Politics / Coming of Age / Economics /
| MP3 Audio Sample |
L.E. Modesitt, Jr. has published over 50 novels, both science fiction and fantasy. Imager, his latest novel, is the first time his work has appeared on audio.
Imager is the start of a new fantasy series called “The Imager Portfolio”. It’s the story of Rhenn, who at the beginning is an apprentice portrait painter. In a life-changing event, he realizes two things: First, he can no longer continue in his profession, and second, he is an “imager” – a person who can make things real by visualizing them in his mind. Imagers are not common, but common enough to be feared and respected in Modesitt’s world.
After this, the novel takes it’s time in following Rhenn grow into his new-found ability. He climbs the ladder as an imager taking various and interesting training that use his ability in unique ways. My first thought was not that an imager would make a good bodyguard, but imaging something into a person’s body makes for quick defense – or a potent offense.
William Dufris is wonderful as always. The novel is not quick paced, as if Modesitt is using this volume to firmly create the world for future volumes. Dufris is as engaged a narrator while relating the details as he is during the exciting bits. A pleasure to hear!
Tantor will be publishing the next two volumes of this trilogy, and I will be listening!
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Here are another two excellent unabridged audiobook short story offerings from Roy Turnbull…
The first, Accidental Death by Peter Baily, is definitely Science Fiction. It’s about an ill-fated expedition to an alien planet with some friendly, though dangerous, tennis-playing aliens. It speculates on the nature of luck in a first person present tense narrative – which is fun.
The second story, All The World A Grave by C.C. MacApp, is either Fantasy or Science Fiction, depending on your view of human nature. I take it as very apt satirical SF, in the same vein as The Space Merchants – as such, and despite its vintage, it has some very promising economic stimulus ideas for the new Barack Obama administration. Go economy, go!
Accidental Death
By Peter Baily; Read by Roy Turnbull
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Story Spieler Podcast
Published: 2009?
Provider: Internet Archive
From Astounding Science Fiction February 1959. The most dangerous of weapons is the one you don’t know is loaded.
And All The Earth A Grave
By C.C. MacApp; Read by Roy Turnbull
1 |MP3| – Approx. 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Story Spieler Podcast
Published: 2009?
Provider: Internet Archive
From Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1963. There’s nothing wrong with dying—it just hasn’t ever had the proper sales pitch!
Posted by Jesse Willis
John 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.
The 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)…
The 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
METAtropolis
By Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, and Karl Shroeder
Read by Michael Hogan, Scott Brick, Kandyse McClure, Alessandro Juliani, and Stefan Rudnicki
Audible Download – 9 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2008
Themes: / Science Fiction / Future Cities / Internet / Computers / Virtual Worlds / Survival / Economics / Environment /
METAtropolis is a shared-world science fiction collection with stories from five different authors who have been busy making their marks on the history of science fiction literature: Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, and Karl Schroeder. The ties that bind these excellent stories are imagined future cities in the same future world, which is filled with detail and innovation by the authors.
Also excellent are the narrators. Scott Brick and Stefan Rudnicki are well-known and respected by audiobook listeners, and they read one story each with their usual professionalism. The other three stories are read by actors from Battlestar Galactica: Michael Hogan (Col. Tigh), Kandyse McClure (Dee), and Alessandro Juliani (Lt. Gaeta).
Jay Lake starts the collection with “In the Forests of the Night”, with Michael Hogan narrating. The story takes place in Cascadiopolis, a settlement in Oregon that is visited by a man named Tygre Tygre. John Scalzi, the editor of this collection, introduces each story, and here he says that Lake, who is skilled at world-building, did a lot of the heavy introductory lifting in this story. That’s true, and the story is filled with information, but it is never dull. Hogan’s narration keeps us on our toes.
Next up is Tobias Buckell who takes us to The Wilds of suburban Detroit in “Stochasti-city”, with Scott Brick reading. In the future, commuting to work becomes unsustainable, and entire neighborhoods are abandoned, but some still live there, like the protagonist of this story. He makes his living “turking” – finding odd jobs that someone on the net will pay for. I’ve never been to Detroit, but imagining the abandoned suburbs and the city itself was easy with Buckell at the helm of this rich, thought-provoking tale.
Elizabeth Bear, in “The Red in the Sky is Our Blood”, introduces us to Katie, who also lives in Detroit. Kandyse McClure narrates here, and does a wonderful job with the most character-driven story of the five. The story opens with Katie riding her bicycle through a downtown Detroit that is nearly impassable, due to potholes and general infrastructure failure. As it continues, she’s got some hard choices to make.
John Scalzi’s entertaining story is next, read by Alessandro Juliani. There are a couple of laugh-out-loud moments in “Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis”, which is about a recent graduate’s first job in the city. Also filled with detail (would you take a shower with grey water?) and entertaining. Juliani reads with perfect timing.
And last is Karl Schroeder’s story, “To Hie from Far Cilenia”, read by Stefan Rudnicki. This is a wonderful story of cities of a different type. Idea-rich, action-packed – it’s got it all. It’s a perfect cap to a great bunch of stories, taking things in a completely different direction. A virtual world superimposed on the “real” one, but ins’t the virtual one just as real? Rudnicki is excellent, like always.
The shared world idea is not a new one, but this completely successful collection of great stories may renew the enthusiasm for this sub-genre. Is this a sub-genre? The actual stories of any shared-world collection can be of any sub-genre. But the point is that this is a thought-provoking, exciting group of stories that deserves high praise. An SFFaudio Essential!
ADD: I forgot to mention – get the first story for free over at Audible! CLICK HERE for details.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
The SFFaudio Podcast #008 – here there be podcasts – we’ve adorned ourselves in too much gold, now we can’t move! So join us on our 8th show, where we’re always etymologically correct.
Scott: Oh ya right. I just forgot something man. Uh, before we dock, I think we ought to discuss the bonus situation.
Jesse: Right.
Scott: We think… we think we deserve full shares.
Jesse: Right.
Scott: Pass the cornbread.
Topics discussed include:
42Blips.com, METAtropolis, Jay Lake, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Karl Schroeder, Mr. Spaceship, Philip K. Dick, Stefan Rudnicki, Wonder Audio, Anne McCaffrey, The Ship Who Sang, Michael Hogan, Battlestar Galactica, 18th Century Spain, Cascadia (Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and sometimes Idaho), Detroit, “Turking”, The Turk (the chess playing automaton), alternative economy, Kandyse McClure, infodump, shared world, Brandon Sanderson, hard fantasy, Elantris, Larry Niven, The Magic Goes Away, manna, unicorns, dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, Mistborn, Robert Jordan, The Wheel Of Time, Writing Excuses Podcast, Howard Tayler, SchlockMercenary.com, Dan Wells, The Dark Knight, Aural Noir, The New Adventures Of Mike Hammer, Stacy Keach, Mike Hammer, Full Cast Audio, Red Planet, Robert A. Heinlein, Bruce Coville, Mars, Heinlein’s Future History sequence, the Red Planet TV miniseries, Princess Academy, Shannon Hale, Blackstone Audio, The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Volume 1, and Volume 2, Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, David Farland, Runelords, Collected Public Domain Works Of H.P. Lovecraft, LibriVox.org, October, Ray Bradbury, “Autumn ennui”, AUTHOR PAGES, LEIGH BRACKETT, FREDERIC BROWN, JAMES PATRICK KELLY, BBC7, RadioArchive.cc, Beam Me Up Podcast, MACK REYNOLDS, Robert Sheckley, Religulous, Constantine’s Sword, The Ultimate Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction: The Definitive illustrated Guide edited by David Pringle, space opera, planetary romance, Julie D., Forgotten Classics podcast, The Wonder Stick, time travel, alien intrusions, metal powers, Slan, The Demolished Man, comedic SF, aliens, artificial intelligence, “cosmic collisions”, Deep Impact, cyborgs, dinosaurs, the dying Earth, Gene Wolfe, elixir of life, immortality, Roger Zelazny, Robert Silverberg, genetic engineering, nuclear war, overpopulation, parallel worlds, robots, androids, Joanna Russ, Ben Bova, space travel, suspended animation, teleportation, transcendence = the Singularity ?, Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke, religion, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Monica Hughes, Crisis On Conshelf Ten, Hard SF, cyberpunk, psychology, New Wave, lost races, military SF, science fantasy, shared worlds, steampunk.
Posted by Jesse Willis