Jack Vance – Page 8

Review of “Turjan of Miir” by Jack Vance

SFFaudio Review

We forgot to mention that this short review is part of the 7th Anniversary SFFaudio Reviewapalooza! Those responsible have been sacked.

“Turjan of Miir”
Contained in The Dying Earth
By Jack Vance; Read by Arthur Morey
42 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2010
Themes: / Science Fantasy / Spells / Mathematics / Artificial Life /

“Turjan of Miir” is the first story in Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth. It’s a densely rich story – when my mind wandered, I had to stop and back up the audio because each and every word is important and very much worth hearing. And a pleasure to hear, too – kudos to Arthur Morey for the fine narration.

The story opens with Turjan trying to feed his latest creation.

Turjan sat in his workroom, legs sprawled out from the stool, back against and elbows on the bench. Across the room was a cage. Into this, Turjan gazed with rueful vexation. The creature in the cage returned the gaze with emotions beyond conjecture. It was a thing to arouse pity.

The creature won’t eat, though, and dies in front of him. Out of frustration (for he’s attempted to create life many times before), he decides to visit an otherworld where a man (or ex-man) named Pandalume will be able to help him stabilize the pattern he needs to successfully make life.

Vance is luxurious with detail. In very little space, he tells us how Turjan can only carry four spells at a time, so for the trip to the otherworld he takes “three spells of general application”. The Excellent Prismatic Spray, Fandale’s Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour. It’s marvelous. There are many descriptive gems here.

I immediately see how The Dying Earth spawned an RPG, and I can also see that Wolfe, Zelazny, and Gaiman were all influenced by Vance.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #049

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #049 – Jesse and Scott talk about recent arrivals, new releases, audiobooks, podcasts and plenty more!

Talked about on today’s show:
SFFaudio.com is 7 years old, So I Married An Axe Murder, San Fransisco, California, Alcatraz, recent arrivals, Brilliance Audio, military SF, Fearless: The Lost Fleet Book 2 by Jack Campbell, space opera, Gene Roddenberry‘s Andromeda, Buck Rogers, Live Free or Die: book 1 in the Troy Rising series by John Ringo, Paperback Digital, Cally’s War by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane |READ OUR REVIEW|, John Ringo can give his books away and sell books too, Time’s Eye: A Time Odyssey Book 1 by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, it’s not a sequel it’s an “othrquel“, time is orthogonal to space (in relativity theory), Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, benevolent aliens, malevolent aliens, H.P. Lovecraft, The Eternal Wall by Raymond Z. Gallun, LibriVox, Gregg Margarite, time travel, Blackstone Audio, Identity Theft by Robert J. Sawyer, Mars, consciousness uploading/downloading, Treason by Orson Scott Card, A Planet Called Treason by Orson Scott Card, Stefan Rudnicki, Spider Robinson, Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson |READ OUR REVIEW|, copyright, copyfight, the philosophy of art, The Graveyard Book |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Harry Potter, The Dark Is Rising, A Wizard Of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, ripping off Heinlein is legit when you are Spider Robinson, Friday by Robert A. Heinlein, new releases, Wonder Audio, The Men Return & Worlds Of Origin by Jack Vance, Brilliance Audio, The Songs Of Dying Earth: Stories In Honor Of Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, The Book Of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe, David D. Levine, Tk’Tk’Tk’ by David D. Levine, The Moon Moth by Jack Vance |READ OUR REVIEW|, Suldrun’s Garden, The Green Pearl, Madouc by Jack Vance, Swimming Kangaroo Books, Need For Magic by Joseph Swope, BBC Audiobooks America, Great Classic Science Fiction: Eight Unabridged Stories, Forgotten Classics podcast talks James Gunn’s The Road To Science Fiction series, paperback book bags, A Game Of Thrones coming to HBO, A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin |READ OUR REVIEW|, Roy Dotrice, John Lee, Shogun (the TV miniseries), FlashForward, Stephen King’s Storm Of The Century, 1408, Scott’s Pick Of The Week: Steve, The First by Matt Watts |READ OUR REVIEW|, @ the CBC store, radio drama, post apocalypse, humor, Canadia: 2056 |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Jesse’s Pick Of The Week: The Chronicles Of Solomon Kane, Roy Thomas, Howard Chaykin, Robert E. Howard, The Iliad, Ralph Macchio, Red Shadows by Robert E. Howard, religion, Solomon Kane, The Punisher.

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases – Philip K. Dick, Jack Vance & Andre Norton

New Releases

Three fantastic new releases from Wonder Audio, plus news on one eBook!

The Men Return & Worlds of Origin
By Jack Vance; Read by Tim Rowe
1 hr, 10 min.- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2010

Available at Audible

Two vintage stories from the 1950s by science-fiction Grand Master Jack Vance, who wrote stories of adventure, detection, horror, and humor.

What the Critics Say:

“‘Worlds of Origin’: A mystery novel and a fine example of Vance’s trademark imagination with worlds and customs of alien origin. No less than a dozen wholly unique Vance worlds come to light during Magnus Ridolphs’ inquiry into the mysterious death of a man on a space-station retreat. ‘The Men Return’: [A] completely alien earth where our universal rule of cause and effect no longer has any meaning and only the insane flourish in the new dynamics.” (Amazon reviewer “Coriolous”)

The Defenders
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
61 min.- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2010

Available at Audible

Taylor felt life was pretty good. Sure, living in an underground bunker developing more sophisticated weapons to bomb the Soviets was less than ideal. But he had a pretty wife, and he was safe from the radioactive poisoned environment that existed above ground. The leadies, sophisticated robot servants, could inform them of the devastating destruction, the bombed out cities, and the further Soviet attacks. But it was a strange fact that the latest leadie to return to the bunker showed no sign of radioactivity. Strange enough for Taylor to be ordered above ground in a lead-lined suit to investigate. That Taylor didn’t want to go, wasn’t really an option!

People of the Crater
By Andre Norton; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
1hr, 44min.- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2010

Available at Audible

A flight to a lost world of Antarctica. Garin Featherstone has been sent to explore a mysterious blue haze that was spotted in the polar region. There he discovers a lost civilization and a strange environment of vivid green lands, crimson tree trunks, and golden rivers. He must save Thrala of the light against the lizard men.

This is Andre Norton’s first professional published story from 1947. Even the Grand Dame of science fiction had to have her first sale. And she shows her strengths in her first fantastic adventure story.

Did you know Wonder Audio also publishes eBooks and print books under the name of Wonder Publishing Group? Here’s one of their many new eBooks. And yes, that’s one sweet cover. :)

Venus is a Man’s World and Other
by William Tenn

Wry, brilliant stories from the late William Tenn. Stories of irony, poignancy, humor and satire. Vampires, time travel and paradoxes, government projects, war, and the battle of the sexes. Stories included are: VENUS IS A MAN’S WORLD, OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS, NULL-P, BROOKLYN PROJECT, SHE ONLY GOES OUT AT NIGHT, PROJECT HUSH, ME MYSELF AND I, and RICARDO’S VIRUS. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia ranked Tenn as “one of the genre’s very few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction.”

FICTIONWISE | AMAZON KINDLE

Posted by Rick Jackson

LibriVox: Short Science Fiction Collection 027

SFFaudio Online Audio

This new LibriVox collection of short SF has a few tales worthy of your ears. H. Beam Piper’s Weird Tales story, Dearest, is interesting and very Piper. The morality of it though is actually rather unnerving – and I’m not at all sure that that was intentional.

Short Science Fiction Collection 027
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours 59 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
Science Fiction is speculative literature that generally explores the consequences of ideas which are roughly consistent with nature and scientific method, but are not facts of the author’s contemporary world. The stories often represent philosophical thought experiments presented in entertaining ways. Protagonists typically “think” rather than “shoot” their way out of problems, but the definition is flexible because there are no limits on an author’s imagination. The reader-selected stories presented here were written prior to 1962 and became US public domain texts when their copyrights expired.

Podcast feed:
http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-027.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Dearest
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Ric F
1 |MP3| – Approx. 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
Colonel Ashley Hampton is an veteran of many battles. Now, in his golden years, he’s begun talking to himself. Ask him nicely and maybe he’ll tell you about his invisible playmate. From Weird Tales March 1951.

Flamedown
By Horace Brown Fyfe; Read by JohanG
1 |MP3| – Approx. 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
It was, of course, one Hell of an ending for a trip to Mars— From Analog Science Fact & Fiction August 1961.

The Flying Cuspidors
By V.R. Francis; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
A trumpet-tooter in love can be a wonderful sight, if Local 802 will forgive our saying so; when extraterrestrials get involved too—oh brother! V.R. Francis, who lives in California and has previously appeared in men’s magazines, became 21 and sold to FANTASTIC UNIVERSE all in the same week.
From Fantastic Universe August 1958.

Invasion
By Murray Leinster; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 59 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
The whole fighting fleet of the United Nations is caught in Kreynborg’s marvelous, unique trap. From Astounding Stories March 1933.

Keep Out
By Fredric Brown; Read by Megan Argo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
With no more room left on Earth, and with Mars hanging up there empty of life, somebody hit on the plan of starting a colony on the Red Planet. It meant changing the habits and physical structure of the immigrants, but that worked out fine. In fact, every possible factor was covered—except one of the flaws of human nature… From Amazing Stories March 1954.

Fantastic Universe September 1955 The Long Voyage
By Carl R. Jacobi; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 42 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
When we published Carl Jacobi’s last story we had no assurance he would be with us so soon again. For when a uniquely gifted science-fantasy writer becomes radio-active on the entertainment meter and goes voyaging into the unknown, he may be gone from the world we know for as long as yesterday’s tomorrow. But Carl Jacobi has not only returned almost with the speed of light—he has brought with him shining new nuggets of wonder and surmise. From Fantastic Universe September 1955.

Navy Day
By Harry Harrison; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
The Army had a new theme song: “Anything you can do, we can do better!” And they meant anything, including up-to-date hornpipes! From If Worlds of Science Fiction January 1954.

One-Shot
By James Blish; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
You can do a great deal if you have enough data, and enough time to compute on it, by logical methods. But given the situation that neither data nor time is adequate, and an answer must be produced … what do you do? From Astounding Science Fiction August 1955.

Sjambak
By Jack Vance; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
Wilbur Murphy sought romance, excitement, and an impossible Horseman of Space. With polite smiles, the planet frustrated him at every turn—until he found them all the hard way! From If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953.

Two Timer
By Fredric Brown; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 28, 2009
Here is a brace of vignettes by the Old Vignette Master … short and sharp … like a hypodermic! From Galaxy Science Fiction February 1954.

[Extra thanks to Gregg Margarite, Wendel Topper and Lucy Burgoyne]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #040

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #040 – Jesse and Scott are joined by Steve Feldberg of Audible.com to talk about Audible Frontiers and other Audible.com projects. We talk audiobooks the whole show, giving particular attention to those produced by Audible.com itself. Steve tells us all about a bunch of the upcoming Science Fiction, Fantasy, espionage, and crime audiobooks we can expect to see showing up in the Audible catalgoue this year and next!

Talked about on today’s show:
Audible.com, Audible Frontiers, Gateway by Frederik Pohl, Robert J. Sawyer, Frederik Pohl, how to translate font and textual changes to audio, Oliver Wyman, Jonathan Davis, METAtropolis |READ OUR REVIEW|, Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer |READ OUR REVIEW|, narrator performance, The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, how do you pick stuff?, Battlestar Galactica, Mike Resnick‘s Starship series, space opera, dialogue driven audiobooks, David Weber‘s Honor Harrington series, female protagonists, Mike Shepherd‘s Kris Longknife series, military SF, Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War series, novella and novelette length audiobooks, METAtropolis, Michael Hogan, Alessandro Juliani, Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer, Stefan Rudnicki, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card |READ OUR REVIEW|, Scott Brick, Hopscotch by Brian Garfield, espionage novels, Death Wish by Brian Garfield, Hopscotch (1980) starring Walter Matthau, Six Days Of The Condor by James Grady, mystery and thriller audiobooks, Jim Thompson, copyright disambiguation, Hard Case Crime, BBC Audiobooks America, Christa Faust, The Ghosts Of Belfast by Stuart Neville, Gerard Doyle, Eragon by Christopher Paolini, Jeremy Gage, Lawrence Block, pseudonymous narrators, Grover Gardner (aka Tom Parker), Mercedes Lackey‘s Elemental Masters series, fairy tales, Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer |READ OUR REVIEW|, Golden Fleece by Robert J. Sawyer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch‘s Retrieval Artist series, William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero, All Tomorrow’s Parties are all coming to audiobook, wouldn’t a multi-voiced version of Neuromancer be great? Yes it would!, Stanisław Lem, audiobooks are coming, Gene Wolfe‘s The Book Of The New Sun is coming to audio, epic fantasy is hard to turn into audiobooks, David Eddings, Subterranean Press, how the audiobook experience is different than the paperbook experience, Harlan Ellison as a narrator, we need some Jack Vance audiobooks, Brilliance Audiobooks, On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, Seeing Ear Theatre, audio drama, James Patrick Kelly, copyright disambiguation part II, the Bradbury 13, J. Michael Straczynski‘s City Of Dreams, Mary Burkey’s Audiobooker Blog, audiobook reading groups, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Audible.com’s internal book club.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Hour 25 interview with Jack Vance (from 1976)

SFFaudio Online Audio

This 1976 interview was recorded for HOUR 25, a long running Science Fiction radio show broadcast out of KPFK, a Los Angeles radio station. I couldn’t find an MP3 version online, but someone has done up a multi-segmented youtube version. One of the issues discussed is author remuneration. Vance speaks frankly about how even though he is ‘quite an established writer’ in the field of Science Fiction and Mystery, he doesn’t have enough income from either genre. Other reports, also mentioned in the interview, point out that those SF authors (like Isaac Asimov and Lin Carter) who have made a decent living via their writing, made most of that money writing non-fiction articles or selling the movie rights to their fiction. Perhaps even more interesting, near the end of the interview a caller asks if Vance has read A Quest for Simbilis by Michael Shea (a sequel to one of Vance’s own books, it stars a Vance character). In response Vance says that he hadn’t read it but that he’d still given Shea the go-ahead to try to get it published when Shea had asked. Then he invites the caller to write his own sequel! Interesting eh?

Here’s the first vid:

A search of youtube will turn up the rest.

Posted by Jesse Willis