Orson Scott Card – Page 18

Commentary: King Kong’s Special Features

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.

posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Eye For Eye by Orson Scott Card

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Eye For Eye
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki with Margy Stein
3 CDs – 147 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: ReQuest Audiobooks
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1933299517
Themes: / Science Fiction / Society / Morality / Youth / Power /

“If you’re a half way decent person you don’t go looking to kill people. Even if you can do it without touching them. Even if you can do it as nobody even guesses they were murdered you still got to try not to do it.”

Mick Winger is only seventeen – and already he’s killed over a dozen people. Not on purpose of course; he never meant to hurt anyone. But when Mick gets angry, people die, even the people he loves the most. Set in the contemporary world, Mick is a godfearing young man with a mysterious power – the ability to kill people just by getting mad at them. He doesn’t want to kill people, but sometimes he gets mad and then they die of hideous cancerous tumors – sometimes fast, sometimes slow – depending on how mad he gets. The phenomena is explained by some “bio electrical field” handwaving on Card’s part but that isn’t the heart of the story. Mick’s been an orphan since the day he was born – even as a baby his uncontrollable power killed his caregivers. When he grew old enough to realize the danger he posed to others, he left the orphanage to get a job doing manual labour for a decent father figure. One day Mick finds himself unconciously withdrawing his meager savings and travelling to his birthplace – like a salmon going to spawn – but on the way he meets an older woman who knows his terrible secret. She tells him he doesn’t have to go and tries to persuade him to come with her instead. But Mick has other plans. He’ll go work for the CIA, make some good of his ability to kill. Of course Mick has forgotten even he has to sleep sometime…

I plain loved this book. Not only is the story told crisply and cleanly, but it also gets one doing some deep thinking. Mick’s gift/curse is almost the perfect allegory for gun control. Not even the most rabid NRA members would suggest it’s a good idea to give pistols to toddlers, and that’s basically Mick’s situation. He’s been given a weapon that is so a part of him that he can no more stop it than he can stop breathing. His emotions are tied into a hair trigger of killing. Pity even the most loved friend who is standing near when his emotions run hot. Orson Scott Card has tied this all in with what looks like a cross between an Old Testament inbreeding program and a fundamentalist militia.

This whole situation reminded me of a phrase Robert A. Heinlein once coined: “An armed society is a polite society.”* This concept has been much trumpted by the firearms lobby and Eye For Eye shows just what it would mean if it were practiced. If everyone was like Mick Winger, a community of the armed would also be a community of fear, where even constructive criticism is to be avoided at all costs lest someone take offense. Love thy neighbor doesn’t extend very well when thy neighbor demands the freedom to own nuclear weapons.

In this age of seemingly endless series, thousand page fantasy epics, and general fiction sprawl, it is wonderfully refreshing to listen to a short novel or novella. Request Audiobooks, a brand new player in the audiobook market, has dipped into Science Fiction and Fantasy’s glorious past for some wonderous tales that don’t require a forklift to enjoy. Eye For Eye was first published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Mar 1987 issue, and in 1988 it won the Hugo Award for best novella. Then in November 1990 it was paired as half of the Tor Double Novel #27 with another novella by Lloyd Biggle Jr. (The Tor Doubles are for my money the very best modern treeware series published). For more than ten years this terrific tale sat out of print. Then ReQuest Audiobooks stepped up. And boy did they ever! ReQuest presents the novella in all its glory, and then some. They tapped master narrator Stefan Rudnicki to read it. Rudnicki who’s sonorant basso has performed more Orson Scott Card audiobooks than any other voice on Earth is perfect for the job. Then, they went to Orson Scott Card himself and had him write an original afterword just for the audiobook. To finish it all off, they commisioned some truly eye-catching art. This is my very favorite kind of audiobook. A short novel with an intriguing premise, bristling with driven characters, read by a talented narrator, and sporting a bonus feature. With a USA price point of just $14.95 for three CDs this is like a slice of audio heaven.

*-The quotation comes from the novel Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein

Posted by Jesse Willis

Though too modest to toot his own horn himself…

news

Though too modest to toot his own horn himself my co-editor and very dear friend Scott D. Danielson has made his very first professional sale and I think it is very newsworthy, even though it hasn’t yet been adapted to audio (yet)! Scott sold his first ever short story to none other than the new online magazine Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show!

Adrift
By Scott D. Danielson
Publisher: Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show – Issue 2
Published: March 2006
“He was floating in dark space, stars all around. Then he noticed a dark patch of space, as if a dark hole had opened. The hole grew larger and larger, the stars disappearing, until he realized that he was looking at another ship. An immense, completely dark craft approached.”

The print edition of Adrift appears today in issue #2 (that’s the March 2006 issue). This also happens to be the same issue as Middle Woman (the story I REVIEWED back on March 1st – which was a story read by SFFaudio reviewer Mary Robinette Kowal). Adrift has a setting not unlike that of the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos, but is also influenced by the likes of Anne McCaffrey and William Gibson, if you can imagine that. Scott’s prose is polished, shiny, poignant – had I known he had it in him I’d have been way too intimidated to email him all those years ago – this guy’s a natural writer, talented quick and full of great ideas. Now as to the inspiration, were I to guess, I’d say Scott was inspired to write Adrift in particular for two main reasons:

1. Besides running SFFaudio Scott is working on another big site. His personal blog, SFFreader has primarily been a project in which he reads and comments on ALL of the Hugo and Nebula award winning short stories, novellas and novellettes. This neo-Hurculean task has already vastly deepened his already substantial knowledge of SF&F in the short form.

2. Additionally, a few months ago Scott and I had some discussions about what makes an SF story resonate with one person and not with another. When I asked Scott in a private skype conversation to “name a favorite Science Fiction story”, he named The Star by Arthur C. Clarke – a very good story but one that didn’t resonate with me the way it resonates with him. He then asked me to name one of mine and I named The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin – a story Scott hadn’t read at that time. Scott got a hold of a copy of The Cold Equations, read it and felt the same way I had about The Star. There was a distinct gap between the two tales as well as a gap between our two feelings about the stories. In my estimation, the gap was the difference between a meaningful universe and a meaningless universe. I think Scott agreed, because in my view Adrift bridges the gap between The Cold Equations and The Star quite effectively. Now I ask you is this mere coincidence? Or is it meaningful to you?

Do yourself a favour and find out, Issue #2 of Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show is only $2.50 USD and is available now!

posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Middle Woman by Orson Scott Card

SFFaudio Review

Middle Woman
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Mary Robinette Kowal
1 MP3 File – 9 Minutes 57 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show
Published: March 2006
Themes: / Fantasy / Fable / Dragons / 3 Wishes /Immortality /

This is the second “Audio Bonus” from Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show online magazine, the plan appears to be to offer one bonus MP3 story per issue. Cool!

Orson Scott Card’s short fiction is connected to people in ways that other speculative fiction often isn’t. Realistic character psychology always takes the lead over scenarios, but his scenarios always test his characters’ psychologies – it makes for a special completeness rarely found in Speculative Fiction. Combine this with a refinement of prose, where every word is perfectly placed, and you get a little piece of magic in every OSC story. In this case, “Middle Woman” is a fable style fiction, another variation of that old saw “the three wishes”. Originally published under OSC’s pseudonym “Byron Walley”, it takes the idea of moderation, something almost always absent from fables, and runs with it. It reminded me of a kinder, gentler version of Robert Bloch’s classic That Hellbound Train. Interestingly, it also offers a more restive solution to W.W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw. The setting is Eastern, and given the “middle” of the title I suspect it is working in the ‘middle kingdom’ style of storytelling. Whether I’m right about that or not you’ll have to check it out yourself to decide.

Quite short, only 9 minutes, this is ably read by Mary Robinette Kowal who manipulates her voice in all the right ways to lend classic fairy tale reading to this modern fable. In addition to being a terrific narrator, Kowal is a professional puppeteer who also moonlights as speculative fiction author. “Middle Woman” is the Audio Bonus found in Issue Two of the online magazine Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

DISCLAIMER: Mary Robinette Kowal, when not reading stories aloud is an SFFaudio reviewer.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Click here for a complete list of Audie Award fina…

SFFaudio News

Click here for a complete list of Audie Award finalists. The awards will be presented on May 19 in Washington, DC at the National Press Club.

In the Science Fiction category, here are the finalists:

Dragonsblood by Todd McCaffrey, Brilliance Audio

Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, Tantor Media, Inc., SFFaudio Review forthcoming

Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card, Audio Renaissance, SFFaudio Review

The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein, Full Cast Audio, SFFaudio Review

The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold, Blackstone Audiobooks, SFFaudio Review

In other categories, Campbell Scott received a nomination for his narration of The Shining by Stephen King. A marvelous audiobook, that is – click here for the review. And I was pleased to see Blackstone’s The Sherlock Holmes Theater get a nomination in the Audio Drama category.

Good luck to all the nominees!

On a side note, I was very pleased to serve as one of the judges for this year’s awards, though I was not given the Science Fiction category.

posted by Scott

Our recently reviewed Special Collector’s Editio…

News

Blackstone Audiobooks Logo Our recently reviewed Special Collector’s Edition of King Kong isn’t the only 800 ton gorilla making waves over at Blackstone Audiobooks… they’ve got plenty more new titles:

The Door Into Summer
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Patrick Lawlor
5 cassettes, 6 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Published: January 2006
ISBN: 0786136782, 078617692X, 0786179546
Dan Davis, an electronics engineer, had finally made the invention of a lifetime: a household robot that could do almost anything. Wild success was within reach—and Dan’s life was ruined. In a plot to steal his business, his greedy partner and greedier fiancée tricked him into taking the “long sleep”—suspended animation for thirty years. But when he awoke in the far different world of A.D. 2000, he made an amazing discovery. And suddenly Dan had the means to travel back in time—and get his revenge.

The Incredible Shrinking Man
By Richard Matheson; Read by Yuri Rasovsky
6 Cassettes, 7 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: January 2006
ISBN: 0786137924, 0786175761, 0786178515
Inch by inch, day by day, Scott Carey is getting smaller. Once an unremarkable husband and father, Scott finds himself shrinking with no end in sight. His wife and family turn into unreachable giants, the family cat becomes a predatory menace, and Scott must struggle to survive in a world that seems to be growing ever larger and more perilous—until he faces the ultimate limits of fear and existence.

The Worthing Saga
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Scott Brick
13 Cassettes, 15 CDs or 2 MP3-CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: January 2006
ISBN: 0786129360, 0786181869, 0786183012
It was a miracle of science that permitted human beings to live, if not forever then for a long, long time. Some people, anyway. The rich, the powerful, they lived their lives at the rate of one year every ten. Somec created two societies: that of people who lived out their normal span and died and those who slept away the decades, skipping over the intervening years and events. It allowed great plans to be put into motion. It allowed interstellar empires to be built. It came near to destroying humanity. After a long, long time of decadence and stagnation, a few seed ships were sent out to save our species. They carried human embryos and supplies and teaching robots and one man. The Worthing Saga is the story of one of these men, Jason Worthing, and the world he found for the seed he carried.

Tales of Terror
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by a FULL CAST with music by David Thorn
5 Cassettes, 5 CDs or 1 MP3-CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Published: January 2006
ISBN: 0786144327, 0786173785, 0786177535
This special audio collection features some of Poe’s best known classic stories, including “The Tell Tale Heart,” “Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” “Hop Frog,” “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “Masque of the Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.”

How to Survive a Robot Uprising
By Daniel H. Wilson; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
3 Cassettes, 4 CDs or 1 MP3-CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Published: January 2006
ISBN: 0786144629, 0786172908, 0786177128
This is an inspired and hilarious look at how humans can defeat the inevitable robot rebellion, as revealed by a robotics expert. The robots are coming. Are you ready? How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous “smart” house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the secrets to quashing a robot mutiny. From treating laser wounds to fooling face and speech recognition, outwitting robot logic to engaging in hand-to-pincer combat, How to Survive a Robot Uprising covers every possible doomsday scenario facing the newest endangered species: humans.

And Coming in April, no foolin’:

The Martian Child
By David Gerrold; Read by Scott Brick
5 Cassettes, 6 CDs, 1 MP3-CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Published: April 2006
ISBN: 0786144092, 0786174277, 0786177640
Winner of the 1995 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Winner of the 1994 Nebula Award for Best Novelette. Gerrold, a science fiction writer from California, adopts a son who has a slight behavioral problem. He believes himself to be a Martian. Gerrold begins the long, involving work of trying to earn the acceptance of Dennis, a hyperactive eight-year-old who desperately wants a father’s love, but is so insecure he feels he must be an alien. Gerrold’s memoir of the first two years with Dennis ends with the climax of Dennis running away and waiting in a city park at night for the flying saucers to come and reclaim him. Funny, endearing, and at times, heartbreaking, this is a beautifully written testament to fatherhood. This book is semi-autobiographical. Gerrold did adopt a son, but he heard about a boy who thought he was a Martian from another adoptive father.

posted by Jesse Willis