The long promised StarShipSofa coverage of SF master Robert A. Heinlein is now complete. Three shows, and approximately three hours, of discussion by two hard-core Heinlein enthusiasts. Awesome!
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3|
And be sure to subscribe, the SSS boys have a Michael Moorcock show (and short stories!) in the works. Plug this podcast URL into your podcatcher to get the feed automatically:
http://starshipsofa.libsyn.com/rss
In it’s continuing series celebrating the Heinlein Centenary, BBC7’s The Seventh Dimension is airing Ordeal In Space. Last weekend’s The Green Hills Of Earth was a great listen, and the airing of Methuselah’s Children. will wrap on Monday. And of course, U.K. and non-UK residents alike who can’t listen to the live stream or broadcast (on DAB) can still use the Listen Again service for 6 days following each broadcast.
Ordeal In Space
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Adam Sims
1 Broadcast – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED?]
BROADCASTER: BBC7’s The 7th Dimension
BROADCAST: Saturday July 13th 2007 @ 6.30pm and 12.30am (UK time)
To mark the centenary of Robert A. Heinlein’s birth, a thrilling tale that delves into the psyche of a traumatized spaceman. Astronaut, William Cole is back on earth recuperating from a terrible accident. He was rescued in the nick of time from being jettisoned into outer-space. It has left him with a debilitating fear of falling. Facing the prospect of never returning to a job he loves, he tries to adapt to life as a civilian. His struggle to overcome paralyzing fear is captured in exquisite detail.
If you’re wondering who’s publishing the biggest names in Science Fiction and Fantasy, this week’s arrivals from Blackstone should leave no doubt.
Variable Star
By Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson; Read by Spider Robinson
9 CD, 11 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9780786158843
At his death in 1988, Robert A. Heinlein left a legacy of novels and short stories that almost single-handedly defined modern science fiction. But one of Heinlein’s masterpieces was never finished. In 1955, he began work on Variable Star, a powerful and passionate tale of two young lovers driven apart by pride, power, and the vastness of interstellar time and space. Then he set it aside to focus on other novellas.
The detailed outline and notes he created for this project lay forgotten for decades, only to be rediscovered almost a half century later. Now the Heinlein estate has authorized award-winning author Spider Robinson to expand that outline into a full-length novel. The result is vintage Heinlein, faithful in style and spirit to the Grand Master’s original vision.
Alvin Journeyman; Tales of Alvin Maker Book Four
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Multi-Cast
12 CD, 15 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433205934
Alvin is a Maker, the first to be born in a century. Now a grown man and a journeyman smith, Alvin has returned to his family in the town of Vigor Church. He will share in their isolation, work as a blacksmith, and try to teach anyone who wishes to learn the knack of being a Maker. For Alvin has had a vision of the Crystal City he will build, and he knows that he cannot build it alone. But he has left behind in Hatrack River enemies as well as true friends. His ancient foe, the Unmaker, whose cruel whispers and deadly plots have threatened Alvin’s life at every turn, has found new hands to do his work of destruction.
Voyagers III: Star Brothers
By Ben Bova; Read by Stephan Rudnicki
10 CD, 11.5 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433205781
Keith Stoner lay frozen in an alien spacecraft for fifteen long years. During that time he came to be something more than just an astronaut, just a man. Stoner became partly alien himself, merged with an alien intelligence embodied in the nanotechnology that lived inside his body.
The alien whose tomb that spacecraft was brought humanity both a blessing and a deadly peril. The technology that lives in Stoner’s bloodstream will change mankind forever. There are powerful leaders, both corporate and political, who are becoming aware of Keith Stoner and the power he seems to control. They want that power for themselves and will do anything to gain it. Nothing Stoner can say or do will convince these ruthless men and women that the power they seek may destroy them utterly.
Mirror Dance
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
15 CD, 18 hrs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781433205699
Winner of the Hugo Award for Science Fiction
The dwarfish, fetally-damaged yet brilliant Miles Vorkosigan has more than his share of troubles. Having recently escaped an assassination plot whose tool was a brainwashed clone of himself, Miles has set the clone, Mark, free for a new chance at life. But when he decides to let his clone brother assume his secret identity and lead the Dendarii Free Mercenary on an unauthorized mission to liberate other clones from the outlaw planet of Jackson’s Whole, things start to get really messy. The mission goes awry, Miles’s rescue attempt goes even more wrong, and Miles ends up killed and placed in cryogenic suspension for future resuscitation. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, the cryo-container is lost! Now it is up to the confused, disturbed Mark to either take Miles’s place as heir of the Vorkosigan line or redeem himself by finding and saving Miles.
In honour of the 100th anniversary of Robert A. Heinlein’s birth, BBC7’s The Seventh Dimension is airing a special series of Heinlein stories. The first of which aired this last Saturday. First up was The Green Hills Of Earth, a Heinlein story he partially credited to a line from C. L. Moore and her story Shambleau (which also aired this year on BBC7). The Green Hills Of Earth is also one story with a distinction few others could possibly equal, it was quoted to listeners on the Moon – namely the crew of Apollo 15! Next Saturday the Heinlein Centenary celebration continues with Ordeal In Space. And, all this week, BBC7 is airing Methuselah’s Children. You can have a listen to The Green Hills Of Earth now, and for the next few days, via the Listen Again service. Same goes for the first episode of Methuselah’s Children. More details below..
The Green Hills Of Earth
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Adam Sims
1 Broadcast – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED?]
BROADCASTER: BBC7’s The 7th Dimension
BROADCAST: Saturday July 7th 2007
This is the poignant story of Rhysling, the blind space-going songwriter whose poetic skills rival Rudyard Kipling’s. This yarn is about a radiation-blinded spaceship engineer crisscrossing the solar system writing and singing some of the best lyrics in science fiction. In a fine display of writing skill, the spaceship and crew feel as real to the reader as a contemporary tramp steamer.
Methuselah’s Children
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Paul Birchard
6 Parts, Six 30-Minute Broadcasts – Approx. 3 Hours [ABRIDGED]
BROADCASTER: BBC7’s The 7th Dimension
BROADCAST: Weekdays July 2007 to July 16th 2007
Robert A Heinlein’s sci-fi novel about a group of families who can live for several hundred years.
Lots of new release out right now. First up is a FREE one. A podiobook that took nearly a year to finish. Tracy Hickman’s near future dystopia The Immortals is now COMPLETE! Point your web-browser towards Podiobooks.com, sign-up and subscribe.
The Immortals
By Tracy Hickman; Read by Tracy and Laura Hickman
40 MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED?]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Started: April 2007
It’s 2020, and an attempted cure for AIDS has mutated into a deadlier disease, V-CIDS. The U.S., under martial law, has set up “quarantine centers” in the Southwest. Searching for his gay son, Jon, media mogul Michael Barris smuggles himself into one of centers only to discover that it and the other centers are actually extermination camps. With a strange assortment of allies, including the leader of the camp’s gay barracks, an army officer and a local cowboy, Barris precipitates an inmates’ rebellion that promises the unraveling of the death-camp system and the overthrow of the government that established it.
Let’s not forget the venerable and always reliable TellTaleWeekly, selling short stories for great prices!
The Star
By H.G. Wells; Read by Alex Wilson
1 MP3 , Ogg Vorbis or AAC File – Apprx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: TellTaleWeekly.org
Published: April 2007
Just $1.00 payable via PayPal. One hundred and one years before the films Armegeddon and Deep Impact entered U.S. theaters, the father of modern Science Fiction scared the crap out of Victorian London with this, the first of such death-from-above SF tales.
Hurray for Tantor Media! They’ve got lots of waycool stuff in the works including lots of Asimov…
No Humans Involved
By Kelley Armstrong; Read by Laural Merlington
10 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 12 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: May 2007
ISBN: 1400104416 (CDs), 1400154413 (MP3-CD)
Jaime knows a thing or two about showbiz, as a woman whose special talent is raising the dead, her threshold for weirdness is pretty high: she’s used to not only seeing dead people but hearing them speak to her in very emphatic terms. But for the first time in her life—as invisible hands brush her skin, unintelligible fragments of words are whispered into her ears, and beings move just at the corner of her eye—she knows what humans mean when they talk about being haunted.
The Caves of Steel
By Isaac Asimov; Read by William Dufris
6 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – 7 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: May 2007
ISBN:1400104211 (CDs), 1400154219 (MP3-CD)
A millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer. The relationship between Baley and his Spacer superiors, who mistrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the “R” stood for robot—and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!
Simon & Schuster Audio even has a new title!
City Of Bones
By Cassandra Clare; Read by Ari Graynor
12 CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Published: March 2007
ISBN: 0743566572
When 15-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder — much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It’s hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing — not even a smear of blood — to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?
And of course, nobody is publishing more Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror audio than the wonderous Blackstone audio…
Where’s My Jetpack?
By Daniel H. Wilson; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
3 Cassettes, 1 MP3-CD or 4 CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: April 2007
ISBN: 9780786148707 (Cassettes), 9780786171606(MP3-CD), 9780786160822 (CDs)
It’s the twenty-first century and let’s be honest—things are a little disappointing. Despite every World’s Fair prediction and the advertisements in comic books, we are not living the future we were promised. By now, life was supposed to be a fully automated, atomic-powered, germ-free Utopia, a place where a grown man could wear a velvet spandex unitard and not be laughed at. Where are the ray guns, the flying cars, and the hoverboards that we expected? What happened to our moon colonies and servant robots?
Variable Star
By Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson; Read by Spider Robinson
8 Cassettes, 1-MP3-CD or 10 CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: May 2007
ISBN: 9780786149384(Cassettes), 9780786170159 (MP3-CD), 9780786158843 (Cds)
At his death in 1988, Robert A. Heinlein left a legacy of novels and short stories that almost single-handedly defined modern science fiction. But one of Heinlein’s masterpieces was never finished. In 1955, he began work on Variable Star, a powerful and passionate tale of two young lovers driven apart by pride, power, and the vastness of interstellar time and space. Then he set it aside to focus on other novellas. The detailed outline and notes he created for this project lay forgotten for decades, only to be rediscovered almost a half century later. Now the Heinlein estate has authorized award-winning author Spider Robinson to expand that outline into a full-length novel. The result is vintage Heinlein, faithful in style and spirit to the Grand Master’s original vision.
Komarr
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
8 Cassettes, 1 MP3-CD or 9 CDs – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: May 2007
ISBN: 9781433202575 (Cassettes), 9781433202599 (MP3-CD), (CDs)
Komarr could be a garden with a thousand more years’ work, or an uninhabitable wasteland if the terraforming fails. Now, the solar mirror vital to the terraforming of the conquered planet has been shattered by a ship hurtling off course. The Emperor of Barrayar sends his newest imperial auditor, Lord Miles Vorkosigan, to find out why.
Rocket Ship Galileo
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Spider Robinson
5 CDs, 4 Cassettes or 1 MP3-CD – 5.5 hrs [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9780786162765 (CDs), 9780786147892 (cassettes), 9780786172092(MP3-CD)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Young Adult / Space Travel / Rocket Science / Espionage / Moon /
Ross Jenkins, Art Mueller, and Morrie Abrams are not your average high school students. While other kids are cruising around in their cars playing ball, this trio, known as the Galileo Club, is experimenting with rocket fuels and preparing for their future education at technical colleges.
Robert Heinlein created something new when he started writing his “juvenile” SF novels. He wasn’t the first person to write what publishers would categorize as Young Adult SF but he was the first respected SF author to do so. Not only did it not harm his reputation, it actually enhanced it. Some of these, like Citizen of the Galaxy, The Star Beast, and The Rolling Stones still stand as some of his best books and are considered classics.
His first juvenile, from 1947, was Rocketship Galileo. It’s a tale of three young fellows that have their own amateur rocketry club. When one of their rocket experiments go awry with an explosion, they find that one of the boys’ uncles was injured on the grounds. The injured man is Doctor Donald Morris Cargraves. He’s a scientist with his own background in atomic propulsion. With true do-it-yourself ethos, Cargraves recruits the boys to build their own rocket to the moon. There are incidents of sabotage, which creates the mystery of who is responsible for the sabotage.
Eventually the boys with Cargraves in tow head to the moon. On occasion the story seems to stop for a science lesson. Once they reach the moon, they learn they are not alone. I’ll leave the nature of the co-habitants to the listener. I will say the answer that lies behind the sabotage attempts are less than satisfactory. What seems dated and implausible today was likely just as implausible in 1947 when the book was written. Although this novel is not the best of Heinlein’s juveniles, it is still an enjoyable ride with an optimistic future for mankind.
The book is narrated by SF author Spider Robinson. Spider is a gifted narrator with a flair for voice characterizations. His natural narrator’s voice seems a bit nasally at times, but he still conveys ease, and his pacing is unhurried.
This is not the first paring of Robert Heinlein with Spider Robinson. Spider recently coauthored a book with Mr. Heinlein called Variable Star. Using notes and an unfinished outline, Spider Robinson was chosen by Heinlein’s estate to complete it. The story is said to be reminiscent of one of the master’s juvenile novels circa 1955. The good news doesn’t end there. Robinson was tapped by Blackstone Audio to narrate the audiobook for Variable Star, which has just been released.