science fiction – Page 216

H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy as a FREE UNABRIDGED audiobook!

Little Fuzzy is a minor classic of Science Fiction by H. Beam Piper. Thanks to the wondiferous hobby of Maureen O’Brien it is now available in its unabridged entirety as an amateur produced MP3 audiobook. All 17 chapters are available now for free via archive.org.

Little Fuzzy
By H.Beam Piper; Read by Maureen O’Brien
17 Zipped MP3 Files – 6 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
PODCAST: Maria Lectrix
COMPLETED: October 2006

The planet Zarathustra is going through a dry spell. Land-prawns, ecologists, and scared bureaucrats are coming out of the woodwork. But there’s more trouble to come. The cutest little alien critter you’ve ever seen: Little Fuzzy.

The story revolves around determining whether a small furry species discovered on the planet Zarathustra is sapient. Along the way a gentle kind of libertarianism that emphasizes sincerity and honesty is advocated. This is generally considered a “juvenile” novel.

The narrator, Maureen O’Brien, first released each chapter as an instalment on her Maria Lectrix Podcast which she describes as “Six days a week of public domain audiobooks — mystery, history, adventure, devotion — for people with Catholic tastes.” About Little Fuzzy she writes:

“Right now, I’m making an audiobook of H. Beam Piper’s novel Little Fuzzy. It’s in the public domain and on Gutenberg, because Piper didn’t renew copyright. Piper is one of my younger brother’s favorite authors, so I’m really doing it for him. But the funny thing is that I actually am enjoying the book a lot more than I did back in junior high; I guess the legal and corporate maneuvering makes more sense to me now.”

Little Fuzzy is finished, I asked her what else she’d been working on. It seems that Maureen’s been in fandom more than a dozen years, helping out at some conventions and writting for an shared world superhero zine, Vanguard Dossier. She says…

“I record public domain stuff because I am cheap and have time on my hands. Also, it’s nice to give something back to the Internet that’s given so much to me. Back in the BBS days, you were expected to upload a certain amount of material to offset all the files from other people that you were downloading. I think I’ve done that now.”

And has she ever she’s recorded dozens of other stories, novels, poems and plays too!

“I’m afraid my choice of literary works is a bit haphazard, as I usually pick on whim something I like, something I’ve been meaning to read, or something I run across that looks interesting. My original plan was to podcast mostly short stories, short essays, and a few longer works. Instead, novels and epic poems have taken over my podcast.

For quite a while, I was broadcasting something from the works of antebellum New York SF/Fantasy writer Fitz James O’Brien every Monday. Partly this was because I like his stuff and think he’s unfairly neglected. But partly it’s because I had a hard time deciding what to read on Mondays and he narrowed that down quite a lot. But Fitz had a very interesting take on life, and I enjoyed that a lot. He was also amazingly prolific; there are still tons of stories by him that I haven’t done.

I also really enjoyed reading Lord Dunsany, who has been one of my all time favorite authors since I first encountered his stories. When he really gets rolling, his fantasy can veer abruptly from the highest flights of beauty and language to the silliest comedy within a few sentences. He was wonderful to read; and I fully intend to read some more stories by him later this year. I would love to hear someone adapt one of his spooky plays as an audio drama; I think they might work very well.

A lot of the epic poems I’ve podcasted are actually fantasy novels in poetic form. Lucan’s Pharsalia is full of witchcraft and horror, ancient Roman style. Scott’s The Bride of Triermain is pure fantasy, with King Arthur, demigoddesses, bards, phantoms, and all.”

It is all very cool and I’m going to be keeping my ear attuned to Maureen’s passion. I’ve subscribed to her podcast. If you’re interested you too can subscribe by plugging this feed into your podcatcher:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/MariaLectrixAudiobookClub/

posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Antibodies by Charles Stross

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Antibodies
By Charles Stross; Read by Jared Doreck and Shondra Marie
1 CD – 54 Minutes 16 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612474
Themes: / Science Fiction / Singularity / Conspiracy / Artificial Intelligence / Parallel Worlds /

– Click HERE to hear a sample –

“Damn it, Bob, I really had high hopes for this world-line. They seemed to be doing so well for a revelatory Christian-Islamic line, despite the post-Enlightenment mind-set.”

The announcement of the solution to the traveling salesman problem heralds the imminent destruction of humanity. No more salesman; no more problem. The story begins when a computer programmer is notified by RSS feed that all NP-complete problems lie in P, and thus computer encryption is forever compromised. Knowing the disaster for what it is, he flees, but with this being such a hard-takeoff he might not make it.

Stross’ ideas are hard, cold, pure, and funny, but it is his storytelling – the effectiveness of the complete tale – that elevates his perspective SF ideas into Science Fiction excellence. This is the kind of fiction I love; thought provoking with shrewdly surprisingly but necessary consequences of the premise. Stross goes from alpha to omega faster than you can guess, and in so doing delivers a solid entry into SF’s growing dialogue about The Singularity. Antibodies reminded of Isaac Asimov’s similarily elegant short story Living Space. Also refreshing is a humourous conspiracy that explains why Microsoft Windows-based computer viruses are so prevalent.

Allan Kaster, who runs the Infinivox wing of Audiotext, has put deep thought into this tale’s production. The narrators, Jared Dorek and Shondra Marie, pair up to deliver the action in this first-person perspective masterpiece of SF. Marie reads all the female voices and Dorek all the male. When each speaks the role of the hero and heroine, they do so in an amalgamated accent that is implied by the text. The production is carefully woven with transition music designed to show textual scene transitions and time passing. But it is the story that elevates this audiobook to SFFaudio Essential status. With a running time just shy of one hour you aren’t likely to have a more quintissential Strossian experience on audio.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Science Fiction Audiobook Review

Pattern Recognition
By William Gibson; Read by Shelley Frasier
9 CDs – 10.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 2004
ISBN: 140010095X
Themes: / Science Fiction / Internet / 9-11 / Crime /

“Cool Hunter.” How about that for a dream job? Companies pay you (and ply you with the latest technological goodies) to identify trends and fashions that spring up at street level so that they can commodify them and turn a buck. As far as I know, William Gibson (the man responsible for the term “cyberspace”) didn’t coin “cool hunting,” but he makes good use of the idea in “Pattern Recognition.” Cayce Pollard is Gibson’s heroine and the consummate cool hunter. Cayce can spend an afternoon walking through the teenagers clogging the streets of London when school lets out and identify at least three of tomorrow’s money-making fashion trends. She can look at two potential logos for a company and immediately know which of them will connect better with the targeted demographic. Like any other talent, though, being able to tell what works and what doesn’t has its downside. Cayce has an almost allergic reaction to most brand names; she’s got to have the labels removed from and the words filed off of the rivets on her black 501’s, her Casio G-Shock has got to be logo-free, and don’t even think about coming near her with a picture of the Michelin Man. Cayce is also deeply obsessed with a captivating film that has been mysteriously released, bit-by-bit, over the Internet, an obsession that opens the door for Gibson’s intricate plot.

Pattern Recognition was written soon after 9-11 (the events of which it references regularly), and is set in a very realistic 2002. The book probably doesn’t even technically qualify as science fiction, but Gibson keeps his ear so close to the tech-development ground that the story gives the impression of being futuristic. In fact, the book can be used as a sort of barometer to gauge your level of tech-geekiness. Are image-based search engines and vintage calculator fetishes old-hat to you? Congratulations, you’re ready to tackle Doctorow and Stross. Is the idea of a “render farm” unknown to you, and do you still double-take when you hear “google” used as a verb? Better stick to Card and Haldeman.

Having said that, this is probably the most accessible of all of Gibson’s books. His embrace of a post-cash economy era heroine and his tangential explorations of Internet forum social hierarchies and information-age Russian Mafia thugs will satisfy sci-fi vets (and provides solid evidence of Gibson’s place as a powerful influence on the new wave of cyber-post-punk writers), but the realness of Cayce’s femininity, the lack of one-dimensional characters, and, particularly, the overall attractive melancholy mood of the book make it one that you can safely recommend to your sci-fi avoidant spouse and friends.

I read the text version of Pattern Recognition soon after it came out, and was pleasantly surprised at how much enjoyment the audio book added to my experience. Shelley Frasier’s pleasantly dry narration, able handling of accents, and especially the sexy innocence she gives Cayce’s voice had me popping discs in one after another. I have a very pleasant memory of taking a break from a late-night Fawlty Towers marathon to get some Burger King, and staying in my garage five extra minutes just to finish listening to Shelley describe a British noodle bar called “Charlie Don’t Surf”.

The text version of the book includes a drawing of an object that is vital to the plot, and I was worried that the audio book might get awkward at that point, but truth be told, I didn’t even notice the absence of the drawing.

So, hats off to Gibson, Frasier, and the folks at Tantor Media for putting together an excellent reading of a great science fiction novel (that isn’t even really science fiction). As wonderful as Gibson’s more speculative work is, if Pattern Recognition is what it looks like when both of his feet touch ground, then I wouldn’t mind if he came down to earth more often.

posted by Cory Myler

Review of Strawberry Automatic by T. Ray Gordon

Science Fiction Audiobook Review

Strawberry Automatic
By T. Ray Gordon, Full Cast Production by Richard Sellers
1 CD – 78 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Apex Audio Theatre
Published: 2005
Themes: / Science Fiction / Androids / Terraforming Mars /

The Automatics are androids, and trained fighting machines. When they fought for their own rights, they were, of course, declared non-personal non grata and the ones that could left Earth for other parts of the Solar System colonies. Strawberry Automatic is tall with flaming red hair, beautiful and deadly as they come. On Mars there is a company running the terraforming operation. Naturally someone wants to speed up the process using illegal nukes, and someone else wants to stop them.

I say “of course” and “naturally” because as I listened to this CD I had no trouble keeping slightly ahead of the story line. I kept thinking “This is a 1950s sci-fi story.” On his CD sales website, producer and narrator Richard Sellers says that T. Ray Gordon wrote 72 original manuscripts during the 1950s, which have never been published until now. So I was right. And as seems to be the cliché with pulp and radio writers, he was alcoholic and killed himself in 1961.

As a story Strawberry Automatic is a fairly good sci-fi adventure. As a script it relies too much on narration, some of which could have been written into dialogue or eliminated to keep the story moving faster. This might have made the script longer, though, and it appears they had decided to keep it to one CD. The production values are high, as the producer works as a voiceover artist and knows his trade. He also narrates the story. The acting is quite good, and it shows that Sellers knows his community of good performers. They just need someone to help them develop the script a bit before moving on.

The production values and the fact that it was not a story that had ever been produced before garnered it an Honorable Mention for the 10th Annual Mark Time Awards for Science Fiction Audio this year. Click here for more info.

The first of Gordon’s stories made for audio by Apex Audio Theatre, Inhumanity Quest, was also produced by Richard Sellers, and it shares many of the qualities mentioned here regarding the story, the production quality, and the performances.

I liked the production a little better the second time I heard it, as I could listen a bit more critically. It is well done. But I don’t know if I could listen to 72 of this kind of tale.

Reviewed by Jerry Stearns, Great Northern Audio Theatre

This week’s Escape Pod has Mike Resnick content!

SFFaudio Online Audio

The story this week over on Escape Pod, the preeminent podcast SF magazine, is Barnaby In Exile by Mike Resnick. Bring a hanky to this one. The story is reminiscent, and from my POV clearly in dialogue with, Pat Murphy‘s classic Rachel In Love. Both are powerful anthropomorphic visions of apes in tough emotional spots. If you like Barnaby In Exile Robert J. Saywer reccommends also reading Robert Silverberg‘s Pope Of The Chimps.

EP073: Barnaby in Exile
By Mike Resnick; Read by Paul Fischer
1 MP3 File – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: September 28th 2006

posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Radio 7’s The 7th Dimension does Understand by Ted Chiang

Online Audio

BBC7’s the 7th Dimension will be re-airing a truly AWESOME unabridged reading of Ted Chiang‘s novelette Understand.

This story has been broadcast on BBC Radio 7 previously and it blew my mind when I first heard it! This sort of unabridged reading is what makes me so attuned to what The 7th Dimension is up to. If you listen to no other BBC Radio production this year listen to this one!

Here’s a teaser: Leon is a former coma victim, who has gone experimental medical treatment to repair the massive trauma his brain recieved after he was trapped under ice for more than an hour. He’s regained consciousness, found he has all of his faculties back and a whole lot more. In the tradition of Daniel Keyes’ Flowers For Algernon. It was originally published in “Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine” in 1991.

Understand
By Ted Chiang; Read by Rashan Stone
4 half-hour segments – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
BROADCASTER: BBC Radio 7
AIRING: Saturdays for four weeks @ 6pm (repeats 12am) UK Time

This will be available via the Listen Again service shortly after it airs.

posted by Jesse Willis