space travel – Page 6

Five Free Favourites #3

SFFaudio Online Audio

Five Free Favourites
Five more faves, five more of my best bets. These are stories to make your mind say “yum yum” and your wallet say “nightie-night”…

1.
After A Lean Winter
By David Farland; Read by Rick Jelinek
1 |M4A| File – Approx. 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: MechMuse
Podcast: Spring 2006
I’m very pleased to see all the released MechMuse stories still available online. Of the dozen or so of stories released, I think this one is my favourite. It’s set six months or so after the events of H.G. Well’s The War Of The Worlds and features a protagonist named “Jack London,” who like the other residents of the Yukon, is still struggling against a Martian menace that still survives up there.

2.
Beyond Lies The Wub
By Philip K. Dick; Read by Mac Kelly
1 |MP3| – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: The Time Traveler Show
Podcast: December 2006
The best Xmas gift I received in 2006 was this podcast short story! This was Dick’s first ever published tale, it’s one of his best too. And, I find holds up to multiple listenings. I recommend it often. Knowledge of Homer’s Odyssey is recommended.

3.
The Green Odyssey
By Philip Jose Farmer; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – 6 Hours 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Published: December 2006
Publisher: LibriVox.org
This FREE audiobook was created on a dare. As one of the titles from the first SFFaudio Challenge I asked budding narrators to make single-voiced audiobooks from a list of public domain titles. This was the very first to meet the challenge – it is also one of the best. Set on a grassy plain on an obscure alien planet – it’s fast, funny, and makes for quite a romp. A novel in the spirit of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court

Subscribe using this feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-green-odyssey-by-philip-jose-farmer.xml

4.
Star Surgeon
By Alan E. Nourse; Read by Scott D. Farquhar
14 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – 5 Hours 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: October 2007
Dal Tigmar is an alien doctor with a sort of interstellar Médecins Sans Frontières. As a recent graduate of the Galaxy’s most prestigious medical school, on Earth, he’s been trained to treat every disease in the book. But racism isn’t a disease even he can treat. This is a real peppy 50 year old novel, that still crackles with energy. It plays out like a typical Heinleinian juvenile, minus the lectures. You’ll love it.

5.
X-Minus One: The Lifeboat Mutiny
Based on the story by Robert Sheckley; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: NBC Radio
Broadcast: September 11, 1956
Provider: Archive.org
I find a lot of X-Minus One hit or miss, but this Robert Sheckley story works. In fact, I’ve used the script for it twice just this month! Kids love it, adults love it. It’s funny, and it’s FREE! My only nit-pick is that the actor playing the lifeboat is not emotional enough – he totally underplays the scripted dialogue. When I do this part, I always play it highly emotional.

I’m still soliciting podcasters and bloggers for their lists, if you’ve a batch of five free faves you think just can’t be ignored, either post em below, or send me an email.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Beyond The Aquila Rift by Alastair Reynolds

SFFaudio Review

Beyond the Aquila Rift
By Alastair Reynolds; Read by Tom Dheere
1 CD – 72 min [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: Feb 22, 2008
ISBN: 9781884612770
Themes: / Science Fiction / Space Travel / Suspended Animation /

Beyond the Aquila Rift. It’s shorthand for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident. The one that will screw up the rest of your life, the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole Bubble. Men and women ripped out of time, cut adrift from families and lovers by an accident of an alien technology we use but rarely comprehend.

Fiction editors. I don’t know much about how they work and I don’t much care to. More than anything in an editor, I want a gatekeeper who consistently picks stories that I like. Thinking about who that might be, I always bring one name to mind: Isaac Asimov. If Asimov liked the story then I usually did too. But Asimov is dead. If it’s new stuff today, it has to be one guy very few readers have heard of. His name is Allan Kaster. Kaster edits an ongoing anthology (released one tale at a time) entitled Great Science Fiction stories. Nowhere on the package of any Infinivox title does it say “Allan Kaster, Editor”, but he’s definitely the guy making this series live up to it’s title. I can’t remember a single Infinivox production that left me cold. They often leave me confused, frightened, hurt, awed, satisfied, or unsatisfied (but not in the wrong way). Mostly though they leave me thinking: “Please, sir, can I have another?”

Beyond The Aquila Rift is another little known novelette deserving the title “Great Science Fiction.” I say this because this story got me thinking thoughts about the nature of reality that not even Philip K. Dick couldn’t conjure. Most tales that deal with “what is reality?” type scenarios come up with a weak endorsement of something I’ll call “real reality.” Sometimes they end in another way, one more noir than mainstream. This one has it both ways and I like that. The ambivalence is itself novel, and makes the story work. This isn’t the best of Infinivox’s Great Science Fiction Stories, but it is a worthy listen. Thanks Allan!

Narrator Tom Dheere, another in Infinivox’s stable of previously unknown narrators, delivers this reading straight. It is a good reading. This is 72 minutes of thought provoking modern SF. Have a listen to a sample |MP3|.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox Short Science Fiction Stories Collection #006

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here comes Volume #6 in the Short SF Stories Collection series – all public domain, all 100% FREE, from the folks at LibriVox…

Short Science Fiction Collection Vol. 006
By various; Read by various
Zipped MP3 Files, Podcast or individual MP3s – Approx. 4 Hours 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 25, 2008
Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and case) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves sociological and technical speculations based on current or future science and technology. This is a reader-selected collection of short stories, originally published between 1752 and 1962. Those published after 1922 entered the US public domain when their copyright was not renewed.

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-vol-006.xml

And here are the individual stories with my own notes on some…

Accidental Death
By Peter Baily; Read by RK Wilcox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From the pages of Astounding Science Fiction magazine’s February 1959 issue. A tale about, aliens and space travel, told in a curious recorded epistolary form (and its set atop Mount Everest). Strange, but kind of familiar, worth listening to, but not likely to be at all memorable.

…After a Few Words…
By Randall Garrett; Read by Alex Becker
1 |MP3| – Approx. 18 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in Analog magazine’s October 1962 issue – with the LibriVox team identifying the author, “Seaton McKettrig,” as actually Randall Garrett using one of his many pseudonyms. A few off-pronunciations aren’t enough to mar this solid reading. A historical tale – that really isn’t.

The Diamond Maker
By H.G. Wells; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
A canvas sack full of several hundred pounds worth of diamonds, proffered on a London bridge for a paltry £100. It sounds like a con, at the very least a deal too good to be true. But the owner of the diamonds has a tale of woe to explain why he is selling them at such a cut-rate price. This one reminds me of Wells’ The Crystal Egg. Narrator, Jerome Lawsen, has a nice setup, the recording on this one is very clean.

Egocentric Orbit
By John Cory; Read by Perry Clayton
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
It took a long time for human beings to accept that our little piece of meteoric rubble wasn’t the exact and absolute center of the Universe. It does appear that way, doesn’t it? It may not take so long for a spaceman to learn … First published in Astounding Science Fiction’s May 1960 issue. This is the second version of this story to be recorded by LibriVox.

Flight From Tomorrow
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Jerome Lawsen
1 |MP3| – Approx. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in the unwieldy titled “‘Future’ combined with ‘Science Fiction Stories’” magazine’s September/October 1950 issue. This one’s a novelette, an out-in-out time travel tale, that though a bit predictable, and certainly very period, has a certain vintage charm. Jerome Lawsen, reads it well.

In The Year 2889
By Jules Verne; Read by James Christopher
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
First published in 1889, and credited to Jules Verne, it was actually written by Michel Verne, Jules Verne’s son. But then just to confuse matters more it was published under Jules Verne’s name correctly a year later when the senior Verne re-wrote it (and changed the title to In The Year 2890). In any case, this tale is set a mere one thousand years in the future.

The Measure of a Man
By Randall Garrett; Read by D.E. Wittkower
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
“What is desirable is not always necessary, while that which is necessary may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of a man is the ability to tell one from the other … and act on it.” From the April 1960 of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

Micromegas
By Voltaire; Read by Annoying Twit
1 |MP3| – Approx. 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
An 18th century tale (first published in 1752), Micromegas is significant in the pre-history of SF. Earth is visited by a pair of alien visitors, one from a planet circling Sirius and the other from the planet Saturn! This reading is also significant as it was recorded using a £1800 microphone!

The Sky Trap
By Frank Belknap Long; Read by Dr Special
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From Comet magazine’s July 1941 issue (the same issue that has Leigh Brackett’s A World Is Born – which is also available HERE). This is Dr. Special’s first recording for LibriVox. He reads it very well, even though there are a lot of lines like… “Good God Dave, do you suppose something has happened to space?”

Test Rocket
By Jack Douglas; Read by Lance
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
From the Amazing Science Fiction Stories magazine’s April 1959 issue (which had an amazing cover).

Posted by Jesse Willis

Resonance FM’s: A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou

SFFaudio Online Audio

A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time, and Thou is a podcast radio show (on Resonance FM 104.4 FM in London, U.K.) that you are absolutely going to love. The hosts, Elisha Sessions and Mark Sinker, along with various guests, talk about Science Fiction short stories from “SF’s Golden and Silver Ages.” Covering stories from 1927 to 1965, these are deep, articulate, and knowledgeable discussions, along with, in at least a couple of cases, complete, unabridged readings! Planet shaking stories, with intelligent commentary – I absolutely love it!

Episode 1 – Who Goes There?
By John W. Campbell; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [READINGS OF CHAPTERS 2 & 4]
Sarah Clarke joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There”, a 1938 science fiction novella about ice-bound scientists confronted with an alien who can become them. Elisha reads from the book in case you haven’t. As originally broadcast on Resonance FM 104.4 FM in London on April 1, 2008.

Episode 2 – A Pail Of Air
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [ABRIDGED]
Tom Ewing joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss Fritz Leiber’s “A Pail of Air”, written in 1951. It’s a short story about a kid, some rugs, and an Earth so cold that helium crawls. Will it crawl onto YOU? Elisha reads from the story in case you haven’t.

Episode 3 – The Segregationist
By Isaac Asimov; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [???]
Alan Trewartha joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss “Segregationist”, one of Isaac Asimov’s famous robot stories from 1967. Elisha reads from the story in case you haven’t.

Episode 4 – Beyond the Reach of Storms
By Donald Malcolm; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [???]
Martin Skidmore joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss the first space-travel story of the series, and the first truly obscure find, “Beyond the Reach of Storms” by Donald Malcolm.

Episode 5 – The Red Brain
By Donald Wandrei; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED?]
Dave Queen joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about the outrageous 1927 short story “The Red Brain”, written by Donald Wandrei when he was supposedly 16 years old.

Episode 6 – A Sound of Thunder
By Ray Bradbury; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Al Ewing joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, the famed 1952 story about a dinosaur safari gone wrong. Lots of other Bradbury and time travel tales get a look in.

Episode 7 – The Tactful Saboteur
By Frank Herbert; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED?]
Ken Hollings joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about “The Tactful Saboteur” by Frank Herbert, a tale of civil servants and their multi-phase sexual life cycles from 1964.

Episode 8 – Build Up Logically
By Howard Schoenfeld; Read by Elisha Sessions
1 |MP3| – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED?]
Kat Stevens joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about Choose Your Own Adventure books, speaking with animals, and “Build Up Logically”, an unclassifiable short story written in 1950 by Howard Schoenfeld. It’s about two men who can summon the entire universe from thin air but spend most of their time at parties.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Fleet Of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

SFFaudio Review

Fleet Of Worlds
By Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner; Read by Tom Weiner
8 CDs – Approx 9.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 1433229420
Themes: / Science Fiction / Hard SF / Aliens / Physics / Space Travel / Sociology /

Larry Niven teams up with fellow science-fiction writer Edward M. Lerner to take a closer look at the events leading up to Niven’s first Ringworld novel. Kirsten Quinn-Kovacs is among the best and brightest of her people. She gratefully serves the gentle race that rescued her ancestors from a dying starship and nurtures them still. But, if only the Citizens knew where Kirsten’s people came from! A chain reaction of supernovae at the galaxy’s core has unleashed a wave of lethal radiation that will sterilize the galaxy. The Citizens flee, taking with them their planets, the Fleet of Worlds. Someone must scout ahead, and Kirsten and her crew eagerly volunteer. But as they set out to explore for any possible dangers in the Fleet’s path, they uncover long-hidden truths that will shake the foundations of worlds.

Not knowing much about Edward M. Lerner or his style, it’s hard to know precisely what parts of this novel he wrote. On the whole it definitely feels like a Larry Niven book. And of course that’s a very good thing. Surprisingly nice, this “known space” novel doesn’t feel like it’s just embellishing the dark corners we’d little explored before. There is material to be mined, and mine it they do. We learn more about the General Products corporation, early Puppeteer influence on Terra, and the back story to Niven’s classic The Borderland Of Sol. The heart of the novel though is Nessus’ interaction with a crew of Humans. As well, Niven and Lerner, introduce an entirely new and compelling alien species, though we really don’t get to interact with them. Its hard to get into much more without giving out a lot of spoilers. Suffice it to say, this is a fine, though definitely lesser entry into the “known space” canon. When recommending a novel universe, I would always start with the strongest book in that universe, and expand out from there. If you haven’t read any Niven novels before this one, go listen to Protector and Ringworld first. Then, if you are as enchanted as I was with it, come back to Fleet Of Worlds for more.

Tom Weiner, who is one of Blackstone Audio’s new narrators, previously heard in A Galaxy Trilogy, brings authority to the narrative of Fleet Of Worlds. He has to work pretty hard to do both the puppeteer contralto that is supposed to sound like “Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Marilyn Monroe, and Lorelei Huntz all rolled into one.” But both it and the human females Weiner performs come off well enough – giving more of an impression of a voice change than any actual transformation.

Update: Edward M. Lerner tells me that that the follow up to Fleet Of Worlds, titled Juggler Of Worlds, is also slated for a Blackstone Audio release!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer

SFFaudio Review

Calculating God
By Robert J. Sawyer; Read by Jonathan Davis
Audible Download – 12 hours – [Unabridged]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2008
ISBN: None
Themes: / Science Fiction / Aliens / Paleontology / Religion / Philosophy / Space Travel /

One of the things I enjoy most about reviewing audiobooks is that I get to revisit novels that I’ve read and loved in the past. When these beloved novels are given great readers (not always the case), I can’t wait to get at them. Calculating God is one of those novels, and Jonathan Davis is an excellent narrator, so this audiobook leapt to the top of my TBR list the moment I realized it existed.

Jonathan Davis burst onto the science fiction scene with his stellar narration of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (SFFaudio review here). Since then, in the science fiction genre, he’s been almost exclusively reading Random House’s Star Wars abridgments. He reads them well, but I was thrilled to see him step away from that and narrate another of science fiction’s great novels. He is one of our very best narrators and this is a fine performance. I was rapt the entire time, and even near tears at one moment in the book.

When I read this novel for the first time, I was a bit taken aback. I am a Catholic and I’ve been reading science fiction all of my life. I have never had a problem reconciling science and religion and have been both perplexed and dismayed that Christianity is portrayed so often as being incompatible with science. It’s certainly true that for many Christian churches this conflict is real, but those churches are not Catholic churches, despite the most famous illustration of the conflict being the Catholic treatment of Galileo. I tell everyone who cares that Galileo was an aberration in the history of the Church (not the norm), but still, it was a colossal (though admitted) mistake. But for myself, science and religion are NOT in conflict. I’ve included a link at the bottom of this review to an interview of Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Vatican astronomer that aired on CBC Radio as an illustration of a Catholic’s relationship with science. Robert J. Sawyer is mentioned in the interview as well.

Back to the novel at hand: The reason I was taken aback when I first read this book was that it’s the first novel I’ve ever read in which the aliens believe in God. That in itself makes this book interesting enough to pick up. Imagine – an alien lands on your front doorstep and starts to question your doubts about the existence of God. Most science fiction portrays religion as something that is grown through or evolved past. By the time an alien species is mature enough for stellar travel, surely they have jettisoned religion? There’s no place for such a thing in a rational, scientific universe. Right?

Well, not according to this novel. Sawyer presents, in a very entertaining and interesting way, arguments for and against God’s existence. The main character (Tom Jericho) is a paleontologist who is dying of cancer. An alien (named Hollus) lands near the Royal Ontario Museum and strolls right in, asking to see the fossils. And off the novel goes. Jericho and Hollus spend much of the novel together looking at fossils and discussing various topics that range from the wide, including mass extinctions and evolution, to the intimately personal, like the approaching death of Jericho. I can think of no better way to present these topics than this lively novel, and I’ll recommend it to anyone interested in thinking about these things, no matter which side of the fence they are on.

Sawyer uses science fiction to create circumstances that make us readers think about important ideas in different ways and from different perspectives. That’s exactly the kind of science fiction I love to read, and why I’ll keep coming back to Robert J. Sawyer for more. I’m very happy to have had a chance to revisit this novel, and even happier to be able to award it our SFFaudio Essential designation.

Audible.com has published a few more of Robert J. Sawyer’s novels: The Neanderthal Trilogy is there (Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids). They also have his Nebula winning novel The Terminal Experiment, published by Recorded Books. We reviewed it back in 2003.

Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God page: LINK

A link to a CBC interview of Brother Guy Consolmagno, Vatican Astronomer: LINK

Posted by Scott D. Danielson