Locus Online reports that Robert J. Sawyer’s weekly radio column Science FACTion: The Cutting Edge of Science has been picked up as a regular weekly feature by CBC Radio after a successful eight-week test run. The column consists of Sawyer’s three-minute commentaries and will be heard on local CBC morning shows across Canada, starting July 1st 2003. It’s possible that the CBC Radio website will carry the commentary – if that’s so, we’ll let you know.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
Audible.com is publishing some excellent science fiction and fantasy on audio. Earlier this year, they put out three collections: The Best of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 2002, The Best of Analog Science Fiction Magazine 2002, and The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine 2002. I reviewed all three titles for SF Site and enjoyed them all. My clear favorite, though, was the Fantasy and Science Fiction collection, so I was very pleased to see them follow up with two more titles: The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, January-February 2003 and The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, March-April 2003. The stories are all unabridged, and each collection runs five to six hours.
Over the past two or three years, I’ve experienced a growing appreciation for short-form science fiction on audio. Unabridged novella and novellette length stories make the finest audiobooks, in my opinion, and there is a lot of good science fiction and fantasy out there at that length that has yet to be recorded. I’ve got a copy of The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, January-February 2003 and have listened to the first story, called “Anomalous Structures of My Dreams” by M. Shayne Bell. M. Shayne Bell is an intensely emotional writer. All of his stories I’ve read to date have been memorable – he really makes me feel. His website is here. It hasn’t been updated for a long while, but you can read “Lock Down”, one of his best. The site also has his essay A Defense of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which is worth a read.
There are five other stories in the The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, January-February 2003 collection:
“Vandoise and the Bone Monster” by Alex Irvine
“Grey Star” by Albert E. Cowdrey
“Old Virginia” by Laird Barron
“The Seasons of the Ansarac” by Ursula K. Le Guin
“Reach” by Sheila Finch
(Readers include Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir)
There are also six stories in the The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, March-April 2003 collection:
“The Resurrections of Fortunato” by John Morressy
“Decanting Oblivion” by Lawrence C. Connolly
“Shutdown/Retrovival” by Aaron A. Reed
“Hunger: A Confession” by Dale Bailey
“The Lightning Bug Wars” by Gary Shockley
“Seeing is Believing” by Paul Di Filippo
(Readers include Harlan Ellison and Gabrielle de Cuir)
I’ll revisit these once I get them heard… but I hope they continue to produce these titles. Current science fiction and fantasy audio by great writers, right there for the grabbing.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
This year’s Stoker nominees have been announced. (The Stoker Awards are given by the Horror Writer’s Association for works published in the previous year.) In the “Alternative Forms” category, two audio dramas and one multimedia CD have been nominated:
Buckeye Jim in Egypt (audio script based on the Mort Castle story) by Mort Castle (Lone Wolf Publications)
The Tree is My Hat (audio script based on the Gene Wolfe story) by Larry Santoro (Listen to this one free here.)
Imagination Box (multimedia CD) by Steve and Melanie Tem (Lone Wolf Publications)
See all the Stoker Award nominees here. The awards will be presented at the HWA Annual Conference and Bram Stoker Awards banquet in New York City at the Park Central Hotel on the evening of June 8th 2003.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
I Am Legend / The Shrinking Man
by Richard Matheson
Read by Walter Lawrence
9 Cassettes – Approx. 12 hours UNABRIDGED
List Price: USD $72.00 – CURRENTLY OOP (out of print)
BOOKS ON TAPE INC.
(February 26, 1992)
ISBN: 0736621474
Read by Walter Lawrence, this double audiobook features two novels by Richard Matheson. Lawrence does a fine job in narrating both, Matheson’s prose is clear and powerful. I highly recommend this audiobook. Unfortunately, finding a copy to listen to may be rather difficult, this unabridged audiobook is out of print, you can try ADDALL.com or eBay, even better check the shelves of your local library.
I Am Legend
“From out of the night came the living dead with one purpose: destroy Robert Neville, the last man on earth. A mysterious plague has swept the planet leaving in its wake this one survivor. But there is still life of a sort–vampires, the strengthless half-dead who press on Neville from every side. He is almost tempted to join them in I AM LEGEND.”
I Am Legend is a vampire story and a psychological story, the hero, Neville, is the last man on Earth. Every night undead and living vampires pelt his suburban Los Angeles home with rocks. Every day he repairs the night’s damage, restocks his supplies, finds ways to keep himself from going mad, and – oh yes – hunts down the vampires and drives wooden stakes through their hearts. The novel jumps back and forth in Neville’s history, between when the plague first hits, killing his wife, to a few months after he the last man alive, to three years later when Neville is resigned to his new life as the last man on Earth. Neville is an everyman with a scientific disposition, when he isn’t killing vampires he’s studying the disease that causes it in the local library. He develops theories, tries to iron out the inconsistencies in it and performs gruesome tests on the vampires. He lives in hopes that maybe he’ll find someone else still alive, or be able to cure one of the still living vampires.
Richard Matheson has a pretty low profile for such a well known writer. I’d heard his name, but never read any of his books before this one. I knew that he been involved with the original “The Twilight Zone” (1959-1965) television series, had written the book that had been turned into the movie The Omega Man (1971) starring Charlton Heston, but had no idea what a great writer he was until I listened to this double audiobook. First let me tell you this, I think I Am Legend is one of the best audiobooks I’ve ever listened to, and I’ve heard hundreds. I won’t spoil the ending, but I’ll tell you this, its revolutionary, thought provoking and satisfying – and as I would find out after listening to The Shrinking Man, its one of Matheson’s on-going ideas.
The Shrinking Man
“It started simply enough in THE SHRINKING MAN. One moment Scott Carey was in the sunlight, the next he was being soaked by a warm, glittering spray. His skin tingled, and soon he began to change, to grow smaller and smaller, until his mere existence was at stake.”
The Shrinking Man is a good story, not a good science fiction story, but a good fable. In fact you probably heard the plot before, or saw the movie based on it, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). Scott Carey is shrinking, everyday he loses 1/7th of an inch in height. The doctors don’t know what to make of it, the press loves the story and his family life is falling apart. Everyday Scott keeps shrinking, nothing can stop it, soon he can’t sit in chairs anymore, people on the street mistake him for a child, treat him as a child. He becomes a resentful, unable to do anything for himself he must depend upon his wife, his brother and eventually his own daughter, who now towers over him, for everything. At one point his own cat becomes dangerous to him. Scott is utterly alone and overtime he begins to cope with his diminutive height a new danger confronts him.
There are many frightening scenes in this novel, most notably a battle with a black widow spider that towers over our hero. There are poignant scenes, a visit to Mrs. Tom Thumb at the circus, a woman as short as he who lives in a doll house and to who being tiny is the only thing she’s ever known. There are also disturbing scenes, teenage toughs beat up and tease what they assume to be a child, and in perhaps the most disturbing scene Scott becomes the target of a drunken pedophile! But the novel is only surfically a science fiction story, and Matheson seems resigned only to the barest of explanations for what is happening to Scott. We’re told that it must have been an exposure to a concentrated insecticide that is causing the shrinkage, that the nitrogen is going out of Scott’s body at a regular rate. But as any student of subtraction knows a constant loss of 1/7th of an inch a day will eventually result in no height at all.
Pulp Cover images:
I Am Legend By Richard Matheson © 1954 Gold Medal Books
The Shrinking Man By Richard Matheson © 1956 Gold Medal Books
Renting audiobooks is a cost-effective way of getting your hands on some very good stuff. How does it work? With most of the companies listed here, you select a book or two that is sent to you in a self-addressed stamped box. Usually you keep the book for 30 days, after which you put the book back in the box, tape it closed, then drop it in a mailbox. There’s no need to add postage, because it’s already paid.
Some of these companies allow you to set ship dates for the books you select so that you can order several at a time, and have them arrive every two weeks or so.
Blackstone Audio has been doing more and more science fiction and fantasy lately. The narrators are generally good. Some of their latest include Jack Williamson’s The Humanoids and a collection of short stories by Robert Silverberg. They also carry some audio drama, including an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey that I’m eager to hear.
Books on Tape has an unabridged science fiction collection that’s highlighted by Isaac Asimov’s entire Foundation series and by Frank Herbert’s Dune series (including unabridged versions of the recent prequels written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson). There are a few short story collections here as well.
Recorded Books has the biggest collection of quality science fiction and fantasy, it’s getting even larger. Their narrators are the best, including Frank Muller, George Guidall, Rob Inglis, and Richard Ferrone, among many others. They’ve got some great titles, too. To name a few: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, several Robert A. Heinlein titles, Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis are also here, along with many other good titles.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson