The SFFaudio Podcast #678 – READALONG: Starship: Mutiny by Mike Resnick

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #678 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, and Will Emmons talk about Starship Mutiny by Mike Resnick

Talked about on today’s show:
space opera, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, space opera is garbage, Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off, galactic civilization, Mirror Mirror, a perpetual war, a security officer, Yar abd Odo and Tuvok, sleeping with Big Brother, Big Sister, Nineteen Eighty-Four, she likes to watch, enjoying the voyeurism, nothing non-carnal, worshiping Wilson Cole like a god, a group of malcontents, Honor Harrington, the Honorverse, drugged out, an attack on the Honor Harringtonverse, Horatio Hornblower in space, broadsides, the pointlessness in being space opera, steelmanned space opera, Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott, Melinda Snodgrass, more nuanced and interesting, Alastair Reynolds, Greco-Persian wars in space, a female Alexander The Great, all gender flipped, the Pournelle Niven theory about space travel, better warps, there’s no worldbuilding in this novel, you are correct sir, one spaceship can blow up a planet, how much energy to blow up a planet, its a fuel dump, Space: 1999, slightly implausible, not a fig leaf of plausibility, did you enjoy the book, the lack of worldbuilding, he’s a great commander, he’s always right, do we have to do this again?, the way Socrates is always right, see what happened to him, explicitly designed to be a series, Will’s problem with it, telegraphing, it works, being the smartest man in the room, the canniest man, his instincts are always right, the author is cheating, sarcastic and sardonic, how much research put into this book, he did zero research, it probably took a week to write, hackwork, absolutely entertaining, Neal Stephenson, super easy reading, every book came out the year after the last one, I need some meat on some bones, some actual science fiction, extruded science product, a perfectly fine TV show, what colour are the uniforms?, the ship is grey, he doesn’t care about the ranks, all the services were amalgamated, flows easily and well, not to Paul’s taste, what makes it better?, more interesting and nuanced characters, worldbuilding, they have the same ethnicities we have the day, Mount Fuji, an oriental that’s 7 feet tall, a perfectly legitimate word, an inscrutable Chinaman, the news media, in jail awaiting his trial, commander Podok, this is a girl boss story, not the racism its the sexism, his theme, bureaucracy and military inefficiency, the message, its 2005, why can’t we win this Iraq War?, a Lincoln, WWII, this is a really political book, guess who went into the navy three years past the cutoff and given a rank of ensign and had no training as an officer, Hunter Biden, a lot of shitty officers, the whole premise of this book, we don’t know who they’re fighting, there will be a mutiny, the flagship, taking back the federation/republic, manly men doing manly things, a symbiont, the gorib, no deep worldbuilding at all, more anthropology, I’m the smartest guy in the room episode, dumb smart guys, The High Ground, criticizing patriarchal values, imperial space navy, exploring patriarchy and empire, an aristocratic empire in space, deeply into the world and the characters, crap, Measure Of The Man, Pen Pals, C.J. Cherryh, Downbelow Station, what its really like with people settling space, a bunch of old people, Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold, military SF, overlapping, Gareth L. Powell’s Embers Of War series, The Expanse, alien molecule, Alastair Reynolds land, pure storytelling, a little serialized, the horse people who can’t see too good during the day, painted on the cover, foreign editions, disposable science fiction, writing to be turned into a Netflix or Amazon series, the James S.A. Corey thing, right there in the business, The Wheel Of Time, Bryan Alexander’s review of Foundation TV series, add a lot of sex scenes to Foundation by Isaac Asimov, a novel series, subtle anthropological science fiction, Kirinyaga, Seven Views Of Olduvai Gorge, purely commercial (hackwork), smooth writing, why markets exist, manual labour, painting 3,000 square feet, interesting and hold your attention and fun, when sick, yard work, it serves a purpose, a space opera soap opera Star Treky universe, all the criticisms that we throw at it, this is not an intellectual stimulation delivery system, perfectly serviceable, there are stars in the universe, grav plats, wormholes and lightspeed, weapons systems, lightspeeds in an atmosphere, we’ll burn up due to fiction, pure space opera, military SF, star trek doesn’t feel like military SF, where Resnick feels comfortable, series stretch the idea of it being about science, making pain go away, very much like Soma, Paul did that on purpose, a different totalitarianism, the regular federation couldn’t have a mutiny, the most rotten thing of all is incompetent government, Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, nobody was going to be held to account for this 20 year adventure in Afghanistan, didn’t do anything, couldn’t find anything, incompetence, the decline of the Empire (in Foundation), science fiction is always taking about the present, the buildings crashing down are suicide bombings, the anniversary of September 11, 2001, the author didn’t even know it was political, what they’re worried about in 1890 and 1920, they’re soaking in it, so obvious they don’t even state, retelling the story of the flight of the mercenaries our of Persia, retellings, if you want to sell a book, March Upcountry by David Weber and John Ringo, The Warriors (1979), is it really relevant or is it just a story?, how you end up with Rudy Guiliani, The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, ideas in what you read, leadership and the media, 2,500 pages with 400 ideas, anachronistic, magic gold, heavy gold, the guy who walked with god, Leibniz’s logic mill, careening, hefty intellectually, its not like your brain is a muscle exactly, Will and reality TV shows, brain decay because of this book, the Rastignac the Devil section, the gorib, handled completely differently, Wilson Cole’s inability to use they them pronouns, pilot/slick, a strawman situation, we need to give Chinese people American name, where did you get English names?, Winston is the most ridiculous name, don’t be another Anna, what gets Mike Resnick in trouble, science fiction drama, hotter back in the day, canceled after his death, unrepentant, I’m too old for this shit, Alex Acks, Dear Barry Malzberg, fuck you, SFWA bulletin, sexism allegation, bulletin magazine, the losses this industry has suffered, our old masters are dying, glad the old ways are dying, Jaym Gates, Jerry Pournelle, dead people gettin’ roasted, Resnick created the situation, our hero Wilson Cole doesn’t do that, a casual captain, lazy salutes, respect for the character, transgender, pronouns, its cool to assign people pronouns, sexism and assumptions, not kosher, these rules, offensive language, a religious practice, a cultural practice, keeping halal, eating pork everyday, Paul doesn’t need to apologize, redskin dream, this is wrong bud, Khartoum (1966), Chinese Gordon, Lawrence Oliver in blackface, Cecil Rhodes put Rachel Maddow through university, Cecil Rhodes is responsible for Russiagate, Will is a comics guy, people who are running the X-Men movie studio, X-Men is exclusionary, X-Folk, staying up nights, many internally think the title X-Men isn’t inclusionary, X-Ladies And Gents, XXs and XYs but no asking, we know there is a problem with the X-Men, stunningly incompetent, don’t make waves, I’m busy trying to get myself promoted here, rotated in, always making improvements, the Afghan army is now ready to take over, the warlords are sex trafficking children, it makes your bosses look bad, why it resonates a little bit, do I really need space opera in my life?, the gorib’s planet is called Rastignac The Devil by Philip Jose Farmer, a Clash Of The Titans remake, Will Durant’s The Life Of Greece, Stephen Fry, Avengers Ancient Greece, the Argo initiative, Eternals, Jack Kirby property, The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick, reality, what is it?, reality is whatever I say it is, Golan Globus, almost all dialogue, characters in conversation, pure storytelling, supposed Science Fiction on TV, fun dialogue, the characters are fun, passable entertainment, not a lot of dramatic tensions, The Voice, a break from this boomer, dealing with something real, planetoids, some asteroid with the same amount of air pressure as the Earth, The Little Prince, I need some real space opera, Catalyst Gate by Megan E. O’Keefe, science fiction ideas, more popcorny space opera, K.B. Wagers, not rebelling against the empire, always about rebelling against the empire, why people like Star Wars, I’m a Sith you’re a Jedi can’t we all get along?, we need to constantly rebel against the empire, retcon things, essentially the problem with series, what do you think it means that they’re always fighting for the empire and never against it, comforting and reifying the old order, Miles Vorkosigan is fighting for the empire, back to the 1920s and 1930s, reconciliation, they fight for the empire, classic fantasy tropey, space opera is much closer to fantasy than science fiction, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, the ragtag fugitive fleet, the freed slaves, the girl boss in this book is wrong, killing civilians on your own side, deny the enemy materials, we have a duty to the empire, rooting for a prince to help other princes, so conservative, keep the empire going, bubbly easy reading, its very important they’re pirates, made some progress, The Last Of The Masters by Philip K. Dick.

Starship: Mutiny by Mike Resnick

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Review of Honor Among Thieves: Star Wars by James S.A. Corey

SFFaudio Review

Honor Among Thieves: Star WarsHonor Among Thieves: Star Wars (Empire and Rebellion)
By James S.A. Corey, read by Marc Thompson
Publisher: Random House Audio
Publication Date: 4 March 2014
[UNABRIDGED] – 9 hours, 52 minutes

Themes:  / Star Wars / rebellion /

Publisher Summary:

Nebula and Hugo Award nominees Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck—writing as James S. A. Corey—make their Star Wars debut in this brand-new epic adventure featuring Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Princess Leia Organa. The action begins after the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope.

When the Empire threatens the galaxy’s new hope, will Han, Luke, and Leia become its last chance? When the mission is to extract a high-level rebel spy from the very heart of the Empire, Leia Organa knows the best man for the job is Han Solo—something the princess and the smuggler can finally agree on. After all, for a guy who broke into an Imperial cell block and helped destroy the Death Star, the assignment sounds simple enough.

But when Han locates the brash rebel agent, Scarlet Hark, she’s determined to stay behind enemy lines. A pirate plans to sell a cache of stolen secrets that the Empire would destroy entire worlds to protect—including the planet where Leia is currently meeting with rebel sympathizers. Scarlet wants to track down the thief and steal the bounty herself, and Han has no choice but to go along if he’s to keep everyone involved from getting themselves killed. From teeming city streets to a lethal jungle to a trap-filled alien temple, Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and their daring new comrade confront one ambush, double cross, and firestorm after another as they try to keep crucial intel out of Imperial hands.

But even with the crack support of Luke Skywalker’s x-wing squadron, the Alliance heroes may be hopelessly outgunned in their final battle for the highest of stakes: the power to liberate the galaxy from tyranny or ensure the Empire’s reign of darkness forever.

Honor Among Thieves is a great Star Wars book. This is the second book of the Empire and Rebellion trilogy but fear not, there is no overarching plot to worry about and the only thing relating the two books so far is just that they take place between Episodes 4 and 5. The plot is pretty decent but whatever it may lack is completely made up for in the characterization and interaction of the characters I didn’t realize I was missing in other Star Wars novels. The charisma feels a lot more like the character interaction from the original trilogy than any other time period in the books. The main short coming of the novel is that nothing major can happen in this book because it is essentially a side adventure that takes place between Episodes 4 and 5 of the original trilogy. I would recommend this book to any Star Wars fan whether or not they’ve read any Star Wars novels before.

As you can tell by the cover, this story mainly follows Han Solo as he goes on a mission to extract the Rebel Alliance agent Scarlet Hark from deep cover in the Empire. He struggles along the way with how far he is willing to go for the Rebel Alliance and whether he thinks they could become as controlling as the Empire they are trying to usurp. Scarlet Hark kind of takes the place of Leia as this strong, attractive female that Han can verbally parry with as they go along in their adventure. Luke and Leia are present too but in more of a limited capacity for much of the story.

Speaking of verbal parrying, James S.A. Corey does a great job with the character interaction in this story. One of the reason why I haven’t really liked the prequel trilogy is that the characters felt stiff toward each other, even those that were supposedly falling in love. As I said earlier, this novel follows much more closely in the vein of the original trilogy where the characters banter with each other and feel like they have much deeper relationships or a history that this novel builds on. Other Star Wars books are great (particularly the ones by Timothy Zahn), but they rarely have this kind of warm interaction between the characters. There is some genuine humor and even some silliness in this book asidde from the common slight comic relief normally present in Star Wars books. I would say that this part of the novel was so good that I’m actually going to go read some James S.A. Corey novels just because I enjoyed the writing style so much in this book.

As for the audio side of things, Marc Thompson does a great job with the voices as usual. The impersonations of well known characters are well done and new voices are quite entertaining. I particularly enjoyed his Hunter Maas voice because it was perfect for the swagger of that character. The novel also gave some great moments for Marc Thompson to use some great surfer dude and valley girl voices that were pretty great for the characters. His voices for Scarlet Hark and Leia were so similar though that they were hard to tell apart, especially when in the same conversation. As for Chewbacca, I think other books use canned sounds (pretty sure) but some of his parts in this book are more….unique…and all of his parts are done specifically for this book. This can be good at times but I kind of found it distracting because it didn’t sound like the Chewbacca I’m used to. The sound effects and music were just about as good as you’d expect from your typical Star Wars novel.

Posted by Tom Schreck

The SFFaudio Podcast #170 – READALONG: The Fountains Of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #170 – Jesse, Tamahome, and Jenny discuss the Brilliance Audio audiobook of The Fountains Of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke.

Talked about on today’s show:
Skyhooks and space elevators, Sri Lanka, “my first space elevator book”, Robert A. Heinlein, Friday, “it feels like a novel”, “the fictional accounting of a real construction project”, history, Colombo, afterwords, sources and acknowledgements, “what a rip-off”, Sigiriya’s Lion Paws Gate, King Kashyapa I, “past, present, and future”, engineering fiction vs. science fiction, Taprobane, Paradise Regained by John Milton, Jo Walton’s review of The Fountains Of Paradise, religion, “Heinlein in a dress”, an idea book, to think interesting Science Fictional thoughts, hard SF, Clarke’s Laws, space probe, a game changer, Gregg Margarite, Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, The Nine Billion Names Of God, Sigmund Freud, growing out of religion?, Thomas Aquinas, symbolic logic, Bertrand Russell, satellites and their uses, unseen benefits to giant engineering projects and science, Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, Burj Khalifa, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, “this is what we’re meant to do”, the space age, the 1970s, Jenny gets depressed, Terpkristin‘s visit to French Guiana (PICS!), will we have a Chinese moonbase by 2022?, innovation vs. exploration, Jerry O’Neil, good reasons to go to space, we ought to do things that we can do, Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, the daily life challenges of a space born population, The Island Worlds by Eric Kotani and John Maddox Roberts, the probe is a person, The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy #64: John Scalzi, (Star Trek holds us back), “the God Particle”, “you’re going to die soon”, can we empathize with a character that isn’t a human being?, a complimentary cosmonaut, 2001: A Space Odyssey, one day in Jerusalem, the transhuman future in the end of The Fountains Of Paradise, Starglider/Starholme, a well developed solar society, the Wikipedia entry for The Fountains Of Paradise, The Last Theorem, The City And The Stars, a non-off putting post-human story, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Ted Chiang, Charles Stross, sequels and science, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Alastair Reynolds, Kim Stanley Robinson, in SF ideas build can on one another whereas others books are more parasitizing upon those ideas, why does it have to be a new book?, ‘these were the stepping stones to today’, a balance of both a good story and good ideas, William Gibson, Embassytown by China Miéville, The City And The City, “garbage, garbage, garbage”, 2312, Playboy’s serialization of The Fountains Of Paradise, Buckminster Fuller, why did Sir Arthur C. Clarke live in Sri Lanka?, Milton is literature, Dante’s Inferno, Lucifer’s fall from heaven, Brilliance Audio, A Fall Of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke, BBC Radio dramatization of A Fall Of Moondust, Crisis On Conshelf Ten by Monica Hughes, “best book ever”, The Abyss, Tom Swift, Aquaman vs. The Sub-Mariner, Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds, The Prefect, Ray Of Light by Brad Torgeson, “Alien sun mirror block deepwater living daughter Glimmer Club surface discovery.”, the Mars tangent, Phobos and Deimos, John Scalzi, “I liked that he didn’t explain it.”, “we don’t build em that way”, “I want it to be hard”, Phobos interference would be a feature not a bug, “wiggle the thread”, atmospheric density and windspeed, carbon nano-tubes vs. buckminsterfullerene, Roald Dahl, Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator, horror, The BFG, Jack McDevitt, a waking dream, in the shadow of Vesuvius, the Prime Directive, Doctor Who, Fantasy vs. Science Fiction, Inferno (Doctor Who episode), Sliders, Doorways by George R.R. Martin, Tom Baker.

BRILLIANCE AUDIO - The Fountains Of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

Caedmon - Arthur C. Clarke reads Fountains Of Paradise

Del Rey paperback - The Fountains Of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

Playboy, January 1979 - The Fountains Of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke - illustration by Ignacio Gomez

Playboy, February 1979 - The Fountains Of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke - illustration by Ignacio Gomez

Posted by Jesse Willis