The SFFaudio Podcast #256 – READALONG: Have Space Suit—Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein

TheSFFaudioPodcast600The SFFaudio Podcast #256 – Jesse, Tamahome, Luke Burrage, Seth, and Mark Turetsky talk about the audiobook of Have Space Suit—Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein (as narrated by Mark Turetsky for Blackstone Audio)!

Talked about on today’s show:
On the book title’s proper spacing and hyphenation; Have Gun, Will Travel TV show; Heinlein’s last “juvenile” novel; Mark “over the moon” about the opportunity to record the book; novel nominated for Hugo in 1959; parts of the novel are hard SF; Philip K. Dick’s completely unrelated story The Father Thing; ways of manipulation in the novel; Mark’s favorite character voices; correlations between the Earth characters and space characters; debunking the possibility that the story was all a dream or imaged à la Wizard of Oz; cross-novel characters in Heinlein’s novels i.e. Space Family Stone; novel followed up by Starship Troopers; detailed description of the space suit possibly inspired by Heinlein’s work on bomber pilot pressure suits during World War II; The Martian by Andy Weir; casual drug use in the novel; Mark didn’t do the helium voice in space suit scenes; comparison to full cast audio version; Kip’s conversations with inanimate space suit bear resemblance to Gravity; on the novel’s setting in time and its world building flaws; slip sticks and slide rules; slide rule “the best invention since girls”; Kip’s dad should “get off his ass and get a job”; Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat and its inspiration on Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog via its appearance in this novel’s opening lines; Heinlein’s infallibility; going Galt; the father is an asshole; the father is Heinlein; money in fiction; money baskets in Stranger in a Strange Land; old men hooking up with young women in Heinlein; Podkayne of MarsTime for the StarsTunnel in the Sky is a mash-up of Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games; the story’s narrative perspective; on learning outside of school, “I’m gonna learn this shit on my own”; novel encapsulates Luke’s life philosophy, “There’s no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”; the novel’s accelerating plot; The Puppet Masters; on adapting the novel to the silver screen; PBS’s adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven; the relative weakness of the novel’s last section; Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure; time travel “breaks” fiction; Lisa Simpson would read this book; John Scalzi’s blog post An Anecdotal Observation, Relating to Robert Heinlein and the Youth of Today; people today don’t read books (or read the wrong kind of books); is science fiction the most enlightened of fiction genres?; phone books are useful for starting fires; Luke tells an inspiring story about the Magellanic Cloud; “the cure for boredom is curiosity”; where animals keep their brains.

Have Spacesuit - Will Travel - illustration by Ed Emshwiller

Emsh interior illustration for HAVE SPACE SUIT - WILL TRAVEL

Ed Emshwiller illustration of Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

Kelly Freas -  Have Spacesuit, Will Travel

Posted by Jesse Willis

Maria Lectix: The Ultimate Weapon by John W. Campbell Jr.

SFFaudio Online Audio

John W. Campbell, Jr. was a moderately successful writer with a science background. He found his true calling as editor of the magazine Astounding Stories, in which capacity he reshaped science fiction forever. Here is one of his lesser known novels. From the pages of Amazing Stories in 1936, this novel ran as a serial called “Uncertainty”. But Ace Books called it The Ultimate Weapon!

The Ultimate Weapon by John W. Campbell Jr.The Ultimate Weapon
By John W. Campbell; Read by Maureen O’Brien
12 MP3 Files or Podcast – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: November 30, 2008 – May 11, 2009
Aliens have just been discovered! Only trouble is, the Solar System has just been discovered by those same aliens — and they want it all for themselves. The result is a war and a desperate arms race between alien technology and human ingenuity. Who will win? What is the ultimate weapon?

John W. Campbell, Jr. was a moderately successful writer with a science background. He found his true calling as editor of the magazine Astounding Stories, in which capacity he reshaped science fiction forever.

Chapter 1 |MP3| Chapter 2 |MP3| Chapter 3 |MP3| Chapter 4 |MP3|
Chapter 5 |MP3| Chapter 6 |MP3| Chapter 7 |MP3| Chapter 8 |MP3|
Chapter 9 |MP3| Chapter 10 |MP3| Chapter 11 |MP3| Chapter 12 and Epilogue |MP3|

Podcast feed:
http://huffduffer.com/jessewillis/tags/the_ultimate_weapon/rss

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis