June 2010 – Page 6

LibriVox: If by Rudyard Kipling

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’m not much for poetry. Perhaps that’s because, as a published poet myself, I know just how crappy most poetry really is. Still, there are a few poems that do speak to me. Here’s one, a popular one, from 100 years ago, that I revisited recently.

If
By Rudyard Kipling; Read by Chip
1 |MP3| – Approx. 2 Minutes [POEM]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 29, 2006
Described as “a memorable evocation of Victorian stoicism” and the poetic crystalization of the British virtue of keeping a “stiff upper lip.” First published in 1910.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man my son!
—Rudyard Kipling

And also:

Posted by Jesse Willis

Golden Age Stories: FREE AUDIOBOOK – Pearl Pirate by L. Ron Hubbard

SFFaudio Online Audio

GoldenAgeStories.com (aka Galaxy Press) has a new FREE audiobook download for their newsletter’s subscribers:

Pearl Pirate
By L. Ron Hubbard; Read by ????
1 |MP3| – Approx. 47 Minutes [UNABRIDGED?]
Publisher: Galaxy Press
Published: March 2010
American captain Smoke Engel loses his ship, the Witch, to a corrupt Chinese money lender and must then embark on a deadly errand to regain his rightful property—by stealing a fortune in black pearls from the most ruthless pirate on the South Seas.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Magicians by Lev Grossman

SFFaudio Review

The Magicians
By Lev Grossman; Read by Mark Bramhall
17 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2009
Themes: / Fantasy / Magic / Wizard School / Meta Fiction / Alternate Worlds / Fictional fictional characters /

It would be too easy to simply compare this book to the Harry Potter series. There are obvious elements that are present in both, specifically the magic school. But Lev tells a story that only uses that as a means to bring the characters together and move onto the main story, which really kicks off once they graduate.

The main character, Quentin Coldwater, is a very bright high school kid who is busy applying to Universities. Despite his academic excellence, Quentin struggles to connect with the real world. He has a fascination with a series of fantasy books about a land called Fillory. In those books he can see a purpose to existence that he can’t find in his own life.

One university, Brakebills Academy, takes an interest in him and gives him an exam. It is during this exam that Quentin discovers that he is one of those few who have a talent for magic. He is enrolled in the school and goes from the smartest kid in his school to about average in his year. He pushes himself to excel and eventually finds that he is being skipped ahead a year. He makes friends and finds love. But his time there is not without upset. Eventually he and his friends graduate and we are not even half-way through the book.

Struggling to decide what to do with their lives, Quentin and his college friends drift through life for a short time. The world of the wizards isn’t challenging to them. This secret culture looks after their own, keeping a low profile and pretty much doing whatever interests them. Lacking direction and guidance Quentin and his friends have too much money and no responsibilities. They party. Drink, drugs and sex. But then they discover something that even their tutors didn’t know about. Fillory, the land from Quentin’s books, is real and they have a way to get there. They gear up and mount a small expedition to find adventure and fill the hole in their lives. They go into this with a tactics and planning of a group of fantasy role-players. They see everything in terms of the stories of Fillory. They expect quests will turn up to tell them what they need to do, and indeed one does.

The parallels between Fillory and Narnia are much stronger than those with the Harry Potter series, and pervades through much more of the novel. In the Fillory novels, a family of children, the Chatwins, from rural England in the early 1900’s keep finding secret paths into Fillory where they have adventures, defeat enemies to the land and return home as if no time has passed. While there isn’t a Lion god, there is Ember and Umber the twin Ram gods, who clean up any remaining mess and sends the Chatwin children back home. The events and characters in these books are real and have a serious impact on Quentin and his friends as they try to figure out what really happened in Fillory. There are hints and clues throughout that a second reading would put into a clearer context after knowing the ending.

The narrator, Mark Bramhall, gives an excellent performance, keeping most of the voices distinct.

Although this is described as a coming of age novel, I would hesitate to recommend it to younger teen readers. There are several strong uses of offensive language, all fitting with the characters and their situation. Definitely not aimed at the same primary market Harry Potter was.

Posted by Paul [W] Campbell

Graphic Audio Interviews E.E. Knight

SFFaudio News

Graphic Audio Director Ken Jackson interviews E.E. Knight (aka Eric Frisch) about his series Vampire Earth that will be released in GraphicAudio® this August.

Here’s the link: |LINK|
And the Graphic Audio podcast feed is: http://www.graphicaudio.net/t-rss.aspx

About the Vampire Earth series:

The story begins in 2065 in a post-apocalyptic American setting. Forty-three years ago, in 2022, an alien race known as the Kurians triggered a series of natural disasters (as well as artificial ones) that enabled them to gain control of the planet and subjugate humanity. A plague has reduced the world population to 25% of its pre-cataclysm level; nuclear explosions have created a mild form of nuclear winter, cooling the earth, and smaller events everywhere have added to the chaos. In America, the New Madrid fault let go, destroying much of the Midwest. Major rivers such as the Mississippi have been unleashed.

In the year 2022 CE, a seemingly immortal extraterrestrial race called “Kurians” has wrested control of the Earth from its inhabitants. The Kurians derive their endless lifespans from draining the “vital aura” of other life forms. To facilitate this addiction to life energy, the Kurians employ killing machines known as “Reapers”.

Following the Kurian takeover, many humans made the decision to serve the new overlords. These traitors, known as Quislings, are set up as members of the police and supervisory government for the Kurian Order. Nearly every other human who is not a Quisling is known as a Territorial, and is either a slave scratching out a living in various trades, or fighting with rebel organizations such as the Southern Command.

After a time, the Kurian Order reduced Earth to a technological and social Dark Age, with only the few remaining pre-2022 machines and transportation networks surviving, with most of these under Kurian control. As an incentive to good and loyal service to the Kurian Lords, Quislings are awarded “ten year badges”, which protect the wearers from the Reapers. Even more sought after is the “Brass Ring”. A Brass Ring ensures that one never has to fear being randomly taken by the Reapers at night, although it can be revoked and cannot be passed to one’s children.

Pockets of resistance do exist, however. The main rebel group fighting the Order at the beginning of the series is known as Southern Command. A formal military (though classified by the Order as terrorists) is charged with the defense of the Ozark Free Territory; Southern Command would be doomed were it not for the Hunters.

Definitely would like to try this one…

Posted by Scott D. Danielson