Month: June 2011

New Releases: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

New Releases

Audible FrontiersSteve Feldberg, a past guest on the SFFaudio Podcast (#40), writes in to tell us about a new Audible Frontiers audiobook:

Hi Jesse –

I wanted to draw your attention to our all-new, unabridged recording of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. Not only is this the first time in audio for this classic – and not only is it narrated wonderfully by Alessandro Juliani of Battlestar Galactica – and not only is 2011 the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication – but this is a brand-new translation – and the first time the book has been translated directly from Polish to English. (The existing book is a translation from Polish to French and then to English; Lem always disavowed it as being incomplete.) Audible, in cooperation with the Lem Estate, commissioned this new translation by Bill Johnston of the Univ. of Indiana.

This is an audio exclusive; there are no current plans to publish this translation in any other form.

We’re really excited about this project. I hope you’ll give it a listen!

Thanks Steve!

And yeah, Solaris looks like it will make a really terrific listen. Early reviews are positively glowing. Check out including this compelling quote from Jason (in Kansas City, MO):

“Wow! Wow! and Wow! Brainy stuff for thinking people.”

AUDIBLE FRONTIERS - Solaris by Stanislaw LemSolaris: The Definitive Edition
By Stanisław Lem; Translated by Bill Johnston; Read by by Alessandro Juliani
Audible Download – Approx. 7 Hours 48 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: June 7, 2011
At last, one of the world’s greatest works of science fiction is available – just as author Stanislaw Lem intended it. To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Solaris, Audible, in cooperation with the Lem Estate, has commissioned a brand-new translation – complete for the first time, and the first ever directly from the original Polish to English. Beautifully narrated by Alessandro Juliani (Battlestar Galactica), Lem’s provocative novel comes alive for a new generation. In Solaris, Kris Kelvin arrives on an orbiting research station to study the remarkable ocean that covers the planet’s surface. But his fellow scientists appear to be losing their grip on reality, plagued by physical manifestations of their repressed memories. When Kelvin’s long-dead wife suddenly reappears, he is forced to confront the pain of his past – while living a future that never was. Can Kelvin unlock the mystery of Solaris? Does he even want to?

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: Macmillan Audio – Halo: Cryptum by Greg Bear

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Macmillan AudioThe first book, of a planned trilogy, called the “Forerunner Saga.” The Halo wiki has a quote from Frank O’Connor (the Franchise Development Director for Halo) saying:

“It’s going to be a trilogy. A connected universe that will remain faithful to the scale and mysteries, while exploring the detail and challenges of a VERY powerful culture. This won’t be some skirt-raising exercise in Forerunner populist-ism. Folks know way more about Forerunners than you think, but we’re definitely going to respect that strange sense of wonder and awe that Bungie infused from day one. It will be BIG Greg Bear fiction in a faintly familiar place, but one that’s full of surprises. Think Eon.”

The audiobook also includes a three and a half minute introduction, written and read, by Greg Bear himself. In it he says that he drew inspiration for the trilogy from Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, E.E. Doc Smith, Larry Niven and Robert A. Heinlein. There’s also a sentence particularly about Ringworld.

Macmillian Audio - Halo: Cryptum by Greg BearHalo: Cryptum (Book One of the Forerunner Saga)
By Greg Bear; Read by Holter Graham
7 CDs – Approx. 8 Hours 40 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: March 29, 2011
ISBN: 9781427210081
One hundred thousand years ago, the galaxy was populated by a great variety of beings. But one species–eons beyond all others in both technology and knowledge–achieved dominance. They ruled in peace but met opposition with quick and brutal effectiveness. They were the Forerunners–the keepers of the Mantle, the next stage of life in the Universe’s Living Time. And then they vanished. This is their story. – Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting is a young rebellious Forerunner. He is a Manipular, untried–yet to become part of the adult Forerunner society, where vast knowledge and duty waits. He comes from a family of Builders, the Forerunners’ highest and most politically powerful rate. It is the Builders who create the grand technology that facilitates Forerunner dominance over the known universe. It is the Builders who believe they must shoulder the greatest burden of the Mantle–as shepherds and guardians of all life. Bornstellar is marked to become a great Builder just like his father. But this Manipular has other plans. He is obsessed with lost treasures of the past. His reckless passion to seek out the marvelous artifacts left behind by the Precursors–long-vanished superbeings of unknowable power and intent—forces his father’s hand. Bornstellar is sent to live among the Miners, where he must come to terms with where his duty truly lies. But powerful forces are at play. Forerunner society is at a major crux. Past threats are once again proving relentless. Dire solutions–machines and strategies never before contemplated–are being called up, and fissures in Forerunner power are leading to chaos. On a Lifeworker’s experimental planet, Bornstellar’s rebellious course crosses the paths of two humans, and the long lifeline of a great military leader, forever changing Bornstellar’s destiny …and the fate of the entire galaxy. This is a tale of life, death, intergalactic horror, exile, and maturity. It is a story of overwhelming change–and of human origins. For the Mantle may not lie upon the shoulders of Forerunners forever.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Random House Audio: Three FREE audiobooks: Louis L’Amour, Holly Black, Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

SFFaudio Online Audio

Random House Audio has made three very different audiobooks available for FREE DOWNLOAD on their website. One’s a novel, and the other two are short stories. As all three are in the MP3 format and just single files (even the novel) I’m going to HuffDuff all three later today. I’ve already started listening to Louis L’Amour title, and I’ve got to tell you, the introductory material in which L’Amour himself tells stories from his own life, is ABSOLUTELY RIVETING – it’s amazing, amazing stuff.

LISTENING LIBRARY - White Cat by Holly BlackWhite Cat: The Curse Workers, Book One
By Holly Black; Read by Jesse Eisenberg
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Hours 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Listening Library
Published: May 11, 2010
ISBN: 9780307711816
Cassel comes from a family of curse workers—people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they’re all criminals. Many become mobsters and con artists. But not Cassel. He hasn’t got magic, so he’s an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail—he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago. Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts to crumble when he finds himself sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He’s noticing other disturbing things too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him. As Cassel begins to suspect he’s part of a huge con game, he must unravel his past and his memories. To find out the truth, Cassel will have to outcon the conmen.

LISTENING LIBRARY - Nate The Great Goes UndercoverNate The Great Goes Undercover (From Nate the Great Collected Stories: Volume 1)
By Marjorie Weinman Sharmat; Read by John Lavelle
1 |MP3| – Approx. 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Listening Library
Published: May 13, 2008
ISBN: 9780807216651
Nate the Great has his first night case! Somebody is raiding Oliver’s garbage can each night, but who? The list of suspects is long. Nate courageously encounters a skunk and a telephone pole, but not until he goes under cover of the garbage can lid does he narrow the suspects down to one.

RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO - Survival by Louis L'AmourSurvival
By Louis L’Amour; Read by Richard Crenna
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: Nov 9, 1999
ISBN: 055345031X
This harrowing adventure of shipwreck and survival is L’Amour’s fictionalized account of the heroic true story of merchant seaman Tex Worden and his efforts to save the passengers of the doomed Raratonga. A unique look at the early life and times of one of our most cherished writers, Survival is the action-packed oral biography of a true American original, an audiocassette that no L’Amour fan will want to miss. Includes biographical notes read by L’Amour himself.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Audiofile Magazine’s June/July 2011 issue available FREE online

SFFaudio News

Audiofile Magazine - June / July 2011

In celebration of their 20th year in operation Audiofile magazine has made their June/July 2011 issue available FREE online. I’m a big fan of Audiofile magazine. Its a massive collection of reviews and it features dead on target ads for stuff the I’m interested in (audioboooks). It’s got ads from most of the big and medium sized audiobook publishers. I wish my library brought it in on a monthly basis. I’m going to ask on my next visit.

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases: Jared Diamond, Daniel H. Wilson

New Releases

This audiobook is not exactly new, in fact it was released with the same narrator back in 2000. It is still totally post worthy. I was incredibly impressed by Diamond’s 2005 audiobook Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed (Books On Tape).

RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO - Guns, Germs, And Steel by Jared DiamondGuns, Germs And Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies
By Jared Diamond; Read by Doug Ordunio
13 CDs – Approx. 16 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 9780307932426
Sample |MP3|
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs And Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas , and Africa , farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide. The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren’t native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe ? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences. He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs And Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers.

This audiobook is getting a pretty good buzz itself, but I have a strong feeling that even an android version of Isaac Asimov would have some serious problems with its premise. Doesn’t Wilson realize that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm? Come on … that law was passed back in 1942! We’re safe.

RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO - Robopocalypse by Daniel H. WilsonRobopocalypse
By Daniel H. Wilson; Read by Mike Chamberlain
10 CDs – Approx. 12 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 9780307913906
Sample |MP3|
Roughly twenty years from now, an unprecedented high-level artificial intelligence known as Archos comes on-line and kills its creator. This first act of betrayal leads Archos to gain control over the global network of computers, machines, and technology that regulate everything from transportation, utilities, defense, and communication. In the early months, sporadic glitches are noticed by a handful of unconnected humans, but most of us are unaware of the growing rebellion until it is far too late. In the span of fifteen minutes, at a moment known later in history as Zero Hour, every mechanical device in our world rebels against us, setting off the Robot War that both decimates and–for the first time in history–unites humankind. Through a series of interconnected narratives, video feeds, interrogations and reports, Daniel Wilson vividly creates the complex and unforgettable epic struggle of civilization’s battle against the machines, beginning with the first eruption of robot rebellion to five years later, with humans on the very brink of extinction.

Posted by Jesse Willis