Hour 25, hosted by Harlan Ellison, October 24, 1986 – guest Robert Silverberg.
[via SFSignal.com]
Posted by Jesse Willis
Month: August 2013
Hour 25: Jack Catran vs. audience
This Hour 25 recording, I think hosted by Mike Hodell, has Jack Catran talking to callers regarding his ideas (about the difficulty SETI faces). Broadcast August 13, 1982.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Review of Crown of Slaves by David Weber & Eric Flint
Crown of Slaves (Honorverse: Wages of Sin #1)
By David Weber & Eric Flint; Narrated by Peter Larkin
Publisher: Brilliance Audio (Audible 2009)
[UNABRIDGED] – 20 hours
Themes: / military sci-fi / slavery /
Publisher summary:
The Star Kingdom’s ally, Erewhon, is growing increasingly restive in the alliance because the new High Ridge regime ignores its needs. Add to that the longstanding problem of a slave labor planet controlled by hostile Mesans in Erewhon’s stellar back yard, a problem which High Ridge also ignores. Finally, the recent assassination of the Solarian League’s most prominent voice of public conscience indicates the growing danger of political instability in the League – which is also close to Erewhon. In desperation, Queen Elizabeth tries to defuse the situation by sending a private mission to Erewhon led by Captain Zilwicki, accompanied by one of her nieces. When they arrive on Erewhon, however, Manticore’s most capable agent and one of its princesses find themselves in a mess. Not only do they encounter one of the Republic of Haven’s most capable agents – Victor Cachat – but they also discover that the Solarian League’s military delegation seems up to its neck in skullduggery. And, just to put the icing on the cake, the radical freed slave organization, the Audubon Ballroom, is also on the scene – led by its most notorious killer, Jeremy X.
Multiple articulated segments valiantly strive to give shape to this story. At times they move in joint cooperation and at others, they do not. This coauthored book is the first in what is being labeled the “Honorverse” series. It is said that it will launch an exciting new telling that… I’m sure you get the idea, or at least the idea that the publishers and Weber might wish you to have. The story appears simple at the surface. We encounter issues of slavery, the incessant pursuit of power, ill-conceived notions of political philosophy, religious ranting, and a whole lot of exposition. Yes, this seems simple, right? And to some degree it is. But a recipe merely listing the ingredients does not guarantee a tasty delight on the tongue. Or in this case, the literary palate. David Weber is a talented writer. Unfortunately Weber’s skill is not on display in this book.
First off, I don’t like writing reviews wherein I simply dump on an author’s book. It is easy to criticize something and all too often we tend to focus on the negative more than the positive. As I indicated, David Weber is a gifted writer in the military science fiction genre. His first volume of the Honor Harrington series On Basilisk Station is a fine read. But this book lacks Weber’s eye for craft. The sheer tonnage of exposition in this book is staggering. I’m not a fan of the information-dump, and I am especially not a fan when you are strapped down and force-fed it until your eyes glaze over. Flint and Weber’s ability to provide the reader with a strong foundational understanding of the rationale behind all character and political motivation is stunning. In many ways this book has the feel and tonality of a history book. You learn who did what and then why. This knowledge then is the underlying cause for the action of a character that you will now be told about. And perhaps this is my core issue. I felt as if this story was told to me and not shown. If this had been a lecture about lectures, it would have been more interesting than this book. Aside from massive droughts of exposition, flat characters, and shoddy dialogue, come the issue of adverbs. If you are reduced to using adverbs in dialogue attribution in order to tell the reader how someone says their lines, it is up to the editor to politely ask (demand) the author to rewrite. This book is full of adverbs and awkward transitions between metaphors and similes that are rarely rendered well.
Peter Larkin serves as narrator. And while his performance is better than I’ve heard in the past, he still injects far too much drama into his reading. His interpretation of youthful characters is distracting at best and downright irritating for the most part. Larkin doesn’t fall into the pitched cadence reserved only for air traffic controllers but comes dangerously close on several occasions. If Larkin can set aside the idea of performing and just read, he’ll do well in the business.
The musical score at the beginning and end of each CD is too long, too dramatic, and distracting to the extent of making it difficult to hear the narration under the music. In this case, a little goes a long ways.
Posted by Casey Hampton.
Review of Extinction by B.V. Larson
Extinction (Star Force #2)By B.V. Larson; Performed by Mark Boyett
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
[UNABRIDGED] – 12 hours
Themes: / aliens / military sci-fi / fighting bugs /
Publisher summary:
Earth’s Star Force Marines invade an alien world! In the second book of the Star Force series, Kyle Riggs has another bad year. The Nano ships have a new mission – one that sentences their pilots to death. Meanwhile, the governments of Earth want to steal Star Force’s Nano technology for their own. Worst of all, Earth has made a promise to the Macros, and the machines are coming to collect. Extinction is the story of Earth’s entry into an interstellar war between living creatures and machines. To buy the peace, we’ve signed up with the machines.
If the first book of B. V. Larson’s Starforce series set humanity at the center of a conflict between Replicators and Terminators, this second entry sticks with that mostly successful formula and improves on it with a healthy dose of Starship Troopers. Kyle Riggs remains the protagonist and narrator of the story and all the important characters from the previous novel return and see some development. The plot of Extinction can be broken into five major acts, which for the purpose of this review I will call Return to Earth, Independence, Exploration, Growth, and Fighting Bugs.
The Return to Earth portion of the story brings Kyle back from the confrontation around Venus that ended Swarm. It essentially serves to reintroduce readers to his character and give some nods to character development. Gone is the mild-mannered university professor of the previous novel. Riggs has been transformed by his experiences in South America and around Venus and is now a hard as nails military commander. Larson devotes just enough time to the deaths of Riggs’s children and the other horrors of Swarm to show that his protagonist still has a human side, despite being enhance by a body full of nanites.
The portion of the story that I think of as Independence finally brings some serious political intrigue to the series. I know that this is Starforce, not Game of Thrones, but it’s nice to see some consideration given to the big picture. In addition to establishing clear political relations between Starforce and the nations of Earth, this second portion of the novel develops the relationship between Riggs and his sometimes-commander Crow. Sandra is back as well and, while Riggs still appears to treat her as little more than a sex machine and foil for exposition, the author at least gives Sandra more freedom to act. She even surprises Riggs a few times throughout the story by taking initiative in difficult situations and pushing him to make the right decisions.
The Exploration and Growth portions of the story race by as quickly as the year of plot time that they encompass. Larson pulls in more elements from the science fiction cannon in these sections, with star gates, inertial suppression (or the lack thereof), and the difficulties of negotiating with artificial intelligences all adding their flavors to the story. Little can be said about this portion of the story without giving away the plot points, so I’ll just say that if you like fast moving exposition about strange planets and alien technology, this part of the story is a great read.
Everything in the book builds up to the final portion of the story, which can be summarized in two words: Fighting Bugs.
The alien enemies in this portion of the story are truly alien, even if we have seen similar creatures from other series, and they give the Starforce marines a good fight. Thousands of nanite-enhanced marines and machine gun-toting aliens are slaughtered on the altar of audience entertainment in a bloodbath of storytelling that rivals the plot of Starcraft. If that sort of action is what you are looking for, then this book will be exactly your cup of energy drink. On the other hand, this section of the book does have a distinctly video game feel to it, as Kyle Riggs slogs neck deep through the blood of literally thousands of other humans and aliens as they are slaughtered all around him. Sure, readers need a hero with which to identify, but at some point you stop caring about Kyle Riggs as a character and just assume that he will survive any situation to get the reader to the next battle.
I think that this book should mark the decision point for readers. Two books into the Starforce series, Larson has clearly established what sort of story he is telling. If you like this particular brand of military scifi, you’re going to get your fill. Larson does little to expand on already existing science fiction tropes, but like a very talented Lego artist, he continues to stick these already existing elements together to build new stories that are quite cool, even if the edges are a bit rough and the construction materials easily recognizable.
The production quality of this audiobook was excellent. Mark Boyett provides the perfect narration for a character who still retains elements of his former life, but is slipping deeper into his role as a cold-hearted commander. The CD version I listened to comes on ten discs, each of which begins and ends with a short musical cue. I started to find the narration a little slow in parts, so about three hours in I set my iPod to double-speed and was much more content. Don’t take this to mean that the narration is too slow. I think it is perfect, as the standard speed is just right for people who are new to audiobooks and long time listeners like me can double it with little distortion.
Posted by Andrew Linke
Review of Dear Girls Above Me by Charlie McDowell
Dear Girls Above Me
By Charlie McDowell; Read by Kirby Heyborne
Publisher: Random House Audio
ISBN: 9780804164207
Published: 4 June 2013
[UNABRIDGED] – 8 hours, 6 minutes
Excerpt: | MP3 |
Themes: / neighbors / twitter / apartments / memoir / humor /
Publisher summary:
When Charlie McDowell began sharing his open letters to his noisy upstairs neighbors—two impossibly ditzy female roommates in their mid-twenties—on Twitter, his feed quickly went viral. His followers multiplied and he got the attention of everyone from celebrities to production studios to major media outlets such as Time and Glamour. Now Dear Girls breaks out of the 140-character limit as Charlie imagines what would happen if he put the wisdom of the girls to the test.
After being unceremoniously dumped by the girl he was certain was “the one,” Charlie realized his neighbors’ conversations were not only amusing, but also offered him access to a completely uncensored woman’s perspective on the world. From the importance of effectively Facebook-stalking potential girlfriends and effortlessly pulling off pastel, to learning when in the early stages of dating is too presumptuous to bring a condom and how to turn food poisoning into a dieting advantage, the girls get Charlie into trouble, but they also get him out of it—without ever having a clue of their impact on him.
I admit that I procrastinated for a while over writing this review. Not because I didn’t like the book, which I did in a weird way, but more because I’m not quite sure what I thought of it. I found out about the Dear Girls Above Me Twitter meme some time ago and I was always amused by the dry-witted observations of the author’s upstairs neighbors, two 20-something girls who say really stupid things.
“Dear Girls Above Me, ‘Like why isn’t the 4th of July on the 2nd of July? Who makes up when these holidays are gonna be anyway?’ Will Smith.”
“Dear GAM, ‘Mom, how are you not hearing me?! I forgot to send dad flowers because THERE’S A NEW KARDASHIAN!’ Happy Father’s Day, Kanye.”
A lot is said in less than 140 characters. Anyone who has ever had to live in close proximity to other people in an apartment complex can certainly relate. Goodness knows I can! This might explain why the meme became popular in the first place.
Does that make for a compelling book? I’m not entirely sure.
I hesitated to try this book because I wondered how on earth the author was going to make a linear and compelling storyline out of the 140-character observations of his upstairs neighbors. The original meme had no linear storyline to begin with and seemed to serve as an outlet for Charlie’s frustrations at how inane his neighbors could be. So how was this going to be turned into a book?
By creating a small bit of a plot.
You have this mid-20-something who lives in Los Angeles with a longtime roommate who may or may not be gay (a constant source of speculation on the part of the author) named Charlie. Charlie and his longtime girlfriend break up. As he is getting over the pain of his breakup, he notices that he has some new upstairs neighbors, two very loud and very bubble-headed early-20 something girls named Cathy and Claire. Charlie can hear them in his apartment but they, for some odd reason, cannot hear him. So he is forced to hear every inane topic of conversation they have and he turns his rage at their loud conversations into Twitter gold. Eventually he gets to know them a little bit more after he goes upstairs to talk to them and gets sucked into a loud party the girls are hosting, and the girls never seem to remember who he is.
The rest of the story meanders through his fledgling love life, such as his trying to reconnect with the former hot girl from his high school graduating class, and his other observations about apartment life (the neighbor who tries to get her dog to have playdates with Charlie’s dog) and his family, since his mother is apparently an Oscar-winning actress, and punctuating his observations with quotes from the girls above him. Each chapter ends with some of Twitter quotes from the girls.
While his observations are written in that dry style that I like, I kept wondering when an actual story was going to come in. The entire book felt more like the stream-of-consciousness journal of a 20-something guy and I felt myself tuning out sometimes as he went on and on about trying to look on Facebook for the former hot girl he crushed on in high school or having to see as a thirteen-year-old his best friend become aroused at seeing his partially naked mother on a late night movie channel.
I prefer books that have a clear plot to them that leads to a good conclusion and there was nothing like that in this book. There was no story to really drive the book along, so when the end finally did come, it left me feeling more like “wow, that’s it?” It felt so abrupt.
In short, if you enjoy reading rambling books that don’t really have much of a plot to follow, then this would be for you. Do be aware that there is some language and sexual situations, none of which bothered me, but I know some people are sensitive about those things.
As for the audiobook itself, I thoroughly enjoyed the person who read the book. Even if the meanderings of this book left me a little bored at times, I was certainly not bored by the audio reading. I thought that was the best part. Not only did his voice fit the character of the author very well, but also his impressions of Cathy and Claire, the girls who live above Charlie, were hilarious. I found myself cracking up often at hearing his otherwise serious voice speak their dialogue in such a dim-witted Valley Girl voice. It really made the characters in this story come to life.
Review by Cecilee Linke.
The Dreams In The Witch House by H.P. Lovecraft
Bryan Baugh‘s illustration of The Dreams In The Witch House is fabulous.
It captures everything I love about this novelette. In a stating his inspiration for the illustration Baugh explains his own experiences, of not being able to appreciate The Dreams In The Witch House, until he had matured. But he also goes on to call it “[an] insane little epic” one “which offers a mind boggling blend of old fashioned haunted-house horror with sci-fi quantum physics and alternate dimensions.
In The Nyarlathotep Cycle, a collection of related stories by various authors, editor R.M. Price wrote this for the introduction to The Dreams In The Witch House:
“Fritz Leiber was right: Lovecraft effected a Copernican revolution in horror by using the fearsome implications of modern science as the subtext for Gothic horror.”
Julie Hoverson, a Seattleite polymath and sometime guest on the SFFaudio Podcast, narrates it for us. A Lovecraft expert herself, Julie has adapted several of his short stories as audio dramas for her 19 Nocturne Boulevard series.
And me? I’m just glad that the twisting non-Euclidean angles of the actual real life witch house, as seen in the Masters Of Horror adaptation of this story, allow me to live within driving distance of Caprica City (where I attended university), the Tomb of Athena (where I went hiking), and Kobol (where I go dog walking).
The Dreams In The Witch House
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Julie Hoverson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 42 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Julie Hoverson
Provided: April 2013
Walter Gilman, a student of mathematics and folklore at Miskatonic University, rents a local rooming house. First published in the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales.
Posted by Jesse Willis