Jesse Willis – Page 4

Hardware review of Sony MDR-AS200 “Active” Stereo Headphones

SFFaudio Review

SONY MDR-AS200 Headphones Sony MDR-AS200 “Active” Stereo Headphones [WHITE]
Manufacturer: Sony
UPC: 027242862500

Sony® headphones deliver dependable, quality audio reproduction time after time. Equipped with 13.5 mm high-sensitivity driver units, our MDR-AS200 Sports headphones are no different while also affording a secure, comfortable fit that lets you get close and personal with your workout.

Sony MDR-AS200 Headphones

What I look for in headphones is not so much audio fidelity, or heavy bass, or whatever it is that music listeners are presumably looking for, as much as the reliable and constant delivery of the spoken word to my ears.

I’ve used the same pair of Sony MDR-AS200 “Active” Stereo Headphones, off and on, for a few years now – they’re reliable, lightweight, not-super tangly (though still tangly) and best of all they are cheap. “Active” is Sony’s way of saying these headphones are sweatproof. And they are. In fact, I go through other kinds of headphones very quickly. Listening is such a big part of my life that I don’t mind spending a bit of money on something that might improve my ability to listen, more and more efficiently. But when a pair of my regular wireless bluetooth headphones dies (which they do fairly frequently), and when the sun isn’t shining or I’m not going to be outdoors (that’s when I use my wireless bluetooth sunglasses with headphones) I need some regular backup wired headphones and the Sony MDR-AS200s are those for me.

I don’t like earbuds, I’ve never been able to use any without having them fall out and/or hurt my ears, and while the MDR-AS200 headphones do sit in the same place as earbuds they simply ride there – they don’t rub, or bump, or pop out or fall out. People seem to want to call these “over the ear” headphones, but the MDR-AS200 headphones are more secure than that – they go all-the-way-around-the-ear. The around-the-ear ear loops are marked, right and left, and each has an expandable section, adjustable by friction and able to travel just slightly more than the thickness of a pencil (approx. half an inch). This means if you are a person and you have ears – they can probably fit yours and that they won’t fall off.

As to the sound quality, I must stress that these headphones do not in any manner form a seal between your ear canal and the speakers that ride just outside of them. What this means is that at all times you can hear the outside world. This is perfect for navigating the stacks at a library, but possibly not so great for noisy environments like the gym (they’re sweatproof), the mall, or your own home (depending on your home).

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and listen to audio from YouTube videos, and sadly, not everyone who produces podcasts and YouTube videos has loud enough audio in their productions. If you’re in the same situation as me you must be aware that these MDR-AS200 headphones do not seal you off from the world – and so too-quietly-recorded podcasts and video audio will be nigh unhearable in anything like a noisy environment.

Sony MDR-AS200 Headphones and earmuffs

One last thing. The other reason I need to keep my Sony MDR-AS200 headphones on hand is for a specific in-home use. I don’t like vacuuming, but I will do it (when necessary) if I have these “active” headphones in my ears. They allow, when paired with some cheap plastic over-the-head ear protection earmuffs, a somewhat pleasant vacuuming experience.

A little feature from Sony’s design department:
Sony MDR-AS200 Headphones - zipper

And a cute little hard plastic clothing clip, designed to prevent the cord from dangling or moving where you don’t want it to:
Sony MDR-AS200 Headphones - clothing clip

Usage and features from the manual:
Sony MDR-AS200 Headphones - usage and features

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Change Agent by Daniel Suarez

SFFaudio Review

Change Agent
By Daniel Suarez; Read by Jeff Gurner
Audiobook Download – 14.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: Apr 18, 2017

In 2045 Kenneth Durand leads Interpol’s most effective team against genetic crime, hunting down black market labs that perform “vanity edits” on human embryos for a price. These illegal procedures augment embryos in ways that are rapidly accelerating human evolution—preying on human-trafficking victims to experiment and advance their technology.

Executive Summary: Despite a bit of a bumpy start, I think this is my favorite book by Mr. Suarez since Daemon.

Audiobook: Jeff Gurner continues to be a good fit for Daniel Suarez books. He reads well, and does a few voices to add that little extra something to the audiobook. These are exactly the kind of books I think are well suited to doing in audio.

Full Review
I picked up Daemon a few years back on the recommendation of a co-worker. It was kind of remarkable that I hadn’t found it on my own earlier. That book was totally in my wheelhouse. A near-future sci-fi thriller about a computer program gone crazy? Yes please. However unlike many people I found the sequel Freedom™ to just be too over the top for me to read it without constantly rolling my eyes.

In fact, I’ve found most of his work after Daemon just a little too ridiculous at times for me, but always good for a fun quick listen. I’d say this book is no different, except I found myself enjoying this one a lot more by the end than the last few.

Bioengineering seems to be a pretty popular topic for near-future science fiction recently, but I found Mr. Suarez’s take on things to be pretty interesting and unique. I did struggle a bit in the beginning with the whole “Wrongfully accused Fugitive” trope. It felt too generic for me, and I found myself starting to grow bored.

However once things got past the setup, I found that the sci-fi elements that Mr. Suarez added in made his spin on the story unique enough to be quite enjoyable. As with most of his books, things start of in the realm of believability and end up veering into the realm of ridiculousness at times.

I sometimes struggled with Kenneth Durand as a protagonist, but overall I thought his story does a good job of posing interesting questions about how much of who we are is biology vs. our upbringing. The whole nurture vs. nature debate. The book as a whole brings up some interesting ideas of what should be allowed and what should be illegal in terms of biological engineering.

I don’t pretend to have the same level of comprehension about biology and what’s possible in that field as I do in computers, but some parts of the story were just a bit too much for me to not to roll my eyes. I’d be curious to find out if Biology folks will have the same kinds of issues with this book that I had with Freedom™. Maybe they’ll tell me that Mr. Suarez isn’t too ridiculous after all. I sure hope not, because it would be pretty terrifying.

Like all of his books, he takes interesting science, extrapolates on what might be, and uses that to frame an over the top thriller story. It was a fun book, and I’ll be eager to pick up his next book when that comes out as well.

Review by Rob Zak

Review of Dan Dare: The Audio Adventures, Volume One: 1: Voyage To Venus, 2: The Red Moon Mystery, and 3: Marooned On Mercury

SFFaudio Review

Dan Dare: The Audio Adventures, Volume 1, 1: Voyage To Venus, 2: The Red Moon Mystery, and 3: Marooned On Mercury
Adapted from the Eagle comic strip; Performed by a full cast
3 Episodes – 3 hours, 9 minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Big Finish
Published: January 2017

Three audio adventures based on the Eagle comic strip “Dan Dare” created by Rev. Marcus Morris, adapted and drawn by Frank Hampson.

Dan Dare - 1: Voyage To Venus

Brilliant test pilot, Dan Dare, is chosen to fly the Anastasia – a new experimental
spacecraft – on its maiden voyage to Venus. This isn’t exploration – it is to make first
contact with a mysterious civilisation that has sent technological secrets as a goodwill
gesture. However, what Dan, Digby and Professor Peabody find on Venus isn’t
goodwill, but a terrifyingly intelligent, cold-hearted ruler, the Mekon. A creature
destined to become Dan Dare’s nemesis – and Earth’s greatest threat…

Dan Dare - 2: The Red Moon Mystery

Unable to return to Earth, Dan Dare and the crew of the Anastasia head to the
desolate planet Mars, where Dan’s estranged Uncle Ivor is part of a research team
working on a top-secret archaeological dig; but when they find the base wrecked and
the scientists missing, Dare, Digby and Professor Peabody soon discover that the Red
Planet is not nearly as dead as everyone thought and that Ivor’s expedition has
woken an army of deadly insect-creatures that threaten to swarm and engulf the
Earth… Dare must stop the aliens, but can he really resort to genocide in order to
save the human race?

Dan Dare - 3: Marooned On Mercury

When a distress call summons the crew of the Anastasia to the burning wilderness of
Mercury, they are reunited with their old ally, Sondar. He tells them of the
beleaguered Mercurians who are held in thrall to a cruel new taskmaster – the
Mekon! The exiled Mekon is rallying his forces, plotting a desperate revenge against
his former homeworld of Venus and his hated enemy, Colonel Dan Dare!

It had been quite some time since I’d heard much about Dan Dare, at least twenty or more years until the classic comic character’s adventures were rebooted by ace author Garth Ennis in 2009 for Dynamite Comics. I was glad to hear that B7 Media, those folks responsible for the terrific Blake’s 7 adventures from a few years back have revived the man with the iconic name: Dan Dare.

Taking advantage of the audio drama format, these three new Big Finish Dan Dare adventures are truly terrific entertainment. They’re modern boy’s own-style space adventures, a kind of unapologetically forthright solar space opera, and starring no less a figure than Britain’s most iconic test pilot turned space adventurer, Dan Dare. For those unfamiliar, Dan Dare is one of those lapping-over delights from the end of the British Empire days, an ever just so slightly alien import – like the Rupert Bear books, or Captain Britain, or even Judge Dredd – and as delightful as a tin full of Turkish delight!

It is hard for me to review audio drama the same way I review audiobooks. I listen to audio drama at night with my eyes closed just as I’m drifting off into Dreamland. This means if I want to review them, I must re-listen to the shows over and over in order to get all my facts straight (that I love to is a side benefit). I need to know exactly what’s in the show itself, and what I only dreamed was in the show. And in my nightly re-listening for two weeks, I must say that all three episodes are really terrific – professional – solid work – as good as you would want them to be. Even with three different writing teams for three episodes and the fact that the three shows are mapped to three storylines from the very inception of Dan Dare, there’s very little for me to complain about. If you pushed me, really pushed me for some hard critiques of the shows as a whole I could come up with a few pitiful ones. I’d say, maybe, that the actors for Digby and Dan have voices just a bit too similar to each other, that maybe the personality of Professor Peabody – going from a hard-ass corporate profiteer to a stalwart champion of the undertrodden is a bit quick. But I really cannot complain. I got two wonderful weeks of nightly entertainment from these three episodes; each combining some of the very best elements of some of my favourite adventures into three all new shows. I’m telling you, if you like stories like The Empire Strikes Back, or Metropolis, or DOOM, or Aliens you’ll certainly love these new Dan Dare adventures.

Now, twist my arm just a bit more and I’ll tell you a secret… oh yes, I loved the first and second episodes, but that third episode, with those wonderful sympathetic Mercurians… it is my favourite.

Some fun, fast facts comparing Dan Dare in 1950 and Dan Dare in 2017.
-In the original comic strip Digby was Dan’s batman (his gentleman’s gentleman), not so in 2017.
-In the 2017 audio drama, Dan Dare is a vlogger!
-In 2017, Dan Dare’s dad is in hospital, in what sounds like a coma, and he regularly visits him (as does Digby).
-Professor Peabody was a professor in 1950 and still is a professor in 2017.
-The 2017 Dan Dare is set in the 2040s, the 1950s Dan Dare was set in the 1990s.
-In the 1950 Dan Dare “Eagle” was the name of the magazine where Dan Dare appeared, in 2017 “Eagle” is the name of the corporation that built Dare’s spaceship.
-And, the 2017 Dan Dare uses the medium of audio drama (or radio drama) as part of the plot.

Here’s a video reviewing the history of Dan Dare:

Posted by Jesse Willis

Eagle V1 No1, April 14th, 1950

Commentary: Bill Hollweg, March 5, 1967 – April 1st, 2017

SFFaudio Commentary

Bill Hollweg

Jack Ward of the Sonic Society podcast has just informed me of some terrible news (read Jack’s tribute here). Humanity’s friend, Bill Hollweg, of Miles, Texas and BrokenSea Audio Productions, is dead.

I do not know the details of his death, I heard he’d taken his own life, but I do know that whatever he died of it must really have been that his heart was far too big.

To say that Bill was a generous man is to be uncharitable with words. Bill was a champion of that which is best in life, with a voice like a gravel pit and a pen like a sage.

I had far too few meetings with him, and he was a better friend to me than I deserved. I suspect I am not alone in this.

I first found Bill’s work on the web, about a decade ago, and as happens, we soon became, as he put it “amigos.”

His enthusiasm was contagious.

I last heard from in December in a brief comment consisting mostly of an oath to Crom that I “rock” – but the truth is it was Bill who rocked, and I swear it by Crom.

Bill well knew that there was no use in calling on the gods, for they care little for men. They merely laugh and send down dooms, if they even hear. But though Crom is grim and loveless, he gave one boon to Bill, at birth Crom breathed power to strive and create into Bill’s soul.

I, as just one of his chroniclers, do not have the complete picture, but I do know that to live life as Bill did is a goal worthy of any man.

As lovers of the works of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs how could Bill and I not have become the fastest of friends?

But Bill could surprise me. In one of our last exchanges he told me that he was thinking he needed to “re-read Moby Dick for the zillionth time!” I had, at the time read it only twice.

But truly this is not a tragedy. In fact, it all makes a grim kind of sense. Bill had been a sailor, and like Steve Costigan a fighter. A true veteran, and then a steely warrior, laughing in the face of rent-seeking vampires of cultural suppression. And now, like John Carter, though his body is here, his spirit has left the Earth for more adventurous climes. Call him Ishmael.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

SFFaudio Review

A Monster Calls
By Patrick Ness; Narrated by Jason Isaacs
4 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Publication Date: 23 September 2011

Tags: / YA / fantasy / monsters / nightmares / illness /

The monster showed up after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming…. This monster, though, is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final story idea of Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself.
Darkly mischievous and painfully funny, A Monster Calls is an extraordinarily moving novel about coming to terms with loss from two of our finest writers for young adults.

This book is inspired by an idea from author Siobhan Dowd (4 February 1960 – 21 August 2007). Patrick Ness was granted the opportunity to explore these ideas, and soon ideas gave way to other ideas, which yielded this book. There’s a terrific interview that follows the audiobook reading wherein Ness discusses the writing process and challenges he faced in such an undertaking. Ness successfully sidesteps weighty sentiment and delivers emotional authenticity while allowing room for empathy, and it is for these reasons that this book resonates long after reading.

The writing is clean and the story is as deep and layered as you wish it to be. Don’t let the young protagonist fool you. This isn’t your generic YA plastic-wrap fantasy story packed with breathless bubblegum adventure and paint-by-number characters. There are monsters and there is loss. The emotion is real, and Ness allows enough room for empathy to turn, to circle like an unquiet animal that knows the end isn’t far. Couple this with genuine wisdom, and we have a story that demands attention, that successfully spans that artificial genre-based boundary to shake reader out their slumber.

Jason Isaacs narrates the audiobook, and conducts the follow-up interview with Patrick Ness at the book’s conclusion. Isaacs nails the reading. In my opinion the audiobook is flawless, and Isaacs never makes himself known to the listener, rather he is a conduit, something only the very best readers manage to pull off. Too many contemporary audiobook narrators perform the text when all they need to do is get out of the way and read. Thank you, Jason Isaacs.

Posted by Casey Hampton

“The Smithsonian Collection” of “Old Time Radio Science Fiction” featuring an essay by Ray Bradbury

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Smithsonian Collection - Old Time Radio Science Fiction

Published in 1995, a year prior to the birth of Archive.org (and all that has meant to access to classic radio drama), the “The Smithsonian Collection – Old Time Radio Science Fiction” is a collection of radio dramas likely never to see physical production again. This out of print collection from Radio Spirits, featured a detailed “60” page history booklet on the history of SF in radio, and uniquely, a Ray Bradbury essay as a foreword. Here it is:

RAY BRADBURY FOREWORD TO THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION

Here too are all the radio dramas included in the release:

The Mercury Theatre On the Air – The War Of the Worlds |MP3|

Suspense – Zero Hour |MP3|

Lights Out – The Meteor Man |MP3|

X Minus One – Mars Is Heaven |MP3|

The Mysterious Traveler – Operation Tomorrow |MP3|

Lights Out – Rocket From Manhattan |MP3|*

Escape – The Time Machine Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

Family Theater – Twenty thousand Leagues Under The Sea |MP3|

Suspense – Donovan’s Brain Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

Dimension X – The Martian Chronicles |MP3|

The Smithsonian Collection - Old Time Radio Science Fiction

*I have substituted the Arch Obler’s Play version of Rocket To Manhattan for the Lights Out version, but the original Arch Obler’s Plays version is HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis