SFFaudio – Page 486 – News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.

Review of Vampire$ by John Steakley

Sunday, June 13, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Vampire$
By John Steakley; Read by Tom Weiner
10 CDs – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010
ISBN: 1441727213
Themes: / Horror / Vampires / Religion / Catholicism / Mercenaries /

Suppose there really were vampires. Dark, stalking, destroying. They’d have to be killed, wouldn’t they? Of course they would. But what kind of fools would try to make a living at it? In best-selling author John Steakley’s vampire classic, one tightly knit band of brothers devotes itself to hunting down the monsters that infest the modern world—for a price. An exciting blend of horror and western genres, Vampire$ is a twenty-first-century Ghostbusters with an edge.

I first found out about John Steakley when watching John Carpenter’s Vampire$. The on screen accreditation didn’t mean much then. I figured that what goodness was found in that movie came from Carpenter. And that’s largely true. Their rather different in plot, or at least in the way the plot plots out. Its clear that John Steakey’s novel served more as the inspiration than a blueprint for the movie. The novel feels much richer, much wider, and also much more personal, than Carpenter’s version.

Now, having read this audiobook after John Steakley’s other novel, Armor |READ OUR REVIEW|, I’ve come to the conclusion that Steakley has a pattern or two. First up there’s the name thing. Two names are recycled from Armor (even though they aren’t the same characters). Felix, the gunslinger (and ex-drug trafficker) has an important role in Vampire$. Jack Crow, the lead vampire hunter, is arguably the main protagonist. Armor, which is set maybe a thousand years in the future, has two characters with those exact names too, and they play similar importance in the plot. This is a novel full of twists and turns that even a fan of the movie based on the novel can be surprised by Similarwise, the emotional impact is the primacy of the novel’s power. Sure, this novel has maybe a few innovations I’ve never read before:

1. God is real AND vampires are too.
2. A team of mercenaries, with pure hearts, are taking cash for cleaning up vampire infested towns.
3. The anti-vamp mercs are in league with the Pope and the Vatican, who know and support their efforts.

Narrator Tom Weiner gets to play a fairly wide range of characters. On top of the brooding Felix and the unstoppable Jack Crow he’s got a compassionate pope, an irate Texas sheriff, and a bloodsucking vampire (or two) too.

This is a case where a good movie was based on an very good novel and a good novel got made into a great audiobook. Vampire$ is an emotionally impactive audiobook that surprises with its innovate approach to an old foe: those old evil vampires fucks that you gotta love, and Jack Crow’s gotta hate.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Armor by John Steakley

Sunday, June 13, 2010Tuesday, September 11, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio Essential Armor
By John Steakley; Read by Tom Weiner
11 CDs – Approx. 13.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 1433294834
Themes: / Science Fiction / Military SF / War / Leadership / Drugs / Psychology /

The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water poisonous. It is the home of the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered. Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred. And he is protected not only by his custom-fitted body armor, the culmination of ten thousand years of the armorers’ craft, but also by an odd being which seems to live with him, a cold killing machine he calls “the Engine.” This best-selling science-fiction classic is a story of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat and also of how strength of spirit can be the greatest armor of all.

Armor is a novel that was clearly inspired by Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. It makes use of both powered exoskeletons and insect-like alien enemies. But, instead of being a novel of politics and leadership it is a very different kind of story. At first I thought it was about the psychological effects of violence and the various kinds of heroism that can exist within a person. I was wrong because that isn’t enough. This novel is not one or two things. It isn’t the normal kind of idea driven SF that I so love – instead its ideas flow more through the emotions, eliciting our sympathies. I think this was acomplished by it changing, turning over and over, with it’s many plot surprises.

Early on Felix, our viewpoint character, refers to something he calls an “engine.” I thought he was describing the powered armor of the title. That would make sense, there was a video game called Heavy Gear that, like than Mechwarrior, had men and women doing battle in humanoid shaped tanks. I think it refereed to its “mechs” as “engines.” Felix seems pretty much like any of the other soldiers he’s been dropped with on planet Banshee. Maybe he’s a bit more of a hick – he doesn’t know the names of the winners at the Powered Olympics. Felix makes no waves, volunteers for nothing. He just wants to survive the battle to come. But when the waves of enemy aliens pour out of their holes only Felix survives – and keeps on surviving.

Armor has taut battle scenes, flowing exposition, and realistic dialogue. Had John Steakley written more, and his other novel Vampire$ |READ OUR REVIEW|, I think he’d be a very well known author.

The first third (or so) of the novel follows Felix, a low ranking scout in the invasion of the planet Banshee. Here the action somewhat resembles that of Starship Troopers. Then there is an abrupt switch – the novel seems to lurch into an an entirely different scene and setting. Set a few years later and following in first person perspective this time we meet a man named Jack Crow. Crow is a notorious galactic scoundrel. A well known thief, pirate, and adventurer – his legend is long and precedes him even to an obscure research station on a planet called Sanction. Crow is there to infiltrate, but eventually finds himself involved in an experiment – one that drains him of his half-hearted bravado and changes his life. If were talking about where this novel fits in the SF library I’ll say this: Armor synthesizes the action of Heinlein’s Troopers with the emotional impact of Haldeman’s The Forever War – but still comes off as a completely unique story.

Tom Weiner, who seems to be narrating almost every Blackstone Audio audiobook that I’m listening to these days, delivers his usual letter perfect narration. Weiner animates Felix with a weary melancholy of a veteran scout, brightens audibly with the cocksure Crow, pulls a vocal Tom Bombadil with Louis, feminizes for Lya, and geeks it all up for Holly (a star-struck scientist). That’s pretty impressive. Check this audiobook out!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Radio Drama Revival: 2000X – Karel Čapek, Robert A. Heinlein, Yuri Rasovsky

Sunday, June 13, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

2000X Tales Of The Next Millenia

Fred Greenhalgh, or Radio Drama Revival, writes:

Hey Jesse,

Wanted to point you to what should be some pretty appealing Radio Drama Revival episodes for SFF Audio listeners. I’ve gotten permission from Yuri Rasovsky to broadcast a few stories produced for the Beyond 2000 series… If you’re not familiar with it, it was a series commissioned by NPR back in the day and featured a startlingly great compilation of writers no less than Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K LeGuin… http://www.irasov.com/faves.htm

Wow! Thanks Fred!

I agree with Fred, this is truly exciting audio. And there IS a whole lot to love in these professional productions from 2000X series (aka Beyond 2000). Check out the top shelf actors in these productions. And, then check out the sound quality! As Fred mentions in the podcast, it is all in an absolutely pristine stereo goodness.

Rossum’s Universal Robots asks a question, which has haunted the Science Fiction since: What does the creation of an artificial life form mean for the fate of humankind?

2000X – R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)
Based on the play by Karel Čapek; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 11 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Radio Drama Revival
Podcast: June 4, 2010
Helena, the daughter of the president of a major industrial power, arrives at the island factory for a tour of Rossum’s Universal Robots. The original stage play premiered, in Czech, in 1921.

Robert A. Heinlein’s By His Bootstraps deals in some of the inherent paradoxes that would be caused by recursive time travel.

2000X – By His Bootstraps
Based on the short story by Robert A. Heinlein; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 57 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Radio Drama Revival
Podcast: June 11, 2010
Bob Wilson locks himself in his room to finish his doctoral thesis on time travel. Suddenly a stranger appears in his dorm room and tells him to stop writing and start listening. The interloper, who looks strangely familiar, calls himself “Joe” and explains that he has come from the future through a Time Gate. First published in the October 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the pen name Anson MacDonald.
Starring:
Richard Dreyfuss
Cordis Heard
Kascia Marciniak
Ira Burton
Crew:
Adapted, Produced and Directed by Yuri Rasovsky
Sound Fesign by Richard Fairbanks

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Audio and RadioArchive.cc: The Taming Of The Shrew and Science Fiction

Thursday, June 10, 2010Thursday, June 10, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

The "Induction" scene in The Taming of the Shrew

If I asked you to think about “Shakespeare and Science Fiction” you’d probably go with Forbidden Planet (a spacey version of The Tempest). If you’re more TV inclined you’d probably go with Star Trek, maybe even name the episode entitled “The Conscience of the King” outright. That’s the one that features a near perfect inversion of the traveling actors sequence in Hamlet (as well as part of the production of the play itself).

And yeah, Shakespeare himself may appear as a character in Science Fiction stories. Isaac Asimov’s The Immortal Bard is perhaps my favourite example of that. But no actual Science Fiction can be found in any play by William Shakespeare. Right?

Shakespeare’s plays have many fantastic elements (ghosts, magic, witches, prophecy), but those are all Fantasy tropes, not SF. Not one the the plays of William Shakespeare could possibly qualify as Science Fiction outright. Right?

But then, I was thinking about the very Philip K. Dickness of the opening sequence of Shakespeare’s farcical romp called The Taming Of The Shrew. It’s called “The Induction” and features a character named Christopher Sly, a drunkard, who while unconscious, is abducted from the street where he lays and is taken into a mischievous Lord’s home. There, he’s put to bed, and when awakened, is told by the household’s servants that he’s been “asleep” for fifteen years, that he is the lord of the manor, and that he has a beautiful young wife! All the household’s servants are in on the jape and obey his every command. The Lord who arranged this practical joke says,

Persuade him that he hath been lunatic;
And when he says he is, say that he dreams,
For he is nothing but a mighty lord.
This do and do it kindly, gentle sirs:
It will be pastime passing excellent,
If it be husbanded with modesty.

Only then, once the ridiculous question of identity is hatched does The Taming of the Shrew begin (performed by a troupe of traveling actors who visit Christopher Sly’s manor). We’ve talked about Fictional Fictional Characters, on the SFFaudio Podcast before, this is a case of a fictional fictional play. The actors in the play are playing actors in a play.

“Christopher Sly’s presence as a spectator in Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew makes the entire drama of wife-taming into a mere science fiction spectacle of household order.” -From the introduction to Poor Women in Shakespeare by Fiona McNeill

I’m betting that’s as close as The Taming Of The Shrew gets to Science Fiction.

This is all apropos of some recent reading of the play proper and a visit to RadioArchive.cc where you’ll be able to find a terrific sounding 1988, BBC Radio 3 dramatization that faithfully adapts the play to audio.

The Taming of the Shrew
By William Shakespeare; Adapted by Jeremy Mortimer; Performed by a full cast
CD or MP3 (via TORRENT) – Approx. 2 Hours [RADIO PLAY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 3 / BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: 1988 / 2005
Publisher: BBC Audio
Published: 1999
ISBN: 056355391X
This hearty comedy has always been a favourite with audiences. Three suitors pursue Bianca Minola, but her father won’t let her marry until her older sister, Katherine, is married. Kate is wilful, loud, volatile and above all, shrewish. Her suitor Petruchio is stern, jolly, and somewhat odd. A match made in heaven?
Cast:
Bob Peck, Cheryl Campbell, Moira Leslie, Robert Glenister, Stephen Tompkinson, Douglas Hodge, Christopher Fairbank, Michael Deacon, Anthony Jackson, Willam Simons, John Badley, and Paul Copley
Crew:
Directed by Jeremy Mortimer
Music composed by Mia Soteriou

The Induction scene in The Taming of the Shrew

Posted by Jesse Willis

New Release from Infinivox: The Year’s Top Ten Tales

Thursday, June 10, 2010Thursday, June 10, 2010 Scott D.

New Releases

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 2 is now on sale!

An unabridged audio collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre, as narrated by top voice talents.

In “Erosion” by Ian Creasey, a man tests the limits of his exo-suit prior to leaving a dying Earth.

In “As Women Fight” by Sara Genge, a hunter, in a society of body-switchers, has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife’s body.

“A Story, with Beans” by Steven Gould considers the role religion plays in a dystopian future with metal-eating bugs.

In “Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance” by John Kessel, a monk in the far future steals the only copy of a set of plays from a repressive regime and uses this loot to free his people.

In “On the Human Plan” by Jay Lake, a mysterious alien visits a far-future, dying Earth in search of the death of Death.

Set in the Jackaroo sequence, a detective in “Crimes and Glory” by Paul McAuley chases a thief to recover alien technology that both aliens and humanity are desperate to recover.

Set in the Lovecraftian “Boojum” universe, “Mongoose” by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, a vermin hunter and his tentacled assistant come on board a space station to hunt toves and raths.

In “Before My Last Breath” by Robert Reed, a geologist discovers a strange fossil in a coal mine that leads to the discovery of a peculiar graveyard.

In “The Island” by Peter Watts, a woman on a spaceship must decide whether to place a stargate near an alien society that will ultimately destroy it.

Finally, “This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe” by Robert Charles Wilson is an alternate American Civil War history in which the war was never fought, slavery gradually disappeared, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin was never published.

And to top it off, Infinivox is offering $1 shipping in June. Here’s your link, go check it out!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Recent Arrivals from Tantor Audiobooks

Thursday, June 10, 2010Thursday, June 10, 2010 Scott D.

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

City of Dragons
By Kelli Stanley; Read by Cynthia Holloway
13 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

February, 1940. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, fireworks explode as the city celebrates Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party, a three-day-and-night carnival designed to raise money and support for China war relief. Miranda Corbie is a thirty-three-year-old private investigator who stumbles upon the fatally shot body of Eddie Takahashi. The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up. The cops acquiesce. All Miranda wants is justice—whatever it costs. From Chinatown tenements, to a tattered tailor’s shop in Little Osaka, to a high-class bordello draped in Southern Gothic, she shakes down the city—her city—seeking the truth.

I Am Not a Serial Killer
By Dan Wells; Read by John Allen Nelson
7.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

John works in his family’s mortuary and has an obsession with serial killers. He wants to be a good person but fears he is a sociopath, and for years he has suppressed his dark side through a strict system of rules designed to mimic “normal” behavior.

Then a demon begins stalking his small town and killing people one by one, and John is forced to give in to his darker nature in order to save them. As he struggles to understand the demon and find a way to kill it, his own mind begins to unravel until he fears he may never regain control. Faced with the reality that he is, perhaps, more monstrous than the monster he is fighting, John must make a final stand against the horrors of both the demon and himself.

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Robertson Dean
24 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

Robert E. Howard, renowned creator of Conan the barbarian, was also a master at conjuring tales of hair-raising horror. In a career spanning only twelve years, Howard wrote more than a hundred stories, with his most celebrated work appearing in Weird Tales, the preeminent pulp magazine of the era.

In this collection of Howard’s greatest horror tales, some of the author’s best-known characters—Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them—roam the forbidding locales of Howard’s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.

Included in this collection is Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation—and into the maw of its fatal secret. In “Black Canaan,” even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers—and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. Also included is the classic revenge nightmare “Worms of the Earth” as well as “The Cairn on the Headland.”

Beowulf
By A Group of Drunken Anglo-Saxons; Read by Rosalyn Landor
3 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

When sleep was at its deepest, night at its blackest, up from the mist-filled marsh came Grendel stalking…

Thus begins the battle between good and evil, for lying in wait and anxious to challenge the ogre Grendel is a young man, strong-willed and fire-hearted. This man is Beowulf, whose heroic dragon-slaying deeds were sung in the courts of Anglo-Saxon England more than a thousand years ago.

Beowulf is our only native English heroic epic. In the figure of Beowulf, the Scandinavian warrior, and his struggles against monsters, the unknown author depicts the life and outlook of a pagan age. The poem is a subtle blending of themes—the conflict of good and evil, and an examination of heroism. Its skillful arrangement of incidents and use of contrast and parallel show it to be the product of a highly sophisticated culture.

This version of Beowulf is the translation by Francis B. Gummere.

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
By Paul Davies; Read by George K. Wilson
10.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tantor Audiobooks
Published: 2010
|EXCERPT|

Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). But after a half century of scanning the skies, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence—eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. The problem, argues leading physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies, is that we’ve been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way. Davies should know. For more than three decades, he has been closely involved with SETI and now chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we’re confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. In this extraordinary book, he shows how SETI has lost its edge, then offers a new and exciting road map for the future.

Davies believes that our search so far has been overly anthropocentric: we tend to assume an alien species will look, think, and behave like us. He argues that we need to be far more expansive in our efforts, and in this book he completely redefines the search, challenging existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if we ever do make contact. A provocative and mind-expanding journey, The Eerie Silence will thrill fans of science and science fiction alike.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson