Review of Star Trek by Alan Dean Foster

Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

Science Fiction Audiobook - Star Trek by Alan Dean FosterStar Trek
By Alan Dean Foster, Based on the movie, written by Roberto Orci and Alex Hurtzman
Read by Zachary Quinto
7 CDs – 8 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9780743598347
Themes: / Science Fiction / Time travel /

|HEAR AN EXCERPT – Kirk on Trial|

Star Trek is dead. Long live Star Trek! Like lots of others, I went to the film expecting to hate it, but came away liking it, even though it was not the Star Trek I knew. In fact, the film pretty much killed Star Trek as I knew it. A bad thing? I’d use the word “unfortunate” because I look at Star Trek and see a huge missed opportunity for intelligent television. I don’t see any thoughtful writing in the franchise’s future – we didn’t see much of it in Voyager and Enterprise either. It had nearly turned into every other show, and this movie just finished the job.

Yet, it wasn’t a bad movie. It was very much a product of the Hollywood Blockbuster machine. Danger, action, sex, witty dialogue, big special effects, some things that make zero sense… it’s all here. It was exciting, it looked great, I liked the actors, and I liked recognizing things that they threw in there from the Original Series. It was fun.

But I’m not here to review the movie. This is Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of the film, read by Zachary Quinto, who portrayed Spock. Back in the 1970’s, Alan Dean Foster wrote one of the best novelizations I’ve run across – Alien. I must’ve read it three or four times as a kid. And he’s no stranger to Star Trek – he wrote the Star Trek Logs which were novelizations of the episodes of the Animated Series. He did a great job with this book, too.

Zachary Quinto also did a great job narrating. The voices are new, even if the characters weren’t. Quinto was an inspired choice to play Mr. Spock, and of course plays that character in the reading as it was on the screen. The others weren’t exactly attempts at mimicry, but rather more subtle changes in cadence. With Chekov and Scotty, he did the accents, and is real good at both of them. An excellent performance, throughout.

In eight hours of unabridged narration there is nothing here that deviates in any significant way from the movie. It just takes longer, but that’s not a bad thing. You come away with what a novel gives you that movies can’t: the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters. Also, there are some scenes from Kirk and Spock’s childhoods that weren’t in the movie, and other things scattered through the book.

So that’s the new Trek. We’ll see what happens from here.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

New Releases from Audible Frontiers

Scott D.

New Releases

Fantasy Audiobook - Stalking the Dragon by Mike ResnickStalking the Dragon: A Fable of Tonight
By Mike Resnick; Read by Peter Ganim
8 Hours 37 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2009

It’s Valentine’s Day and private detective John Justin Mallory is planning on closing up the office early and taking his partner, Col. Winnifred Carruthers, out to dinner, since he’s sure no one else will do so. But before he can turn off the lights and lock the door, a panic-stricken Buffalo Bill Brody visits them.

It seems that the Eastminster pet show is being held the next day, and his dragon, Fluffy, the heavy favorite, has been kidnapped. Mallory’s nocturnal hunt for the miniature dragon takes him to some of the stranger sections of this Manhattan – Greenwitch Village (which is right around the corner from Greenwich Village and is populated by witches and covens); a wax museum where figures of Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre come alive; Gracie Mansion (which is haunted by the ghosts of former mayors); and the Bureau of Missing Creatures, a movie set where they’re filming a PBS documentary on zombies and various other denizens of the Manhattan night.

As Mallory follows the leads and hunts for clues, he comes up against one dead end after another. Along the way he meets a few old friends and enemies, and a host of strange new inhabitants of this otherworldly Manhattan. Aided by a strange goblin named Jeeves, Mallory has only one night to find a tiny dragon that’s hidden somewhere in a city of seven million.
 
 
Science Fiction Audiobook - Undaunted: Kris Longknife, Book 7Kris Longknife, Book 7: Undaunted
By Mike Shepherd; Read by Dina Pearlman
12 Hours 34 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: 2009

Kris Longknife encounters some peaceful aliens who have come to warn humanity of an unidentifiable force that is roaming the galaxy, obliterating everything in its path – a path now leading directly toward the human worlds.
 
Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The Memory Palace: The Mad Gasser Of Matoon and Edgar Allan Poe’s death-day

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Memory Palace with Nate DiMeoOne of the cool things about podcasting is that it’s old enought now to have developed it’s own distinct ethos. I’ve mentioned my favorite history podcast on SFFaudio before, it’s called Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. Carlin takes the dramatic events of real history and makes them into a story – an amazing history story, told by an enthusiast. Another program I’ve long enjoyed is much more frequent than Carlin’s slowly releasing podcast. It follows essentially the same formula, but delivers the history in tiny five minute (or so) doses. Here are the most recent two podcasts from the feed of Nate DiMeo’s The Memory Palace.

a gas gas gas
By Nate DiMeo
1 |MP3| Approx. 6 Minutes [HISTORY STORYTELLING]
Podcaster: The Memory Palace
Podcast: October 28, 2009
This show tells the story of “The Mad Gasser of Mattoon.”

this ungainly fowl
By Nate DiMeo
1 |MP3| Approx. 5 Minutes [HISTORY STORYTELLING]
Podcaster: The Memory Palace
Podcast: October 16, 2009
This show tells what happened to Edgar Allan Poe on his death-day.

Podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/thememorypalace

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

KUCI Film School: Interview with the director and co-writer of Moon

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

KUCI - Film SchoolFilm School is a program out of Irvine, California on radio station KUCI. It has an interview with the director and co-writer of the movie called Moon (2009), Duncan Jones. |MP3|

In the interview Jones says the film was inspired by movies like Alien (1979), Silent Running and Outland (1981), as well as by the non-fiction book: Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization by Robert Zubrin.

Here is a snippet from Rogert Ebert’s thoughtful review:

“‘Moon‘ is a superior example of that threatened genre, hard science-fiction, which is often about the interface between humans and alien intelligence of one kind of or other, including digital. John W. Campbell Jr., the godfather of this genre, would have approved. The movie is really all about ideas. It only seems to be about emotions. How real are our emotions, anyway? How real are we? Someday I will die.”

I agree. Not only with Ebert being mortal, but also that Moon is a movie of ideas. Moon is a true Science Fiction movie and an intellecutal heir to Blade Runner. It’s made of one part 2001: A Space Odyssey, one part Silent Running, one part The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, with an added dash of Outland (1981) and that is a proud lineage to follow.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Guest Law by John C. Wright

Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

Infinivox Science Fiction Audiobook - Guest Law by John C. WrightGuest Law
By John C. Wright; Read by Tom Dheere
1 CD – 52 minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: October 2008
ISBN: 9781884612831
Themes: / Science Fiction / Pirates / Space Travel /

There be pirates in the vast void of space! Does not the poet say: “Beware the strangeness of the stranger. Unknown things bring unknown danger?” The noble ship Procrustes was silent as a ghost. Warships can be silent if they are slow; only their missiles need speed. And so it was silently, slowly, that the Procrustes approached the stranger’s cold vessel.

Perhaps it is a short story like “Guest Law” that best showcases John C. Wright’s considerable talent. Told from the point of view of a lowly engineer on a pirate ship, Wright uses their encounter with a broken-down ship to paint an entire universe. We learn of the adaptations that the pirates made to themselves to adapt to life in space, We learn that there is a universally accepted “guest law” to which all must adhere. We learn why people left Earth to live in space and why. We learn the pirates’ usual method of subjugation of those they conquer. One would think that might be enough, but against that background, the pirates’ method of dealing with the other ship’s captain reveals a great deal about honor and humanity that is timeless no matter what the setting.

Wright’s use of language is almost poetic and is nicely showcased by Tom Dheere’s narration. The only problem I encountered is Dheere’s choice of different accents for different characters. Some seemed to be British or Irish but the choices seemed entirely random to me unless the purpose was to point out high or low class. If so, perhaps a different technique could have been used as I found it almost jarring when the various accents would come up in the story. However, this is not enough of a problem to stop you from listening and greatly enjoying the story itself.

Posted by Julie D.