Review of Lobsters by Charles Stross

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Infinivox Audiobook - Lobsters by Charles StrossLobsters
By Charles Stross; Read by Shodra Marie and Jared Doreck
1 CD – Approx. 70 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1884612466
Themes: / Science Fiction / Technology / Love / Politics /

Manfred’s on the road again, making strangers rich. It’s a hot summer Tuesday and he’s standing in the plaza in front of the Centraal Station with his eyeballs powered up and the sunlight jangling off the canal, motor scooters and kamikaze cyclists whizzing past and tourists chattering on every side. The square smells of water and dirt and hot metal and the fart-laden exhaust fumes of cold catalytic converters; the bells of trams ding in the background and birds flock overhead.

Let’s just say it’s a crying shame and leave it until later to explain why.

Manfred Macx is a patent junkie, spending his days dreaming up ideas that will make him rich, very rich indeed; patents them and offers them up to whomever for free. In doing so has shunned the want for cash, preferring to live off the generosity from his benefactors. Enter into this story, uploaded lobsters wanting to defect, investigations from the IRS and a dominatrix ex- girlfriend who works for said IRS and you’ve got yourself a hip post-cyberpunk tale.

With Lobsters, Charles “Charlie” Stross has set his stopwatch to just 70 minutes. In that time he’s allowed to blast your senses with an array of images and visualizations and does so with perfect storytelling, skill and timing. Image after image explode onto your brain with the speed of a flashing strobe light. He throws away metaphors and similes as if he’d robbed the World Vocabulary bank. One after the other they hit you with delight and clarity until the end, and like all addictive tales, Lobsters leaves you a word junkie, aching for more.

There are two themes filtering through Stross’ Lobsters. On one hand you have Manfred, a high octane, finger on the pulse, grab it before its gone guy, focused on the moment, on the idea and on the deal. Live for the moment. Then you have Stross’ craftily ability to weave Manfred’s ex-girlfriend into the story, bringing her subtle but very practical approach to the future. Is Manfred up for this latest and most challenging proposal of his life? It’s a question we might all ask ourselves at one point through our lives.

The audio zips into your ears with ease. Both Jared Doreck and Shondra Marie deliver a fine production and tackle Stross’ rapid image bursts with gusto. The folks at Infinivox can hold their heads high with this production and at $7.99 it’s a pop!

Charlie Stross dips his toes in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Lovecraftian Horror and is part of the new generation of British Science Fictions writers that are taking the genre by the throat until it squeals. Living in Edinburgh his first short story The Boys appeared in the Science Fiction magazine, Interzone in 1987. Since then he has gone on to be nominated for a Hugo three times for recent novels.

So, is it a crying shame that he has still has not won a Hugo for one of his novels? No, it won’t be long, I promise you that. He has already won one for his novella, The Concrete Jungle.

No… it’s a crying shame that I have not yet heard more of his work.

Review of Kirinyaga: A Fable Of Utopia by Mike Resnick

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Science Fiction Audiobook - Kirinyaga by Mike ResnickKirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia
By Mike Resnick; Read by Paul Michael Garcia
8 CDs or 1 MP3 CD – 10 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9780786167906 (CD), 9780786174218 (MP3-CD)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Utopia / Dystopia / Terraforming / Sociology / Kikuyu / Storytelling /

“The Kikuyu turned their backs on their traditions once; the result is a mechanized, impoverished, overcrowded country that is no longer populated by Kikuyu, or Maasai, or Luo, or Wakamba, but by a new, artificial tribe known only as Kenyans. We here on Kirinyaga are true Kikuyu, and we will not make that mistake again. If the rains are late, a ram must be sacrificed. If a man’s veracity is questioned, he must undergo the ordeal of the githani trial. If an infant is born with a thahu upon it, it must be put to death.”

Originally published as ten short stories in magazines and collections during the 1980s and 1990s, the novelized Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia is one of the definitive examinations of the concept of utopia. These are stories about storytelling, intertwining resentment, mimesis, comparative morality, and the purpose of human existence.

The desire for a better life can lead people to covet an idealized lifestyle, either one of imagination or of tradition. In the 1970s a back to the land movement led a segment of the North American population to go rural, a place most of them had never been before. Most returned home, the conditions were too harsh for those used to the cushy modern society they were brought up in. The promise for a better life via idealistic visions has also created relatively enduring people’s republics the world over. But no people have more incentive to strive for utopia more than those who had their’s stolen from them. The indigenous peoples of the world lament the demolition of their pre-colonization folkways. What if the devastation that resulted from contact between colonizers and indigenous people could somehow be undone? Would those peoples be satisfied to return to the lives of their ancestors as they were prior to contact? Mike Resnick has answers, the most obvious of which is that utopia is not a destination, not a fixed set of cultural behaviors or even the complete happiness of a people. But I may be saying too much. Let it be said then that the pull of “European” technologies and products is so compelling it is hard to imagine forgoing them – more, the meme that things can be different is itself enough to cause change. Enter Kiringyaga: A Fable Of Utopia which relentlessly and unflinchingly examines the struggle for a perfect society.

Though the specific folkways Resnick has chosen to follow in the Kirinyaga stories is that of the Kikuyu of East Africa, these exploratory fictions are equally applicable to Haisla, Bakhtiari, Basque or Maori. The lessons taught by the Koriba, the mundumugu (witch-doctor) are fables. Tales of lion, elephant, hyena. They are fables for the characters being told them, and the novel itself is a parable for us. As the mundumugu it is Korbia’s job to be the repository of the Kikuyu culture. Koriba is a true believer despite, or perhaps because of studying in the European’s finest schools. What he found there among his colonizers is most assuredly not good for the Kikuyu people. What is good for the Kikuyu people is to embrace the wisdom of their traditional lifestyle. His terraformed planetoid, Kirinyaga, may have been manufactured using European technologies but that doesn’t mean Ngai, the god of the Kikuyu, didn’t give it to his people. In recreating the pre-colonial Kikuyu culture Koriba has many disadvantages. Lions and elephants are extinct, so they can’t threaten his people. Maintenance, the engineering and supervisory arm of the Utopian Council, the institution that gave Kirinyaga its charter keeps interfering with the affairs of Kirinyaga. Koriba can’t even kill a newborn baby that was born with a curse upon it (it was born feet first), without Maintenance trying to intervene. Worse, in isolating themselves upon a planet created only for the Kikuyu they now have no enemies for their young men to be vigilant against. What purpose can their lives serve if the segment of their populace that was supposed to guard their people against danger doesn’t have anyone to guard their culture against? They cannot even raid their neighboring peoples for wives because they have no neighbors! And when a young girl with an extraordinary mind wants to learn to read and write, Koriba must prevent her from corrupting the society – no matter the cost. Girls may not be permitted such things – it is not the Kikuyu way. If she were a male she’d be the be the perfect apprentice to the mundumugu, but because she is a girl she has no prospects except tilling her husband’s fields, bearing his children and gossiping with his other wives. As the mundumugu it is Korbia’s job to be the repository of the Kikuyu culture. He is good at his job, but he is only one man, and despite his mighty magic it remains to be seen what one man, however powerful, can do to hold back the idea of progress.

There are a lot of questions that could have been answered in these stories, how were the utopian worlds constructed? Are they full sized planets or terraformed asteroids? Why would you need to adjust an orbit to induce rain or cause a drought? What other utopias exist? Where are they? Heck, where is Kirinyaga in relation to Earth? Ultimately none of these questions are answered. And that absence distinguishes this as Social Science Fiction as opposed to Hard SF. That said, I’m am convinced Resnick has said something with this series that will endure. The seeming contradictions inherent in the disconnect between our moral attitudes and that of Koriba’s are not easily forgotten. Koriba is a man who will use his computer to cause the rains to fall and then actually sacrifice a goat for the same purpose, and in so doing go out of his way to do something that we enlightened folk know will have no real world effect. Is the wisdom he imparts less valid because its source is not falsifiable? Is the magic he wields less real because it is caused by technology, unlike the mundumugus of East Africa? The training of his replacement, a young boy who was the quickest to understand the significance of Koriba’s parables, is fouled because the boy just can’t get past this fact that Koriba ignores facts in favour of cultural truth. Am I crazy for being sympathetic to Koriba’s definition despite my knowledge that he is in some sense a fraud? I really don’t know. The thing that stuck with me the most, the truest thing I came away with was the idea that convenience is a subtle kind of a trap. You can’t have a car without fuel. You can’t have fuel without fueling stations. You can’t have fueling stations without cracking stations. Without drilling rigs and tools to repair them the cracking stations would be pointless. Without the factories to manufacture the machines to make the rigs to fill the stations to supply the fueling stations to fill the cars you can’t have cars. The question then becomes, is the trap worth the cost? Of that, I am not at all sure.

I am saddened that Blackstone has had to omit the Author’s Afterword in which Resnick explains some of the sources of his ideas. Looking at it though, I can see how it would have been difficult to render to audio very compellingly. It is largely composed of original publication notations for the individual stories and lists of awards that each story was nominated for and won. An insert card, were that possible, might have done the trick. Thankfully as is typical with their growing library of Science Fiction audiobooks – the narration here is absolutely top notch. Paul Garcia’s voicing is magnificent, encapsulating and charismatic. His Koriba is a basso rumble that embodies wisdom and surety of a man who knows much. His young men and women are youthful, lively. No accents are used in the production, but we can clearly distinguish between the cultural mindsets by the intonation and stresses. His Masai hunter doesn’t sound Kikuyu. But perhaps most impressive of all is what Garcia does with the stories within the stories. Koriba’s reciting of fables designed to instruct the children in what it means to be Kikuyu are recursive gems of wisdom. In these recitations Garcia is required to narrate a narration and in so doing he will adeptly remind the listener that it is Koriba who is telling these tales, and not Resnick, and also not the characters of the stories themselves – though they have voices of their own. That same Koriba, whose life’s work is the resurrection and regaining of a people’s dignity independent of those who took it away.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

LibriVox - The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose FarmerThe Green Odyssey
By Philip Jose Farmer; Read by Mark Nelson
10 MP3s or 10 OGG Vorbis files – 6 Hours 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Published: December 2006
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Themes: / Science Fiction / Space Opera / Planetary Romance / Swashbuckling / Pirates / Slaves / Planetary Ecology / Panspermia / Humor /

Alan Green is a space traveler stranded on a barbaric planet. He’s been taken as a slave and made a consort to an insipid and smelly queen. His slave-wife, though beautiful and smart, nags him constantly. He’s given up hope of ever returning to Earth when he hears of two astronauts who have been captured in a kingdom on the other side of the planet, and sets out on an action-packed journey on a ship sailing across vast grasslands on rolling pin-like wheels in a desperate scheme to save them and return home.

This audiobook was created on a dare. Back in November 2006 I challenged anyone to make an unabridged single-voiced audiobook from a list of titles of public domain Speculative Fiction novels that had not been previously released as audiobooks. This is the first audiobook to complete the aforementioned “SFFaudio challenge.” With its completion, the narrator, has won himself a copy of Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick as read by Tom Parker. Congratulations Mark! Now, on to the review proper…

The Green Odyssey roughly parallels the adventures of the original Odysseus, except that the Mediterranean sea here is instead a sea of grass on an endless plain on an obscure alien planet. Perhaps most original in this tale are the ships that sail that grass sea of this land-dominated planet. The idea of sails and roller ships to ply the prairie between cities is a neat one (something similar was used the Dragonlance AD&D module Dragons Of Ice by Douglas Niles). The lead character, Alan Green, is a Earthman who has been shipwrecked (or is that “spacewrecked”) on a planet inhabited by a branch of quasi-medieval Homo sapiens sapiens. If his alien origins were to be revealed they’d think him a demon. For two years already he’s been enslaved and humbled. The worst of it is his being forced into the bed of a lusty, but fickle, Duchess. Her merest whim would mean his death, so when Green hears of two strangers, like himself, who’ve come from the sky in a strange ship, his ears perk-up. Upon further investigation it seems the two “demons” are being held in a distant city. With a death sentence not too far in their futures, Green hatches a shrewd escape plan with a wily merchant. His only problem – his adopted family wants to go with!

This is a exuberant adventure. It reminds me of vintage Poul Anderson, in fact the whole novel is a kind of an inverse of Anderson’s excellent The High Crusade. Its also funny, in the same smile and smirk way, and lets not forget another of its vitures, The Green Odyssey is quick! I often think this, the classic short novel of the 1950s and 1960s, is the perfect length for SF. Moreover, Farmer has scripted lots of fun details for fans of both Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs – the colloquial language is also full realized and amusing. Now a word of caution, this is by no means a classic on the scale of To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Jose Farmer’s best know work. That said, it is absolutely and addictively listenable – I plowed straight through the 6 hour running time with nary a dry spell. Since it is FREE, thanks to the good efforts of Mark Nelson, I can unreservedly recommend it even to people who’d otherwise give it a miss.

Mark Nelson has a real narrators voice. He puts as much characterization into the various characters into this exposition heavy novel as is probably possible. Sound is good, loud enough and pretty clean of noise. Two minor problems, Mark pronounces a word wrong and there is one line repeated, I’d guess the latter got missed in the editing, the former is almost inevitable. I’ve heard professional productions far less “professionally” produced. I am looking forward to hearing a lot more public domain SF novels from Mark!

Editors note:
In a last minute email Mark has said that he does indeed expect to be reading more Science Fiction for LibriVox in the months ahead. He’d prefer titles that “haven’t been done commercially, just to increase the variety of audiobooks out there”. But here’s the problem he’s having; Mark is not super-familiar with the Science Fiction from the 50’s and 60’s. His reading thus far has tended to read much more recent. And so he asks that we come up with with some recommendations. Recommendations, in fact, from what he calls “the knowledgeable” – Hey! That’s you guys out there! So, which public domain Science Fiction novels from the 1950s and early 1960s would you like to hear Mark read?

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent arrivals

Science Fiction Audiobook Recent Arrivals

Science Fiction Audiobook - Triplanetary by Doc E. E. SmithTriplanetary
Lensman Series #1
By E.E. “DOC” SMITH; Read by Reed McComb
CDs and MP3 editions- Aprox. 10 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books in Motion
Published: 2006
ISBN: MP3 – 1596074507/CDs – 1596074493

By the father of the Space Opera genre.

From the back cover:

From the atomic age in Atlantis to a world remote in space and time, two incredible ancient races, the Arisians and the Eddorians, are in the midst of an interstellar war with Earth as the prize. The Arisians, using advanced mental technology, have foreseen the invasion of their galaxy by the corrupt and evil Eddorians, so they begin a breeding program on every planet in their universe. Their goal…to produce super warriors who can hold off the invading Eddorians.

Science Fiction Audiobook - Guardians of the West by David EddingsGuardians of the West
Book #1 of the Malloreon
By David Eddings; Read by Cameron Beierle
CDs and MP3 editions- Aprox. 15 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books in Motion
Published: 2006
ISBN: MP3 – 1596072377/CDs – 1596072369

From the back cover:

Garion has slain the evil God Torak and been crowned King of Riva. The Prophecy has been fulfilled–or so it seems. While the strange child Errand was growing up in the Vale of Aldur with Polgara and Durnick, showing only occasional flashes of inexplicable knowledge and power, Garion is learning to rule and be a husband to his fiery little Queen, Ce’Nedra.

The Time Traveler