Aural Noir review of Columbine by Dave Cullen

Aural Noir: Review

I didn’t expect to be reviewing this audiobook. Prior to its arrival in the SFFaudio mailbox I didn’t even know this audiobook existed. It is neither Science Fiction, nor Fantasy. Its Horror is of the very detached and remote kind because of the way it is told. I scoured the packaging looking for a sign as to why we were sent this audiobook. The only thing that stood out was that it was directed by Emily Janice Card (that’s Orson Scott Card‘s audiobook producing daughter). That’s a very tenuous connection to what is normally our kind of audiobook. But, after listening to the book in its entirety I found I had some things to say about it. And… we do have this handy “Aural Noir” tag that I use to talk about the Mystery, Thriller, and Noir audiobooks that I so love. Why not review it under its aegis?

Done!

Blackstone Audiobooks - Columbine by Dave CullenColumbine
By Dave Cullen; Read by Don Leslie
11 CDs – Approx. 13 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Published: March 2009
ISBN: 9781433290435
Themes: / Crime / History / Colorado / Murder / Suicide / Psychopathy /

“If you want to understand ‘the killers,’ quit asking what drove them. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were radically different. Klebold is easier to comprehend, a more familiar type. He was hotheaded, but depressive and suicidal. He blamed himself for his problems. Harris is the challenge. He was sweet-faced and well-spoken. Adults, and even some other kids, described him as ‘nice.’ But Harris was cold, calculating, and homicidal. ‘Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people.'”

Journalist Dave Cullen has assembled what must be, for the foreseeable future, the definitive book about the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Myself, I was only vaguely familiar with the incident at the time. In 2002 I watched Michael Moore’s disturbing film Bowling For Columbine. It was a kind of editorial-documentary on the event itself, the connections with other shootings and firearms in general. Since then, the Columbine High School massacre had been completely off my radar. Dave Cullen’s non-fiction book Columbine supports my conviction that if you really want to know what exactly happened, you’ll have to wait for the facts to be ferreted out by a historian. Cullen is just such a historian. The history Cullen paints is rich in factual details. His sources are: the writings and videos of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold themselves, county records, friends of the murderers, their fellow students, eyewitness interviews, police records, victims, victim’s families and probably most crucially a senior FBI agent. That agent, Dwayne Fuselier, had a son attending Columbine High School on the day – so his arrival on the scene was both personal and professional – his later investigations reveal insights into the vast reams of documents and video produced by the killers themselves. With Fuselier’s assistance Cullen debunks virtually all of the many myths and falsehoods that swirled around the media’s coverage of the massacre.

Other than the two murderers, and the gun suppliers, the only other major villain in Cullen’s account of the massacre and its aftermath is the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. “Jeffco” was in charge of the investigation. It was also responsible for a lot of the incompetence that lead to it being necessary. In the aftermath Jeffco had a limelight loving sheriff who was concocting conspiracy theories that he had no investigative evidence for. But that bunk seems to have supressed some very interesting facts. For instance. Were you told the police had, prior to the attack, documented murder threats by Harris/Klebold prior to the attack? Did you know that the police had even made out a search warrant based on these threats? Did you know that, if the warrant had been taken to a judge, it would have allowed the police to discover the weapons cache the teens were preparing? Did you know that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold been arrested together, for another crime, prior to the attack?

Other myths Cullen debunks are those generated by the media and church groups. Had you heard about the girl who said ‘yes’ when asked if she ‘believed in God’? Ya, I had too. Did you know that she actually didn’t say it? That another teen had, and that she wasn’t shot? That instead this survivor, the one who had actually proclaimed her belief, was branded a liar by the evangelical community? I hadn’t known that.

With Columbine Cullen, has assembled a first rate piece of non-fiction history. It illustrates exactly why a public reaction to the daily news so often leads to dangerously false beliefs. If there was just one takeaway from this audiobook let it be that American society needs to be more focused on the problem of detecting psychopathy. Not all psychopaths are murderous, in fact most are law abiding. What unites them all is that other people don’t matter to them, except as a means to their ends.

Blackstone has issued the same stark cover for the audiobook as is on the paperbook. Chapters jump back and forth in time, showing the consequences of and the preparations for the murderous assault. This is a wise structural move as the day’s events themselves are not the primary focus of this book. In fact a good deal of the narrative follows others who were there that day: Frank DeAngelo, the Columbine High School principal, some of surviving victims and their families or the workings of the media itself. Don Leslie, the narrator, is given the grim task of reading the words of Klebold and Harris. It isn’t an enviable job, but he is up to the task. There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the audiobook that explains that all the words in quotes are sourced from interviews, transcripts and articles. This is naturally less clear in the audiobook version than the paperbook edition but Leslie does his best to make each quote as clear as he can.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Sword of the Lamb by M.K. Wren

SFFaudio Review

Sword of the Lamb by M.K. WrenSword of the Lamb
By M.K. Wren; Read by Scott Brick
MP3 Download – 21 hours, 27 minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Scott Brick Presents
Published: 2008
Themes: / Science Fiction / Epic / Secret Societies / History / Political Intrigue /

I was thrilled to hear that SFFaudio scored a copy of Sword of the Lamb from Brick by Brick, narrator Scott Brick’s audiobook production company. Hearing Scott wax eloquent on the audio entry for his blog, I was hooked and begged to review it. Among other things he says:

“I loved it right from the beginning – I loved its format, I loved its pathos, I loved its political intrigue, and more than anything else, I loved its characters. The relationship between the two central characters, Alexand DeKoven Woolf and his brother Richard, is one of the greatest I’ve ever read. It is amazingly well-executed, rich in detail and nuance, and unashamedly sentimental. …

As you might have guessed, I tore through the next two volumes just as quickly as the first, and found myself profoundly moved. THE PHOENIX LEGACY is a huge, sprawling epic of political intrigue in the 33rd Century, in which mankind has witnessed amazing technological advancements, yet its society has devolved into a new kind of feudalism. It’s a tale of class struggles across solar systems, it’s THE WINDS OF WAR set in outer space, it’s A TALE OF TWO CITIES meets DUNE, it’s… it’s its own unique creation, a gem that most people, even most science fiction fans, don’t know about.

I’ve asked myself why this is, why this gem exists in bookstores everywhere but has largely gone ignored, but it defies explanation. Maybe it’s because of those damn covers; they really were bad. …”

Or … maybe, it’s because the books, or at least the first book, is not as brilliant as A Tale of Two Cities or Dune. I never read The Winds of War but I have read Gone With the Wind many times. Sword of the Lamb is not as brilliant as Gone With the Wind either. Oh how I hate to be the only person that Scott Brick ever introduced to these books who did not fall in love with them, but there you go. I wanted to love The Sword of the Lamb, I really did. However, every time I felt myself falling for it, the author tripped me up.

First, a brief synopsis of The Sword of the Lamb. Set in the 33rd century, mankind has long since populated many planets. Their government, called The Concord, looks as if it is about to take that inevitable downward slide into a dark age, which would be the third in known history. This is a feudal system governed by the Lords of trading houses and supported by two servant castes, who are actually not much more than slaves. We see the story through two brothers of the DeKoven Woolf House, Alexand and Rich. Alexand is the eldest son and being groomed for the power and responsibility he will eventually inherit. Rich, fragile because of a childhood illness, takes the path of scholar and sociologist. Both boys have been greatly influenced by their tutor who was a passionate supporter of the downtrodden lowest “bond” class. The combination of logic and insistence that “bonds” are people who deserve more than they receive sends both young men down paths they could not possibly foresee, including involvement with the underground movement, The Society of the Phoenix.

This is a book where the relationships shine. The brothers are very different but have an unbreakable understanding and bond. Alexand and his love, Adrien, likewise have a meeting of minds and hearts that leaves them inseparable. Make no mistake about it, these are indeed epic characters and we want to see them succeed and achieve their heart’s desire no matter what the cost. Wren has a gift for dialogue and even seemingly unimportant situations are compelling and interesting when there are characters involved. She uses this to great advantage in painting characters in the book.

Likewise, her plot is interesting. It is true that one can foresee the major story lines before they come along. (Let’s face it, Alexand and Adrien had it much too easy in their match. It practically screamed “star-crossed lovers coming next scene!”). However, that is forgivable if the story is told well. Much of the time, Wren pops in surprising little twists and turns in the broader plot that make the story much more interesting and keep us thinking.

With all that going for it, what could go wrong?

Info-dumps.

Nothing can kill a story like too much exposition and this book has it in spades. Wren can’t resist from the very beginning when the tutor is going to bid the boys goodbye and decides to give them one last quiz. (Hey, what easier way to just throw a thousand years’ worth of history at the reader?) She can’t resist making us listen to old computer tapes of university lectures from leading sociologists about a woman’s diary during one of the terrible societal breakdowns long ago or recordings of insightful university lectures. She can’t resist even when we are being introduced to that long awaited encounter with the actual Society of the Phoenix. We’re excited! We’re seeing a secret society! But first, let’s have someone sit around and think at very great length about how they are organized and who hates who. Gee, who doesn’t love a sharp rap over the knuckles and a history lesson before beginning an adventure?

In short, the author doesn’t trust her characters to be able to carry the story without giving us a lot of background that doesn’t matter at all. Things are getting going, we are in a white-heat to see what will happen next, and she grinds it all to a halt with yet another long, boring description. By the time she’s done, we barely care about the story any more. At least, that’s how it hit me. Luckily, her genius with characters was such that I would reluctantly be pulled back into the story. Only to have her once again stick out her foot and trip me on the way to the finish line. Overall, I tend to blame the book’s editor. This is something they are supposed to catch. And didn’t.

To be fair this may be something that stands out in audio form much more than on the printed page. I would have been skipping, or at best skimming, those long expositions in a regular book. Scott Brick is an enormously talented narrator and he pours his heart and soul into the book as we would expect since he loves it so. I’m not sure he is capable of doing a bad job of narrating anything. But even he couldn’t lessen the abyss of those sections. In the end, I finally would just skip ahead as best I could to get to the spots where the story would pick up and move forward. It was always worth it. The story was good. The characters, of course, were great. The narration was fantastic. But those info-dumps … they were killers.

Perhaps I’m nitpicking. Maybe most people don’t loathe info-dumping the way that I do. Fair enough. However, let’s consider those other epics to which this book was compared. A Tale of Two Cities. Gone With the Wind (my own addition, I know). Dune. It didn’t matter if we knew much or, indeed, anything, about the French Revolution, the American Civil War, or Arakis and the Empire. The authors all managed to get in the information we needed, and even a little more, without having our eyes glaze over. In fact, we barely noticed that we were being fed background information at all. That is the difference between a truly classic epic novel and a pretty good book that’s kinda long.

Sadly, Sword of the Lamb is the latter.

Posted by Julie D.

LibriVox: The Edge Of The Knife by H. Beam Piper

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s a new FREE LibriVox H. Beam Piper audiobook, it took a little while for the podcast feed to appear but its all ready for listening now…

LibriVox Science Fiction - The Edge Of The Knife by H. Beam PiperThe Edge Of The Knife
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Julio Martini
6 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 48 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: February 12, 2009
The Terro-Human Future History is Piper’s detailed account of the next 6000 years of human history. 1942, the year the first fission reactor was constructed, is defined as the year 1 A.E. (Atomic Era). In 1973, a nuclear war devastates the planet, eventually laying the groundwork for the emergence of a Terran Federation, once humanity goes into space and develops antigravity technology. The story “The Edge of the Knife” (collected in Empire) occurs slightly before the war, and involves a man who sees flashes of the future. It links many key elements of Piper’s series.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-edge-of-the-knife-by-h-beam-piper.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #018

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #018 – a podcast about audiobooks, audio drama, History and most of all mutiny! This is mutiny mister!

Talked about on today’s show:
One way to get around DRM (swapping iPods), Blackstone Audio arrivals, The Selected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Volume 1, The Selected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Volume 2, X-Minus One: Colony, The Days Of Perky Pat, Alpha, Catherine Asaro, Inferno, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, New Releases, Starship: Rebel, Mike Resnick, Allen Steele, Coyote, Wayne June, The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, audio drama of The Maltese Falcon, Yuri Rasovsky, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, The Sacred Book Of The Werewolf, Victor Pelevin, Canadia: 2056 – Season 2, Matt Watts, Steve The First, Steve The Second, sez Scott: ‘Matt Watt’s stuff is way better than Red Dwarf, Matt Watt’s blog entry on Canadia: 2056, Nova Swing, M. John Harrison, Tantor Media, The Steel Remains, Richard K. Morgan, Replay, Ken Grimwood, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles, Pierre Bayard, Pandora’s Star, Peter F. Hamilton, The DIY Scholar Blog, Stephen Pott’s UCSD Literature Of The World course on Science Fiction, LibriVox’s release of Uller Uprising, H. Beam Piper, the Sepoy Mutiny, 1984, George Orwell, what’s wrong with writers today (their works are not inspired by History), Mike Resnick’s the exception to this rule.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Uller Uprising by H. Beam Piper

SFFaudio Online Audio

In The SFFaudio Podcast #017 I went on a little rant about why so much of the Fantasy fiction written today sucks (half of my idea for which was that a distinct lack of history informs today’s bad Fantasy). Here is an SF novel that embraces History (as much of good SF does). Whether Uller Uprising is good SF, or not, is now for the the listener to decide…

LibriVox Science Fiction Audiobook - Uller Uprising by H. Beam PiperUller Uprising
By H. Beam Piper; Read by various
16 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 5 Hours 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: December 24, 2008
Uller Uprising is the story of a confrontation between a human overlord and alien servants, with an ironic twist at the end. Like most of Piper’s best work, Uller Uprising is modeled after an actual event in human history; in this case the Sepoy Mutiny (a Bengal uprising in British-held India brought about when rumors were spread to native soldiers that cartridges being issued by the British were coated with animal fat. The rebellion quickly spread throughout India and led to the massacre of the British Colony at Cawnpore.). Piper’s novel is not a mere retelling of the Indian Mutiny, but rather an analysis of an historical event applied to a similar situation in the far future.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/uller-uprising-by-h-beam-piper.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

Five Free Favourites #9

SFFaudio Online Audio

Jesse here, with another batch of Five Free Favourites, five listens that won’t cost you a penny, but that will pay hefty rewards.

Have you got your own list of free favourites that you can count on the fingers of one non-hyperdactyli’d hand?

Five Free Favourites

1.
Despoilers Of The Golden Empire by Randall GarrettDespoilers Of The Golden Empire
By Randall Garrett; Read by Maureen O’Brien
5 Zipped MP3s – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Maria Lectrix
Podcast: April 1st 2008
A seasoned military commander travels to another world to find the metal that brings power, and ends up bringing down a barbaric empire.
Maureen O’Brien’s Maria Lectrix podcast, has lots of content I care nothing about (theological audiobooks) – but, it also has several digital tons of content I care dearly about. On April 1st, 2008 released Despoilers Of The Golden Empire. She called it “…a very good story by Randall Garrett, and it makes a very good comment on sf as a genre….it was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, for April Fools’ Day.” This story is probably better enjoyed by fans of history, than by fans of science fiction. But if you’re like me, a fan of both, you’ll absolutely love it.

2.
Escape PodEP073: Barnaby in Exile
By Mike Resnick; Read by Paul Fischer
1 |MP3| File – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: September 28th 2006
Few authors have as many of their stories podcast as Mike Resnick, (although James Patrick Kelly’s definitely got to be in first place). Back in September 2006 Escape Pod podcast this tearful tale. At the time I was comparing to Pat Murphy’s classic Rachel In Love. Which is about as high a compliment you can give to an SF story. Powerful listening, bring a hanky.

3.
The Silver Tounged DevilThe Silver Tongued Devil
By Roger Gregg; Performed by a full cast
2 MP3s – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: The Sonic Society (via Crazy Dog Audio Theatre)
Podcast: October 2006
Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|
The Sonic Society has podcast much of the finest audio drama of the modern era. Their October 2006 podcast included a program that was originally broadcast on RTÉ (Ireland National Radio). Described as A documentary of poetry, pretension, and possession. and our review of it explained it thus: “This entire piece is done like a radio documentary, NPR-style, complete with interviews of average people about the ‘Silver Tongued Devil’. The actors who did these segments were perfect! If I had listened to this on the radio without knowing that Crazy Dog had done it, I’d have thought it was news. Who is the ‘Silver Tongued Devil’? He’s an incredibly famous poet from Cork who has the god-like ability to make people swoon with his words. Again, the piece is multi-layered, achieving both hilarity and poignancy.”

4.
Badge Of Infamy by Lester del Rey
Badge Of Infamy
By Lester del Rey; Read by Steven H. Wilson
15 MP3s – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Published: January 2006
Daniel Feldman was a doctor once. He made the mistake of saving a friend’s life in violation of Medical Lobby rules. Now, he’s a pariah, shunned by all, forbidden to touch another patient. But things are more loose on Mars. There, Doc Feldman is welcomed by the colonists, even as he’s hunted by the authorities. But, when he discovers a Martian plague may soon wipe out humanity on two planets, the authorities begin hunting him for a different reason altogether.Here’s a novel I dearly regret not having talked more about. I never reviewed it, as I was just listening for sheer enjoyment. It was released in January 2006 as part of the First SFFaudio Challenge. It was narrated by Steven H. Wilson of Prometheus Radio Theatre, and he did an outstanding job on this terrific little novel about a disgraced doctor. Lester del Rey was a major player in his day and his novels don’t show their years as many of their contemporaries do. I love novels set on a colonized Mars, if you do too, this is a sure bet.

5.
LibriVox Audiobook - To Build A Fire by Jack LondonTo Build A Fire
By Jack London; Read by Betsie Bush
1 |MP3| – 40 Minutes 03 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher:
LibriVox.org
Published: 2006
A man and his husky, travel through the Klondike in seventy-five below zero weather (Fahrenheit). I’d heard of this story for a long time, and I’d always liked Jack London’s novels. I’ve compared it to Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations, saying that ‘the two tales are, essentially, the same ruthless story.’ This is also a I regret that this is not a better reading. Betsie Bush’s version is not recorded very well, her voice is fine, but the mic she’s using is weak, there’s a hum and even some noise. There is a very cheap semi-pro version available HERE and a version by a professional narrator HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis