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Review of Songmaster by Orson Scott Card

SFFaudio Audiobook Review

Songmaster
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
10 CDs, 9 Cassettes,or 1 MP3 disc – 12.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2006
ISBN: 9780786178421 (CDs), 9780786180578 (MP3-CD), 9780786135097 (Cassettes)
Themes: / Science Fiction / Galactic Empire / Music / Education / Children / Despotism / Rebellion /

This early novel by Card is a precursor of many things to come from this great author. One of Orson’s favorite themes is that of a child with extraordinary talent coming of age. The child’s name is Ansset, and at very young age he is sent to the sequestered Songhouse. In the Songhouse, a powerful form of singing is taught that creates an abnormally strong emotional response in the listener. Ansset turns out to be exceptionally gifted singer and is groomed to be a Songbird.

The emperor, Mikal, who most believe to be the most horrible tyrant of the galaxy, wants to have a Songbird. Ansset is sent as a child to be Mikal’s Songbird. But there’s more to Ansset than what appears on the surface.

The writer’s credo “show, don’t tell” had to be abandoned in a sense. How does an author write about the impact of the music being sung without describing it? (telling). After all, the writer’s tools are words and not music. Card does show us the emotional impact that listeners have to the singing, so in that sense he is showing us. The great power of the songbird’s music could emotionally ravage a listener for good or ill. As a reader/listener, we need to believe this. So, how well does this novel succeed when it is about music, but is written in prose? In one word— beautifully. In the hands of less expressive author this could have been clumsy technique. This is a touching novel, in which you’ll care for Ansset.

The audiobook is narrated beautifully by Stefan Rudnicki. Mr. Rudnicki conveys an introspective and measured performance that suits the novel perfectly. There are parts of the text that he has to convey by singing. He does this in an understated manner that doesn’t undermine the emotional context of the scene. And the recording is up to the usually high standards that we expect of a Blackstone audiobook. If you’re fan of Ender’s Game or Card’s other works and you haven’t read or heard Songmaster—get it! If you’re not familiar with OSC’s works, this is a good place to start.

posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

Review of Maps In A Mirror: The Short Fiction Of Orson Scott Card

SFFaudio Review

Maps In A Mirror: The Short Fiction Of Orson Scott Card
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Various
4 Cassettes – Approx. 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Dove Audio
Published: 1999
ISBN: 0787121770
Themes: / Science Fiction / Fantasy / Crime / Elephants / Music / Art Theory / Utopia / Dystopia / War / Death /

Four cassettes, six hours, eight stories of Orson Scott Card’s polished prose. Included in this collection are some truly crackerjack stories and a couple that aren’t so hot:

The Elephants Of Posnan appeared in English for the first time in this collection. Originally published in Poland for a Polish Science Fiction magazine it is the tale of a human global die-off caused by an infertility crisis. This is something we’ve seen before in Science Fiction to be sure, but the addition of an elephantine theme and a Polish setting makes this one totally unpredictable. Card reads this himself and gives it an interesting introduction too.

Unaccompanied Sonata is perhaps the most fantastic story here. Set in a bizzare dystopia in which the purity of music can only be assured by the ignorance of its makers. This is a world that could have been inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s theory of art – a world in which imitation ensures art to be a failure. I have no idea if OSC had that in mind when he wrote it but it certainly fits. Read with passion by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

Freeway Games is the least SFFaudio related story in this set. It was first published in Novemeber 1979 in the Gallery magazine which at the time was competing with Playboy for quality short fiction. The original published title was “Hard Driver.” This is basically the story of perverted serial killer who while keeping his hands clean is actually as guilty as sin. It ranks in well alongside Lawrence Block’s late 1970s early 1980s slick magazine tales of demented psychos. Read to perfection by the incomparable Robert Forster.

Lost Boys is interesting in that the main character is someone named Orson Scott Card. My research indicates it is “semi-autobiographical” story, hopefully the fantastic elements are the “semi” part! Stefan Rudnicki, the producer of this audiobook read this tale with a heartfelt flush of sadness. This short story was later expanded into a full length novel which went on to great acclaim.

Quietus, was virtually opaque to me. The plot was something to do with our need to reconcile with death. I am given to understand it incorporates several Mormon themes. The style is surrealistic but even knowing this I couldn’t easily follow it let alone understand its thesis. First published in Omni’s August 1979 issue.

The Best Day was written under the pseudonym Dinah Kirkham. Card’s rumination of the elusive search for happiness. This story fled my brain as soon as it was finished. Read by William Windom.

Fat Farm is perhaps my favorite OSC short story. It isn’t the characters, I hate them. Instead it is the riveting plot that is the star here – this story deals with the philosophy of personal identity in the context of two science fictional technologies: 1. Cloning. 2. Memory uploading. If you can replace your imperfect body with a perfect one and keep on living what would give you pause? OSC’s Fat Farm will do the job. It also compares nicely to Robert J. Sawyer’s Shed Skin. Roddy McDowell’s reading is grumbly, growling and totalitarian. You’ll beleive he is all the characters in this one.

Ender’s Game. The original short story from 1977 shows the sparkling promise that would lead to the unquestionably great novel of the same name. This tale isn’t just an shorter version of the novel, there are a number of differences between the two texts. Reader Michael Gross does a fine job with it.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft, Volume 4 by H.P. Lovecraft

The Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft Volume 4: The Rats In The Walls, The Shunned House, The Music Of Eric Zann
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Wayne June
3 CDs – 2 Hours 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
Published: 2006
ISBN: 1897304242
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Music / Atavistic Guilt / Cannibalism / Mushrooms /

Curse you, Thornton, I’ll teach you to faint at what my family do! … ‘Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust … wolde ye swynke me thilke wys?… Magna Mater! Magna Mater!… Atys… Dia ad aghaidh’s ad aodaun… agus bas dunarch ort! Dhonas ‘s dholas ort, agus leat-sa!… Ungl unl… rrlh … chchch…

This collection from Audio Realms is the fourth in a series, and the second to be reviewed. There are three CDs and three complete and unabridged stories here, first published between 1922 and 1937. The tales are archaically constructed. If you sat down and try to read one of the paragraph-long sentences that Lovecraft wrote you’d probably begin to wonder why it actually works. Then if you considered that this is the guy who makes curious genealogists or amateur historians the center of his horror stories it becomes almost baffling how he manages to keep our attention at all. There is no doubt though: Lovecraft has our attention. I think I am on safe ground in calling him, at the very least, one of the true giants of Horror fiction. Here are three stories that will prove it…

The Rats In The Walls
The Delapore family, late of Massachusetts, has returned to its ancestral family estate in rural England. Their genealogical and historical research reveals that their ancestors have maintained a strange atavistic responsibility to the land and the ruin upon which their keep was built. Woe be to the friendly neighbors of the long-away Delapores, for the Delapore blood runs thick in their veins and loudly thrums with ancestral duty, as loudly perhaps as the “venimous slithering of ravenous rats in the walls.”

The Shunned House
The house of this story is reported to have been based on a couple of real houses that Lovecraft actually visited. One in particular in Providence, RI at #135 Benefit Street, as in the story, is supposed to be the main inspiration. This story also uses local Providence folklore and history for added depth, but I suspect that if even one fifth of the rest of this story were true we’d have to nuke Rhode Island from orbit, just to be sure. I think some people consider this to be one of Lovecraft’s lesser tales but this one really got me. I am probably a bit more mycophobic than your average person, though. If you don’t like mushrooms, or if you’re even a little afraid of them, listen to this one with the lights on.

The Music Of Eric Zann
One of the most frequently adapted of Lovecraftian tales. The narrator, a near-vagrant, recalls a fellow lodger of a mouldering lodging house in a mysterious French city. Erich Zann is being stalked by a nameless horror that comes to him at night. Only the eerie music he produced was not nearly as haunting as horror that chased him. First published in 1922, still powerful.

SFFaudio Essential narrator Wayne June is back! His grave rumbling voice and his letter perfect pacing makes each of these three tales a shuddersome experience. But I do have a one problem with this entry in the terrific Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft series. It isn’t the production; these CDs sound awesome. Wayne June’s reading of these three stories is absolutely definitive. His unaccompanied performance is utterly chilling – this series truly must be heard. It isn’t the packaging that is the problem, with original art by Allen K. The images on this series are reminiscent of the art found within the pages of the pulps in which these stories were first published. No, my problem isn’t with any of these things. My problem is with choice to censor a couple of lines of the text in The Rats In The Walls. It makes me want to cry. Maybe Lovecraft was indeed being a racist when he wrote the offending words (in naming Delacore’s cat “Nigger-man”), but I’m a purist. Instead of calling Delacore’s cat “Nigger-man” Audio Realms has changed it to “Blackman.” If the text is good enough to be republished year after year ought we not preserve it as it stands, racism and all? True horror is by its very nature transgressive, but I want all the horror in my life to be in fiction. A cannibalistic incestuous serial murderer of homeless children is scary in fiction but as long as its fiction I’m up for it. Keep all the racist crazy-talk in the fiction, I say, because that is where it all belongs.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Unnameable: Four Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio Review

The Unnameable: Four Tales by H.P. Lovecraft
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by David Cade
1 CD – 1 Hour 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Tales Of Orpheus / www.DavidCade.net
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0955209005
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Cthulhu Mythos / Cats / Music /

“We were sitting on a dilapidated seventeenth – century tomb in the late afternoon of an autumn day at the old burying ground in Arkham, and speculating about the unnamable.”

Dumb move guys, being in Arkham was the first mistake. Hanging out at the cemetary at twilight was the second. You don’t get a third with Lovecraft. Fortunately we get both a third and a fourth! This collection contains four complete Howard Philips Lovecraft short stories! Included are:

“The Book”
Told in a creepy first person, a disembodied voice, a voice that decries the day it discovered “the book”, in a library beside a great black oily river. The voice has forgotten its family, its life, even its own name. You will never forget this story. Probably written in 1933, a point at which Lovecraft was at the height of his powers, it shows.

“The Music Of Erich Zann”
One step from vagrancy, our anonymous narrator, recalls a fellow lodger Erich Zann. They shared a decrepit building on a mysterious French street, but Zann’s eerie music was not nearly as haunting as horror that chased him. First published in 1921, still
powerful.

“The Cats Of Ulthar”
A cryptic fable that gives reason to why killing a cat may be the most dangerous thing one can ever do. There are two kinds of people in the world: Dog people and
cat people. H.P. Lovecraft was obviously a cat person. Cats are mysterious, small but quite powerful and work best at night, just like this story. First published
1920.

“The Unnameable”
Randolph Carter, who we already know from The Statement Of Randolph Carter recalls the events which followed their visit to an Arkham, MA cemetary. This is the only story in this collection considered part of the Cthulhu Mythos and Carter is probably the only character to survive two brushes with the who should not be named. First published 1923.

British actor David Cade reads all four tales. There is some question in my mind on one matter, does having an English accent whilst reading very American stories necessitate a conflict? It probably would if there was much dialogue – but seeing as Lovecraft was far friendlier with exposition than he was with speaking parts it isn’t much of an issue at all. Cade is effective at bringing the mostly expository prose to gruesome life. All four stories are framed by muscial excerpts that are very well matched to the thematic material. One thing that bothered me greatly though was the lack of titles, each track is distinctly seperated by music, but the stories themselves are not named in the audio, one must look at the back of the CD case to find out which story you are listening to – something a blind listener would be unable to do.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Green Hills of Earth and Gentlemen, Be Seated by Robert A. Heinlein

The Green Hills of Earth and Gentlemen, Be Seated
By Robert A. Heinlein; Read by Leonard Nimoy
1 Cassette – 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Caedmon
Published: 1979
ISBN: None
Themes: / Science Fiction / Minstrel / Space Travel / The Moon /

This is one of my most treasured recordings. Until I found it on eBay a couple of years back, my only copy of it was a worn cassette that I taped from my local library’s copy when I was a kid. That cassette must have been played a hundred times. When Jesse noticed it on eBay one day, he let me know and I snatched it. I would have paid any price.

It’s likely that the recording’s worth is that its sounds evoke pleasant memories of my childhood. But it’s not only that. This is an excellent reading by an actor I admire (Leonard Nimoy) of the work of this legendary author. So it’s well worth finding yourself if you can get it.

The first story is “The Green Hills of Earth”, a story of a man named Riesling, who worked among the atomic piles on space freighters until an accident left him sightless. From then on, he became a minstrel, writing and performing the songs of the trade.

Second is “Gentlemen, Be Seated”, which is about a reporter who is allowed guided access to some of the tunnels being built on the Moon.
He’s escorted by a construction worker, who he’s lucky to have with him when things go awry.

To this day, these stories are still Robert A. Heinlein to me. These are from the early phase of his career, published in 1947 and 1948, respectively. Of Heinlein, I enjoy these stories and his others from the same period best of all his work.

What I haven’t got to look at all these years is the very nice Kelly Freas cover. Though it doesn’t really have anything specific to do with the stories (there isn’t a gun to be found in either of them) it’s still very nice.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of Tales From The Crypt

SFFaudio Review

Tales From The Crypt
Performed by Tim Curry, Gina Gershon, Luke Perry, Oliver Platt, John Ritter, Campbell Scott and others
4 CDs – Aprox 3 hrs. [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Published: 2002
ISBN: 1565116747
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Crime / Murder / Humor / Undead / Music / Zombies /

Produced by the now defunct Sci-Fi Channel’s Seeing Ear Theatre, these seven audio plays are based on EC comicbook stories from the 1950s, skillfully updated and masterfully produced its one of the best anthology audio drama series of the last 25 years! Unfortunately, only seven of the eight episodes actually produced are included. And that is the biggest disappointment with this collection. The actors are awesome, the sound effects and music fill the audio landscape without drowning out their performances – but all this would be nothing without good writing, and again we’ve lucked-out. All seven tales are a whole lot of fun. Each episode is bookended by the Cryptkeeper’s introduction and comments on the story. The Cryptkeeper is voiced by John Kassir, the same actor as in the television series. This undead host’s obsession with horror is only exceeded with his obsession with frightfully bad puns. It is really good stuff boys and ghouls!

“Island of Death”
A dot-com millionaire with a penchant for movie trivia crash lands on an isolated tropical island and becomes embroiled in a twisted cross between a reality television show and Odysseus’ encounter with the sea-nymph Kalypso. Luke Perry (Jeremiah) is teamed with Gina Gershon (Bound) for the least successful tale in this collection. Gershon and Perry are great, but the action is a might hard to follow.

“A Little Stranger”
They say politics makes for strange bedfellows, but did they really mean vampires and werewolves? Set in 1968, this is the sole episode without a major Hollywood star in the lead. Randy Maggiore and Lisa Nichole star, and make the horrific crossbreed of terror and comedy.

“Tight Grip”
Told from a truly bizarre perspective, this is a tale of a young concert violinist is boxed in by a terrible secret stars Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Original and really scary.

“By the Fright of the Silvery Moon”
A modern day sheriff in New Mexico faces deadly perils, irate environmentalists and angry ranchers. John Ritter (Three’s Company) stars as the sheriff.

“Zombie!”
The longest tale in the collection. An immigration lawyer who has stolen his client’s money retires to mysterious Haiti. What he finds there may just be enough to overcome a powerful zombie curse. Oliver Platt (Funny Bones) stars. An immersive and fascinating tale of horrific Caribbean curse that makes you crave the sweetmeats.

“Carrion Death”
A truly excellent “horrality” tale. A bookish schoolteacher – disgusted with his inept students – goes on a crime spree and lands himself in prison. When he escapes from custody into the desert the only thing that can stop him are the talking ants. Campbell Scott (The Spanish Prisoner) seems to revel in his character’s clear insanity.

“Fare Tonight, Followed by Increasing Clottiness!”
A vampire hunter takes cab ride to bloody peril during a citywide vampire outbreak. An ingenious pairing of a modern day Van Helsing and an East Indian taxi driver. Keith David (The Chronicles Of Riddick), is awesome in this one, and not just for his iconic maniacal laughter. Aasif Mandvi (Spider-Man 2) is also excellent, playing his meek humor close to the vest!

Posted by Jesse Willis