The SFFaudio Podcast #766 – READALONG: Invitation To The Game by Monica Hughes

The SFFaudio PodcastJesse, Paul Weimer, and Trish E. Matson talk about Invitation To The Game by Monica Hughes

Talked about on today’s show:
1990 or soon after, culled it, the audiobook, the only audiobook of Hughes’ stuff, a book for the blind, 35 books for young people, Earthdark, Crisis On Conshelf Ten, The Keeper Of The Isis Light, pummel Paul, one of those states Paul’s in, not absolutely perfect?, didn’t quite gel for Paul, slightly undercooked, the main character narrator or the author?, the society, not well thought out by the government, left with that impression, not allowed to do that, the best and the brightest, except for one, rigging the tests, terrible employment conditions, fodder for being invited to the game, environmental catastrophe, robots saved humanity, robots are taking our jobs!, rigging, the psychiatrist and the farmer, definitely governmental action, badly thought out elements, just stupid to send off people without tools at all, no fire implements, a lot of people out to be dying, boots and overalls, a crazy method of colonization, chip their own flints, they were given the knowledge and their massively awesome bodies and they were given each other, physical fitness, all these skills, knowledge and skills, the do survive, is it realistic?, grad school, basic premise, basic plot, basic sketch of a story, no more detail than absolutely necessary and good SF, and that’s it, perfectly competent SF, exactly what she’s trying to do, it’s by Heinlein, Tunnel In The Sky, Alexi Panshin’s Rite Of Passage, super complementary to that, are we actually on earth, identical reasoning?, this sky doesn’t seem familiar, there’s no Moon, it rained most of the time, Planet Of The Apes (1968), kvetching, it took you this long, they had a Heinleinian style conversation, not in a VR simulation, emotional scenes, we’re doing all this extra work, it doesn’t matter because they’re not coming out of it, we’re running out of time, the last words of the book are the first words of the book, we’re her descendants!, she did a great job, Andre Norton gets a lot of attention, Monica Hughes is way better, much better sketched, I wanna like her stuff, a big reputation, years of publication, first book was in her 50s, she was a WREN, Bletchley Park, seems like a pretty smart lady, emigrated to Alberta, Zimbabwe, publishing like mad, Canada’s finest writer of science fiction for children, Robert J. Sawyer is crying, Canada’s only full time science fiction writer, retired by the time she started writing, hit after hit, that’s really cool, hopeful someone is gonna make audiobooks out of these, very basic SF, good introduction material, children living on their own and having to make do, Robinson Crusoe, more than just that, Tom Sawyer, The Black Stallion, Island Of The Blue Dolphins, all the stuff set on Earth, interesting sociological stuff, lack of sympathy employed people had for the unemployed, resonant and modern, she doesn’t tell us how to think about that, the people who go the jobs were the worst students, a minor role in an automated luxury society, descending scores, when you’re doing your assignments for your marks, what is my goal?, this is how you would approach this problem, hit a certain number, getting good marks in school is not a sign you’re going to be a better doctor or manager, an engineer or an architect, getting a great job, scrounge, learn to make their own food, their home into a castle, they teach eachother how to do karate and run marathons, keep eachother safe, who is to say?, my evil plan, who or what the government is, we assume it is, the top layer of government, we don’t know anything about it, a ground level view, a very interesting modern dystopia, the poor and unemployed, seems to be that way, separated from parents and families and each other, 15 minute cities, vaccine passports, a rebellion against the suburban sprawl, Star Trek Deep Space Nine’s Bell Riots episode, Past Tense, Jesse will hear not bad words about it, 2017 podcast discussing this book, Teen Creeps podcast, jobs in Burbank, read old book they would have read in their teens, talking about work, too much of a sketch, unrealistic dialogue, not knowing the motivations, why did they hate it?, gets you to the thoughts where you’re wondering about things, feature not bug, which is worse: you go to a massage parlour and are offered a happy ending, going on craigslist and cheating on your wife, watercooler talk to distract yourself because you hate your work, these despised people, isn’t able to work, scrounging everyday, saving their money, learning to cook bad food, avoiding the thought police, I’ve read this 50 times, seems excessive, you need more books in your life, it is a good book, a comfort read, competence porn, within the context of…, Harry Potter of competence porn of thing people can’t be competent at, you’re special harry versus rejects, a bit sulky about it, you guys ruined it for me, family farm, desperation, sympathy for Benta, the rejects of the rejects, vast conspiracy somehow to get us into the game, twice rejected, rebellion against the robots, the double left behind, that setting is awesome, set 300 years in the future, that’s a great thing, open and thinking about it, could be Colorado, could be Edmonton, farmland somewhere nearby, bus, universality, some of the appeal of the book, Jesse went to that school, purposefully not enough markers, available for anyone to identify with the characters, awe and interest, oh Heinlein I hate you moments, conclusions about, isolated as a community, all the kids will bond together as a family, hanky panky, sex?, how old are they? are they high school graduates?, a little older a little younger, crime boss was 22, he could be a lot older than he looked, at least 10 years old, late teens, nobody starts up any relationship, an unrequited crush, then she gets Philip, immediately pregnant, that pent-up, a little old fashioned, unrealistic to the nature of kids, as a children’s writer, not wanting to deal with romance, a teen soap opera, maybe it’s a Christian book, marriage ceremonies, that’s in Heinlein though, if this book was written today, farm friend, pair bond, what happens when you get on another planet, exact numbers, two teams of 10, so toxic, nothing remaining of itself, society has gone so wrong, send young people off, that seems high, people all over the planet, survivor bias, some of them died when they got sick, pregnancy, a medic, childbirth equipment, actual improvements in civilized countries, reducing childbirth and childhood mortality, had the book been sketched slightly more…, it’s not that they had questions, it’s that they didn’t like that there were questions, this is the opposite, barely enough material to cover the topic it is handling, not even 5 hours, the Heinlein is longer, this whole other level, accidentally didn’t get picked up, Heinlein pulls the rug out, now we’re coming back in force!, triple rugs pulling out, vaguely: pollution bad, don’t cook beside the cesspit, the first step of not polluting everything, you got the ashes, animal fat for nutrition, not even animal husbandrying, a great ending, being good at computer gaming, survival genre, Minecraft, NZ based comedy troupe, Viva La Dirt League, game sketches, poof you appear on a beach, EPIC NPC MAN, scanty armour, tankies and healers, 3 sticks and a stone and now you have a hand-axe, crafting games, Valheim, Survival Logic, The Long Dark, how long you can survive, the VR game, Dream Park is more like Westworld, you dress up, injured in the simulator, the transition between the artificial and the other planet is slippy, no Philip K. Dick style moment, Jesse was still thinking, a book that works with this, Tad Williams’ Otherland, 24/7 in the tanks, City Of Golden Shadows, a million onehundred thousand words, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, the same setup as Avatar, were their consciousnesses inside of drone robots, Trish’s assumption, makes sense, hey what’s that shit on your hair?, I with the feather pen, and there was this shitty gel on my head, that’s the situation we’re all in, we can pull out at any time, put a bookmark in it, those other peoples were wrong, so good, just enough, a nice simple meal precisely cook, no exotic tang, a great introduction to science fiction, the BEST BOOK EVER, other Monica Hughes books exist, go argue with Heinlein for a while, other books exist, Paul’s notes, eXistenZ (1999),

“Cronenberg: Here, put this in your mouth.

Me: I’m not sure I want to do that.

Cronenberg: It’ll make me feel good though.”

I feel violated, you’re going to like being violated, you do make some interesting idea movies, a Larry Niven story, What Can You Say About Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers?, a creative mind, so good at karate, karate is important, specifically karate, bluefurs, anything you do to this book to add anything makes it longer, more romance, a predator, no matter what you do it would make it longer, the B.A. biology degree in Paul, book 2 in the series explains there was a killer robot, a bulldozer with Earth’s Thought Police on it, wearing the skulls of the native peoples around, Stephen Baxter’s Proxima, because convicts, Swiss Family Robinson, Lord Of The Flies, all of those answers make the book longer, the scenario, No Escape (1994) Ray Liotta, Lance Henrickson, Kevin Dillon and Ernie Hudson, set in 2022, half-Mad Max half-I will not have my will dominated, The Penal Colony by Richard Hurley, an action movie with no girls, Gale Anne Hurd, it’s a B movie, a prison movie, threw in a couple of girls, The Prisoner as Mad Max with a Waterworld vibe, a lost classic, Ray Liotta in a science fiction movie, any other links?, “comps”, a good book for YA, quibbles, some interesting things to think about, I’m on my deathbed what book should I read Trish?”, “I’m a slow reader!”, a long review exegesis of Time Enough For Love, doubled the length, Paul had to restrain himself, it was a trauma, a sweat lodge you had to sweaty, such a sweaty essay, raised a daughter to adulthood, pioneering trip by themselves, major problems with this whole scenario, voluntary colonists, obsessed with incest, boink and marry, those are your two choice on your deathbed: Time Enough For Love or Invitation To The Game, lets play some pinochle, 5 hour class, taken this off, got yourself some rest, grandma you’ve been sitting in this chair all day, Jesse! stop podcasting!, when not resting, need a good rest.

Invitation To The Game by Monica Hughes

Invitation To The Game by Monica Hughes

Invitation To The Game by Monica Hughes

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Review of Earthseed by Pamela Sargent

SFFaudio Review

Earthseed by Pamela Sargent Earthseed (The Seed Trilogy, #1)
Written by Pamela Sargent; Read by Amy Rubinate
8 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: December 2011
ISBN: 9781455118335
Themes: / space colonies / adventure / science fiction / space /
Awards: AudioFile Earphones Award; ALA Best Books for Young Adults Selection, 1983

Publisher Summary:

Ship hurtles through space. Deep within its core it carries the seed of humankind. Launched by the people of a dying Earth over a century ago, its mission is to find a habitable world for the children—fifteen-year-old Zoheret and her shipmates—whom it has created from its genetic banks.

To Zoheret and her shipmates, Ship has been mother, father, and loving teacher, preparing them for their biggest challenge: to survive on their own, on an uninhabited planet, without Ship’s protection. Now that day is almost upon them, but are they ready? Ship devises a test, and suddenly instincts that have been latent for over a hundred years take over. Zoheret watches as friends become strangers—and enemies. Can Zoheret and her companions overcome the biggest obstacle to the survival of the human race—themselves?

It is understandable why this book is getting attention again, almost 30 years since it was written: it’s another YA book that is similar to The Hunger Games.

In Earthseed, the reader is introduced to Zoheret, one of many teenagers aboard a ship traveling through space. Zoheret, and her ship mates, were all “born” on the ship, created by the ship (known as “Ship”) from DNA samples of Ship’s creator. Ship was sent from Earth with samples (and programming) from “the last of humanity on Earth,” set with a mission to find another world where no intelligent life exists and “seed” the world with humans. Ship raised these kids (about 50ish in total) from birth, teaching them, fulfilling a parental role. We enter the story as the kids, now teens, are getting ready to spend time in the “holo” (I presume it’s “holo” and not “hollow,” either way, it’s a wilderness environment on-board the ship) to train for what it will be like on the surface of the planet.

At this point, I’m sure you’re thinking that some Lord of the Flies type story is going to happen (I know that’s what I thought), and in fact there are some parallels between Lord of the Flies and Earthseed. However, Sargent does a wonderful job of making the story engaging with some surprising twists and turns along the way. While listening, I felt myself making excuses to listen to more of the story, not wanting to stop. I won’t spoil the story, but I will say that at the end, Ship’s residents find themselves making a life on the surface of the new planet and Ship goes off to seed another world.

I thought Amy Rubinate’s narration was superb. I normally don’t care for female narrators; usually they sound too dramatic for my taste. But Rubinate did a great job. I could always distinguish the voices of the characters, whether it was two females, two males, or a male and a female talking, and at no point did I feel like it was overdramatized. Also, the voice she used for Ship was a perfect matronly but somewhat robotic voice.

All three books in The Seed Trilogy are available in audio from Blackstone – Farseed (Book #2) and Seed Seeker (Book #3).

Review by terpkristin.

LibriVox: Rastignac The Devil by Philip José Farmer

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVoxI get the sense that Rastignac The Devil is a satire, using the furniture of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. But I feel really embarrassed about not knowing what is going on, sub-textually, in this interesting, but baffling, novella by Philip José Farmer. Is it all an allegorical satire of some event in 17th century France?

A couple of other notes. Mike Resnick’s Starship series has a character named “Slick.” Slick is an alien with a sentient symbiotic skin (called a “gorib”). Rastignac The Devil has aliens and humans with just such a similar concept – very cool! Gregg Margarite, the narrator, does a very good job with the abundance of French words.

Anyway, like I said, I liked the story, thought it was weirdly cool, but don’t feel like I’ve understood it at all. Could someone fill me in?

LIBRIVOX - Rastignac The Devil by Philip Jose FarmerRastignac The Devil
By Philip José Farmer; Read by Gregg Margarite
2 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 59 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 19, 2010
Here is high fidelity fiction at Philip José Farmer’s story-telling best. It’s a vibrant, distractingly different tale of three centuries into the future. And as you read you’ll have a vague, uneasy feeling that it’s all taking place somewhere in the unexplored parts of the universe, even today. From Fantastic Universe May 1954.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4158

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Barry Eads (aka KiltedDragon)]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper

SFFaudio Review

Science Fiction Audiobooks - Little Fuzzy by H. Beam PiperSFFaudio EssentialLittle Fuzzy
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Brian Holsopple
5 CDs – 5 Hours 53 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
Published: November 2006
ISBN: 9781897304617
Themes: / Science Fiction / Planetary Colonization / Sapience / Law / Mining /

The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it, and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people…

Little Fuzzy is a novel cherished by a smallish but passionate group of admirers. They seem to love it for its portrayal of the fuzzies themselves. It may be a “furry fandom” book too (but I’m a little afraid to do the research on that). I myself hadn’t heard of the novel, or much of the author, H. Beam Piper, until Little Fuzzy and pretty much everything else written by H. Beam Piper began being posted to Project Gutenberg.

My initial sense of the book was that Little Fuzzy would act as a lens through which historical colonizations could be examined – something like what was done in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word For World Is Forest. But it didn’t work out that way. Piper was not trying to explore historical events as much as what we mean by the word “sapience.” The verdict on the Fuzzies is obvious from the begining, but curiously enough the Fuzzies are still somewhat treated like children even by their human champions. Perhaps this was the only way Piper could easily characterize the right minded human’s benevolence? I wish he were alive so I could ask him about this. For the infantilization of the Fuzzies parallels some attitudes towards the aboriginal peoples facing colonization here on Earth. But like I said, the general focus is on a philosophical examination of the concept of sapience – not colonization.

After some initial trepidation I found myself hanging on the every word of this WONDERFUL audiobook. H. Beam Piper is an amazing storyteller. His homespun folksiness allows him to make grammatically wrong choices, but none that ever misconstrues his intended meaning. For example:

“He dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. It tasted badly, and after a few puffs he crushed it out.”

I think Grammar Girl would have a problem with this noting that ‘cigarettes don’t have tongues so they can’t taste well or badly’ – despite this, I think Piper’s Little Fuzzy is some of the most transparent and plainspoken prose that I’ve ever read. Narrator Brian Holsopple doesn’t have a vast range with which to pitch his voice, but he subtly manages to give accent and attitude to every character. His voicing of the entire fuzzy vocabulary (just the one word: “yeek”) is nearly as broad – giving curiosity, understanding, determination and suggestion to every yeek in the book. There was a small editing gaffe on disc 3, a repeated line, and another similar one on disc 5 but otherwise the production was perfect.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Science Fiction Audiobooks - Red Mars by Kim Stanley RobinsonRed Mars
By Kim Stanley Robinson, read by Richard Ferrone
17 cassettes / 24 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 2000
ISBN: 0788740849
Themes: / Science Fiction / Hard SF / Future history / Mars / Space exploration / Space flight / Planetary colonization / Terraforming

If I were to play you the prolog from Red Mars, neither telling you the title nor showing you the case (with Olympus Mons shown actual size), you would know immediately that it came from a very large book. The mystical meditation on the red planet that opens this tome plumbs the depths of human history and the width of human culture, conjuring a sense of vast space for the story that follows.

And what follows is a massive dose of exhilarating hard science fiction, the first volume in an epic trilogy charting the future history of the colonization of Mars. It grabs us with an opening sequence of mid-novel action, then backs up to lead us more meticulously from the selection of the first one hundred explorer/settlers to their first attempts at independence from the faltering socioeconomic powers of Earth nearly twenty Martian years later. Told through the eyes of half a dozen of these “First Hundred”, the novel details the technical, political, and to some extent personal growth of the colonists through their training on Earth’s Antarctica, the long space voyage between the planets, the rise of the first settlements and buildings, the initial attempts at terraforming, the breakaway of some of the settlers to another colony, the arrival of the next, larger and more diverse waves of colonization, and on to a cataclysmic finale. The story covers a lot of ground with striking believability.

The strongest point of the novel is its marvelous set-pieces, such as the radiation storm scene on the voyage out, a nearly deadly encounter with a Martian dust storm in a dirigible, and a perilous escape down a canyon system that is being destroyed by a torrential flood. Some of the best would be slight plot spoilers to mention, so I won’t. But suffice it to say they are all lovingly crafted, filled with mental eye-popping detail, and yet integrated well into the plot. This is science fiction with its fundamental sense of wonder not only intact, but bursting from every page like an alien from the abdomen. As you might expect, some of this detail and the buildup to monumental scenes leaves a few slow parts in the narrative, but the payoffs are almost always phenomenal.

Also strong is the fundamental clash of old and new economic systems, which contrast idealized concepts of human worth with the dehumanizing iniquities of our international market economy pushed to its all-too-readily conceivable limits. I tend to cheer at any work that is not afraid to point out how the cancerous growth of international corporations in our modern world devours the planet’s resources yet returns nothing of value to the overall system. This book gave me a lot of alternative ideas to dream about, and some Darth Vader-sized economic evil to hiss at cathartically.

One thing I didn’t like was the huge number of fundamental breakthroughs that are made by the “First Hundred” in various fields of science after they leave the messiness of life on earth. That premise borrows a little too much from Frederick Pohl’s Jem, for one thing. For another, as someone who does science and engineering for a living, I don’t believe that if you separate a bunch of scientists and engineers from the mundane glop of real life, you suddenly end up with astounding technical breakthroughs. If it were that easy, you could get any amazing breakthrough you wanted just by throwing a bunch of scientists and engineers in a nice padded cell.

Also, as with most hard science fiction, you could quibble that the characters lack the depth of believable human beings, and that the necessities of the plot move the characters more than their individual natures and decisions determine the plot. But you shouldn’t be reading this book for the same reasons you’d read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Come on! Red Mars may do little to illuminate the unrequited yearnings of the human soul, but that’s not the point. It boils over with effervescent ideas, dynamic images, and inspiring speculation on what human minds and hands can achieve. The characters here may feel a little hollow, and their individual voices may be pretty much interchangeable, but they do their job: they lead us into an exciting, vibrant, thrilling future world.

I will admit that the weaknesses in characterization are not greatly aided by Richard Ferrone’s narration. Don’t get me wrong, I found his cigarette-charred, “In a world where…” voice (somewhat reminiscent of my grade school secretary Mrs. Byrd) to be reliably intriguing. And he can spit out the ten-dollar words and knotty concepts in the exposition with lucid authority. However, his voice characterizations are often indistinguishable. It is possible to find yourself confused about who is speaking when the dialog comes without tag lines. This is partly Robinson’s fault for failing to provide distinctive speech patterns for all the characters, but that’s exactly where the voice of the narrator is supposed to help most. For several characters, it does. But for many, it does not.

I consider the above detractions to be minor points, however. Overall, you will find so much to gasp at, delivered with such powerful enthusiasm by both the author and the narrator, that it would be a crime to miss it. I owe a significant fine just for pushing Red Mars down my reading list for so long. If you’re looking for a hard SF novel that will make you sit up and say “Wow!” out loud, then you should get your hands on this one immediately.

Posted by Kurt Dietz