The SFFaudio Podcast #672 – READALONG: Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #670 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Will Emmons talk about Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
dog trot through or skate through?, Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein, 1949, A Colonial Boy On Mars, Steele Savage, the original uncut, the original restored text, the extended Stranger In A Strange Land, the two endings of Podkayne Of Mars, call him Willis too, hey you’re a girl!, I’m a good boy!, The Pleasant Profession Of Robert A. Heinlein by Farah Mendelson, changing gender over time, a ship of Theseus, Jim’s grandkids in the miniseries has problems, no straw men, almost a perfect book, the environmental award, its about pollution, ecological anti-capitalist themes, yet another revolution story, Beta Earth, its not set on Mars, its set on New Ares vs. New Aries, the Mars company, The Hudson’s Bay Company, The East India Company, the Red River Rebellion, Paul just told me how I have to identify, Albert Einstein, a stateless person, a country comes into your territory, sometimes countries just change, the Massachusetts colony, Canada and the Crown, rights taken, given or never ceded, colonists, administering the colonization and doing whatever resource extraction,the water seeker, the cabbage plant, cabbage patch kid, junked Jim’s best friend, an improvement, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, she kills a Cerberus dog thing, an armed society, a frontier society, a residential school, Howe is the best candidate for a straw man, the boy with the pet who might have to give it up, the pet is more than it seems, the old man, Doc Mccrae, Stranger In Strange Land, Jubal Harshaw, Between Planets is set on Venus (but they talk about Mars), supercharging the air, applying for self governing status, we’ve worked out a new treaty with the natives, how the Red River Rebellion happens, Rupert’s Land, in reaction to what the Americans were doing, investment properties, fashion for hats declining, decimating the fur bearing animals, surveyors show up, the North-West company, Métis, inland settlement, the government being incompetent and full of , the Chateau Clique and the Family Compact, the plot of the book, two settlements to double the number of colonists, pemmican, fur trading, the technology is Willis, a Wikileaks style leak, a truth bomb, how well put together this book is, Stranger In A Strange Land, not enough about the Martians, A Princess Of Mars, a Weinbaum version of A Princess OF Mars, A Martian Odyssey, Willis laying the eggs in the bed with Jim, young or old, are roundheads young or old?, races?, a butterfly chrysalis, Willis won’t remember Jim, the Nymph stage, in the cartoon, Willis’ bio-technology, the defense mechanism against waterseekers, the ability to project a hologram, when the book starts, shipping Jim and Willis, the egg laying scene, crawl into bed with you and give you children, Alien Nation: The Series, the three stages of Martians, everything about Mars is startling, no sex, the adults are male, every day relations with Heaven, Stranger In A Strange Land is in a nymph stage here, Willis is a nymph, Gekko is the father, Jim is the step-father, and Frank is the bleeblack, curling into the Jim zone, “warm”, the Gekko theory, the Steele Savage cover, scenes from the book, pre-school or post-school, Howe’s demand, Gekko standing in a bush, Willis bounces towards Gekko, and dances around their, they’re ents, he carries the two boys, they drink entwater and become ent brothers, called upon later to fight Saruman, the sister’s job is to cook and clean, the mom is Beverly Crusher, Frank is the only person missing, change for change’s sake, meld Frank into the sister, changing for no reason is bad, it didn’t make the series better, less successful, the added environmental angle, Paul and Jesse are both wrong, wilderness survival themes of the novel, no skating, checkboxing, until we know what the plot is…, learning how things are, soaking things up on a Greek beach, when the plot gets going, returning home with the news, boys being truants, a residential school is bad, we learn how their suits work, everybody is literally nude, not just because Heinlein’s a nudist, the suits are not pressure suits, not doing things that are in the book, running out of air, that’s in another Heinlein thing, in your Mohawk, compression space suits, the mask is the only part of your body with air on it, nothing between you and your compression suit, the style on Mars, a bug or a feature, also Princess of Marsy, a feature rather than a bug, a comics adaptation of John Carter’s dick swinging, nudity, the whip hand, civil liberties cases in British Columbia, bare breasts in BC, some old biddie couple, the Potter family, Heinlein literally kills them, punishment for stupidity, those people exist, doing what the government tells you, that punishment is Heinlein’s point, starved to death by government policy on purpose, a compelling gun case, cutesy sister stuff, the rules of the road, this books is so rich, not a false note anywhere, light and frothy and fun, you can skate right over it, quite substantial ideas-wise, Paul wishes Evan was here, communitarian, we’re all in it together, a nation vs. a tribe, a lot longer, all the stuff that happens at the school, how many other colonies are there?, caretaker Eskimos, Inuit and Tibetans, what’s the population of Mars?, kids at that company school, living at the equator year round, is it a university?, is it a high school?, Harry Potter upper-age boarding school?, J.K. Rowling is a terrible TERF, not a military prep school, sent away to military school because of discipline problems, a trade school situation, Frank wants to be a rocket pilot, Jim’s plan?, the mom cooks, any girl that can cook and tend babies is an adult, an improvement, it makes Doc Macrae a non-character, New Aries, in 1949 there had been no probes but the telescopes were getting better, what the atmosphere is made out of, Heinlein better write his Mars stuff, once you start you start changing things for poorer reasons, Heinlein thought about the ecosystem, everybody hates the waterseekers, waterseekers need to be to be destroyed, an extermination program, for every werewolf in your ecology you need a vampire and for every vampire you need a mummy, dragons of the komodo kind, what happened to Mars?, the lack of a robust ecosystem, the Martians apparently don’t eat anything, what does Willis eat?, small animals, what are the colonist actually doing there?, Heinlein’s lack of numeracy, colonization doesn’t solve the population problem, Greek colonization, troublemakers, self-select, unpeaceful Scandinavians, the Rus of Russia, they’re terraforming the planet, the traditional explanation for colonizing Mars (is mining), the terbidium must flow, Total Recall (1990) is all vacation plans, a science fiction story within a science fiction story, LV-426, rape this planet, Captain Planet, bogus environmental awards, an invading species, Turbanium, can of beans, longer cabbage scene, and be better, so much plot, so much in storms, bottles on their suits is wrong, short term profits for long term costs, how Howe got his job, literally how it all works, corporate nepotism, the libertarian elements, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, tightly bound, the communitarian feel, prisoners vs. free citizens, the chairman of the meeting, Roberts Rules Of Government, committees and nominations, the polar opposite of libertarianism, Louis Rossmann right to repair(man), helping farmers get the right to fit their own tractors, replacement batteries for phones, every business owner to refuse service to the unvaccinated, the political compass, Howe is authoritarian, uncivilized, liberty vs. authority, rights and privileges, the larger scale scope, dictating people’s movements, a contractual right at best, the Métis traditional hunt, Orangemen vs. Catholics, every protestant in Ontario is angry, a war between one nation and another nation, taking a person’s gun away, the libertarian argument is pretty pure, bringing the martians in as a shield, a personal bond with Jim and Willis and Gekko and Frank, united in their identity as Métis, Festival du Bois, not only limited government, the freedom to publish and read what books you want, vaccines passports and vaccine mandates, cribbed from the Declaration Of Independence, another American Revolution, in a softer smaller way, a fantasy of the American revolution without the genocide, merciless Indian savages, strange mystical alien people that live underground, adds legitimacy to the American Revolution that it doesn’t deserve, S.M. Stirling’s The Sky People and In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings, Leigh Brackett, sensible nudity, Jim Marlowe, Heart Of Darkness, James Madison Marlowe, three legged and three eyed, H.G. Wells, the relationship with Jim and Frank and Doc, interbreeding, spiritually its possibly, physically interbreeding with your fellow humans, in solidarity with other people, not only hard SF, weird definition of hard SF, history is hard SF, mysteries are hard SF, “a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value.[1] Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, minimize the state; emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association”, the talking point of the day vs. first principles, why is it good for people to be free?, the approved reading list can hurt you, kill you or stunt you, not allowed to run away, not allowed to have guns, kids plowed into the earth, drivers licenses, talking points, what is the principle?, do we subscribe to it or not, the political compass, we think we know how he would answer, who gets to form the questions, wholly agenda questions, not allowed to read certain books, only some people were allowed to read, freedom to read, stick to the principle and then abstract away, no to vaccine passports, a drivers license is a driving passport, a license to do a thing, a perfect situation to make the argument, a really good book, a good book for kids to read today?, an exiting book, intellectual molest children vs. enhance children, parents have to coordinate or the kid divides them, women are not in particularly progressive roles in this book, Maissa’s point, intellectual heft, an idea book underneath the adventure fun, Will is really glad that he read it, settler freedom, the resistors to the revolution are stupid, the strawman is the setup, weighting the revolution, the Torys were tarred and feathered, we have no way of deleting people from the universe, the heat beams, Mr Sulu freezing to death, the handwavium of Doc Macrae’s speculations we assume are true, underground subway systems, so advanced, finding the monolith on the Moon in 2001, say it it is “great”, kids ice skating on the canals, Glory Road, The Number Of The Beast, a better Heinlein book?, future Heinlein reading, higher highs vs. footfaults, a modest book, so Planet Stories, Hard Planet Stories, what Heinlein next?, you gotta read it, you’re smart enough to understand this book, so many great Heinlein juveniles, unrealism in the setup, god damn you Heinlein, the first Heinlein juvenile, Rocketship Galileo was adapted to Destination Moon (1950), space nazis? the Moon is too far out, The Man Who Sold The Moon, all the Musks and Bezoes and Bransons, Harriman, they’re doing it for us, Paul is hard to get, Maissa’s famous for Fringe Festivaling, Will feels tricked, Mack Reynolds, the Heinlein Poul Anderson podcast, The Goddess Of Atvatabar by William R. Bradshaw, the inherent silliness (or sadness) of Poul Anderson, Three Wishes by Poul Anderson, a tiny naked fairy, I have no desires at all.

RED PLANET – Clifford Geary

RED PLANET by Robert A. Heinlein

RED PLANET by Robert A. Heinlein JAPAN

RED PLANET by Robert A. Heinlein - art by Barclay Shaw

RED PLANET by Robert A. Heinlein

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #382 – READALONG: Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #382 – Jesse, Paul, Julie Davis, and Maissa talk about Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini.

Talked about on today’s show:
1921, Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, the morality of this character, on his high horse, betraying the Revolution, completely detached, everybody in this novel is morally gray, maddeningly indistinct, not a hero, historical explanation, that is why the book is named “Scaramouche”, he is the goad, acting as Scaramouche, Aline holds up the virtue, the epitaph on Sabatini’s gravestone, a Prisoner Of Zenda situation, based on somebody real, “A Romance Of The French Revolution”, incendiary speeches, the “Paladin of the Third”, critiquing the excesses of the French Revolution, pro-Jacobean, the character has knowledge of the future, excusing a lot of the morality, we don’t know what he’s thinking until he opens his mouth, good writing, “the tiger is the great lord of the jungle…”, hunting the tiger, solidifying what the revolution meant, dual (duel) motivation, playing the actor, foreshadowing, acting, taking on the role of actor (orator and paladin), a Heinleinian hyper-competent character, the author forces the other Scaramouche off-stage, the comedy and drama, a great sequence, becoming the mask, the inner portion of his life is reflected out on to the stage, he is himself as his purest expression, he is best as Scaramouche, he’s happiest and most content as himself as Scaramouche, you did WHAT with WHO?, we are all the sport of destiny, why look at adaptations, the 1952 movie, dad vs. brother, liberty, equality fraternity, the Robe, Omnus Omnibus, the Buskin, the Sword, enraging the audience, the privileged estates, it becomes very meta, William Shakespeare, a horrible sequel (Scaramouche: The Kingmaker), the puppetry, the author is puppetting the characters, traditional swashbuckler, The Princess Pride without the comedy, other ways of telling the story, a revenge tale, A Tale Of Two Cities, Nicholas Nickleby, reading old books, writers who were ravenous readers first, Donald Westlake (Richard Stark), the Parker series, roll and repeat adventures, Scaramouche is just living, accessory criminals, Alan Grofield is an actor/criminal who gets his own spin-off series, The Score by Richard Stark, The Damsel, The Dame, The Blackbird, Benet, there is the other way…, Sabatini’s weakness is his third act, in the center of Islam, Simon Vance’s narration of Scaramouche, Gord Mackenzie’s narration (for LibriVox), expletive deleted, name of name!, in keeping with the 19th century literary tradition, a lost tale of the French Revolution, Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg, wandering Scaramouche-style, juggling, waking-up with amnesia, quasi-global government, The Old Curiosity Shop, commedia dell’arte, pantomime, improv, Who’s Line Is It Anyway?, pantaloon, harlequin, the little skirmisher, Shakespeare’s types, a learned-fool, a brooding older man, the maiden -> the nurse -> the matron, you’re playing pantaloon, more meta, reading books to become a fencing master, the opening is rather boring, but soon after we’re in a sword-fight, the man-on-the-run genre, as a lawyer, taking sides, raising and destroying a company, the trainee becomes the master, friendship, friendships that betray him, caring enough, carrying on a legacy, sucking up to power, at heart a good guy despite the threats, in bed or on board, the 1952 adaptation’s ending is better than the novel’s, a young Corsican officer, played for comedy, the seven-minute fight in the theater, I will meet you behind the cathedral, killing members of the titled classes, weird morality, shooting a good guy and forgiving the man you’re after revenge for, Mel Ferrer, “he had a string of wives and I understand why”, The Taming Of The Shrew, Stewart Granger, he’s not handsome, aha!, an unhandsome Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, star-quality, The Prisoner Of Zenda, deep into French Revolution politics, the Revolutions Podcast, aristocrats vs. the Third Estate, deep into the weeds, we’re on a powder keg politically (brexit), biting off your own to spite your face, the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the titled (and entitled) classes, the estates: Nobility 1st, Church 2nd, 3rd People, 24% of the population of with 90% of the power, justice for the rich vs. justice for the poor, production efficiency since the French Revolution, the food industry, 1% of the 1%, everybody is fed, far away to the left, the sucking up to power is still around, class betrayal, bastard children, I was betrayed!, everybody is secretly noble, never mind all that revenge, that’s the reality we live in, the book is very realistic, people are people are people, there’s something noble about liberty, equality, fraternity, the resistors to change were pulling dirty tricks, sabotage and betrayal, “noble” and “honorable”, a calculated attack, a professional boxer challenging me to a fist-fight in the street, why dueling is banned, UFC, we should use our words (lawyers), Jesse went off, same sex relationships in 1796, can we not get passed this?, they freed every slave, a very honorable action, high morality, Alexandre Dumas’ father, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss, Napoleon is a sketchy character, the Haitian Revolution, the Church’s stranglehold on France is gone, Quebec, the Quiet Revolution, Napoleon literally sold Louisiana out, Captain Blood, slavery in Barbados, many many pirates, given our success with Scaramouche … could a LibriVox narrator record Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk?

Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini - Famous Authors Illustrated
Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini - Famous Authors Illustrated

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #381 – AUDIOBOOK: Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

Podcast

Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #381 – Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini, read by Gordon Mackenzie.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (16 hours 50 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.

Scaramouche was first published in 1921.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Chimpanzee by Darin Bradley

SFFaudio Review

ChimpanzeeChimpanzee
Written and narrated by Darin Bradley
Publisher: Resurrection House via Audible
Publication Date: 9 October 2014
[UNABRIDGED] – 5 hours, 46 minutes

Themes: / dystopia / unrest / cognitive theory / virtual reality / revolution /

Publisher summary:

Unemployment has ravaged the U.S. economy. Foreclosures are rampant. People struggle everywhere, exhausted by the collapse that destroyed their lives . . .

Benjamin Cade is an expert in cognition and abstract literature, and before the flatlined economy caught up to him, he earned his living as a university instructor. Now, without income, he joins the millions defaulting on their loans—in his case, the money he borrowed to finance his degrees. But there are consequences.

Using advances in cognitive science and chemical therapy, Ben’s debtors can reclaim their property—his education. The government calls the process “Repossession Therapy,” and it is administered by the Homeland Renewal Project, the desperate program designed to salvage what remains of the ravaged U.S. economy. The data Ben’s repossession will yield is invaluable to those improving the “indexing” technology—a remarkable medical advance that has enabled the effective cure of all mental disorders. By disassembling his mind, doctors will gain the expertise to assist untold millions.

But Ben has no intention of losing his mind without a fight, so he begins teaching in the central park, distributing his knowledge before it’s gone in a race against ignorance. And somewhere in Ben’s confusing takedown, Chimpanzee arrives. Its iconography appears spray-painted and wheat-pasted around town. Young people in rubber chimpanzee masks start massive protests. A new use of the indexing technology shows up in bars across the country. It’s called “chimping” . . . named after the mysterious protest movement, and it uses goggles and electrodes to reverse the curative indexing process, temporarily (recreationally) offering those inclined a mental illness of their own choosing.

As Ben slowly loses himself, the Chimpanzee movement seems to grow. And all fingers point to Ben . . . or maybe the voice that speaks to him every time he uses the chimping rig. As civil unrest grows, and Homeland Security takes an interest, Ben finds himself at the center of a storm that may not even be real. What is Chimpanzee? Who created it? What does it want?

And is there even enough of Ben left to find out?

What I prefer in my dystopia is realism and possibility, that it could happen here, in my lifetime. I read dystopia for the horror, for the thrill. That is the brilliance Darin Bradley brings to his novels, both in Noise and in Chimpanzee. It helps that Chimpanzee takes place in a town an hour from where I live, a place I visit often, particularly the arts district, where quite a bit of the action takes place. The events are very vivid to me, described in that place. They will be vivid to others for different reasons, but basically anyone watching the news in the last few years will feel they know the world of this novel.

The premise of Chimpanzee (see description above) may be even more chilling to those of us working in academia, who have seen the impact of the various economic downturns on expensive liberal arts educations. Now that there are no job guarantees, and no guarantee on the investment made (often by the students through hefty loans), people are starting to question the benefit of the system we have maintained for so long. I hate this conversation, because I work at one of those schools, and depend on it for my livelihood. So did the author, for a while. And that’s where reality and the terror of this possible future start to blur within the novel.

There is a lot in this novel that might feel over the reader’s head.  I would encourage people who don’t understand every word from the rhetoric of cognitive theory to press on –  treat it like a classic science fiction info dump.  Let it wash over you, grasp what you can. You will be in the same place as the students in the story, who also are put into a position of creating their own meaning, applied to their real situations.

There is a concept of virtual reality in this novel that I liked, called chimping, something you can do at a bar with your friends.  It becomes an important part of the story in ways I will not give away here.

The audiobook has a story to its making. In the insert, it talks about the initial difficulty Resurrection House had in distributing the audio version.  It includes a warning:

“Because some books aren’t meant for sedans on highways. They may have too many voices, or they may have jagged corners that snag plots, or they may have things with no business being in stories… like symbols or formulae or languages we don’t understand. You can listen to them, if you’re ready to pay attention.”

I did not heed the warning and listened to some of this audio production while driving around. The first time I encountered a repossessed memory, the sound used to represent the hole, the deletion, it almost sent me off the road.  When I played it at home, my husband jumped out of his skin. It would be remiss not to warn you.

Otherwise, the audio moves back and forth between a radio-play style performance from multiple readers with sound effects and music, and the author’s own narration.  I liked the music choices and the sound effects were generally effective.  Having sound effects in some parts magnifies the silence of the others. Benjamin Cade spends a lot of time inside his head, and losing what is in his head, so I think that silence is well warranted.  It takes some getting used to, but I ended up appreciating it.  The author also does a good job delivering his narration in a noirish tone, where short sentences shine.

Posted by Jenny Colvin

Review of Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein

SFFaudio Review

Beyond this Horizon by Robert A. HeinleinBeyond This Horizon
By Robert A. Heinlein; read by Peter Ganim
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
8 hours [UNABRIDGED]

Themes: / utopia / revolution / genetic engineering /

Publisher Summary:

Utopia has been achieved. Disease, hunger, poverty and war are found only in the history tapes, and applied genetics has brought a lifespan of over a century. But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line; each of his last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. He is, as far as genetics can produce one, the ultimate man, yet sees no meaning in life. However, his life is about to become less boring. A secret cabal of revolutionaries plan to revolt and seize control. Knowing of Hamilton’s disenchantment with the modern world, they want him to join their Glorious Revolution. Big mistake! The revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman was definitely not a good idea.

Beyond This Horizon is classic science fiction with social commentary thrown in as you may expect from Heinlein.

Mankind has created a Utopian society where poverty and hunger are studied in school but don’t actually happen anymore. Mankind has also worked toward eliminating weaknesses in the human chromosome via gene selection and intentional breeding. There are still some normal people (referred to as “control naturals”) that could potentially provide new genetic mutations for the good of mankind.

Hamilton Felix genetically represents the best of what humanity has to offer. He gets wrapped up in a group plotting to overthrow the government that thinks only the best of humanity should thrive in society while the control naturals are destroyed or used for experiments. There is little risk or adventure in this society, so a bored Hamilton decided to act as a mole within this organization. It’s not really surprising that this novel came out in the 1950’s when eugenics and superiority of different races was a current topic.

While their society is Utopian and futuristic, they also have notions of honor and violence such that people can get into gun duels when slighted. I found Heinlein’s debate of honor and privilege in this to be interesting in much the same way as his notions of earning rights by military service in Starship Troopers.

I liked the main plot as described but thought it could have happily ended about halfway through. The main plot of the story wraps up and the second half of the book felt like a really long epilogue to me. Heinlein seems to spread himself a bit thin on so many different issues like government influence of the market, government spending, the meaning of life, telepathy, duels for honor, and the afterlife. There were a few long monologues/dialogues going into painful detail of chromosome selection where I had trouble paying attention and following the book.

On the audio book side of things, Peter Ganim does a good job. I thought he had a good conversational tone, did some decent voices (they didn’t differ much though), and was easy to understand. If you’re trying to decide whether reading or listening is preferable, I don’t think there is much benefit either way.

Helpful tip if listening to this book: Hamilton Felix (superman, star line, game making guy) is referred to as “Hamilton” in the first half of the book but people start calling him “Felix” later for some reason. This wouldn’t be confusing except that his friend Monroe-Alpha Clifford (finance, mathematician guy) also goes by “Monroe-Alpha” and “Clifford” at different times. Since Ganim’s voices aren’t very distinct, there were some moments where it took me a little bit to realize which character was talking.

Posted by Tom Schreck.

Review of Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

SFFaudio Review

Science Fiction Audiobook - Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy ZahnStar Wars: Heir to the Empire, 20th Anniversary Edition
By Timothy Zahn; Read by Marc Thompson
13 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2011
Themes: / Science Fiction / Fantasy / Star Wars / Revolution / Space Opera /

Listening to Star Wars: Heir to the Empire on unabridged audio was nostalgic for me. I read the novel in print when it came out almost 20 years ago. I liked it then, and I enjoyed this audiobook, too.

There have been many Star Wars audiobooks. Until a few years ago, the available titles were abridged, anywhere from 3 hours to 9 hours in length. One of the qualities of those short audiobooks that I liked is that they successfully incorporated the Star Wars sounds, and I LOVE the Star Wars soundscape. I expected this unabridged reading to leave those sounds behind, but I’m very happy to report that they are here. This audiobook opens with the John Williams opening score, and there are plenty of light sabers, droids, wookies, and blasters throughout. Awesome.

Listen to an excerpt: |HERE|

It’s a few years after the Battle of Endor (from Return of the Jedi), and the New Republic now has to deal with the fact that they’ve won. Many of the characters we know from the original film trilogy are here: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and her husband Han, Chewbacca, R2D2, C3PO, Lando Calrissian, etc. Making things difficult for our heroes is Grand Admiral Thrawn and an unstable Dark Jedi named Joruus C’Boath.

I was impressed with Marc Thompson’s skilled narration. He was able to evoke these well-known characters with his voice, from outright impression to a cadence change or other verbal tic. I always knew which character was speaking.

This novel came out well before the film versions of Episodes 1, 2, and 3, so there are blessedly no midi-chlorians here. If you like the original Star Wars films and have considered reading one of the novels, this audiobook is an excellent place to start. I enjoyed revisiting Lucas’ universe, and it’s an entertaining story.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson