science fiction – Page 127

Review of Pulp Cover by Gene Wolfe

Tuesday, March 2, 2010Tuesday, March 2, 2010 Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

7th Anniversary Storypalooza continues!

Pulp Cover
By Gene Wolfe; Read by Mike Boris
24 Min – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: StarShipSofa (Aural Delights No 120)
Published: 2010
Themes: / Science Fiction /

This brilliantly narrated (by Mike Boris) story was part of the Aural Delights no 120 – Gene Wolfe podcast from StarShipSofa. Thanks Tony and crew for all the great stories and commentary week after week!

“Pulp Cover” is the story of a man who wants to marry his boss’s daughter, but loses out to a perfect man from Yale. At least, that’s what the story is about on the surface, but Gene Wolfe’s stories are much more than the top layer. Subtle and satisfying.

Listening to Gene Wolfe is something I haven’t been able to do often, but his stories are finally starting to show up on audio. Audible Frontiers recently published The Book of the New Sun. “Hunter Lake” appeared in The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine in 2003, and before that, the only audiobook I know of was a cassette from Audio Prose Library with “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” and “The Solar Labyrinth” on it, read by Wolfe himself. “The Tree is My Hat” was made into an audio drama at the World Horror Convention in 2002, and was included in StarShipSofa’s Aural Delights No 49. That’s all the Gene Wolfe audio I know of – any more out there?

Looks like an author page, Jesse!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

LibriVox: The Dueling Machine by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

LibriVox delivers another retro future audiobook, this time it’s a novellette collaboration between Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis!

The Dueling Machine
By Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis; Read by Gregg Margarite
3 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: February 28, 2010
The Dueling Machine is the solution to settling disputes without injury. After you and your opponent select weapons and environments you are injected into an artificial reality where you fight to the virtual death… but no one actually gets hurt. That is, until a warrior from the Kerak Empire figures a way to execute real-world killings from within the machine. Now its inventor Dr. Leoh has to prevent his machine from becoming a tool of conquest. First published in the May, 1963 issue of Analog Science Fact & Fiction.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4088

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Betty M. and Barry Eads]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Week 1: Think Like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly

Monday, March 1, 2010Sunday, February 28, 2010 Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

SFFaudio celebrates its 7th anniversary this month! What better way to celebrate than with more posts? I’m going to listen to one short story every weekday through the month of March, and tell you all about it here. Here’s the first!

Think Like a Dinosaur
By James Patrick Kelly; Read by James Patrick Kelly
1 Hr – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: James Patrick Kelly
Published: 2007
Themes: / Science Fiction / Aliens / Physical Laws / Morality / Teleportation /

Before the rest of us knew what this podcasting stuff was all about, James Patrick Kelly was busy reading his stories into a microphone and publishing them over in the “Free Reads” section of jimkelly.net. Many stories have reached his Free Reads listeners, including his Hugo-winning novella Burn. And he’s still at it; his current Nebula nominee, “Going Deep” can be found over there too, free for the downloading.

“Think Like a Dinosaur” was part of another fine audio delivery innovation. In partnership with Audible.com, Jim published 4 sets of stories, called StoryPods, as podcasts-for-purchase delivered through Audible. You can still buy the StoryPods or the individual stories at Audible.

But the story – this is one of those stories that keeps you thinking long afterwards. Like Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” (JPK explains in the afterword exactly how that story influenced this one), the main character is presented with a moral dilemma of the highest order. Things are not exactly the same as in “The Cold Equations”, though, because it’s not clear if the concept of “harmony” is something invented by the aliens in the story, or is an actual, unbreakable physical law.

On thing is for certain, though. “Think Like a Dinosaur” has become as much a part of science fiction’s Great Conversation as Godwin’s story. Required reading!

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

LibriVox: Talents, Incorporated by Murray Leinster

Monday, March 1, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Yum yum!

Talents, Incorporated
By Murray Leinster; Read by Mark Nelson
12 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 6 Hours 9 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Published: LibriVox.org
Published: February 14, 2010
Bors felt as if he’d been hit over the head. This was ridiculous! He’d planned and carried out the destruction of that warship because the information of its existence and location was verified by a magnetometer. But, if he’d known how the information had been obtained–if he’d known it had been guessed at by a discharged spaceport employee, and a paranoid personality, and a man who used a hazel twig or something similar–if he’d known that, he’d never have dreamed of accepting it. He’d have dismissed it flatly!

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/3832

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Tricia G]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Sunrise Alley by Catherine Asaro

Wednesday, February 24, 2010Saturday, February 27, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Review

Sunrise Alley
By Catherine Asaro; Read by Hillary Huber
10 CDs – Approx. 11.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Published: December 2007
ISBN: 1433213007
Themes: / Science Fiction / Romance / Androids / Artificial Intelligence / California / Cyborgs /

When a shipwrecked stranger washed up on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton’s home, she was unaware that he was something more than human. He said his name was Turner Pascal—but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. This man only held the remainder of Pascal’s consciousness in a technologically-enhanced humanoid body. He was, in fact, an experiment by the notorious criminal Charon, a practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. Charon has been secretly copying human minds into android brains, with plans to make his own army of slaves. On the run from this most ruthless criminal, Samatha and Turner seek help from Sunrise Alley, an underground organization of AIs and androids that have gone rogue. But these cybernetic outlaws are rumored to have their own hidden agenda.

It may not be so much that women and men are from different planets as women and men care about different things. Or it may be just that Catherine Asaro and I care about different things. Very different things. I have this hypothesis: people, even when they are lying to you, or writing fiction, can tell you a lot about themselves by what they focus on over and over. The word that kept coming up over and over again in Sunrise Alley was “trust.” Catherine Asaro, or at least her viewpoint character, Samantha Bryton, cares a whole helluvalot about trust. Me, I don’t care about trust, at least not in the way Asaro seems to wants me to. Based on the scenes in Sunrise Alley Asaro seems to think that being chased is also of great interest to a reader. Maybe it is to some readers. It isn’t to me. Turner Pascal, the mobile MacGuffin, is being chased prior to the novel’s start. Then Turner, the bellboy turned android, and Samantha, the scientist turned beachcomber, are chased all over the globe. They are chased in cars, by helicopter, by jet, on foot, in cars again.

The meme of an artificial person, android or evolving intelligence as Asaro dubs it, is often an interesting idea to work with in fiction. Philip K. Dick did some amazing things with it Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? as did Alfred Bester in Fondly Fahrenheit. Even later career Robert A. Heinlein managed to tell a compelling story with an artificial person in Friday. William Gibson’s Neuromancer is a globe trotting adventure with an artificial intelligence as the MacGuffin. But Catherine Asaro’s take on AI and androids leaves me empty and depressed.

When Samantha and Turner aren’t being chased by unseen foes they are usually making love in one of Samantha’s many beds (in one of her many houses), or in a tastefully decorated secure facility bedrooms (where they are being held prisoner). But those looking for scene after scene of socially redeeming hot piston on human action will also be sadly disappointed. The order of the day in Sunrise Alley is for the scientist and the bellboy to show each other their emotions, their vulnerable sides and speak essentially the same dialogue over and over.
The android, Turner, has an inferiority complex and his savior/companion/scientist girlfriend is needed to shore up his insecurities. The central problem in the novel, other than their being chased, comes when Turner starts to modify his body in order to solve their problems and escape their captors (because apparently Samantha has no skills herself). In doing this Turner is increasingly loosing the handsome human looks he was given by his evil maker (the bad guy who we don’t get to meet for more than half the novel). This makes Samantha have to deal with the increasing repulsion she feels towards Turner’s increasingly mechanical-looking body. And that is basically encapsulates my big problem with this story. Writing sentences about a character’s emotional life and his/her feelings towards another character’s body parts makes me really, really annoyed.

I like idea fiction, stories that tell me something on an intellecutal level. Asaro’s Sunrise Alley seems to be merely operating on the level of wish-fulfillment. Samantha Bryton is beautiful, wealthy, and unemployed by choice. When the novel begins a handsome, insecure man has just washed up on her beach. She rescues him and drags him to the safety of her inviting home. Did I mention that Samantha also has two homes in the woods? One is near the beach in a forest, another is in some other forest, just a convienient chapter’s distance away. Both homes are filled with top-notch security, lovely decor and garages full of vehicles to make James Bond greatly envious. The explanation of why a quietly retired scientist needs to own two woodsy homes within a few hours driving distance of each other isn’t at all satisfactory. And neither is the explanation as to why she has a spy cars with built-in cloaking devices, bulletproof glass, oil slick droppers and mortars.

The worst sin that Asaro commits, in my opinion, is the final revelation which comes in the form of a pathetic pseudoscience, namely repressed memory.Sunrise Alley is not just a bad novel, but badly conceived, badly written and generally bad. This is the worst novel I have ever read. This is the worst I have ever reviewed. This is the worst I have ever finished.

Narrator Hillary Huber is tasked with making Samantha Bryton’s neurotic thoughts come alive. She pitches her voice a little deeper when voicing Turner Pascal. Huber is a fine narrator, this material is beneath her skill.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Short Science Fiction Collection 028

Tuesday, February 16, 2010Thursday, April 8, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s a new assemblage of short Science Fiction stories, in audiobook form, that are in the public domain. You can re-cut them, sell them, give them away, put them in your podcast or anything else you want. That’s what “public domain” means! The only thing you can’t do with them is copyright them. These are mostly new stories to LibriVox, mostly from the mid-20th century, but the final story in the collection is from the 19th century. Written by Edgar Allan Poe, fictionalizing a new alchemical invention by a real life contemporary of Poe’s. It comes off as plausible – to readers of the period it may have been mistaken as true, given the time and who the central character is. But we know it’s definitely SF. Right?

tabithat’s reading of The Servant Problem by Robert J. Young is another new story in this collection. It offers an intriguing premise. A ghost town needs to be sold off and appraised by an scrupulously honest real estate agent. The town’s only remaining resident is mum on the issue. But what made everyone else leave and where did they go? The answer is neat, even if it is kind of a shaggy dog tale. Whether it’s a legitimate “Feghoot” or not I’ll leave more discerning listeners to decide.

George O. Smith’s Instinct will probably be more likable to many than my estimation of it. It’s well written, but to mind it’s not particularly fruitful. Sort of a “racial memory” story – which when you think a bit about it is kind of the flip side of “ancient astronauts.” Meh.

Short Science Fiction Collection 028
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours 50 Minutes Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
Science Fiction is speculative literature that generally explores the consequences of ideas which are roughly consistent with nature and scientific method, but are not facts of the author’s contemporary world. The stories often represent philosophical thought experiments presented in entertaining ways. Protagonists typically “think” rather than “shoot” their way out of problems, but the definition is flexible because there are no limits on an author’s imagination. The reader-selected stories presented here were written prior to 1962 and became US public domain texts when their copyrights expired.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/short-science-fiction-collection-028.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Attention Saint Patrick
By Murray Leinster; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
Legends do, of course, get somewhat distorted in the passage of time. In the future, the passage across space to other planets may cause a slight modification here and there… From Astounding Science Fiction, January, 1960.

Bad Medicine
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Megan Argo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 38 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
A man is mistakenly treated by a psychotherapy machine intended for Martians. while big corporations rule the world, paying a separate police department to enforce brand loyalty. First published in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine July, 1956

Blessed Are the Meek
By G.C. Edmondson; Read by Mark F. Smith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
Every strength is a weakness, and every weakness is a strength. And when the Strong start smashing each other’s strength … the Weak may turn out to be, instead, the Wise. This story was first published in the September 1955 issue of Astounding.

Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?
By Bryce Walton; Read by Bellona Times
1 |MP3| – Approx. 26 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
The body tanks had to be replenished and the ship had to be serviced—and the crew was having a Lotus dream in its bed of protoplasm. But Kelly knew how to arouse them… From If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1954.

Instinct
By George O. Smith; Read by Ric F
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
You can keep a good man down, if you’ve got enough headstart, are alert and persistent … so long as he limits himself to acting like a good man… From Astounding Science Fiction March 1959.

Mex
By Laurence M. Janifer; Read by soualhi1
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
Talented William Logan [Laurence M. Janifer], though he hails from Dodger territory, tells a quiet story from down near the Mexican border, where men are very close to ancestral memories and to the things which dwell in the shadows. Logan is one of the more interesting of the newer writers. From Fantastic Universe January 1957.

The Nothing Equation
By Tom Godwin; Read by Mark Nelson
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
The space ships were miracles of power and precision; the men who manned them, rich in endurance and courage. Every detail had been checked and double checked; every detail except— From Amazing Stories December 1957.

Scrimshaw
By Murray Leinster; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
The old man just wanted to get back his memory—and the methods he used were gently hellish, from the viewpoint of the others… From Astounding Science Fiction September 1955.

The Servant Problem
By Robert F. Young; Read by tabithat
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
Selling a whole town, and doing it inconspicuously, can be a little difficult … either giving it away freely, or in a more normal sense of “selling”. People don’t quite believe it… From Analog Science Fact Science Fiction November 1962.

Von Kempelen And His Discovery
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 17 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 11, 2009
German chemist, Baron Von Kempelen, possess an alchemical process which can transform lead into gold. The news of the discovery had already caused a two hundred per cent leap in the price of lead in Europe. First published in the April 14, 1849 edition of The Flag of Our Union.

[Thanks also to Wendel Topper and Lucy Burgoyne for proofing and coordinating and cataloging]

Posted by Jesse Willis