science fiction – Page 230

Review of Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Foundation
By Isaac Asimov; Read by Scott Brick
7 CD’s, 9 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Books on Tape
Published: 2005 (Re-issued with new narrator)
ISBN: 1415917760
Themes: / Science Fiction / Psychohistory / Galactic Empire / Energy / Science /

I could write this review in one sentence: A first-rate science fiction classic performed by a top-notch narrator. Whew! I’m exhausted. I better relax with another audiobook…

But first, a few more comments. Foundation is one of Isaac Asimov’s earliest works. One of the joys of reading this novel is recognizing it as an influence on so many other works in science fiction. Since Foundation was published, countless empires have risen and fallen in the pages of science fiction novels and on flickering movie screens. Most obviously, the latest Star Wars movie includes a visit to Coruscant, a planet that is one huge city, just like Asimov’s Trantor.

Like I, Robot, another of Asimov’s best known books, this is not a novel, but a collection of stories. The first (Book 1) is called “The Psychohistorians”, which follows Gaal Dornick as he visits the planet Trantor for the first time. Trantor is a planet completely covered in city – it serves as the capital of the Galactic Empire. Dornick visits Hari Seldon, who is under persecution for predicting the fall of the empire using psychohistory, a mathematical method for predicting probable futures for large numbers of people. The story concludes with the establishment of the Foundation, where a group of scientists will be charged with collecting all human knowledge into a great Encyclopedia.

Book Two is “The Encyclopedists”. It is 30 years after the first story, and it is here that the reader first encounters Salvor Hardin, a political rival of the mayor of Terminus, the name of the planet where the Foundation resides. The story is of a political struggle between two factions, with Hardin winning the day in grand fashion as a holographic Hari Seldon makes his first appearance to tell folks what’s really going on here.

Book Three, “The Mayors”, again stars Salvor Hardin, much later in his career. He is now being challenged as he challenged others in the previous story. Hardin has discovered that the only thing he’s got that surrounding systems don’t have is knowledge of atomics (a knowledge that has been lost at the edge of the empire). So, to keep from being attacked, he creates a sort of religion out of atomic science, trains “priests” to deal with it, and sends these priests out to threatening worlds to keep them at bay. Works great, but now there’s a challenge.

“The Traders” is Book 4, again taking place years after the previous story. Hardin is long gone, and the Foundation now is home to a sub-class called Traders, who are largely independent, but still loyal to the Foundation…

…who evolve into “The Merchant Princes”, the subject of Book 5, the longest installment. The traders have grown rich, and there’s a serious threat to the Foundation. Questions about the further validity of the “religion” are questioned, toss in some espionage, and the struggle is on.

Scott Brick does an amazing job with Asimov’s work. This first book was published in 1951, so Brick has to say things like “Great leaping galaxies!” while keeping a straight face. Apart from these occasional exclamations, the book works extremely well here in 2005. Asimov deserves his place amongst the Grand Masters of the genre, and Scott Brick’s performance adds a worthy dimension to the classic. I’m very much looking forward to hearing the rest of the trilogy.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Review of State Of Fear By Michael Crichton

Science Fiction Audiobook - State of Fear by Michael Crichton State Of Fear
By Michael Crichton; Read by George Wilson
Audible.com DOWNLOAD – 18 hours and 7 min [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: 2004
Themes: / Science Fiction / Techno-thriller / Global Warming / Ecology / Tsunami / Ice-Age / Eco-Terrorism /

A review by Guest Reviewer Barry

In Paris, a physicist dies after performing a laboratory experiment for a beautiful visitor. In the jungles of Malaysia, a mysterious buyer purchases deadly cavitation technology, built to his specifications. In Vancouver, a small research submarine is leased for use in the waters off New Guinea. And in Tokyo, an intelligence agent tries to understand what it all means.

I listened to Crichton’s State of Fear mainly because of a nicely done
interview with Crichton by Beth Anderson, available for free on Audible.com.

I’ve always been a bit of a Crichton fan since his first book The Andromeda Strain. The last book I heard of his, Timeline, seemed kind of silly and cartoonish and I was eager to get it over with. But Beth’s interview with Crichton was interesting and I expected something a little more mature. Boy was I wrong.

This is in many, many ways a very childish and often boring book. The characters aren’t even fleshed out enough to call them thin. Thin implies some dimensionality. Their parts in the story, which is no story, are contrived to enable them to give speeches explaining Crichton’s views while fending off killers and eco-terrorists, poisoners, lawyers and interesting dialog.

Crichton is convinced that the ecology movement has been overtaken by greedy lawyers
and that we’re being sold a bill of goods about global warming. While I can’t help but agree that the scenario he paints would be scary if it were real I don’t see much sign of it being real in the world I live in.

He makes some very good points about studies by universities and foundations being as biased as those of industry. But he seems to think that we the people are all firmly convinced that global warming is a reality because of the PR campaigns of these money-seeking foundations and a press who is always willing to jump on any bandwagon that attracts an audience. And while both of those things are easy to believe, I don’t see any sign that everyone believes that global warming is a fact and I don’t think I’ve seen attempts by the media to convince me of that.

Yes there have been pro shows on TV and articles treating global warming as a fact but the majority of those I’ve seen treat it as an open question; as a possibility.

His major point seems to be that we have a lot of questions and not many answers and that we should be asking more questions and studying and learning more before we try to insist on answers. I agree with that and I agree that it often doesn’t happen that way in
life. But it often does happen that way.

The book has almost no story of interest; no characters of interest at all; very little suspense with the exception of a couple of very surprising and tense and exciting scenes; and very little to offer.

To add injury to insult, this is a very badly made audiobook. It’s read by George Wilson, who I’ve heard and liked in other books, and it’s done badly. He doesn’t give us any way to distinguish the characters in a dialog and it’s often not possible to figure out who is
saying what. If there had been a story this would have hindered it terribly.

He sometimes reads a line badly and then reads it over. I guess that’s the editor’s fault, not the narrator’s; but it makes for bad narration from the listener’s point of view.

And, just to make sure the insult and injury were painful, Audible put their section markers right before chapter headings, which consist of the date and time, so that when you lose your place and are trying to find it, if you don’t remember the exact date and time of the section you were in, traversing the sections makes them all sound the same. That made finding my place after drifting off to sleep; a serious problem in this book; very difficult.

Everyone who got their hands on this book seemed to screw it up a little more. I probably even downloaded it badly. For all you Crichton fans, I suggest hearing Airframe if you haven’t already. It’s one of his best.

For you who want to be up in arms about a problem and don’t care if it’s a real problem or not, listen to Rush Limbaugh or something. This book is just too boring.

Review of Callahan’s Con by Spider Robinson

Callahan’s Con
By Spider Robinson; Read by Barrett Whitener
8 CDs – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0786183470
Themes: / Science Fiction / Humor / Crime / Time Travel / Immortality / Telepathy / Florida /

Jake Stonebender, our favorite intergalactic barkeep, rivets us to our stools with yet another wild and wooly yarn about the goings on of his Key West cantina. This time though, it isn’t the end of the world that is the trouble. Instead, it’s a mountainous mole-hill of a thug named Tony Donuts Jr. who wants to make his bones by fleecing Jake and his neighboring businesses for “protection money”. Jake could solve this problem with straight-on firepower, but that’d only bring down more government attention on him and his hippie clientele. And more heat is what he doesn’t need – because wouldn’t you know it – a dedicated bureaucrat from the Florida family services department has been sniffing around to find out why Jake’s only daughter has not been to school since she was born some thirteen years ago! So Jake and his extended family set about concocting a sting so devious it will make Florida Swampland real estate look good. The grift involves, among other things, time-travel, the Russian Mob, and the Fountain of Youth!

Full of brain-smearing puns and gawdawful song parodies Callahan’s Con is guaranteed to entertain anyone who enjoys Robinson’s Hugo award winning fiction. Myself, I come for the jokes and stay for references. In this case a nice homage to literature’s most unlucky master criminal: John Dortmunder. Callahan’s Con is proof that not only can Robinson like to write in the style of Heinlein – as he did in the previous installment, Callahan’s Key, – but also that he can write in the style of Mystery Writers Of America Grandmaster Donald E. Westlake! Interestingly this means that that Jake’s first person perspective is stretched-out to include multiple viewpoints – as is the Westlake’s Dortmunder novels. I’m not sure how Robinson did it, but he managed to convey other character’s perspectives in a way I can only describe as fictionalizing the fiction. I should also note that in a break with tradition Robinson hasn’t merely added to the seeming ever growing entourage surrounding Jake – for a major of character in the series dies. Though this could be troubling it is handled with grace and a few tears.

Reader Barrett Whitener, in this third Blackstone Audio Callahan audiobook does his familiar and fun vocal gymnastics routine – spouting off one liners in a dozen comic voices. Whitener, an Audie Award winner, is well matched with comic material – it really and truly is his forte. Blackstone Audio has been known to use a mix of art from the hardcover or paperback and their own original cover art. Their own art has been steadily improving and I’m pleased to say this is the nicest original cover so far!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Tertiary Phase

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Tertiary Phase
By Douglas Adams, adapted by Dirk Maggs, performed by a Full Cast
3 CD’s, 3 hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0792735919
Themes: / Science Fiction / Comedy / Time travel / Space travel /

A review by Steven H Silver

When The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy originally appeared on the BBC from 1978-1980, it consisted of twelve episodes (called “fits”). The first six of these fits were later refashioned to form the novels The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Turning his back on the medium of radio for several years, Douglas Adams continued the story with the novels Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless. This caused continuity problems when the decision was made to return the series to its original medium.

Following in the footsteps of Arthur C. Clarke, who decided to write a sequel to the more widely known film 2001 rather than his book of the same title, the BBC produced a radio sequel to the books Adams wrote rather than to the radio series. The result is the complete disregard for fits 7 through 12 of the radio broadcasts as the beginning of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase picks up where the now retitled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Primary Phase left off. There is a slight attempt to explain Zaphod’s adventures in those missing fits, but not Arthur nor that of Ford.

The BBC has successfully put together the surviving cast from the first series, which was more than they did for the second series. Simon Jones, Stephen Moore, and Mark Wing-Davey, who played Arthur Dent, Marvin, and Zaphod Beeblebrox on both radio and television, and Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect) return for their third series. Susan Sheridan, who portrayed Trillian in the first series has returned to the role for the third series. The replacement of Peter Jones (the Book) by William Franklyn and Richard Vernon (Slartibartfast) by Richard Griffiths works well.

The inclusion of Adams’s own voice for the character Agrajag is a nice touch. Since Adams died before the series could begin production, a recording of him reading Agrajag’s lines from the audio version of Life, the Universe and Everything was used with some resampling which allowed it to fit in quite well with the general flow and sound of the broadcast.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with the Tertiary Phase is the same as one of the problems with the novel upon which it is based. Notably, although it contains the characters Adams created for the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, the story itself is a plot originally created by Adams for the television series Doctor Who. Another difficulty with the Third Phase is that because it is based on the novel, Life, the Universe and Everything, it lacks the sense of originality of the first two series, which formed the basis of everything that came after.

The Tertiary Phase strives to recreate the feel of the original series broadcast twenty-five years ago, and manages to achieve that goal. However, both the dialogue and the plot lack the originality of wit which caused those first two series to be so successful and launch Adams’s career. Fans of the Guide will enjoy listening to the broadcast, and will eagerly await the final phase, but it won’t recreate the feeling of listening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the late seventies.

Review of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
By Douglas Adams, performed by a Full Cast
6 Cassettes, 6 hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: The Mind’s Eye
Published: 1988
ISBN: 0881425671
Themes: / Science Fiction / Audio Drama / Humor / Aliens / Space travel / Time travel /

I have to cringe whenever an important milestone in Dr. Seuss’s surprisingly robust afterlife comes around, because it is inevitably greeted with a hundred grating “Seuss-like” paeans from every journalist, columnist and otherwise admittedly illiterate citizen who makes the amazing discovery that the English language is crammed to bursting with words that rhyme. More, even, if you make up a few of the words yourself. Douglas Adams can be similarly “inspirational”. Much of what is written about him is filled with disorientingly obscure citations and facile imitations. I appreciate why: He and Seuss made it look so easy, we can scarcely resist attempting to recreate their magic ourselves. But I will admit right now that if I could write like Adams, I wouldn’t be sitting here bashing out brief audio book reviews for an utter lack of pay. I will also admit that I have incorporated much of Adams’ prose into my own genome, and hope to transfer it genetically to my offspring (an aspiration my wife does not seem to regard with the same urgency). I will not, however, take a crack at trying to impress you with my abilities to mimic and quote. I don’t want to embarrass myself.

These tapes are of the very first incarnation of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Ur-myth that inspired a trilogy of four novels, a diabolical computer game, a television show, and an upcoming movie. More than just a recording of a funny radio play, these tapes represent the annunciation of Douglas Adams as the major talent in science fiction humor: a veritable shot heard round the world. The story itself is an ambling monstrosity of interplanetary adventure, time travel, and hidden questions about the meaning of the universe and the origin and fate of the planet earth. Of course, with all successful humor, what it is really about are the characters (in this case, chiefly Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian, and Marvin the android) and the way they interact and bicker as wave after wave of crazy crap happens to them. The prose is exquisite (“They hung in the air exactly the way bricks don’t.” Oop! That was a quote, wasn’t it?), the settings range from imaginative (Magrathea) to bizarre (Milliways), and the information provided by the Guide itself is always tangential and hilarious.

But for fans of the books or the television show, what is truly remarkable about the first and second half of the tapes (the primary and secondary phases of the radio play) is not their utter perfection, but Adams’s uncanny ability to tweak them to even greater heights. The escape from Milliways is an excellent example. In these tapes, the use of an alien navy commander’s space ship is a little weak, but in the latter versions, the material Adams adds about the band “Disaster Area” and their cataclysmic concerts not only makes a better doomed escape, but contains some of the most memorable lines and images in the whole series. And the way he combines the primary and secondary phases of the radio show to produce an interweaving of the Dent/Prefect and Beeblebrox/Zarniwoop story lines in the novels not only increases the dramatic tension more organically, but also fills many of the logic holes that perforate the second half of these tapes. It’s like a graduate-level class in editing, only funny.

Of course, this radio play is not simply a virtuoso performance by the author, but a monumental ensemble production, as well. Mark Wing-Davey’s spacey portrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox makes even Bill Murray’s Peter Venkman look pretty well plugged in, and Stephen Moore’s Marvin the android is a walking mechanical disaster of painfully amusing dimensions. Those are my two favorite performances, but the others are similarly tight: Simon Jones captures the bewilderment and hysteria of Arthur Dent perfectly; Geoffrey McGivern delivers a Ford Prefect who is helpful, roguish, and enigmatic; Peter Jones gives the voice of the book a zany, reassuring sound like a kindly but mad uncle; and Susan Sheridan provides a smart yet seductive Trillian Add in the myriad voices of mice, computers, doors, and smug waiters; the wonderful special effects of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop; and the loopy grandeur of the Eagles’ “Journey of the Sorcerer” as the main theme and you have a work of audio magic that will tickle your brain and delight your ears.

But don’t believe for a minute that we all walk around quoting this radio play in our daily speech simply because it provides hours of silly hijinx.. Adams ventures beyond situational and linguistic surprise to grapple with the humiliating vastness of the universe and the mind-boggling possibilities of infinity, and it is this theme that anchors the series so firmly in the subconscious. Philosophy, religion, and calculation are shown to be helpless before the unrelenting immensity of everything, and the only response we are left with is either suicidal hopelessness or laughter. We are forever indebted to Douglas Adams and the BBC cast for saving us with laughter. So I urge you to buy, rent, or steal these tapes as soon as you can and begin stuffing as much of the prose into your memory as it will hold. What else are you saving all that underpowered gray matter for?

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Review of A Walk in the Sun By Geoffrey A. Landis

A Walk In The Sun
By Geoffrey A. Landis; Read by Amy Bruce
1 CD – 51 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Infinivox
Published: 2004
ISBN: 1884612318
Themes: / Science Fiction / Hard SF / The Moon / Survival /

A haunting piano melody cascades into the shimmering electronic signature music of Infinivox’s “Great Science Fiction Stories” series. IT IS EPIC… and deservedly so. This Hugo Award winning short story is a poignant and ingenious tale of a stranded Astronaut on the moon. Theoretically Trish Mulligan’s smashed spaceship’s contains everything she needs to survive; maps, food, water and her solar-powered spacesuit. She manages to broadcast a distress signal to Earth, but to survive until they arrive she’ll also need to outrun the sunset. If the sun sets, her suit’s automated life support system will stop working and she’ll die on the moon….. So, she’ll have to race the sun. On Earth it would be an interminable marathon pace but at least there she wouldn’t be alone. Though author Geoffrey Landis is only a part time science fiction writer, he works for NASA as his day job; you wouldn’t know it by this story. A Walk In The Sun reads like it was written by a Grandmaster! I really enjoyed this problem-solving story, I can see why it won the Hugo award!

This is a relatively unadorned production, but there are voice effects, echoing, static etc., but they don’t hurt the story at all. Sound quality on this CD release is 100% perfect – with a pair of headphones on you’ll be right there in the moment. Musical interludes are used now and again throughout the reading to effectively suggest the passage of time.

While narrator Amy Bruce is no vocal chameleon, her range is limited, the emotional investment she gives her reading delivers the goods. This Infinivox re-release (the original was published on cassette in 1998) is a threefold improvement on the same production. Packaging. This CD comes in an ingenious slimline case that securely sandwiches the disc – but allowing you to see it at the same time. The cover art for the audiobook is the disc itself! This saves space, stores easier and safer and costs less. What is not to love? Even better, in celebration of these new CD format, Infinivox has placed all their titles (cassette and CD both) on sale for 50% off. At that price I couldn’t resist, I bought one of each, even though I already owned most of them on cassette! Also of note is the attention to fixing problems – Infinivox staff have corrected an error in the packaging copy for these CD releases – the original cassette edition mistakenly stated A Walk In The Sun was a “Nebula Winner”, when it was in fact a “Hugo Winner”. Better sound quality, better packaging, lower price, an AWESOME story, what is not to love?

Posted by Jesse Willis