Tag: science fiction

Review of Halo: The Thursday War by Karen Traviss

Scott D.

SFFaudio Review

Science Fiction Audiobook - HALO: The Thursday WarHALO: The Thursday War
By Karen Traviss, Read by Euan Morton
15 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: 2012
Themes: / Science Fiction / Video Game Tie-In / Aliens / Artificial Intelligence / War /

This is the second book in the Halo Kilo-Five trilogy by Karen Traviss. It’s 15 hours of thinking you know what is going to happen, only to have it change right before you.

The Glasslands, Book 1 of the trilogy, got us an introduction to ONI’s Admiral Parangosky special black ops team “Kilo-Five”. The Thursday War lets us see more of who they are and how they think. It starts off right where “Glasslands” left off. No time to breath! Kilo-Five has to get back to Sanghelios to rescue one of their own that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Those of you that play the Halo video games will really enjoy understanding more about where some of the Halo 4 characters come from. You gotta love the AI for Kilo-Five: Black Box or BB for short. Not only does he give a little attitude to the team but he almost has emotional traits and worries like humans. Or Meat Bags as the team calls them.

I give 5 thumbs up to Karen Traviss and her writing style. For me it was like I was the AI in their systems watching, hearing, and feeling their every move. And not only from the Humans but from the Sangheili (Elites). I was able to look at them as another race not just a target on the screen. The kudagra to all of Sanghelios hopes is the mighty UNSC INFINITY, a floating city. That shows the Sangheili they are no longer top dogs.

If you like the Halo universe then you will love The Thursday War, and the audiobook is so much better with the reading by Euan Morton. He is amazing with how he brings the characters out with their voices.

Posted by Mike

Mindwebs: Adam And No Eve by Alfred Bester

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Adam And No Eve by Alfred Bester

This well regarded, and much anthologized, Science Fiction short story didn’t seem to have any point to it. I didn’t much like it, not until the very end, when I realized suddenly where it was going to go. It went there. I like it.

MindwebsMindwebs – Adam And No Eve
By Alfred Bester; Read by Michael Hanson and an unnamed female narrator
1 |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [ABRIDGED with a musical bed]
Broadcaster: WHA Radio (Madison, WI)
Broadcast: November 24, 1978
Provider: Archive.org
The last man on Earth is dying. His only companion, man’s best friend, hates him. First published in Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1941.

Adam And No Eve, comics adaptation

Posted by Jesse Willis

Talkers by David Longhorn

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Wow! This is the first original to YouTube audiobook I’ve ever heard that I’ve actually really liked! Talkers, by David Longhorn, is a very high quality short story, apparently inspired by In The Abyss by H.G. Wells and “many stories about the Deep Ones” by H.P. Lovecraft.

First published in the journal of A Ghostly Company.

It’s only got 7 views. We must fix that.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #192 – READALONG: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #192 – Jesse, Jenny, and Professor Eric S. Rabkin discuss the Tantor Media audiobook of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Talked about on today’s show:
written in 1921, is it a ‘Russian’ novel?, H.G. Wells, Synchronicity and Arthur Koestler, Industrialism, the struggle to be a good citizen, the Guardians and Plato’s Republic, the numbers in character names (ah hah!), lips and poet Pushkin, don’t eat the prolefeed, sexual hour, review of We by George Orwell, character development, the Integral ship name, more on numbers in names, biblical references?, why it pays to have Eric, THX 1138 (trailer), Zilboorg vs Ginsburg translation, mathematics, Randall and Brown translations, imaginary numbers, the green wall and glass, Logan’s Run and the outside, the number ’40’, Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, is the novel hopeful at the end?, lying, Caesar and hair, The Space Merchants, how science fiction and We get respect, ranking We among dystopian fiction, Jenny is Ms. Dystopia, eutopias and outopias and autopias, Childhood’s End, this podcast is perfect, Scriabin piano music is passionate, ayre (music)

Tantor Media - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Posted by Tamahome

Plotting For Perfection by Tim Prasil

Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

SFFaudio Podcast #189 featured our chat with the fantastic writer Tim Prasil – about his MARVELLOUS BOXES anthology series (as produced by Decoder Ring Theatre). Something that came up in that discussion was that one of the stories, Plotting For Perfection, was based on a short story Tim has the story online, |PDF|, and has now graciously narrated it for our listening pleasure:

Tim PrasilPlotting For Perfection
By Tim Prasil; Read by Tim Prasil
1 |MP3| – Approx. 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Provider: Tim Prasil
Provided: December 2012
A photographer on assignment meets his future love, an astrophysicist, and then is visited by photographs of their future life together.

Plotting For Perfection by Tim Prasil - illustration

[Thanks Tim!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Jenny

SFFaudio Review

The Diamond Age by Neal StephensonThe Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer
By Neal Stephenson; read by Jennifer Wiltsie
16 compact discs; Approx. 19 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2001/2012
ISBN: 978-1-4558-8349-3
Themes: / Science Fiction / Nanotechnology / Computer Programming / Victorian Culture / Cyberpunk /

Editor’s Note: This edition is the same recording that was released in 2001, but it has been repackaged and re-released.  Back in 2003, Scott reviewed The Diamond Age after listening to it on cassette tape.

Publisher Summary: Set in twenty-first-century Shanghai, The Diamond Age is the story of what happens when a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life — and the entire future of humanity — is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.…

Review: This was my second listen of the audio version narrated by Jennifer Wiltsie, which I enjoyed more thoroughly than the first time. Perhaps the main reason for this was that I happened to listen to Oliver Twist in between and discovered that Neal Stephenson had written a wonderful homage to Charles Dickens’ masterpiece, unbeknownst to me. That is not to say that reading Oliver Twist is a requirement for liking this book, but that it is a great way to fully appreciate the author’s style in this story, which was somewhat foreign to me at first. The Diamond Age is the sort of book that has the amusing ability to make me feel both more and less intelligent than I really am. Stephenson has a style of genre bending all his own that I like to think of as Neal-punk. At times he’ll mix it with some Dickensian dialogue that makes perfect sense to me. Other times his writing flies right over my head and convinces me that I’d need a significant amount of time and effort doing research in order to get his meaning, which is okay with me. It all lends itself to the sort of layered writing that bears up well to multiple readings, getting more and more understanding and appreciation each time. That is not so say that it requires a re-read in order to enjoy, it just helped me out quite a bit. I also happen to be an avid re-reader.

The characters in this book are diverse, interesting, often funny, and easy to sympathize with, especially Nell. I would mostly recommend this to people who enjoy an esoteric story that gives you a lot of food for thought. Neal Stephenson has a bit of a reputation for writing not-so-great endings. I don’t think The Diamond Age has a cut and dried conclusion, leaving room for the listener’s own imagination to wonder about and fill in some details. I can see how this may be dissatisfying to some, but I rather like a story that leaves me thinking about it afterwards. Jennifer Wiltsie did an excellent job with the narration, smoothly going from one character’s voice to another and delivering some lovely Victorian dialogue flawlessly to my American ears. All in all, I found it to be unique, imaginative, and quite fun.

Posted by Philip