science fiction – Page 93

SFBRP #151: Time Travel Special, part 1 – Mark Twain – A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Monday, January 30, 2012Sunday, November 18, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Episode #151 of The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast is a special episode on Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and similar time travel tales. It is both special and strange. First it’s strange because it’s the first part of a two part discussion of time travel and not a regular book review. Secondarily it is special because I participated in it!

Or as Luke puts it:

Time Travel Special part 1: Luke and Jesse discuss A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain as a jumping off point for the topic of “A being out of time.”

|MP3|

Podcast feed: http://www.sfbrp.com/?feed=podcast

Discussed on the show:
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, Smoke by Donald E. Westlake, romance and time travel, science fiction’s hold on time travel, the process of time travel vs. the man out of time, Army Of Darkness, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is totally political, retellings and abridgements of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, framing stories, “a dispute with crowbars”, the LibriVox audiobook edition, 1889 illustrations on Gutenberg.org, the Blackstone Audio audiobook, Stuart Langton, Yankee vs. English accents, the Arthurian characters, Idiocracy, taking the piss out of the British, a very thin satire, The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein, The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman, the effect on electricity on progress, Thomas Edison, dynamite, SFBRP #100, Then End Of Eternity by Isaac Asimov, comparing the 19th century man with the 21st century man, smartness man and the most moral man, democracy, “what we really need are newspapers”, the tyrannies of monarchy and religion, pick your own oppression, the man from the past comes to the present, adventures, “the Vulcan project”, great insults, Sandy’s reproach, “Mark Twain is fucking hilarious”, the characters bamboozle each other (and the reader too), attributed to Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Will Rogers, Groucho Marx, “he is his own target”, occupy Wall Street, Ray Nelson’s Eight O’Clock In The Morning, John Carpenter’s They Live, the 1%, the Robber Barons, Carnegie and Nobel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is an essential adult read!, “you think you might know this book, but really you don’t know this book”, Luke gives it 4 out of 5 stars, sfbrp.com/episode-lists, feedback from #150 (ebooks, audiobooks and paperbooks)

After The Explosion

Protection / Capitalism

The Chruch, The King, The Nobleman, The Freeman

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Mayberry

Thursday, January 26, 2012 Julie

SFFaudio Review

The Dragon Factory: A Joe Ledger Novel
By Jonathan Maberry; Read by Ray Porter
16 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio via Audible.com
Published: 2011
Themes: / Science Fiction / Cloning / Genetics / Mayhem /

“Detective Ledger?” he said, and held out an ID case. “NSA.”

“How do you spell that?”

Joe Ledger’s back.

In Patient Zero, (SFFaudio review here) he saved the world from a zombie apocalypse and Muslim terrorists. Almost single handed.

How will he do on the island of Dr. Moreau?

In The Dragon Factory Joe is evading government agents trying to shut down the DMS, is the only man alive to have defeated genetically engineered super warriors, and is romancing his beautiful fellow agent Grace Courtland.

And that’s just in the first few chapters.

Once again, Jonathan Maberry weaves a threat we know with a threat from fiction. A mad scientist (Cyrus) is using genetic experiments to mold the world in a way that will have horrific results for the population at large. Did I mention he’s German? And enjoys cloning as a light pastime?

Meanwhile, a pair of amoral, super intelligent, albino twins are mixing and matching genetics to create creatures of myth and monsters from your worst nightmares.

Joe’s got to find and stop all of them before the “Extinction Wave” doomsday program counts down to zero and releases havoc on the world. With a little help from Top, Bunny, Grace, and the enigmatic Mr. Church, of course.

I enjoy the way that Maberry mashes up several genres, with tongue in cheek, and produces a pulp fiction style, action-packed roller coaster ride that keeps me on the edge of my seat.

This book tells a good portion of the story from the crazed villains’ point of view, to good effect. I really love the dysfunctional family of super-villains where the children have disappointed the father by not having enough “vision” and the kids have giant “daddy” issues.

Maberry also dug just a bit deeper than I expected by contrasting the villainous family with Eighty-Two the clone who Cyrus loves most but who fails every psych test in being “acceptable” (as his henchman, Otto, puts it). I didn’t stop to think about what that meant when filtered through the horrific mindsets that Otto and Cyrus have, but the result was an interesting surprise that led to some interesting musing about free will versus evil and nature versus nurture. It isn’t that deep but I still found its inclusion refreshing in a book of this sort.

As in Patient Zero, Ray Porter’s narration was spot on, voicing Joe Ledger as if he were the man himself, with slight variations applied to other characters to make them come alive equally well. I’d rather hear these books narrated than read them myself just for the sheer enjoyment of Porter’s style and emphasis.

Make no mistake, The Dragon Factory is a straight-up thriller without a lot of twists and turns in plot. You read it for the hunt, for the action, for the adventure. You also read it for the twists of humor, the pulp fiction style, and the monsters. Especially for the monsters.

It’s a good time at high speed. What more can you ask?

Posted by Julie D.

Stage play of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother in San Francisco

Thursday, January 19, 2012Wednesday, January 18, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

An upcoming episode of The SFFaudio Podcast will be a discussion of Little Brother by Cory Doctorow |READ OUR REVIEW|. The audiobook is available from Random House Audio (not through audible).

I reviewed it back in 2008 but in listening to it again it seems even more relevant today than it was then.

And while we’re on the subject this stage play adaptation, it opened last week in San Fransisco, looks really terrific!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Drama Pod: The Thing In The Attic by James Blish

Sunday, January 15, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Previously available as a LibriVox audiobook, and now mysteriously not, Gregg Margarite’s narration of The Thing In The Attic is available from The Drama Pod! This is one of James Blish’s “Pantropy” tales and makes up one quarter of his fixup novel The Seedling Stars. Here’s a snippet from the Wikipedia entry on pantropy:

“Pantropy is a hypothetical process of space colonization in which rather than terraforming other planets or building space habitats suitable for human habitation, humans are modified (for example via genetic engineering) to be able to thrive in the existing environment.”

Other examples of pantropic fiction include Olaf Stapledon’s Last And First Men, Clifford D. Simak’s Desertion, Poul Anderson’s Call Me Joe and Frederick Pohl‘s Man Plus.

The Thing In The Attic
By James Blish; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 83 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: The Drama Pod
Podcast: January 8, 2012
Honath the Pursemaker is a heretic. He doesn’t believe the stories in the Book of Laws which claims giants created his tree-dwelling race. He makes his opinion known and is banished with his infidel friends to the floor of the jungle where dangers abound. Perhaps he’ll find some truth down there. First published in the July, 1954 edition of If: Worlds of Science Fiction magazine.

The Thing In The Attic by James Blish - illustrated by Paul Orban
The Thing In The Attic - illustration by Paul Orban

Posted by Jesse Willis

AboutSF AUDIO: Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Wednesday, January 11, 2012Saturday, September 2, 2017 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Day Million by Frederik Pohl - illustration by Jack Gaughan

In 1966 Rogue published one of the classics of 20th century SF, a short story named Day Million. It is a story that feels both incredibly old and stunningly fresh at the same time. The oldness is caused by its addressing itself to its contemporary audience, a very specific group, the heterosexual men who read men’s magazines. Apparently this group drove red sports cars, drank fine spirits, didn’t care much for “queers”, and most importantly liked looking at sexy women in the pages of something called “magazines.” The plot of the story itself is a romance, set in a world not entirely unlike our own, but also one of the most astonishingly futuristic I’ve ever read. Despite the audience having caught up, at least in these parts, to the liberal mindset Pohl seems to have had in 1966, the story is probably less accessible now because of its need to address its heterosexual 1960s male audience.

In Robert Silverberg’s Worlds Of Wonder (aka Science Fiction 101) Silverberg wrote of Day Million: “Each paragraph of the story – each sentence, in fact – demonstrates that Pohl has devoted most of his life to attaining the broadest and deepest possible understanding of the universe as we comprehend it today.”

Day Million is a five page story that shows the power of Science Fiction.

The podcast below features Frederik Pohl’s own narration, made specifically for AboutSF AUDIO.

Day Million
By Frederik Pohl; Read by Frederik Pohl
1 |MP3| – Approx. 19 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: About SF
Podcast: June 6, 2011
First published in the February-March 1966 issue of Rogue.

Podcast feed: http://aboutsf.podomatic.com/rss2.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review Of Mindstar Rising (Greg Mandel, #1) By Peter F. Hamilton

Friday, January 6, 2012Saturday, January 7, 2012 Tamahome

SFFaudio Review

Mindstar Rising (Greg Mandel, #1)
By Peter F. Hamilton; Read by Toby Longworth
Audible Download – 14 Hours 52 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: December 1st 2011
Themes: / Science Fiction / Mystery / Global Warming / Psychic Abilities

It’s the 21st century, and global warming is here to stay, so forget the way your country used to look. And get used to the free market, too – the companies possess all the best hardware, and they’re calling the shots now. In a world like this, a man open to any offers can make out just fine.

A man like Greg Mandel for instance, who’s psi-boosted, wired into the latest sensory equipment, carrying state-of-the-art weaponry – and late of the English Army’s Mindstar Battalion. As the cartels battle for control of a revolutionary new power source, and corporate greed outstrips national security, tension is mounting to boiling point – and Greg Mandel is about to face the ultimate test.

This is an older Peter F. Hamilton novel, first published in 1993. It’s relatively short compared to his later books. Just this year it got reprinted in America with Quantum Murder as one book. (I guess thick books sell more?) It has also just gotten the audio treatment from Audible Frontiers. Peter F. Hamilton is kind of a potboiler sf writer, and yet he’s really smart. He seems to put a lot of research into his scenes, including some science. Sometimes I feel like he’s giving too many details compared to someone like Joe Haldeman, and I get a little restless. Maybe it’s my fault and I’m getting confused, which is easier to do in an audiobook. But then something shocking or intense happens, and it keeps me going. Plus his character development is above average for a genre writer. And he doesn’t shy away from sex or violence as much as other writers. I feel like he writes for adults. If you thought the Night’s Dawn or Void trilogies had too many fantasy elements, you might prefer this series. It is more straight science fiction. That’s assuming you don’t consider psychic abilities to be fantasy. At least they’re framed here in a scientific way. You may encounter some libertarian political messages as well. The setting is a post global warming world where a Leftist government has left England in shambles. It will become important to the plot.

I happen to know that Hamilton is a plotter and outlines in advance. I experienced the ‘Connie Willis effect’ while reading — I wasn’t sure why a certain character or location was introduced, but then it all tied together in the end. The last three or four hours here really cooked. He can describe beam weapons and explosions well. (Compare the end of his The Neutronium Alchemist with the end of Samuel R. Delany’s Nova.) Although I caution you there’s a somewhat grisly escape. And I don’t like the word ‘tropes’, but some of the ‘cool stuff’ you’ll see in this novel are mind uploading, cybernetic brain enhancement, and genetically enhanced animals.

No messing.

Posted by Tamahome