News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
Narrator Karen Savage has finished her SFFaudio Challenge #5 audiobook, calling The Big Time, by Fritz Leiber, “A classic locked room mystery, in a not-so-classic setting.” And she’s right about that, this is an SF/Mystery classic.
Fritz Leiber says, in his 1982 introduction to The Big Time, that the novella was written over the course of exactly 100 days in 1956 and 1957.
For more on the plot |READ OUR REVIEW| of the Audible Frontiers edition. Savage has a great voice, this is an amazingly clear recording, and she affects a very serviceable set of intonations and accents for the half dozen or so characters with speaking parts in this excellent reading. My only complaint, as with the Audible edition, Savage does not use the tune of Lili Marlene for the reading of the lyrics at the end of chapter 3. Oh well.
The Big Time
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Karen Savage 16 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 44 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 16, 2011
|ETEXT| You can’t know there’s a war on—for the Snakes coil and Spiders weave to keep you from knowing it’s being fought over your live and dead body! First published in Galaxy Science Fiction’s March and April 1958 issues.
The SFFaudio Podcast #121 – Scott, Jesse, Tamahome and Gregg Margarite talk about Joe Haldeman’s novel Forever Peace.
Talked about on today’s show: The Forever War, Forever Peace, Forever Free, Haldeman’s experiences in South-East Asia (during the Vietnam War), William Mandella, Mandala, Julian Class, Philip Klass (William Tenn), racism, remotely controlled soldier robots, jacks, empathy, sharing menstruation, baldness as a fashion, the nanoforge (a molecular nanotechnology), caper, Stranger In A Stranger Land, heist, “two novellas smushed together”, John W. Campbell, Ben Bova, self help groups, one conceit that remains unexamined, magic machine (aka a sub-atomic replicator), Mack Reynolds, telepathy, asymmetric warfare, prescience, Libya, Pakistan, the two peaces of Forever Peace, what of the aftermath?, applying Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics to people, Gregg is a creature capable of killing, not everyone wants to be the black sheep, is 98% of humanity humanizable?, the earth where everyone is gay, the earth where everyone is a clone, “a giant of SF”, The Memory Of Earth by Orson Scott Card, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, do you grok the group?, “The Hammer of God”, Jonestown, David Koresh, a religion that requires you believe in evolution, punctuated equilibrium, treating the bible like a science book (is problematic), we’re gonna drill into you brain and then you won’t have those feelings anymore, a utopian dystopia, Malthusian theory, the singularity, A Clockwork Orange, moral conviction vs. physical restriction, Gregg needs his murderer (and we do too), Starship Troopers, false consciousness, Women’s Studies, The Tea Party,
“False consciousness is the Marxist thesis that material and institutional processes in capitalist society are misleading to the proletariat, and to other classes. These processes betray the true relations of forces between those classes, and the real state of affairs regarding the development of pre-socialist society”,
following orders (as false consciousness), Stockholm syndrome, identifying with your oppressor, why do people do things that are against their own interests?, Costa Rica, withholding technology vs. holding resources hostage, Plato’s cave, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, is Jesse making an argument for absolute truth?, what is truth?, “one person’s murder is another person’s dinner”, “God exists or he doesn’t exist”, “assuming we agree on the definition of God”, “we have a bedrock of truth”, Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction, “we’re here and we’re invading your software”, our perception of reality changes, “how can it not always be this way?”, “it’s The Matrix“, Gregg can find reasonable doubt in his own existence, Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am), René Descartes, “I doubt therefore I am”, Tama has no take, good and bad vs. right and wrong, a mass of conflicting impulses (ambivalence), Heinlein’s militaristic thinking vs. Haldeman’s militaristic thinking, Heinlein’s Future History series, religious conversion, telepathy vs. total immersion, Jonathan Swift, “you can’t reasons someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into”, there are two tenets in Greggism, what you believe doesn’t has to be true, Alan Moore’s personal made-up religion, Scott isn’t a Catholic because of feeling alone, Joseph Campbell “everything is true”, “he was born with a plowshare”, magical thinking, “that’s true for you and that’s fine”, a religious wacko who wants to end the world seems like a tired villain, Source Code, Moon is fantastic (but Source Code is not), the Norwegian whack job, can’t we find another kind of religion, Carl von Clausewitz, The Operative from Serenity (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), effective villains, Robert E. Lee, Adolph Hitler vs. Joseph Stalin vs. Mao Zedong, the Tehran Conference, “Uncle Joe”, Stalin’s ending was noir, Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton has a great (and dirty) villain, Orson Scott Card’s Buggers, Speaker For The Dead, Ender’s Game, zombies are like a force of nature, Heinleinian villains are not diabolical, the ultimate orbital platform, the English Empire, “besides we’re better than you”, why do English actors always play villains? American accents = movie stars, Vancouver is a science fiction ghetto, iambk audio, the proper pronunciation of “about” in Canada, shock vs. shark, accents are lazy ways of speaking, George Wilson (the narrator of Forever Peace), P.G. Wodehouse, Bertie and Jeeves, the secret language of (drunken) Cockneys, no stupid voices please (in audiobooks), if you hire Nicholson for you movie your movie is a Jack Nicholson movie, Gregg’s signature voice may lose him work, why does the narrative switch between first and third person throughout Forever Peace, Yes, Minister, Goodreads.com, senior civil servant (3rd person) vs. elected official (1st person), The Long Habit Of Living by Joe Haldeman, The Forever War is told in first person (right?)
The Lifeboat Mutiny is a part of Robert Sheckley’s “AAA Ace Series.” The series has eight stories, each involving two partners in the far future encountering various unusual problems. One fan on LibraryThing described the series as being about “two of the unluckiest fellas who ever set out to make a fortune” – I’m still exploring the series, but I note that some non-AAA Ace Sheckley stories also seem to fit into that category – stories like Warrior Race and Untouched By Human Hands!
I find X-Minus One’s shows to be very hit or miss, but this Robert Sheckley story completely works. In fact, I’ve used the script for The Lifeboat Mutiny in school. Kids love it, adults love it. My only nit-pick with this adaptation is that the actor playing the lifeboat is not nearly emotional enough – he totally underplays the scripted dialogue – when I do this part, I always play the lifeboat as highly emotional.
X-Minus One – The Lifeboat Mutiny
Based on the story by Robert Sheckley; Adapted by Ernest Kinoy; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: NBC Radio
Broadcast: September 11, 1956
Provider: Archive.org Two planetary surveyors purchase a second-hand lifeboat to survey a water planet not knowing that the ship contains an artificial intelligence created for a war five hundred years in the past.
First published in Galaxy Science Fiction’s 1955 issue with an illustration by Kossin:
Here’s The Middlebury Radio Theater‘s recording of the script too:
Confessor By Terry Goodkind; Read by Sam Tsoutsouvas
20 CDs – 24 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781423316589
Themes: / Fantasy / Series / Magic / War
The final novel in Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series begins in near-hopeless darkness. The hero of the series, Richard Rahl is not only a slave to the black hole of evil known as the Emperor Jagang, but he’s also been stripped of his magical powers, forced to play a murderous game rigged against him, and wakes to find an unhealthily devoted fan of another team trying to stab him to death. How can he possibly get free, save his wife, his friends, and his kingdom from millions of life-hating fanatics of the Imperial Order come to burn his followers from the earth?
The answer takes some doing to get to. Between you and the final resolution lie some brilliant set pieces; epic sequences of pulse-pounding battle action (and sports action in a game best described as naked football to the death with rocks); and some of the most glaciated, pace-killing, engine-gumming dialogue ever laid out on the slab of an otherwise well-paced story. Some of the characters are interesting and likable, but lord, don’t get them talking! They blather on about the principles of a well-lived life, the course of prophesy, and the evils of mindless devotion to religion so long, you wish you could conjure a little Wizard’s Fire to shorten the book.
Completing the tale also takes a healthy dose of credulity to accept a non-magical mensch getting up after two nights without sleep to play a brutal blood-sport for hours on end and then slice his way through a million-man army before hiking to the top of a mountain to fight his way through a packed room of elite warriors. But even more so, it takes a strong stomach for clinically detailed, lavishly prolonged violence against women. Apparently, it isn’t sufficient for Jagang to be bad; he has to be over-the-top, heinously Dark-Lord evil. What should be a quick, stark characterization draws on so long, it begins to feel like a creepy fetish.
This is the only novel of the entire series I have read, and I’m certainly glad of it. It was entertaining, overall, but I can’t imagine wading through ten-thousand pages of Goodkind’s uneven prose only to get to the slightly anticlimactic climax that Confessor brings. In sum, it wasn’t bad, but it isn’t good enough to be great, and certainly not good enough to cap a dozen books in a way I would have found satisfying.
The God Engines
By John Scalzi; Read by Christopher Lane
3 CDs – Approx. 3 Hours 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: December 2010
ISBN: 9781441890795
Themes: / Science Fiction / Fantasy / Religion / Galactic Civilization / Space Travel / War /
Captain Ean Tephe is a man of faith, whose allegiance to his lord and to his ship is uncontested. The Bishopry Militant knows this — and so, when it needs a ship and crew to undertake a secret, sacred mission to a hidden land, Tephe is the captain to whom the task is given. Tephe knows from the start that his mission will be a test of his skill as a leader of men and as a devout follower of his god. It’s what he doesn’t know that matters: to what ends his faith and his ship will ultimately be put — and that the tests he will face will come not only from his god and the Bishopry Militant, but from another, more malevolent source entirely… Author John Scalzi has ascended to the top ranks of modern science fiction with the best-selling, Hugo-nominated novels Old Man’s War and Zoe’s Tale. Now he tries his hand at fantasy, with a dark and different novella that takes your expectations of what fantasy is and does, and sends them tumbling. Say your prayers… and behold The God Engines.
The God Engines is the strongest John Scalzi audiobook since Old Man’s War |READ OUR REVIEW|. It provokes thought, flies off in an unexpected direction and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The setting is in an unnamed galaxy, at an unknown time. But space travel, interstellar communication, and bodily healing aren’t technological developments. Instead, they are derived from a rigorous faith in actual, existing gods! These gods are so real, so embodied, that there is one in the center of each starship. It lies their enslaved, guarded and harnessed so as to achieve the ends to which they are put. Command over these powerful beings is achieved by a combination of torture and reward. Their masters are human beings, members of a religion with their own completely manifested god. Their purpose is to war with other religions, enslave new gods and bring more human beings to the worship of their own god. It is an unending holy war, in a fully realized universe, and it works.
I like to see the examination of an interesting idea, without an endless parade of pointless activity to dilute its core of goodness. We have that in this book. There’s something very neat about the running of what is essentially the starship Enterprise on faith. To hear that an officer is changing his prayers to adjust what’s showing up on the viewscreen – that’s something definitely worth seeing. Scalzi’s universe is run on prayer, faith, and relgious belief. It’s a kind of realization of what religions always claim, but shown to be actually functioning in a replicable manner. It’s theology as physics. The whole story feels like it comes from the same place J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 came from. Where Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End came from. There’s an indisputable space opera with Lovecraft vibe to it, but unlike so much space opera, the thinking just isn’t mushy and placative. In fact, there was nary a moment where I wasn’t completely engaged with this made up Fantasy/SF tale. The storytelling is expertly intertwined with a careful exposition of the universe’s rules. This works to fully enrich the ideation without coming off as merely a writer going through a checklist. I’d love to see Scalzi, or any other SF writer, write a dozen more books just like this – take a break from the series universe, and write some more idea based SF. Take a simple little premise or vignette, throw in a few characters and have them explore the concomitant interestingness of that idea. The God Engines does exactly that. It shows, very simply what SF storytelling is supposed to look like. This audiobook stands well, on its own, though I could easily imagine it as one half of an old Ace Double. This is very good work. Well done Mr. Scalzi.
Narrator Christopher Lane has about five major characters to play with. The captain is commanding and thoughtful. The second in command is calm and loyal. The ship’s high priest (who also acts as a kind of political commissar) is jealous but clever. The one female role, a rook (which is kind of a cross between a ship’s whore and a priestess), is wise and womanly. But it’s the unnamed god’s voice that is the real standout. Lane’s god is tortured, twisted and devious. It is a very precise performance, one that allows for the sympathy Scalzi was aiming at. The art for the cover comes from Vincent Chong‘s illustration of the Subterranean Press edition.
The Big Time
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Suzanne Toren
4 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: August 2010
ISBN: 9781441875129
Sample: |MP3|
Themes: / Science Fiction / Mystery / Locked Room Mystery / Time Travel / Sex / Aliens / War / History /
Have you ever worried about your memory because it doesn’t seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? Have you ever thought you might be changing because of forces beyond your control? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, then you’ve had hints of the Change War. It’s been going on for a billion years and it’ll last another billion or so. Up and down the timeline, the two sides – “Spiders” and “Snakes” – battle endlessly to change the future and the past. Our lives, our memories, are their battleground. And in the midst of the war is the Place, outside space and time, where Greta Forzane and the other Entertainers provide solace and R and R for tired time warriors.The Big Time was first published in two two issues of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, March and April 1958.
When I finish reading an old Science Fiction novel like this one I pick-up my copy of The Dictionary Of Science Fiction Places (by Brian Stableford) and see if there’s an entry for it. There is one for The Big Time. It’s listed under “Place, The” on pages 238 and 239. Here are a couple of descriptive passages therefrom:
“[The Place is a] safe haven established outside the cosmos while infinity and eternity were undergoing the continual upheavals of the Change War, in order to serve as a Recuperation Station for soldiers fighting on the side of the Spiders against the Snakes. Its female staff were officially categorized as Entertainers and quite rightly thought of their work as nursing rather than whoredom.”
and
“The Place was midway in size and atmosphere between a fair-sized nightclub and a cramped Zeppelin hangar.”
As other reviewers have pointed out this is essentially a stage play, and as such, the stage for The Big Time is “The Place.” Now given that it won a Hugo Award, for the Best Novel of 1958, I’m kind of surprised how lightweight and compact The Big Time is. The entirety of the action takes place in just the one location and over a very short period of time. Adding to the oddness, it’s narrated in first person, by a resident/worker in what is essentially an quasi-bar-brothel (or bawdy house) for military personnel. That’s actually a very good thing in terms of storytelling as The Big Time is actually a locked room mystery tale, a mutiny and a variation on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter. The whole book is chock-full of allusions, historical details and notable quotations (one for each chapter in fact). The plot doesn’t really get rolling until about half-way through, at which point you’ve learned nearly enough to play along with the mystery aspect. I liked how it was resolved, and found that the process had me both suitably and appropriately buffaloed with it’s many Agatha Christie-style red-herrings.
There’s a nice description of this novel’s uniqueness on the Wikipedia entry: “The Big Time is a vast, cosmic back story, hidden behind a claustrophobic front story with only a few characters.” That’s it precisely. Now to the question I turned over and over in my mind after hearing it. “Is The Big Time a classic for the ages?” Upon long consideration I’m thinking that it is not. It is a good story, but it’s nowhere near that vaunted class of SF greatness. The idea of time travelers fighting a war across time and space isn’t a particularly original or interesting. And it isn’t an idea that is thoroughly exhausted in this story. But, for what this story is, and how it’s done, The Big Time is definitely worth reading if you’re in a mood for a locked room tale.
I’m sad to report a couple of minor blemishes mar this otherwise excellently produced audiobook version. First there’s the music. Each disc in the CD set ends and begins with music that absolutely does not fit the novel’s atmosphere. This problem may be entirely avoided by getting the original Audible Frontiers version, or perhaps mostly (or completely) eliminated with the MP3-CD edition.
Second, more serious, and entirely unavoidable, there is a lyrical song in the text, which I will reproduce to illustrate the problem. This comes at the end of Chapter 3:
Standing in the Doorway just outside of space,
Winds of Change blow ’round you but don’t touch your face;
You smile as you whisper tenderly,
“Please cross to me, Recuperee;
The operation’s over, come in and close the Door.”
Given the number of references I got, this one must be Fritz Leiber’s nod to the immortal Lili Marleen. But Suzanne Toren, who is otherwise absolutely fantastic, doesn’t use Lilli Marlene as the melody. And that is a small, but very real shame.
By the way, here are three of several cool Virgil Finlay illustrations from the original Galaxy publication:
The Big Time
X-Minus One – The Lifeboat Mutiny
