Customer Reviews

METAtropolis

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I haven't read SciFi in a long time, though I'm a lover of Star Wars, Star Trek, Battle Star Galactica and Stargate so I was eager to give this a listen, especially since I'm pretty familiar with three of the readers, Michael Hogan, Kandyse McClure and Alessandro Juiliani, as they're all BSG cast members.

The first story in the series started off a little slow, but they had a lot of info to get out to the listeners. These five stories take place about fifty years in the future, countries have collapsed and the lucky live in a loosely aligned system of city states. To live outside isn't good. The second story picks up the pace and it continues through out.

At times the authors were just a tiny bit preachy about being green, but it didn't offend me and being green in these stories fits in. The future painted here is a bit bleak, but I could imagine myself living in it. These authors have woven a set of stories into a future that drew me in. They, with the help of the readers, made the whole think believable.

If you're into science fiction, you'll enjoy this and even if you're not, I think you'll find more here to like then you might think and you'll certainly find a lot to think about.

From a conceptual point of view, I liked the proposed vision of this work. The line up of authors had me excited. Upon listening, I grew frustrated and annoyed with the first 3 stories and eventually, got to enjoy the last 2 stories.

My message to the authors is to remember first and foremost to tell a good story. I felt like, for several of the authors, the priority was to bash me over the head with beliefs about global warming, capitalism, and what I am doing wrong today that will cause the terrible conditions the world is in in the stories. And that took me right out of the story... instead as I listened, I questioned beliefs and conclusions in the underlying structure of the universe in the stories and was busy doing that and not caught up in the plot. Whatever the authors' intents were, this is how it came through to me.

For me... the last 2 stories were enjoyable and well written. Whether or not I agreed with the underlying premise, I enjoyed the stories, got caught up in the plot, and was exposed in a pleasant way to the universe that it felt like the first 3 authors were trying to force feed to me. Whether or not all 5 stories are messages I and others need to hear clearly, the last 2 stories had a much better chance of being 'heard'.

Metatropolis is a collection of short stories about a fictional future world in which the United States government is much weaker and local governments have had to shoulder most of the responsibility for governing. We get to see 4 future settings in this anthology - Cascadia in the American Northwest, Detroit, New St. Louis and Scandinavia. While the U.S. government is much weaker, the role of technology has grown much stronger. There are virtual on-line worlds and cellphones are everywhere and even more plugged in than they are now. The five authors sat down and mapped out the ground rules of this future world and than separated to write their stories. John Scalzi edited the collection and was the last one to write a story. He specifically tailored his story to fill in the blanks left by the other four.

So far, so good but what about the individual stories?

What's good is pretty good, what's bad is real, real bad.

The first story is "In the Forests of the Night," by Jay Lake. It is bad. The worst of the bunch. The story concerns a messiah-like figure called Tyger Tyger who arrives at Cascadia, a city of anti-technology greens in the Cascades in the Washington/Oregon area. The messiah-figure concept was done poorly, the anti-capitalist, anti-technology, anti-religion angle was silly (for example, in one scene creationists storm the geology department of a university and kill all of the geologists). I doubt that Lake actually understands the meaning of the political term "Libertarian" and he certainly overuses the phrase "reputation economics" - in fact the concept is bantered around in the book so often that you'd think this was a new idea. Nah - just overuse of a cool-sounding phrase. The government of Cascadia is so loose and yet so complicated that it reminded me of the peasant collective government in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Special Edition) described by Dennis the Peasant ("Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"). Lake's premise that you can hide an entire city under the basalt and loam (two more overused words in this story - buy a thesaurus, man!) and keep all of the heat created by people just living hidden from heat-detecting satellites is so silly that I have to wonder why this wasn't sent back for a re-write. 1 star for this story.

The second story is set in Detroit. It is "Stochasti-City," by Tobias Bickell. I enjoyed this one. It explored the conditions of America in this world the authors created and the story was in and of itself interesting as well. 4 stars

"The Red in the Sky is Our Blood" by Elizabeth Bear is the third story. It is forgettable except that I noted that it was the victim of long soliloquies about the evils of globalization. 1 star.

"Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis" by John Scalzi is the fourth story, and in my opinion, the best of the bunch by far. It had the most important thing that any story has to have - good characters. As a bonus, the slacker is kinda likable and we do get to learn even more about the world these authors created because, as I already noted, he specifically tailored his story to fill in the blanks left by the other four. 5 stars.

"To Hide from Far Celenia" is the last story. Written by Karl Schroeder, it builds on the notion that people can and will retreat into a video game world. This is not news - people do that now with online games. There are already online economies. They'll do it even more with the addition of 3D video glasses that overlay the online world over the real one. The story just didn't really go anywhere and the authors comments on economics are a joke. Too many long monologues - at points it was like listening to a half-baked graduate dissertation on economics and computer technology. I only finished it because I had already invested so much time listening to the other stories. I have to give it 1 star.

So - 5 stories with scores of 1 + 4 + 1 + 5 + 1. That equals 12. 12/5 = 2.4

Total score 2 out of 5 stars.

Common framework stories exist. "Thieves' World" has served as a framework for multiple anthologies since 1978. One thing that such anthologies have in common is that the different styles of the authors can make the anthology seem uneven.

METAtropolis contains five stories by five different authors, each introduced by editor and author John Scalzi. Though I expected METAtropolis to be in a single city, the authors set their stories in several locations. There are connections between the stories, but each story stands on its own.

The first story is "In the Forests of the Night" by Jay Lake, narrated by actor Michael Hogan. Lake introduces Tyger Tyger as he attempts to enter Cascadiopolis. Tyger is charismatic and intelligent and quickly becomes influential and popular.

Puzzling were the parallel stories. A second, female person boldly enters Cascadiopolis, following Tyger. Then there is Bashar, a military leader of Cascadiopolis. Other significant characters are introduced, all centered on Tyger. In addition to the attempted character development, we learn much about Cascadiopolis, including tidbits that hint at bigger things never exploited.

John Scalzi tells us in the introduction to the story that the reason this story is first is that it provides the most description of the Cascadiopolis metatropolis. Unfortunately, that detail bogs the story down. Tyger's story contains interesting elements, but we deal with so much detail that the Tyger story often fades into the background and I became bored. Worse, by the time we get to the end of the story I was so bored that I actually no longer cared about Tyger. I was thankful that the story was over.

Bottom line: "In the Forests of the Night" is an eminently forgettable story that requires too much energy to wade through for the little value that it adds to METAtropolis. Though the story is coherent, because of the pacing and complexity, I give it two stars out of five.

Things look up with the second story, "Stochasti-City" by Tobias Buckell, narrated by Scott Brick. The hero of our story is an ex-military bouncer who finds himself in the center of plots and schemes. Our hero is initially a victim, but he finally takes charge of his life and works toward something better, all the while revealing some of the complexity of societal evolution in metatropolis. I found myself concerned about the hero of our story and was able to put myself quickly in his position.

The one downside to this story is the underlying messages. Yes, greed is bad, carbon footprint is important, and cars are evil. Unfortunately, Buckell repeated these not-so-subtle messages multiple times and eventually I tired of them. I really did not need to have the evils of internal combustion powered cars rubbed in my face five or ten times to get the message.

Other than the not-so-hidden propaganda, this story was quite interesting and intriguing. I give this story four stars out of five.

The third story, Elizabeth Bear's "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood," read by Kandyse McClure, contained an interesting barter system, in combination with communes and a raft of other philosophical concerns. Sometimes the detail got in the way of the very interesting and complex story. This story points out one of the consistent flaws in this concept: the authors often seemed so caught up in describing their dystopic vision of the future that they forgot that their primary purpose was to tell a story. This story rates three out of five stars.

This collection finishes strong.

The fourth story is John Scalzi's "Utere Nihil non Extra Quiritationem Suis," read by Alessandro Juliani, which I think means something like "Everything but the Squeal."

Scalzi tells the story of Benjy the slacker, who seems to think the world should revolve around him. The reality of life strikes Benjy when he comes of age and is required to get a job or literally get out - of the city. Sadly, Benjy has spent most of his life sucking off the creativity and labor of others and he finds that his only skill (besides being a leech on society) involves pigs. Benjy soon learns that he and pigs have much in common.

Though there are serious undertones to this story, it is quite humorous and reminds me strongly of Robert A. Heinlein. Benjy realizes that he does want to be a good citizen and realizes that his skills are far greater than what he knew he had. Be prepared to laugh and enjoy the best story of this group, the only five star story in the bunch.

The last story has moments where it was cumbersome, but contains a concept so intriguing that it may have been the story that made me think the most. Karl Schroeder's "To Hie from Far Celenia," read by Stefan Rudnicki, describes, as I thought to myself as I listened to it for the third time, circles within circles within circles. You have to listen to the story to understand why I described the story in this way. The closest parallel I have is the plot of "Three Days of Condor," where there was a network within the U.S. intelligence community with its own agenda and rules. Apply to a virtual world where there worlds within worlds. The concept is dizzying and difficult to follow in parts. Reading might have been easier than listening. Four stars out of five for this one.

If you add the totals and divide, you end up with 3.6 stars, which means that this collection is closer (by a small amount) to Amazon's four stars than three stars, but only barely. The struggle is not so much with the rating, but the price. My thought: if you can find this collection for half the normal list price, it is probably worth having. Otherwise, you have to be a fan of audio books and the authors to choose this collection.

Good luck!

I had high hopes for this because I have read and books from several of the authors. Sadly, I don't think it represents their best work.

The first story set the mood... and maybe I am just dumb but I didn't 'get' it. Yes, there was some lovely imagery, descriptions that I could picture so clearly in my mind's eye. It was the story that lacked. What exactly was happening? And more importantly, what was the point?

Overall, this is my biggest problem with these stories. There is a message here, a overbearingly presented 'Capitalism is bad, Environmentalism is good' that overlaid all aspects of each story and frankly it spoiled them. It was hard to follow the stories when this message kept getting in the way.

I stopped and started listening a lot because I just couldn't relate to the characters and thus I could not enjoy the stories.

I completely enjoyed this listen. In fact I might also grab the Kindle version to read it. I wish there were Kindle/Audible bundles as mentioned on Mobileread.com never thought of that before. But I won't spend the money on the Kindle version as long as the Agency Model Price fixing model in in place by the Price-Fix 5 publisher cabal. Still that has no affect on my rating of this book in general, that's a separate matter

Anyway, the story(ies) are captivating as well as missing the mark. I felt like it was sort of a dystopian Twilight Zone anthology. The stories which worked for me, really worked and even those which were not quite a fit for me, at least exposed me to writers I might never have been aware of prior to this listen.

The reading of the stories is great and I was quite pleased with Scalzi's interjections throughout the Audible version. He has a wonderfully conversational manner in his speaking. I guess that could be assumed as I find his writing quite accessible without being trite and banal. In many ways he reminds me of what could have come from Edward Abbey and Robert Heinlein had a love child. I know, heck of an image, huh? I might never sleep again!! hahahaha...

I liked this well enough to use another credit on the sequel. Though I need to listen to this version a couple more times as there are always times when you tune out an audiobook or use them to fall asleep. Not saying these are cures for insomnia just that the readers are quite relaxing though the stories require "active/engaged listening".

I don't want to add any spoilers other than is you like speculative-societal science fiction you should enjoy either the Audible listen or the print edition...just don't support the over-priced price fixed Kindle versions until the publishers come to their senses. I am sure over time the Kindle editions will drop in price but this books might be a case of the printed editions also paying the celebrity readers of the audiobook which might explain the higher than normal price for the print version...oops, a rant...hahaha...seriously though this is a book worth breaking that vow to read if reading s your preferred option. ;)

METAtropolis is a collection of science fiction stories set in a shared world. The first story, "In the Forests of the Night," was narrated my Michael Hogan, from the newer Battlestar Galactica series. This story does most of the work to set up the shared world, but it is interesting, and Michael Hogan does a good job telling it.

I liked the concept of the story "Stochasti City," where people abandon the concept of commuting to work, and by association, their neighborhoods, and "The Red in the Sky is Our Blood," is a nice character driven story about riding a bicycle through a city, which is nearly impossible due to the complete failure of the city's infrastructure. I thought the story by John Scalzi had some funny parts, and was interesting, and the last story, "To Hie From Far Cilenia," was full of action, and a great ending to the compilation.

I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks, but I really enjoyed listening to these stories. The combined skills of the authors and narrators made this a science fiction audiobook that I would highly recommend.

METAtropolis is an intriguing and fun effort from some of my favorite authors, and a great entry in the new urban fantasy genre that has been steadily growing over the past few years. The world of METAtropolis is one where our once-great metropolises are dead or dying. New technologies are helping people create new cities in which to live, or are driving them away to build a safe haven from the tech they can't or won't understand. The writing is crisp and imaginative, the stories range from economic theory to political intrigue to violent civil strife, all contained within this one world specially invented for this audiobook. While I believe this would've done better as a paperback anthology, or something similar, this is a very good piece of work and I would recommend it to any sci-fi or urban fantasy fan.

Metatropolis is a collection of short stories set in the same post-America future. Each is written by a different author and read by a different person. I really disliked the first reader - monotonic and low voice made it difficult to understand while riding in the car. The other readers were fine.

The individual ideas for the stories were all very unique (though there seemed to be a common theme of being 'green') and I liked the various perspectives they gave on the world of Metatropolis. A couple I wished were novels all by themselves, and overall I think Metatropolis would have been better served as a larger collection.

As an audio book, this 8-disc collection rates 4.5 stars. The narrators are generally excellent (although the falsettos used by male narrators for female characters get annoying at times). My biggest complaint about the audio book is that there is no table of contents (either printed on the box or included as an insert) that gives the novellas' titles, authors, or disc locations.

Unfortunately, the high quality of the audio book doesn't overcome the weakness of the book itself. METATROPOLIS is a five-author collaboration, which began with some brainstorming sessions to invent a future world of evolved cities, and ended with the authors going home to write five separate novellas set in the invented world. As always seems to happen with these group writing projects, the novellas taken together don't cohere into an organized whole, and none of the novellas are particularly memorable as stand-alone stories. All five novellas are weakened by the need to include lengthy explanations about the workings of the evolved cities that form the basic setting.

As a collection of stories, METATROPOLIS rates 2.5 to 3.0 stars, because the future world is rather depressing. All of the viewpoint characters seem to be seeking escape from their lives in the evolved cities, and from the authorities who run the cities. And they do this by hiding in small groups in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, joining up with underground sharer-recyclers, making the best of an unpleasant job as an urban pig farmer, or immersing themselves in alternative reality that is superimposed on and played out in the real world. The stories are filled with green living ideals and cliches.

All but the last novella (by Karl Schroeder) seem to be aimed at the usual preteen or teenaged male science fiction fan. However, fans of the book METATROPOLIS should find this audio book version to be an enjoyable listening experience.