Customer Reviews

Mini-Masterpieces of Science Fiction

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mini-Masterpieces of Science Fiction is in a full expression a solid; in the fact splendid collection to have in your personal library. Now you might not want this if you are not a Sci-Fi fanatic. I know that some people have bought this small collection were completely outraged towards the narrators sounding awful or not in tone with today's digital crystal clear sound; or even the stories here aren't as strong or as inspirational for the real Die-Hard fans out there.

But I would like to tell you that this album was the very first start of Allan Kaster's greatest science fiction stories or his authentic and absolute sheer devotion to everything that is Science Fiction; or something to everything in between the Sci-Fi genre and the lines. Of course this audio book release was made in 2008 before High Def or Bose Sound came into being and the recordings of the narrations are limited and sometimes do sound distant; but not that much. You barely notice the gap of what is basic recording sound and what is digital recording sound.

Fast forward to today and the company that commissions Infinivox had gutted or blasted out all of the kinks from their recording engineering. Thus making themselves a private powerhouse to contend with against the other bigger audio book publishers in the world.
Infinivox's main producer Audiotexttapes has made their narrators' voices sound more specialized and not too high, bumpy or even distance and squeaky like in earlier album releases. It does have the non-digital sound or even our familiar 25+ Bit Digital Sound system like we know and hear everyday on all of the media we listen from. But still it does have a great volume of trying to tell a great story and these stories have great storytelling, emotion, imagination and yes even a tight and well understood plot.

The stories on this small anthology are good, no I meant to say fantastic or astonishing. From the terrific to the most imaginative and each story or a few do in a strange way touches the human soul. Even and the human heart in ways that most Sci-Fi tales don't usually do that.

This collection features never-before-released materials from the genre's own grand-masters to even the newly emerging Sci-Fi writers. Some we know while others we have just discovered over the past decade. Each tale is performed by Audiotexttapes' own narrators including veteran narrator Tom Dheere and yes Vanessa Hart which have done an excellent job in this audio collection.

Of course we have enough stories all read by Dheere who does a superb job with Far as You Can Go, Bright Red Star and even Gene Wars. Of course he is Infinivox's main reader and does do a great job in later releases of the series of Science Fiction Stories. But to tell you the truth we have enough of Dheere since he is now releasing his fifth anthology album with Audiotexttapes, well we want something different.

Well we got something different and nice. Vanessa Hart does much of the telling in this anthology more than Dheere. She has done a very excellent recital on some of the stories and she has done great readings with The Year's Top 10 Tales of Science fiction with Kij Johnson's 28 Monkeys, Also the Abyss and The Year's Top 10 Tales of Science Fiction 2 with Sara Genge's As Woman Fight.

Except those are later release albums in 2009 and 2010. Mini Masterpieces of Science Fiction is the first and she this album is her first performances. Here we get to hear her first recitations which aren't really bad. The best stories that Hart does is Grandma, Lambing Season and even Last Contact which all seemed to have a strange sense of capturing the female character in each story. Hart has this great nasal, sexy voice that it really makes you concentrate on each word that she is saying and without consequence. Tom Dheere and others like Sue Bilich, Amy Bruce and J. P. Linton all have great voices too; but it is Hart who really slams a nail into someone's spirit and mind. She makes them become a part of the story, hearing her really made me listen. I mean really listen and really understood what she was reading or even telling.

The best of the best in these stories are Carol Emshwitler's Grandma read by Vanessa Hart. Grandma has an amazing tone towards it and tells of a girl living with her grandmother in the southwest who happens to be an ex-superhero. Now the story rotates around the girl as she tries to imagine that her Grandma's great and youthful days are long gone and she faces her mortality.

Greg van Eekhout's Far as You Can Go read by Tom Dheere is a strange tale towards a boy and his robot in a badly polluted world. Though this story it's not a Sci-Fi tale but more to be a mixture of Fantasy with a little of Science Fiction inside it. Strange and very, very mysterious towards the whole story but like I said a great story to emerge into.
The relaxing-sci-fi classic Lambing Season by Molly Gloss read by Hart tells a story of a Sheepherder deep in the mountains. The she encounters a crashed starship and its rather peculiar pilot. It does have a great human touch in it and if you like stories that show more emotion than the strange than Lambing Season is a story for you.

The tragic tale of Stephen Baxter's first ever release of his story Last Contact also read by Hart. It has a dream like environment towards it and it does have real disastrous end to it and a surprising twist of what all of the alien signals in the universe are trying to say.

The third best are Elizabeth Bear's The Something-Dreaming Game which is also read by Hart is weird and also not to be listen towards the young since it does have the vision of mere committing suicide and the peer pressures of kids and the notion of them trying to die so they can communicate towards another world. Joe Haldeman's None So Blind read by Dheere is a little too strange for my taste but the story is both creepy and well...romantic. It tells of a story about a super intelligent boy and his blind soul mate during their lives as kids to adults.

Bud Sparhawk's Bright Red Star read by Dheere is a true heartrending tale of super-enhanced soldiers trying to save a world from any murdered by a merciless enemy.

Paul McAuley's Gene Wars also read by Dheere is a little odd also, like some of the others in this collection though it does have a little hint of humanity towards it.
The surprising story is the last one in this collection. It really makes a punch in the listener's Physique and its Bruce McAllister's Kin. Read by Tom Dheere though try to go around that the recording of his voice is not as good; though the story is great and very well written.

Like I said, a great collection to have.

Poorly written, depressing or pointless stories. The only one worth hearing was the last one by Greg van Eekhout. They were very very bad and we were on a road trip stuck listening to them hoping each one would be better. The only good thing I can say is the people reading the stories did a good job for what they had to work with.