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Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands
Edited by: Holly Black and Ellen Kushner
Performances by: MacLeod Andrews, Cassandra Campbell, Ellen Kushner, and Holly Black
Length: 18 hours and 8 minutes
Release date: 10 April 2012

Review by Dave Thompson: Bordertown Lives!

I feel in love with Welcome to Bordertown well before I actually read any of the stories. In her introduction, Terri Windling explains how Bordertown came to be: In the 80s, fantasy meant epic – primarily riffs on Tolkien, talking animals, and Sword and Sorcery. Windling was living in NYC, having conversations with writers and editors about mythology while punk music pounding at the bar stage. And when she was given the task of creating a shared world anthology, she had the idea to tap both a sense of rebellion and of tradition, and blend them into something different. Today, we call it Urban Fantasy, but at the time, it didn’t have a name, and it’s easy to forget how unique it was back then. [MORE:]

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Article and Interview by Dave Thompson

For the general public, Tim Pratt is one of the best kept secrets in fantasy fiction. I say this not just as someone who loves to read (and listen!) to Tim’s work, but as someone who who has bought his stories to be featured at PodCastle, a podcast run by Anna Scwhind and myself. Tim creates interesting characters who always feel real, and typically puts them in a world similar to ours, with several very subtle differences. At a young age, Tim discovered he could entertain himself with his own writing, and has never stopped, becoming quite prolific. He’s written and sold over a hundred short stories (it wouldn’t surprise me if by the time this is posted, it’ll be 200), and has written fifteen novels, including the Marla Mason books (as T.A. Pratt), and The Constantine Affliction as T. Aaron Payton.

A year ago, I got to read Tim Pratt’s incredible contemporary fantasy fiction novel Briarpatch. As soon as I started reading it, I completely fell in love. Also, I knew it was a story that my voice was a good fit for. I’d been curious about taking a shot at reading audiobooks for a couple years now, so I emailed Tim and asked him if there were any plans for an audiobook. This … maybe isn’t the best way to go about becoming an audiobook narrator. But I knew Tim and felt comfortable asking him, and I felt comfortable that if he didn’t like the idea, he’d tell me.

And so, this past summer, I spent just about every free moment I had recording Tim’s amazing book. (The recording process could probably be a whole other post.) [Editor’s note: Why yes, Dave, it could be a whole other post. Thanks for volunteering.] We used ACX, which was very easy to work with. When I turned everything in, I kept waiting for Tim to tell me that he wanted me to do something different (maybe even the whole thing). Instead, he told me how happy he was with it, and how much he liked some of the character voices. (Dave’s note: I am not Roy Dotrice or Jim Dale. I have a very minimalistic approach to reading, which is part of why I knew I could read this one.)

And now, the book is out! It’s even got a review! A positive one! People have bought it! Yay! I feel pretty lucky, to be completely honest, to have recorded Briarpatch at all, let alone as my first audiobook.

When I told Sam about all this, he suggested I interview myself about the process. Luckily, thus far, he’s settled for me interviewing author Tim Pratt, who is decidedly more interesting!

INTERVIEW:

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Narrated by David Colacci for Brilliance Audio

Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins

Release Date: 06-12-12 

Review by Dave Thompson: “Why don’t you figure out where we’re going to put all your goddamn comic books!”

This is going to be something of a departure from the other reviews I’ve done here, and I hope you all will indulge me. 

Memory is a funny thing. I first read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay when it came out in hardback. I was studying English in college, and for whatever reason, despite my love of comic books and science fiction and fantasy, I had started to feel like escapism was a dirty word. But I was at a local Borders Bookstore, and I saw the cover of a masked hero punching Hitler in the jaw, and I was in love before I even read the description on the dust-jacket: With Hitler in power in Germany, a Jewish immigrant and his American cousin begin creating WWII propaganda in the form of their comic book hero The Escapist.

I knew right then this book was going to be an incredible. And it was. I bought it, read it, loved it. Characters, scenes, and events have stayed with me ever since.

When I saw it was coming out in audio – finally, fully unabridged from Audible, I was filled with a sense of nostalgia. I wanted to revisit Sammy, Joe, Rosa, Kornblum, George Deasey, Tracy Bacon, and Thomas. I expected it to be like revisiting revisiting friends. I expected to appreciate it, and be moved by it. It’d be a good time. 

But listening to this book stunned me. I think it’s maybe one of the best books I’ve ever read. The story and the characters themselves are such a perfect and pure meditation on escapism. Chabon’s prose is delightful – perfectly setting the scenes better than any number of splash pages could. And the story and the characters themselves are a perfect and pure meditation on escapism. I don’t want to take anything away from Chabon, but David Colacci’s narration has to be singled out. It’s nothing short of fantastic. He does accents and dialects from Prague to Brooklyn and so much in between, perfectly voicing each character. From Joe’s self-destructive need for violence and revenge (that section in Antartica is as bleak as anything in Carpenter’s The Thing) to Sammy’s love and desire for someone the world won’t allow him - all of it is expertly captured by Colacci’s reading. I’d also forgotten how funny it was. I was laughing aloud at quips like, “Why don’t you figure out where we’re going to put all your goddamn comic books!” I haven’t listened to anything else Colacci’s read, but I’ll keep an ear out for him from now on. The way he read Tracy Bacon and Rosa, and their relationships with Sammy and Joe was incredibly impacting.

One of the scene’s that’s stayed with me so vividly is relatively early on: Sammy and Joe get their first big break, and shut themselves in with for a week to create comic books. That scene was like crack for creative people. I remember reading it 10+ years ago and falling madly in love with it. Wanting to create things like that – the way they did. And hearing that section again was like getting another fix of the really good stuff.

But the funny thing is the stuff that I didn’t remember: the whole rest of the book? It’s kind of like that too. This book is an ode to art and creativity and escapism unlike anything else. Here, escapism is no less important or necessary than love, and Chabon sketches it out like an artist, showing us all the shades of excitement and sexiness, hurt and heartbreak, and the pure need we, as humans, have for it.

Because if you can’t escape, you’re trapped. Maybe not in chains over a glass aquarium with a shark swimming below with some strangely dressed supervillain cackling, but in our bodies, in our lives, and in our world.

Near the end of the book, Sammy’s examining another character’s art work, and you can feel him just swept up in awe of what he’s looking at. And he says, “It makes me want to make something again. Something I can be just a little bit proud of.”

That about sums it all up for me. Listening to this book made me laugh, got me all choked up, sure. But most of all, it left me wanting to create art for as long as possible.

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Dave Thompson is the host and co-editor of PodCastle, the fantasy fiction audio magazine. His own fiction has been published by Bull Spec and Apex Magazine, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @krylyr. This fall, look for his narration of Tim Pratt’s Briarpatch.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas By John Scalzi

Narrated by Wil Wheaton for Audible Frontiers

Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins

Release Date: 06-05-12 

Review by Dave Thompson: “Stay off the Bridge! Avoid the Narrative!”

“Is it just me…or is everyone on this ship monumentally fucked up about away teams?” asks one of the Redshirts early on in John Scalzi’s latest.  Redshirts is funny, exciting, and gets emotional and pretty heartfelt in the most surprising places. But what’s really unique about this one is how Meta it gets.  If you’ve ever been frustrated with some of the bad science in your science fiction, you’re going to get some good laughs out of this one. Scalzi plays with his narrative like a phaser set to disintegrate and aims it at all the tropes, poor logic, and shoddy science that badly made genre TV, film, and fiction have conjured for “dramatic purposes.”

There’s a twist early on in Redshirts that could be pretty divisive among the audience, and will make or break this story from some, but if you can go with it, it’s a very fun ride – even an inspiring one.

There are a lot of characters, and as a result, some of them feel a little more cookie-cutter than I’d prefer. Scalzi’s characters are never terribly complex, but the protagonist doesn’t stand out as much as some of the others he’s written. However, the way this story’s set-up, it can certainly be argued that that is the point. They are generic Redshirts after all, right? Still, I wish they could’ve been a little more distinct. (And the usual Scalzi stuff applies - the constant dialogue tags, the characters voices, etc.)

That said, Scalzi’s characters warn each other about being “Under the Influence of the Narrative” and “Death by Away Team” - and I have little doubt will become shorthand for all sorts of creative types in the future. And through it all, Scalzi throws down a challenge to not only live long and prosper, but to stop wasting time - to take advantage of your life and really live, and to do something worthwhile.

There’s been a decent amount of talk about the three Codas that conclude this book. My own reaction to them is somewhat mixed. They’re well-enough written, and the second and third hit emotional points I wasn’t expecting. The first coda, however, seems to be at direct odds with the end of the novel proper (as well as some of the main ideas) - to say more, I fear would be treading into spoiler territory.  

Wil Wheaton once again does a very strong job with the narration – and really, who else would you pick to narrate this book but the once and future Wesley Crusher? It’s great to hear him reading another Scalzi book, and one can only hope that if this ever gets made into a movie, Wheaton will get to play one of the lead roles (though I’m personally hoping he gets the part of poor Lt. Kerensky).

For Star Trek and SF fans, for creative types, for anyone who has ever watched a SF TV or film and wanted to throw something at the screen because it all suddenly stopped making sense - this is worth checking out. There’s a good chance you’ll be laughing while you do so.

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Dave Thompson is the host and co-editor of PodCastle, the fantasy fiction audio magazine. His own fiction has been published by Bull Spec and Apex Magazine, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @krylyr.

Osama by Lavie Tidhar

Narrated by Jeff Harding for Audible Ltd

Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins

Release Date: 05-14-2012 [PS Publishing | Goodreads | Audible UK]

Review by Dave Thompson: “Life Isn’t a Pulp Novel”

Lavie Tidhar’s Osama is not an easy or light novel. However, it is a very thought provoking one, and I suspect it’s one that’s going to stay with me for a long time.

What if Osama bin Laden never existed? What if his acts of terror were confined solely to pulp novels, the kind that are published alongside pornography? That’s the Philip K. Dickian world the novel takes place in.

Joe is a private detective hired to find the author of the Osama bin Laden: Vigilante books. As he travels across the world attempting to track down the writer, the distance between Joe’s fictional world and the real world begins to dissipate. The normal detective stuff happens - attempts are made on his life, he’s told to drop the case, etc. But it gets really interesting when Joe comes into contact with “refugees” - people who seem fuzzy around the edges and appear to be trapped - and he begins to question the nature of the world he inhabits, and even of himself.

The novel asks a lot of questions about how we cope with horrible acts of violence through escapism fiction, the war on terror, about choices that we make, and classic Dickian themes like what is reality, and who we are.

For example, at “OsamaCon” — a convention dedicated to the books put on by enthusiastic fans, complete with fanzines — Joe meets some fans of the bin Laden books, and asks them what’s the draw. The couple responds by saying, “To read about these horrible things and know they never happened … and when you’re finished, you can put down the book and get on with your life. To know it’s fiction - pulp fiction … And that’s where all these terrible things should stay … in the pages of a book.”

The most difficult passages are those from the pulp novels - which turn out to be acts of terror that have occurred recently in our history. They’re gut-wrenching on so many different levels, and it’s difficult material to discuss and interact with it. Thankfully Tidhar’s writing doesn’t sensationalize it, and he handles it all with a certain amount of grace.

Jeff Harding gives a solid narration, but for some reason, it got off to a slow start and took a while for me to get completely invested in. That said, it’s worth sticking with. This is a book that’s lingered with me since I finished listening, and I’ll almost certainly reread at some point.

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Dave Thompson is the host and co-editor of PodCastle, the fantasy fiction audio magazine. His own fiction has been published by Bull Spec and Apex Magazine, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @krylyr.

Quoth Dave: “I get to read the audiobook for Tim Pratt’s amazing fantasy novel Briarpatch! … I am so stoked beyond words about this, I don’t even know what else to say! I keep expecting people to email me that they’ve changed their minds. I love this book. I loved it immediately - as soon as I started reading it when it came out last year.”

This is absolutely awesome news all around: 1. An audiobook for Briarpatch 2. I get to make Dave interview himself. (Hey, if he can handle a whole cauldron of witches, he can surely handle himself.) It should be available via ACX (Audible) late this summer. Yeah!

REVIEW and INTERVIEW: The Witches of Lublin By Ellen Kushner, Elizabeth Schwartz, and Yale Strom, Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Miriam Margolyes, Neil Gaiman, Simon Jones, and Barbara Rosenblat for SueMedia Productions:

Review and Interview by Dave Thompson: “Music Bridging our Profane World to the Holiness of the World to Come”

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Reviewed by Dave Thompson: “The Undead Have Never Been So Fresh (or Funny)”

The living dead seem to be rising just about everywhere you turn, and these days the zombie apocalypse is feeling a bit run of the mill. Do not let this keep you from checking out Raising Stony Mayhall — one of the most delightful zombie books I’ve read.

There’s a trope in zombie fiction of a loved one being infected, and instead of being killed by family in friends, he’s restrained and shackled. Almost always this ends badly, but author Daryl Gregory goes against the grain and starts off his tale in the late sixties, just after a Romero-esque zombie uprising, when a widow and her three daughters find a dead woman and baby in the snow. When the baby starts moving, they decide to take him in, and teach him about life, humanity, family, friendship, and sacrifice. Meet Stony Mayhall, and follow him as he impossibly grows up, and goes out into the world.

You can tell Gregory had a blast writing — all the familiar zombie trappings are here, but turned on their heads. There’s blood and guts and uprisings, sure, but there’s also crazy zombie evangelicals and zombie hitmen, would-be superhero zombies, pulp writers and protesters, Deadtown, and so much more I’d hate to give it away because it wouldn’t be as funny when you hear it (and as well as being charming, this book is always very, very funny). In short, Stony does his best to try and keep things together, even while everything (including himself) is falling apart.

This was David Marantz’s debut as an audiobook reader, but he handles it like a veteran, breathing life (or whatever passes for it with zombie protagonists) into Stony, Delia, Mr. Blunt, Captain Callhoun — and made listening to this book a total delight.

Gregory’s third novel will leave you wondering why his other two aren’t out in audio already, and will leave you eager for whatever he does next.

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Dave Thompson is the host and co-editor of PodCastle, the fantasy fiction audio magazine. His own fiction has been published by Bull Spec and Apex Magazine, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @krylyr.

Last month the blog welcomed contributor Dave Thompson with his review of Tim Powers’s The Stress of Her Regard, read by Simon Vance. Today he returns with another review, setting his ears on Viriconium by M. John Harrison, read by Vance for Neil Gaiman Presents:

Review by Dave Thompson: “A Not As Young Man’s Return Journey to Viriconium”

I have been to Viriconium once before – and appropriately – I find that the landscape of the city seems to have shifted since the last time I was here. Sometimes, it’s a bit difficult to find your way around, because as author M. John Harrison once stated, Viriconium is a place that cannot be mapped. It is its own mythology.

Viriconium is three novels and a collection of short stories. The first book – The Pastel City was my favorite last time, and might still be. It’s a tale of technological wastelands millennia in the future, filled with heroes, villains, princesses, and magic. It had lightsabers – baans, or energy swords, years before Star Wars came out. It has teagus-Cromis, the finest swordsman in the land, who was an even better poet. It’s a straightforward epic fantasy that isn’t a doorstop, and it’s the epitome of cool.

A Storm of Wings is the second novel, and Harrison makes some incredibly interesting choices, working very hard to do something radically different than he did the last time he brought us here. It’s a difficult listen at times because instead of fighting monsters, the heroes of the story are fighting something that ends up being much more abstract. It’s the longest of the stories, and it feels the longest. That said, it might also be the one I’m most eager to revisit.

The third novel is In Viriconium. Again, very different from the two that went before it, but this time the experiment is a glorious one – like watching the Coen Brothers make an urban fantasy farce riffing on epic fantasy tropes. It’s laugh-out-loud hilarious at one moment, then deeply disturbing in the next.

Then we get to Viriconium Nights, the short story collection, which is really interesting. Occasionally, characters from the previous books appear, but not always, and almost never quite how we remember them. Here is where Viriconium truly becomes an unmapped city – where all the contradictions of what’s come before in its history and characters are put on display. 

Simon Vance is our tour guide through all this, showing off the different existences of a world, and tying them all together. He does a fantastic job reading Harrison’s stories.

It’s challenging, yes. It might even be frustrating. But I’ll be damned if I’m not already fantasizing about a return trip.

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Dave Thompson is the host and co-editor of PodCastle, the fantasy fiction audio magazine. His own fiction has been published by Bull Spec and Apex Magazine, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @krylyr.