FEBRUARY 5-11, 2014: While much more quiet in terms of quantity — in particular in concurrent new releases, as apparently every publisher had the same “FEBRUARY 4 OR BUST” idea this year — there’s some absolutely exquisite quality in this week’s audiobooks haul, led by Ted Chiang’s 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others, along with backlist titles from Iain Banks and Octavia Butler, and the only week delayed conclusion in audio for Glen Duncan’s Last Werewolf trilogy, By Blood We Live. Highlights of the “also out this week” listings include M.D. Waters’ Archetype, Matthew Quick read by Oliver Wyman, Neve Maslakovic read by Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugh Howey’s Vonnegutian short story Peace in Amber, some blockbuster YA titles, and a pile of fiction including Michael Piafsky’s “Tarot-inspired” debut, All the Happiness You Deserve. Meanwhile in the news department, Audible’s “Begin at the Beginning” sale includes over 200 titles, so I picked some highlights including Tad Williams, Richard Kadrey, Mira Grant, and Paolo Bacigalupi; Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale (in audio narrated by Oliver Wyman) is set to come to theatres this Friday; and Wendy Webb’s haunted house novel The Vanishing is set to come to audio this year as well. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

In a memorable (to me!) SFFaudio column in June 2011, Jesse Willis asked “Where are all the Ted Chiang audiobooks?” Well, this week Tantor Audio finally answered with a fantastic production of the multiple-award-winning Chiang’s 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others. Read by Todd McLaren and Abby Craden, with McLaren providing the majority of the narration (“Tower of Babylon”, “Understand”, Seventy-Two Letters”, “The Evolution of Human Science”, and “Hell is the Absence of God”) and Craden offering fantastic turns on “Division by Zero”, “Story of Your Life”, and “Liking What You See: A Documentary”. My initial reaction was the quite sophisticated: “Wow. So, Ted Chiang. Y’all told me, and now I know. I was warned in advance and yet still am amazed.” It’s hard to follow sf and not hear praise for the stories of Ted Chiang, and I’d been blown away by his multiple-award winning “Exhalation” a few years ago, but even so my jaw dropped and then fell further still as one story and then another, packed with science, math, and intense characters and situations emerged from this collection. In these stories I found clear inspirations for so many of my favorite current writers (J.M. McDermott’s “Maze” and Jason Erik Lundberg’s “Tower” stories, Ken Liu’s “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary”) and also a stunningly original and unique genre to itself. From “Babylonian science fiction” to recursive brain augmentation, suicide and incompatible maths to alien language and simultaneity and the loss of a child, golems, “lookism”, … Capped by brief (yet fantastic) “Story Notes” at the end. Very, very highly recommended. Since his 2002 collection, Chiang has published several more major works, including “The Merchant at the Alchemist’s Gate”, “Exhalation” (in audio at EscapePod, originally podcast in StarShipSofa), a long novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects, and the novelette “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” — more than enough for a second audiobook. Oh, Tantor… And did I mention that “Story of Your Life” is set for a film adaptation?

I highlighted Glen Duncan’s By Blood We Live in last week‘s seen but not heard listings, in particular a fantastic interview with the author by Matt Staggs for Suvudu. Well, it’s here this week in a fantastic 4-narrator audiobook, read by Abby Craden, Amber Sealey, Steve West, and Rob Shapiro for Random House Audio. “First Glen Duncan gave us his monstrously thrilling, genre-reinventing The Last Werewolf: the tale of Jake, a werewolf with a profoundly human heart, considering bringing to an end the timeless legend of his kind…. Then Talulla Rising: Jake’s werewolf lover, mother to newborn twins, on the run from those who want her destroyed… And now By Blood We Live: a stunningly erotic love story that gives us the final battle for survival between werewolves and vampires, and one last searing – and brilliantly ironic – look at what it means to be, or not to be, human.”

Previously only available (at least in the US) as a 5.5 hour abridgement, Matter: Culture, Book 8 by the late Iain M. Banks, narrated by Toby Longworth for Hachette Audio is now available in its unabridged edition. Not all of the Culture audiobooks are available in the US just yet, as Hachette has been bringing them over from the UK well behind their publication there. Excession, Inversions, and Look to Windward have yet to make their way here, though each has been published in the past year in the UK. Still it’s a very welcome addition, and one of the (many) ways to read the Culture books starts right here: “In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one man it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one – maybe two – people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she’d thought abandoned forever.”

Patternmaster: The Patternist Series By Octavia E. Butler, Narrated By Eugene H. Russell IV –. Listed by Audible as “Book 4” in the series (which is where it stands in the modified internal chronology), it was the first published, in 1976, and it’s the one I’ve been waiting for to get started on the series in audio. “The Patternist is a telepathic race, commanded by the Patternmaster, whose thoughts can destroy, heal, rule. Coransee, son of the ruling Patternmaster, wants the throne and will stop at nothing to get it, including venture into the wild mutant-infested hills to destroy a young apprentice – his equal and his brother.” Also out in Audible extremely welcome and well-produced series of audiobooks bringing Butler’s works to audio this week: Clay’s Ark: Patternist, Book 3 (narrated by Neal Ghant — though it’s the last remaining Butler novel not in audio, 1978’s Survivor, which was the third published book in the Patternist series and which Butler later disowned and declined to return to print) and Imago, the concluding third book in her Xenogenesis trilogy, narrated by Barrett Aldrich.

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

COMING SOON:

MARCH 2014:

APRIL/MAY/JUNE 2014:

JULY 2014 and LATER:

UNDATED or 2015:

