Back in January, I wrote about my views on the graphic novel: a worthwhile art form, but not literature as I define it because the primary mode of storytelling in it is visual. I might occasionally put up a review of a graphic novel on this blog because the blog covers books in all their forms. Cookbooks and atlases are rarely literary, and yet I include them. I’m a pragmatist.
In contrast, I consider audiobooks to be literature. While the medium for storytelling is verbal, the transaction between the book
and reader is conveyed by the words. The narrator’s skill can add or take away in presentation, but to me the words are equivalent to the written form. The words are what are important to me.
But I’ve never listened to an audiobook before. That’s partially because audiobooks are freakin’ expensive. But it’s also because I have a much harder time focusing on the story. Audiobooks are often played in the background while a busy person does something else. When I read, my full attention is on the pages in front of me. To listen to an audiobook that way, my tasks would need to be so mindless that I my full attention could be devoted to the book.
In listening to METAtropolis, I also determined that not being able to look back a few words, sentences, or paragraph’s detracted from my comprehension. On a page, if I don’t quite get something I could scan back briefly and get that understanding. And my comprehension looking at a word was much better in the first place. I seem to mis-hear things when spoken more frequently than I mis-read as well.
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. When my mom lost the use of her hands this summer, I signed her up for Audible.com so we could get some audiobooks for her to listen to. She could operate a laptop with her feet, so Audible was a much better choice than buying CDs. Cheaper too. She left a few unused credits when she died in October, so I selected a few books to use them up. Figured it was a good opportunity to try audiobooks.
First up is METAtropolis. Right now it’s only available through Audible, so this was a perfect opportunity. It’s a shared universe anthology. Two of the five authors (Schroeder and Buckell) are among my recent discoveries. The other three have been on my list to check out for a few months.
In the Forests of the Night
by Jay Lake (read by Michael Hogan)- I didn’t really like Michael Hogan’s breathy reading. It seemed overly dramatic to me. Tyger is a mercenary newcomer to Cascadeopolis, an anarchist green commune in the foothills of Oregon’s Cascade mountains. Capitalists have targeted the semi-secret community for their intellectual property, which they normally give away freely using open source licenses. Tyger and another operative are under contract to the capitalist, but Tyger has gone rogue. I did not understand the ending to this at all.
Stochasti-city
by Tobias Buckell (read by Scott Brick)- In Detroit, a green movement needs help fighting against the Edgewater Company’s private security forces (the police are more or less non-existent) who are trying to prevent them from forcibly make Detroit car-free. Often jobs are done through
turking
which I believe is a take-off of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, though where they got it I do not know. In this method, anonymous employers split up jobs to anonymous employees who only get to see a little bit of the big picture. Think of hiring 50 movers each to carry one box for you. That sort of thing. The green movement hires Reginald, a former military colonel now working as a bouncer to do part of the work. BUt then he gets sucked in to the plot just a but more. Good story. The legal setup for parts is a bit unbelievable, but I do like the economic landscape described. The Red in the Sky is Our Blood
by Elizabeth Bear (read by Kandyse McClure)- Okay, now I see a formula behind this anthology. Third story in a row of a band of outsiders/reformers trying to live in the margins of a decaying or decayed United States. Outsiders are environmentally conscience kibbutzim type places. Not necessarily a bad premise, but all three stories seem to follow the same general lines. As in, introduce a non-member to the place and use that person as a foil to explain how the kibbutz works. Throw in the newcomer mistrust, and a little conflict where the newcomer can play a key role, and there you have your story. So far, I prefer the Buckell version of the formula.
Utere Nihil…
by John Scalzi (read by Alessandro Juliani)- Slacker kid needs to take a placement exam to go out and get a job. Starts off with slacker kid Benji playing the friend role to a girl he really likes, and telling her that her current boyfriend doesn’t really respect her. Job he gets is dealing with pig shit, cause that’s about all there is for someone who screwed around as much as he did. In this story, the insular enclave is not the insurgent group, but instead established St. Louis. And the city is set upon by the have-nots outside the city boundaries. A little different from the other stories but still has a lot of the same feel as them, particularly with Jay Lake’s contribution.
To Hie from Far Cilenia
by Karl Schroeder (read by Stefan Rudnicki)- Meh. Schroeder’s contribution is, surprise, a reworking of a lot of the ideas that appeared in Lady of Mazes. Virtual reality. The theme behind METAtropolis overall is that disparate locations, generally cities, are linked together in a much stronger bond than nation-states. Cascadia is a combination of Portland, Seattle, and Portland, across a still extant U.S. and Canada. Citizenship in St. Louis provides privileges to visit cities in Asia and Europe. Schroeder takes it one step further. Every place falls not only within several jurisdictions in real life but also within virtual worlds. Put on glasses and enter overlayed worlds of virtual reality, such as Oversatch. Frankly, there’s a lot of
magic happens here
to make it work. The basic story is that plutonium has been stolen in the real world by someone who lived in one of these virtual worlds. Gennady is an I.A.E.A. inspector who is hired to help find it, and he must travel through these virtual worlds. I thought the story was pretty underwhelming. Even more so than the other stories, I wasn’t fond of the immense amount of explanation the technology in the story required. It took away from the actual story.
I think the concept behind the anthology is strong, but in execution it lacks a lot. The stories feel very much alike, particularly the first three. All of them rely too much on explication rather than story. In other words, I want my stories to tell the concepts needed, rather than breaks in the story where the narrator steps in to explain the concepts.
In addition, I wasn’t too fond of the actors hired for narration. The hook was that three of them appear on the new Battlestar Galactica series. Way to hook in the geek crowd, but they aren’t great readers. Michael Hogan read extremely breathily, for instance. Stefan Rudnicki (not a B.S.G. actor) was quite excellent though.
Some other blogged reviews:
Title: METAtropolis
Editor: John Scalzi
Imprint / publisher: Audible Frontiers
Format: Audiobook
Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
Publication date: 21 October 2008
audiobooks put me right to sleep. i applaud you for sticking it out. :-)
My mom got a historical fiction one that put me to sleep every time I tried it, within 10 minutes. Most of METAtropolis I listened to while driving to Bellingham from Seattle and back. Basically, 2 hours each way. It seemed to work out.
Half way through the first story and really enjoying Hogans reading. I do agree about the ability to look back though.
Completely disagree with your assesment about graphic novel. For me the words are the hook with the visual element a close but secondary consideration- and a very welcome consideration at that.