Listen:// Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Published By: Random House Audio

Buy From: Amazon.co.uk Audible.com

Just finished listening to this one and it was very entertaining. It's nothing particularly deep or ground-breaking, but it is a wonderful, fast-paced ride through 1980s pop culture and geekery. If you grew up in the 80s watching films like Wargames and playing arcade machines and Dungeons & Dragons, then you need to give this one a read or listen.

The audiobook is narrated by that geek favourite Will Wheaton, and he really is a top class narrator. I hope he does some more audiobooks, very easy to listen to, giving each character a distinct voice without descending into over the top caricatures like some actors do.

The story reads like YA fiction which is no bad thing, and stuffed with so many references to things I loved as a child that I'd find it hard to hate it even if the plot was non-existent. It's light cyberpunk stuff, with a worldwide virtual reality game inhabited by the usual hackers, geeks, and evil corporations.

Loved it.

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.  

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.

A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?

Listen:// The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

Published By: Iambik Audio & BenBella Books

Buy From: Iambik Audio

I've been working my way through some audiobooks I bought recently from a fairly new (at least to me) company, Iambik Audio. They sell everything DRM free at really good prices so it's worth having a look around. They also provided some excellent support when I had some issues which were probably my fault anyway, so I'll definitely be buying from them again.

First up is The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold. Not someone I'd heard about or read before, but it turns out he wrote the 'Trouble with Tribbles' Star Trek episode so I guess I am familiar with at least one piece of his work. It tells the story of Daniel Eakins, a not particularly motivated college student who inherits a 'time belt' after the death of his Uncle Jim. Daniel discovers he can travel backwards and forwards through time, and shortly after this does the obvious thing and starts placing bets on horses accompanied by a future version of himself. He's soon jumping all over the place, visiting historical events, changing the past and the future, and creating paradoxes all over which are explained away with a multiple universes idea. As the book progresses there are more and more versions of himself, interacting in all sorts of ways, until both Daniel and the reader start to question his identity.

It's hard to say much more about the plot without giving away too much, but it is a wonderfully convoluted yet neatly resolved plot. So the time travel probably doesn't make much sense, as time travel rarely does, but it can be such a great concept to explore if done well, and this is among the best examples of it in my opinion. Gerrold looks at both practical issues such as the restrictions of travel due to languages and customs, and also things like sexuality, and identity, topics that rarely enter into the majority of wish fulfilment time travel stories. It's short and sweet like many of my favourite novels, we seem to be living in the age of the epic tome, and I don't think novels are any better for being five times the length they need to be.

Narration of the audiobook is by Charles Bice, who does a great job, nice clear reading without tons of crazy voices, yet enough personality to keep things interesting. If I can forget about the narrator and just enjoy the tale, then I consider it a success.

It's not for everybody, and it's likely to offend some people with the exploration of sexuality, but I'd recommend people interested in time travel tales at least give it a try.

Listen:// Sherlock Holmes - The Last Act

Buy From: Big Finish

It is 1916 and Sherlock Holmes has returned to his rooms in Baker Street after attending the funeral of his long time associate, Dr John H. Watson. Holmes reflects on the old days and comes to realise that not only was there so much that he had shared with Watson in his lifetime but also there was so much that he had not revealed to him: things he had kept hidden, including his deep affection for his friend. Imagining that Watson is present, Holmes addresses this failing and touches on aspects of past cases and the various characters he encountered during his investigations, including ‘The Woman’ Irene Adler and of course Professor Moriarty.

Holmes delves deeper into the darker aspects of his own history, revealing at last a shocking secret. Realising now how lonely and isolated he is without his old comrade, adrift in a new modern and war-ravaged age, he comes to wonder whether, like Watson, he too has come to the end of his time…

 Besides all the science fiction and fantasy I read, I count the Sherlock Holmes books among my all time favourites so I'll often digest anything I find set in that universe. Whilst I love the originals, I don't have any particular problem with people playing in that world. I know some people can get obsessed with canon, and keeping things true to the originals, but I think it's such a great character and setting it deserves to be reinterpreted, rebooted, and generally messed around with.

I'd vaguely heard of the stage play of The Last Act but I've never been able to make it, so I was pleasantly surprised when I spotted that the Big Finish Sherlock Holmes series would be kicking off with a audio production of that play. It's a single actor piece starring Roger Llewellyn as Sherlock Holmes performing a monologue to a deceased Watson. It's incredibly well written, and manages to squeeze a huge amount of detail from the original books in, indeed it would server as a great introduction to anyone who has not yet read the books. At the same time as the 'Sherlock for beginners' detail we are also getting an insight into the mind of the great detective who proves to be a little more flawed than he seems at first glance.

Roger Llewellyn is outstanding as Holmes, I really would love to see him in one of the original stories now I've heard this. He has that exacting tone, slightly dark, very funny in places, and full of emotion. It's a performance worth hearing. He also plays the other characters, or more precisely plays Holmes playing the other characters, and jumps between them seemingly with ease. I'm not so keen on some of the others voices, though it is supposed to be Holmes playing them so the fact that they tend towards the exaggerated probably makes sense.

I can't say much more without spoiling the plot, it's a relatively short listen at 2 hours and definitely worth it. I'll leave with a clip of the stage play...

Listen:// UR - Stephen King

Published By: Simon & Schuster Audio

Buy From: Audible.co.uk

FIRST TIME ON AUDIO...
An Unabridged Novella Unavailable In Any Collection!

Tapping into our primal fears of modern technology that made Cell a #1 bestseller, Stephen King sets his sights on the latest high-tech gadget in UR, in which a mysterious e-book reader opens a disturbing window into other worlds.

Reeling from a painful break-up, English instructor and avid book lover Wesley Smith is haunted by his ex-girlfriend's parting shot: "Why can't you just read off the computer like everyone else?" He buys an e-book reader out of spite, but soon finds he can use the device to glimpse realities he had never before imagined, discovering literary riches beyond his wildest dreams...and all-too-human tragedies that surpass his most terrible nightmares.

A short novella reading at 2hr 20min, it's competently read and quite interesting if not exactly full of original ideas. It was original published as a Kindle exclusive and a Kindle is the major plot device, giving the new owner Wesley Smith the ability to read books that famous authors have published in parallel universes that were never published in his own. I started out thinking it was going to be a terrible plug for Kindles but it's actually a decent tale, reminded me of an old-school sci-fi short story but obviously written in King's style.

It's not all about reading books, and things take a different turn when he accesses information which affects his world. I can't say much more without spoiling the plot, it's more Twilight Zone than outright horror but I found it entertaining and I'm sure most King fans would.