2 B R 0 2 B (audiobook) by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1962 in the magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction.

Published in 2017 by Author's Republic.

Read by Phil Chenevert

Duration: 19 minutes.

Unabridged.

2 B R 0 2 B is set in a future world where the population is kept at a strict limit so that the living can live in a clean and safe environment. When a new person is born into the world, someone must volunteer to leave because aging has pretty much been cured. The Federal Bureau of Termination keeps track of all of the births and deaths to be sure that the math works out. The phone number for the Federal Bureau of Termination is 2 B R 0 2 B - pronounced "two be or naught to be."

The story is about a father whose wife is about to give birth to triplets. One of the grandparents of the triplets has agreed to die. Unless something changes, the future parents will have to pick out two babies to kill...

This is an intentionally provocative short story that had a quick and brutal ending that surprised me. 

I rate this short story 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut.

SLAPSTICK or LONESOME NO MORE! by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1976.

Synopsis

In the essay that serves as the prologue to Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut writes about family, connection, and acceptance. He spends a lot of time talking about his older brother - more than he usually does in his essays. He also talks about his sister - a topic of frequent discussion in his essays. She and her husband both died with days of one another, one of an accident and the other of cancer. Kurt Vonnegut and his wife adopted three of their four children. 

In his essays Vonnegut makes frequent mention of the lack of family connection in our modern world and he thinks we are far the worse off for it. This novel is all about family connection, featuring two physically deformed twins who who are psychically connected.

The twins were kept apart from society in an old mansion on a large estate in order to protect them from society and to protect the reputations of their elite, ultra-rich parents. After all, the "right sort of people" don't have freaks for children.

It was assumed that the children would have mental disabilities. It turns out that they were geniuses, especially when they were physically close to one another...

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

My Review

This is a truly bizarre novel, even by the standards of Kurt Vonnegut. I liked the book in many ways, but I really can't say that it was a great or even a particularly good novel. There are times when it just gets so weird that the story gets buried in its own absurdities.

In one of his essays, Vonnegut graded all of his books up to that point. He gave Slapstick a grade of 'D.' I will do better than that - I give it 3 stars out of 5 (a solid 'C') because it has a lot of heart. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. 

A CANTICLE for LEIBOWITZ (audiobook) by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Originally published in 1960.
Read by Tom Weiner.
Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes.
Unabridged.

Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1961.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a Golden Age of sci-fi novel that originally started out as three related short stories that were published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1955, 1956, and 1957. The author, Walter M. Miller (1923-1996) was convinced to rework them into a single novel - the only novel he published in his lifetime (a sequel to this book was published after his death.)

Synopsis:

The story is set in a dystopian future. During the late 1950s or early 1960s the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union became a nuclear war called the "flame deluge." Human life was nearly destroyed and genetic mutations are fairly common in man and nature. 

Six hundred years later the only surviving constant from the pre-war times is the Catholic Church. The story focuses on an abbey of monks in New Mexico who collect any and all information about science and technology from the past and treat them as relics of Leibowitz, the founder of their order. They collect technical drawings and anything else they can find. Over time, their abbey becomes one of the places of learning that spark a new technological revolution over the centuries because of its isolation.

The second part of the book features the beginnings of technological renaissance. Governments and universities are now recreating technology of the past and even start working together to learn and create even faster.

Eventually, after around 1800 years, in the third part, mankind has gone beyond the technology of the 1960s. There is space travel to other systems, travel around the world is easy. But, the world is not an integrated place and the world faces another Cold War with nuclear weapons...

My Review:

Like so many books in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, A Canticle for Leibowitz goes for big themes in a big way. You have to give it credit for being much more than a sci-fi adventure.

But, big themes does not necessarily mean a good read. The pacing is slow, especially in the first third of the book. I almost stopped listening to the audiobook multiple times because I could not figure out what was going on and the story seemed to be going nowhere.

The book is stuffed full of Latin phrases that may have been familiar to plenty of Catholics (when the book was written, the Latin Mass was the norm) but was not necessarily familiar to this Lutheran. I mostly followed along, allowing for context, the similarity of Lutheran and Catholic liturgies, and my knowledge of Spanish. The Latin added authenticity, but it also was also mostly unnecessary padding. I appreciate that the Latin symbolized a constant moving through time - in the story Latin, along with the Church, survived the Fall of Rome, the Dark Ages, a nuclear war, a horrific dystopian period with genetic mutations, a rebuilding, and was still here in a new Cold War.  My criticism is that a lot of it could have been translated into English with a note that said that the priests or monks were speaking to one another in Latin.

On last criticism is the reader. I am not fond of Tom Weiner as a reader. I've listened to a few books he has read and he just turns me off.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It's not bad. I am glad I read it, but it is hardly a page turner. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A Canticle for Leibowitz.

FAHRENHEIT 451 (audiobook) by Ray Bradbury

 

Originally published in 1953.

I listened to the Tantor Media audio version published in 2010.

Read by Stephen Hoye

Duration: Approximately 5.5 hours

Unabridged

Synopsis: 

Guy Montag is a fireman in a future United States. Firemen in the future do not fight fires. Instead, they burn books, newspapers, magazines that people have hidden away. If you hide forbidden media in your home your home will be burned to make sure all of the books are gone and to serve as a warning to rest of the neighborhood. 

Montag is great at his job, but he has his doubts. Every once in a while he takes a book home. He hides them in the ventilation system of the house. No one knows, not even his wife. Those doubts are accelerated when his team witness a woman die in the fire with her books rather than live without them...

My review: 

This book has an interesting history. Bradbury started building the world that this book is set in with some short stories of a dystopian future where everyone is absorbed by personalized television screens. His publisher urged him to expand the ideas into a book. Bradbury knocked out Fahrenheit 451 in just 9 days on a rented typewriter that cost him 10 cents per half hour.

The book itself has action but it oftentimes felt like essays attached by plot points. It seems to me that the speed in which the book was written probably led to this sort of construction. The essays took the form of extended trains of thought by Montag or long speeches/rants from Montag's boss, Captain Beatty. These "essays" make all of the arguments of the story such as the justifications for mass censorship, the arguments against it, and the lack of human contact in a mass media world.

Bradbury accurately predicted a lot of the modern world in this book. When it comes to technology, he predicted the ATM, giant screen televisions, and earbuds. Culturally, he predicted the rise of sports TV, the inane reality TV shows like The Real Housewives, and the addiction to pop culture and electronic media that may be a factor in the high rates of depression among young people nowadays.

This has to be considered Bradbury's masterpiece. It is such a powerful manifesto against censorship. 

NOTE: If you appreciate irony, please read this bit about how THE anti-censorship novel of the 20th century was edited to remove or change controversial and offensive words and scenes without the knowledge of the author - FOR TWELVE YEARS!

NOTE: Also on the "if you appreciate irony" category - Fahrenheit 451 was put on a book ban list in Tennessee. The article has a searchable database because the list has more than 1,100 unique titles.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury.

DEADLANDS: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Victoria Miluch

 

Published in October of 2023 by Brilliance Audio.
Read by Laura Jennings.
Duration: 9 hours, 24 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Set in a future dystopian Arizona in a United States that is collapsing due to pollution and climate change.

19 year old Georgia lives with her father and her 16 year old brother in an outpost in the Arizona desert north of Phoenix. They are hiding away from the polluted city of Phoenix and the few people that bother to venture out into the wilderness. 

When Georgia and her brother encounter two "hikers" and their car near their outpost, everything changes...

My review:

This book starts out very interesting and then settles into a moody story about relationships, betrayals, and discovery - but I made it sound way more interesting than it actually was. In reality, it was an interesting 45 minute set-up at the beginning and multiple hints that something really dramatic could happen and then nothing happened - again and again and again.

****Spoiler Alert:**** 

Warning: there is a first sexual experience scene that, to me, seemed more like a first sexual assault scene. Some people, like me, really are repulsed by sexual assault scenes. Once again, this followed the pattern of the rest of the book - a very dramatic thing occurs and not much happens as a consequence. 

****End Spoiler****

We never really find out what's going on with America's environment, or why Georgia's father is implementing secret plans, or why Georgia knows all about swimming in oceans when she has lived her entire life in a desert and has never seen a body of water. And, so it goes on and on and on. 

I rate this audiobook 1 star out of 5. If you want to give it a go, it's on Amazon.com here: DEADLANDS: A NOVEL by Victoria Miluch.

TRACKERS (Trackers, Book 1) (audiobook) by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

 

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Read by Bronson Pinchot

Duration: 8 hours, 28 minutes.

Unabridged.

Synopsis:

A Colorado police chief named Colton has organized a search for a young girl he suspects has been abducted. He reaches out to the best tracker he knows, Sam "Raven" Spears, for help. Raven is part Sioux and part Cherokee - an important fact because he soon suspects that the abductor is acting out a Cherokee legend featuring cannibals. 

While Colton and Raven are on the hunt, there is a North Korean EMP attack on the United States. For those not aware, EMP stands for Electromagnetic Pulse. Nuclear weapons emit a pulse that absolutely fries most electronics. If you bomb a city normally, the pulse is limited by hills, buildings, and lots of other things.

But, if you blow a nuclear bomb up high up in the air, the bomb doesn't do a lot of damage but the EMP kills all exposed modern cars (older cars have no computer systems, electrical systems, power plants, airplanes, ships, radios, phones, etc. 

The idea behind the North Korean attack is that a few nuclear bombs can expose most of the United States to multiple EMPs and cause our entire society to collapse. EMPs also generate radiation so there will be a weaponized radiation in the form of radioactive rain.

Colton and Raven continue their hunt while also dealing with the collapse of modern American society...

My Review: 

I've read a small handful of novels that feature EMP attacks and more than my share of creepy serial killer books. You'd think that mixing them together would be extra interesting and exciting. But, this was not a good mix. This should have been separated into two books so that the creepy serial killer had more development and had more exploration into the Cherokee mythological story that inspired his craziness.

It sounds like the aftermath of the EMP attack is explored in the next three books in this series but I will not be continuing on.

Why not?

Despite some good moments, so much of this book felt clunky and tired in this book. Surprisingly, even top-notch audiobook reader Bronson Pinchot sounded like he was just mailing it in.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TRACKERS (Trackers, Book 1) (audiobook) by Nicholas Sansbury Smith.

BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE: DC ICONS SERIES (audiobook) by Alexandra Monir

 

Published in 2020 by Listening Library.
Read by Kathleen McInerney.
Duration: 8 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

The DC ICONS series tells alternate origin stories for DC superheroes, focusing on them in their high school years. This is the fourth in this YA series that I have listened to as an audiobook. My previous ones were the "big three" of the DC Comics Universe - Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. This time I listened to an often overlooked character, Black Canary. 

To be clear, this book focuses on Dinah Lance, the daughter of the original Black Canary. Black Canary was talented at martial arts but her main power was the ability to use her singing voice as a weapon.

The book is set in a dystopian future Gotham City. Think Gotham City meets The Handmaid's Tale. It is a generation after Batman and Commissioner Gordon have passed away. 

Based on a single comment from one of the characters, women's rights have been rolled back across the country. That being said, Gotham City is the most regressive city. Women have to wear approved types of clothing. Girls have only recently been allowed to go back to school, but they have a limited curriculum and will not go on to college. Women are not allowed to speak out in public, create art, or perform. All records of women in any sort of leadership position or performing musically have been expunged from all public records.

Gotham City is controlled by a group descended from some of the original founding families of Gotham City called The Court of Owls. Their leader is Mayor Cobblepot. DC Fans may remember that Cobblepot is the family name of The Penguin. It turns out that Mayor Cobblepot took some of The Penguin's research to create a chemical that robs women of their power to sing. Of course, this ended the power of the original Black Canary.

Dinah Drake is unhappy. She is a senior in high school and she feels restricted by the She knows that women used to be leaders, used to wear what they wanted and used to sing. She discovered a hidden treasure trove of old magazines and has seen photos of women singing on stage.

And now a new boy named Oliver Queen has moved to Gotham City...

My Review:

The first 90% of this audiobook was the most compelling of the 4 books I have read in this series.

***********Spoiler Alert************

The book had the makings of the beginning of a series with Dinah Drake pushing back against the totalitarian rule of the Court of Owls. I was imagining a reverse of the traditional Batman role. Black Canary and Green Arrow would not be the enforcer of laws, instead this team would make sure unjust laws were not enforced.

Instead, the book very neatly clears out the totalitarian rulers and everything is fixed ( the rest of the country was too?) Too bad - this could have been a great series. I am removing 1 star for ruining a great series.

***********End Spoilers**************

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE: DC ICONS SERIES by Alexandra Monir.

PLAYER PIANO by Kurt Vonnegut

Originally published in 1952.

Synopsis:

Paul Proteus is the director of the Ilium Works in New York State in an alternate timeline to our current one. It is roughly the 1950's after yet another World War. 

That war taught the engineers to trust mechanization and the government to continue the central planning model that won the war (a more extreme model of the system the real United States used during World War II.)

In the Ilium works there are multiple factory buildings full of machines, but there are no people because the whole thing is automated. Proteus and the other engineers replaced all of the people with machines in the name of efficiency. Even the best human workers make mistakes or get an illness and miss work or, eventually, die. 

The machines don't have that problem. They work and work and work until the day they are replaced with even faster machines.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
in 1952

This is the source of the title, Player Piano. A player piano plays itself thanks to a roll that is inserted. In the town across the river from Ilium Works, there is a player piano in the bar where all of the unemployed factory workers drink their days away.

The major theme of the book is that it is not good for humans to have no work, no skills to master and no sense that they have put in a good day's work, even if it is more efficient for machines to do it all.

And...Paul Proteus is starting to come around to that way of thinking.

My Review:

This is Vonnegut's first novel. It follows a more normal narrative form than his later, more famous novels. It's too long. It has too many characters. I has too many side plots that don't really go anywhere.

But, it is amazingly prophetic. Vonnegut was working in the public relations department of General Electric when he wrote this novel. He was constantly being exposed to miraculous "labor-saving" devices and his imagination took him to a world where so much labor has been saved with labor-saving devices that there is practically nothing for anyone to do anymore because a person with nothing to do has no reason to be here at all.

Just look at all of the jobs that have been replaced by technology - Line workers in factories, print setters, cashiers, most farm labor and on and on and on. Everyone thinks all of the jobs have gone oversees, but 85% of them have actually been lost to technology. So it goes.

The book gets better as it goes along and has a bittersweet ending.  

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.

V for VENDETTA (graphic novel) by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

 

Originally published in 1982.

Originally published in completed form in 1988 by DC Vertigo.

This iconic graphic novel has been on my to-be-read list for a long while. I tried watching the movie, but it had been a long week and I soon fell asleep. I assumed that the movie missed some of the pizazz of the graphic novel. I decided to go ahead and read the book when I noticed it was on the list of some 850 books that a Republican Texas state legislator wanted to ban from all Texas schools. 

V for VENDETTA is the story of a masked vigilante who decides to stand up against the fascist government of an alternative history version of the United Kingdom. The masked character has become the single most recognizable feature of the book and the face of the "anonymous" movement that swept over social media a few years ago.

Many people assume that it was put on the censorship list because it features a character that fights back against a repressive government. They assume that Texas is afraid of people that fight back, but they forget that this is a state that loves its own history of fighting back. The story of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution is revered in Texas. Texas was also a member of the Confederacy in the Civil War and some people in the Texas Republican Party have openly discussed another attempt at secession.

Based on the other books on this list, I think that the book was added to the list because there are 4 or 5 little panels in the comic that show a naked woman. They are not particularly lurid drawings, but most of the books are on this list for some sort of sexual reason. What appears in this book is certainly not worth the fuss of banning the book, but if you are making a list of 850 books you don't care about not making a fuss.

On to my review:

I was very much looking forward to this book. I like dystopian novels and I am very sympathetic to the themes of this book. However, I must admit that my reaction to the movie pretty much matched my reaction to the graphic novel. It is stylish but very slow and boring. I had a hard time finishing it and probably wouldn't have if not for occasional bursts of interesting plot showing up from time to time. 

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: V for VENDETTA by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Sarah Davis-Goff

 

Published in 2019 by Macmillan Audio.
Read by Anne-Marie Gaillard,
Duration: 5 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

Set in a dystopian future in Ireland, Last Ones Left Alive is the story of Orpen, a teenage girl. The world is overrun by "skrakes".

The reader is never exactly told what skrakes are, but it is useful to just think of them as a sort of zombie. Skrakes hunt humans and when a human is bitten by a skrake, the human gets an infection and becomes a skrake. 

Orpen grew up on an island off of the coast of Ireland. There are three of them - Orpen, her mother and another woman named Maeve, The skrakes never come to the island, but from time to time her mother and Maeve must leave the island to scrounge for supplies and hunt.

The story is told in chapters that alternate between the present and flashbacks to Orpen's childhood. There are hints as to what Maeve and her mother did before they came to the island. It is clear is that they have extraordinary hand-to-hand combat skills, both individually and especially as a team. Orpen is trained in those skills as she gets older and has finally reached the point where she can head to the mainland as well....

This is a debut novel for the author and she did an extraordinary job of telling the story from the point of view of just one character. There is no all-knowing narrator that tells us what happened to unleash the skrakes and there is no change of perspective that lets the reader go "Oh! Now I see." Instead, we get the perspective of this one young lady and it's more than enough to build a compelling story.

The audiobook was read by Anne-Marie Gaillard. Her Irish accent was an amazing change of pace for this audiobook reader. Her tone was perfect, no matter the accent.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:

LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Sarah Davis-Goff.

THE HANDMAID'S TALE (audiobook) by Margaret Atwood

 

Published in 1988 by Recorded Books.
Paper book originally published in 1985.
Read by Betty Harris.
Duration: 11 hours, 20 minutes.
Unabridged.
Note: A newer audiobook version read by Clair Danes was published in 2012.

I am very late to The Handmaid's Tale - more than 35 years after the original publication date. 

The plot is fairly well known so I am not going to go into extreme details. The story is set in a dystopian future America after a violent coup took out the Congress and the Executive Branch. Pollution and constant warfare have lowered the birth rate to an alarmingly low rate and the upper classes have instituted a religion-based system of surrogate motherhood. The upper classes were inspired by the Biblical story of Jacob and Rachel from the book of Genesis and how Rachel resolved the fact that she was unable to have children by having her handmaid sleep with Jacob and Rachel would keep any children as her own. The red robes and the white headpiece are the outfit that the handmaids wear and this book is a sort of diary of one of these handmaids as she tells of her desire to break out of this system.

What finally motivated me to read the book was the fact that it kept on coming up on school censorship lists that MAGA groups like Moms for Liberty keep putting out (here is a link, including a Google doc with detailed reasons why). The graphic novel version shows up on the 850 books that a GOP Texas legislator wants to ban from schools. This notice from Idaho that finally prompted me to stop reading about this book and actually download this audiobook.

Before I give you my take on all of the book banning, let me give you a little bit of information about me. I have been teaching grades 7-12 in some form or another for 32 years. I have a 16 year old daughter and a 22 year old daughter. I also have a very high threshold for outright banning a book. There are books I wouldn't want to teach in class, but that doesn't mean they don't belong in a school or a classroom library.

Here is my take on this book and all of the banning. Generally, it is because of the sex in the book, but also a perceived insult to Christianity. I don't worry about perceived insults to any religion. Not because I am an atheist - I am far from it. I attend church every week and have volunteered regularly with a number of programs. I know that God is above anyone's ability to hurt or insult. Besides, the religion they are criticizing isn't any sort of Christianity that I recognize.

While there is sex in this book, it is never "sexy" and I think that this book would have no intrinsic interest to most high school students except that everyone wants to ban it. Why not? Take the Mad Max movies which are also set in a dystopian future ruined by war and pollution - they are almost all over the top action, almost no discussion. Kids like those movies because there are explosions and yelling and car crashes. The Handmaid's Tale simply has no action. 

That is not to say that it is a bad book. To the contrary, it is a 5 star book in my mind. But, there is no action that would appeal to young readers. It is the description on one woman's situation in this dystopian world. It is all about setting an oppressive, depressing, hopeless mood and it succeeds on all levels. But, it has none of the action or friendships that teen-friendly series like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson have.

The tone of the book reminded me of how I imagined the Soviet Union must have felt during the Cold War - an all-consuming gray oppressiveness consuming everything. It is brilliant and depressing.

For me, the brilliance of the book comes from me seeing that literally everyone in this system is a victim. The handmaids are forced to breed with upper class men. The upper class wives are forced to go along with it and be personally involved at every step. It sounds like the upper class men get nothing but positives out of this deal - after all, they get to sleep with two women, right? This arrangement all but destroys their marriages and sexual relations with the handmaids is...uncomfortable, to say the least. There are no normal relationships exist anywhere. If you can't procreate, the system sends you off to clear toxic waste or makes you a virtual slave. So many children are born deformed to the pollution...

No one is a winner, it's just that some are bigger losers than others.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Note: As I was finishing this review, I came upon a new story about this book on NPR. It was about how this book is almost always on the banned books list and the author was offering a literally fireproof copy of the book in an auction to raise funds to fight book banning. This is a book that will never be burned.

UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED (audiobook) by Sarah Gailey

 

Published in 2020 by Tantor Audio.
Read by Romy Nordlinger

Duration: 3 hours, 52 minutes.

Unabridged.

A 2021 Hugo Award Finalist
A 2021 Locus Award Finalist
A 2020 ALA Booklist Top 10 SF/F Pick
A Booklist Editor's Choice Pick
Book Riot's Best Books of 2020 So Far
Named a Best of 2020 Pick for NPR | NYPL | Booklist | Bustle | Den of Geek

I have a weakness for dystopian literature. I don't do too much of it because so much of it is repetitive - usually it is World War III caused by a nuclear or bio-warfare attack by the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, or the Americans. But, I do enjoy seeing where the author thinks we will break down and how we might recover and rebuild.

Upright Women Wanted fit the bill - a future world in which the western United States has devolved back into a Wild West environment ruled by iron-fisted sheriffs that enforce a strict moral code. Their rules include a death penalty for sexual crimes, such as homosexuality and lesbianism. The main character, Esther, had a short-lived romantic relationship with another female who was put to death for holding resistance propaganda material that she was reading because she did not want to forcibly marry a man. When Esther was assigned to marry that man, she fled.

The world she fled to is not very recognizable as modern America. The United States is involved has been involved in a war for so long and has devoted so many resources to that war that the home front has fallen to disrepair. For example, paved roads no longer exist - rich towns have gravel roads. Everyday people ride horses, use wagons and carry pistols. The clothing looks more like a western TV show than ours does. Modern jet planes still exist and are used by the military but civilian TV and radio no longer exist. Also, three states are pretty much out of the union - Utah, Florida and Maine. 

Esther stows away in the wagon of two women known as Librarians. Librarians bring literature, movies, news and packages from one town to another. If you have seen the Kevin Costner movie The Postman or read the book by the same name, the librarians serve roughly the same purpose as The Postman did in that movie/book. They knit together these communities and are welcomed almost as celebrities when they arrive. 

This book won a lot of awards and I am not sure how. Before I get judged for it, be aware that I had no problem with the book's lesbian content. I knew that was in the story when I downloaded it and I was interested in seeing how that was worked into the story. Turn out it was pretty much like I imagined. 

Careful: spoilers ahead

I was disappointed in the story because so little about the dystopian future was explained (like who was American fighting the war with and how did it let the home front deteriorate so badly) and the book felt more like the introductory chapters to a much longer story than an actual complete story. I would say that it was a novella, but novellas usually have an actual ending and this story just sort of ended at what felt like maybe the halfway point, maybe even not that far along. It felt like a solid start, but nothing more. I was not bothered at the themes of the book, I was bothered by the fact that it just...abruptly ended.

More spoilers:

The government in this story, at the local and national levels, is very much into censorship. It is odd to me that no one wants to censor the materials that the librarians carry from town to town considering that libraries are often targets for censorship. I know the book was published in 2020, but a common theme of the news in 2021 was "concerned community members", lawmakers and other politicians that clamored for schools to remove books from school and classroom libraries. There were even concerted attempts to remove books from regular public libraries. 

The idea that a government that executes people for simply possessing propaganda would not also regulate what amounts to an Old West style bookmobile carries is laughable. It would be more appropriate to have the librarians subject to thorough searches at every checkpoint and town. 

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED by Sarah Gailey.

SEA of RUST: A NOVEL (audiobook) by C. Robert Cargill

 

Published in 2017 by HarperAudio.
Read by Eva Kaminsky.
Duration: 10 hours, 26 minutes.
Unabridged.

Brittle is a caretaker robot in a future United States. 

Sort of.

In Sea of Rust, the United States is dead and gone due to a war between humanity and its robot servants 30 years earlier. Robots were everywhere. They were maids, gardeners, factory workers, delivery drivers, lovers, nurses, nannies, cooks, wait staff and more. On top of that, Artificial Intelligence (AI) super computers were built to do the math and research that human beings struggled to grasp. 

Humans struggled to deal with the concept of robots as thinking beings. The AI super computers were clearly smarter than any individual human and the robots clearly possessed an intelligence of their own, even if it wasn't exactly like human intelligence. 

The author, C. Robert Cargill

As humanity seemingly made a breakthrough in its acceptance of robots as possible equals, a shocking act of political violence by a group of humans shocks the world. Robots don't know what to do, but when every robot on Earth receives a secret download that erases the lines of code that prohibit them from harming humans the war is on.

Brittle wanders what used to be Ohio, Indiana and Michigan - an area called the Sea of Rust. The robots have changed the world's environment in their zeal to kill humans. This zone is a vast desert where robots go off to die or to search for replacement parts to scavenge in the hope of staving off a catastrophic parts failure.

It's not that replacement parts aren't being made. They are. But, the cost is high. The AI super computers are absorbing the consciousness of as many robots as they can so they can fight each other. It is supposedly voluntary, but Brittle doesn't believe it so she stays independent. She hunts down dying robots for their parts and keeps a stash of her own parts handy. 

It was working out - until another robot needed her parts...

This book goes with another audiobook that I recently reviewed, Day Zero: A Novel. Sea of Rust came first so Day Zero is technically a prequel. I read them in chronological order in the story, not in the order that they were written and released. 

I loved Day Zero - one of the best sci-fi books I have read in years. This book should probably be judged as just as good as Day Zero, maybe even better because it built the world that Day Zero inhabits. The heroism of Day Zero appealed to my personality more than the grittiness of Sea of Rust. 

Taken together, though, they are quite the accomplishment. I recommend reading them in chronological order, not order of publishing. There are spoilers in Sea of Rust that could hurt your enjoyment of Day Zero.

I highly recommend the series and rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  SEA of RUST: A NOVEL by C. Robert Cargill.

THE MARROW THIEVES (audiobook) by Cherie Dimaline

Published by Kobo Originals in 2018.
Read by Meegwun Fairweather.
Duration: 7 hours, 11 minutes.
Unabridged.

In The Marrow Thieves, it is the latter half of the 21st century and the world has had a series of literal upheavals. Earthquakes sheared off California, global warming has changed the weather. Droughts occur in former wet spaces and dry places have become swamps. Sea levels have risen and drowned out many cities. Many animal species have died off and others are in severe decline. On top of that, the nations of the world have gone to war and most cities were destroyed, people have fled to the remaining cities. The entire world map has been re-drawn.

In the future there is also another problem. Almost everyone in the world has

The author, Cherie Dimaline.

lost the ability to dream. Everybody except the indigenous population of the Americas - Native Americans. However, their bone marrow can be harvested for a substance that lets other people dream. The government and the Catholic Church have joined together to "recruit" people for this project. That sounds harmless enough in theory, but in practice it means hunting them down, capturing them and taking them off to concentration camps.

Frenchie is a teenager. He and his family fled the city to go north to their people's original homelands. On the way, Frenchie lost everyone in one way or another. Alone, he stumbled into the camp of survivors who were also pushing north. An old woman, a middle-aged man, a smattering of young men and women and a little girl. This is their story.

I liked this book quite a bit. The characters were great and the ups and downs are truly roller coasters for the listener. Meegwun Fairweather did a great job with the reading.

The only problem I had with the book was the reason why the Native American populations were being hunted in the first place. There is no reason giving for almost everyone losing the ability to dream and no explanation for how the government is able to distill a substance from Native Americans, but somehow not able to chemically replicate this substance. This could have been a fatal flaw, but the strength of the characters carried it past this problem.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE MARROW THIEVES (audiobook) by Cherie Dimaline.

This book was placed on a massive book ban list in Florida, a place well-known for banning books. Ugh.

THE RUNNING MAN by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman

Originally published in 1982.

Published in 2010 by Simon and Schuster.
Read by Kevin Kenerly.
Duration: 7 hours, 42 minutes.
Unabridged.

Stephen King's long and storied career is legendary. At this point, he has 61 novels, including 7 written under the pen name Richard Bachman. At first, he wrote books under the Bachman pen name because the publishing industry had a rule of thumb - no more than one book per year per author. Clearly, with a prolific author like Stephen King that rule would be problematic. This edition of The Running Man includes an essay by Stephen King that talks about Richard Bachman and his relationship with his pen name.

The Bachman books have a darker tone than the Stephen King books by design. The Running Man has a particularly dark tone. Set in 2025 in an alternate history (even though it was written in 1982, it refers to things in 1978 that did not happen) in which America has become a corporate oligarchy.

The economy is ruled by a company called General Atomics (presumably a mixture of General Electric and General Motors) and the Games Network. 

Every house, every apartment, every hotel room, no matter how broken down, is wired with a working cable TV system called Free-Vee. The Games Network runs a series of violent, often deadly, game shows that are designed to keep the great underclass entertained and quiet (think: Roman "Bread and Circuses").

Ben Richards lives in a horrible neighborhood called Co-op City. He can't get work because he has been blacklisted for complaining that his job at General Atomics was giving people radiation poisoning. His wife can only earn money through prostitution and they desperately need money. Their 18-month child, the only child they will ever have because Ben is now sterile due to radiation poisoning, is dying from pneumonia. Any decent medicine costs more than they have any hope of scraping together.

Ben decides to try out for one of the game shows. His surly attitude, intelligence and physical stature qualify him for the most lucrative and most dangerous game show: The Running Man. In this show, the contestant becomes an enemy of the state and is given a 12 hour head start before the Games Network releases its crack team of investigators and killers. Anyone who gives the Games Network information leading The Running Man's death or capture will receive a big reward, including police officers. The longer he runs, the more money he makes. If he makes it 30 days, he will receive $1 billion. No one has ever made it more than 8 days, 5 hours.

But, then again. no one's every had to go up against Ben Richards before...

This is a tough book. It is unrelentingly depressing, even for a novel featuring a dystopian future. Ben Richards is an impressive, but generally unlikable character. For me, the most interesting thing was the gradual revealing of the larger setting of America in 2025.

Kevin Kenerly read the book and did an excellent job.

Note: this book does not follow the same plot as the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the same title. That book was the inspiration for the movie, but, at best, you could argue that they could have taken place in the same universe.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE RUNNING MAN by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman.

Note: In November of 2023 it was announced that the group Moms for Liberty had challenged hundreds of books in Florida. This book was one of those books. Learn more about the list here.

THE LAST CHECKOUT (audiobook) by Peter Besson

Published by Peter Besson, Inc. in 2018.
Read by Conner Goff
Duration: 7 hours, 7 minutes.
Unabridged.

In the near future the population of the world has reached the breaking point and climate change has made it all the harder to feed everyone. Throw in a near-continuous state of war and a collapsing economy and you might understand why some people would want to go and kill themselves before someone else gets around to doing it.

So many people were killing themselves that a niche industry formed - suicide hotels designed to deal specifically with the needs of those that want to kill themselves. They are called "Last Resorts" and have any number of conveniences for those that are determined to "check out" of this life, such as handguns, poisons, drugs for overdosing and convenient places to throw oneself off of the roof without harming passersby. The only real rule is that once you check in, you cannot check out alive. You can stay as long as you'd like, so long as you have the funds. Also, if you change your mind, you will be killed by a professional assassin. No one gets out alive.

Ansel Grayson has lived in a Last Resort for 12 years. He and a few other long term residents have watched hundreds of people check in and leave via the morgue in the basement of the hotel. For 12 years, Grayson has tried to work up the courage to finally kill himself and on the day he truly works up the nerve, he gets interrupted by a new female resident who is determined to kill herself as soon as possible. It's love at first sight for Grayson and suddenly he has found a reason to live...

The Last Checkout was an interesting audiobook. I can't say that it was fun to listen to, although it times it was very funny. It was a book full of misery, pain, addiction, greed and despair, but it was also hopeful. I am glad I listened to it, but I never want to listen to it again.

The book could easily be adapted to an Amazon Prime Video or Netflix 10 show mini-series format since it explores not only this brutal vision of the future, but it also explores the reasons why many of the long term residents of the hotel have checked themselves into a "Last Resort."

Conner Goff did an outstanding job as reader. He struck the right tone throughout, which had to be tough considering how many of the characters are trying to kill themselves.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The Last Checkout by Peter Besson.

CHILDREN of WRATH (audiobook) by T.A. Ward

Published by T.A. Ward Books in May of 2018.
Read by Tom Askin.
Duration: 8 hours, 41 minutes.
Unabridged.

In this science fiction novel, the United States suffered a horrible day of terrorist attacks known as the Day of Destruction in the 2040's. There were nuclear attacks in some places but Philadelphia was attacked by a nerve gas called Obcasus. The gas itself was bad enough, but the side effects are worse. Women who were exposed give birth to children with brain damage that makes them uncontrollably violent - even as infants. They are called inexorables.

The main character of Children of Wrath is Dr. Ethan King, a Philadelphia infectious disease doctor that has treated patients for Obcasus exposure since the Day of Destruction. He is happily married but he and his wife cannot have children.

One day, Dr. King spots a starving, nearly dead Inexorable child as he is leaving the hospital late at night and he decides to take it home...

The premise behind this book was very strong. However, I did not enjoy the presentation very much. There is way too much description in scene after scene. There are also long soliloquies and strange turns of phrase by Dr. King that I can't imagine people actually saying in real life. On top of that, I cannot imagine that no one has figured out the big mystery in this story before now.

I listened to this book as an audiobook. The reader, Tom Askin, has a pleasant voice but reads with a soft tone, like a parent might read a bedtime story to a child. He also makes strange pauses, like William Shatner. It made for an odd listen.

There is a sequel to this book and I will not be listening to it.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Children of Wrath by T.A. Ward.

Note: the author provided me with a copy of the audiobook so that I could write an honest review.