A Stitch in Time - Audiobook?
- Thread starter Danoz
- Start date
Nope. To the best of my knowledge, this one was never released as an audiobook.
Personally, I don't get the draw of audiobooks. 99% of them are abridged versions of the originals. I would hate that but they seem to sell well so obviously many don't agree with me.
Still, if you have absolutely no time to read and have a long commute or something, I guess it's better than nothing.
If you were into audiobooks though, this would've been a good one. I loved the story and if they could've gotten Andrew Robinson to actually read it, wow! I might've picked that one up just to hear the voice of Garak come alive again.
- Byron
P.S. The Complete Starfleet Library is an excellent resource for this type of thing and every true TrekLit fan should have it bookmarked. There's even an option to filter by type of book, including audiobooks. The information seems to be very accurate.
http://www.well.com/~sjroby/lcars/
Personally, I don't get the draw of audiobooks. 99% of them are abridged versions of the originals. I would hate that but they seem to sell well so obviously many don't agree with me.
Still, if you have absolutely no time to read and have a long commute or something, I guess it's better than nothing.
If you were into audiobooks though, this would've been a good one. I loved the story and if they could've gotten Andrew Robinson to actually read it, wow! I might've picked that one up just to hear the voice of Garak come alive again.
- Byron
P.S. The Complete Starfleet Library is an excellent resource for this type of thing and every true TrekLit fan should have it bookmarked. There's even an option to filter by type of book, including audiobooks. The information seems to be very accurate.
http://www.well.com/~sjroby/lcars/
No, it wasn't chosen to be an audio, but originally it wasn't a novel either. Andy Robinson created the work, chapter by chapter, as a series of live convention appearance scripts over about four years. Worried he'd be caught short with no audience questions ten minutes into a 60 minute stage performance (unlikely, but I've seen it happen to others), he used to sit down and write letters, from Garak to Dr Bashir, which he could use as a time filler if needed. (I believe I was one of the first to suggest to Andy that he seek out the Pocket editors at a future convention, which he did.)
Well, the audio ST novels were originally presented as a taster for the novels. The earliest ones were only 90 mins and had either James Doohan or George Takei doing selected readings, with unique, specially rewritten, "science officer's logs" read by Leonard Nimoy, in character as Spock. The music was created especially for the audios. It was only later, as audio sales took off generally, that the ST novels started getting longer and longer.
When S&S Audio went to its stable of non ST actors doing the readings, a lot of the charm was gone.
Exactly.
The only unabridged S&S Audio is the Alan Dean Foster novelization of the JJ Abrams ST movie.
The "Vulcans Soul" trilogy is unabridged from Recorded Books (S&S Audio only did an abridged version of Book 1), and a different company did a longer-than-S&S version of "Nemesis" (S&S Audio did its usual 3=hour abridgement).
Steve actually links to my own blog entry on the ST audios, http://therinofandor.blogspot.com.au/2007/05/i-hear-star-trek.html
Hey Steve, you're missing an update. Just noticed he doesn't have "Vulcans Soul" Book 3 audio listed.
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Audiobooks are also useful for those who can't read regular text but want to enjoy the books anyway. There aren't that many books also printed as large print, and I've never seen a Star Trek book transcribed into Braille for the blind. Which would be large, bulky and probably take up several volumes. So audiobooks are more convenient and you only have to be able to hear to use them.
Yes, the abridged versions are frustrating when you know something's missing, but they're better than nothing.
Yes, the abridged versions are frustrating when you know something's missing, but they're better than nothing.
Stitch was the only Trek novel I started reading and put down. Garak was a great character, but IMO reading a man with an eidetic memory recount every single lifelong detail got tedious.
D'oh!
At least my PC's fixed, so I can take care of that soon. Managed to get a bunch of updates online over the last few weeks.
The durations would have been set by the tape lengths - hence it doubling - and later no longer being a concern.
Even without 30+ Audio dramas a year, Doctor Who is actually getting more audiobooks produced now than ever in it's 48 year history - we have unabridged audio readings of novelisations of TV stories!
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Well, the thing was that, after eight successful one-cassette releases, S&S Audio celebrated the launch of Pocket's first ST hardcover, "Spock's World" by squeezing a second cassette into the same sized cover. Double the usual timing.
The next few releases of MMPBs were still 90 mins, while the longer hardcovers went to 180 min. Even the ST VI novelization was only 90 mins. "Faces of Fire", the only book read by Bibi "Carol Marcus" Besch, in 1992 was the first MMPB to get the 180 min. treatment. TNG followed the same pattern, 90 mins for MMPB, 180 mins for hardcovers, until they splurged 150 mins for the novelization of "Relics" with James Doohan.
The next jump, to 240 mins, was quite recent: "Genesis Force" (2003) and "Vulcan's Soul, Book 1" (2004), both hardcovers. VOY's "Pathways" had already trialled 300 mins. DS9 productions of MMPBs toyed with 120 mins and 150 mins.
Although the CD era enabled more efficient production of longer running times, S&S Audio has only made two "CD-only" titles: Shatner's "Captain's Glory" (which was delayed when the Reeves-Stevens were busy on the ENT TV series) and the Foster novelization of JJ Abram's movie.
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The Sulu's were longer, they were CD exclusive weren't they?
To be honest the Captain's Glory audio was probably commissioned, abridged and recorded with a dual cassette release in mind - as with the previous stories) but that late in the day there was little point in releasing it on cassette.
Again, harping back to Dr Who, the two companies releasing audio phased the cassette releases out by 2000. Partly due to them being unable to stick to the right durations - They had a real problem when the 4th episode/side was longer than the 3rd! But cassettes were more expensive to produce as well, yet had a lower RRP.
I've never seen the list of all the Trek Audios together - I had more than I realised - mostly CD. 3 CD cases are horrid, I buried them away!
Interesting to see which of the cast never did them though. Some would have lent their voices well to the format.
Wrong and wrong. The three Sulu original adventures were only 70 mins each and came out on cassette and CD. But... the then-innovative "3D sound" only seemed to work on CD equipment. Even with only two speakers, voices seemed to come out of everywhere. I bought the first Sulu on cassette, but re-bought it on CD after a friend rang me to boast about how amazing his CD was.
Exactly right.
That's why I compiled it.
Any time someone asked about them on Psi Phi or here, I'd realise no one else had ever made a definitive list.
Ah of course. What I thinking of and meant was longer per CD than the others 1x 70 instead of 2 x45 min for the 90s, 3x60 for the 180s hence me thinking they may have been intended for CD.
The Sulus were intended for CD. They only came out simultaneously on cassette for people who had not yet adopted CD as their standard, but the Sulu adventures were very much a part of the "compact disk is the new way to go" phenomenon of the day. As I mentioned, the special "3D sound" only worked on the CD versions, and headphones were recommended to get the full effect.
As a movie soundtrack collector, the first "CD only" album I hit was "Abyss". I was so annoyed it wasn't available on LP. It was the Sulu adventures that made me go out and buy a CD player.
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While this is likely true of Trek audiobooks, it is not true of audiobooks in general. Because the Trek versions focused on using actors from the series for their narrators, the quality is a mixed bag. Just because a person can act doesn't mean it follows that they are a good narrator.
There are plenty of audiobooks out there, though, that are unabridged. And there are narrators out there who do an amazing job of interpreting the material. I have audiobooks that I listen to again and again because of the superior quality of the narrator's performance, and there are even books where I prefer the audio experience to reading.
I agree with the OP, though. An audiobook of A Stitch in Time would have been awesome.
Actually, as the popularity of unabridged general audiobooks grew in popularity, and S&S's use of non-ST actors as narrators grew, the sales of ST abridged audios gradually decreased. At first, S&S stopped doing all but ST hardcovers, then not even all of those. Now, none at all (except for the JJ movie novelization, unabridged.)
"Something like these samples" underlines itself when I move the mouse across the words, but it doesn't seem to be a true hyperlink.
Despite being only 90 mins long, "Strangers from the Sky" is amazingly good. IIRC, George Takei was nominated for an audio award for this one, and his interpretation of southerner Melody Sawyer is a triumph. Somehow, the whole convoluted plot of MWB's "giant novel" is well represented by the audio production, and Leonard Nimoy, as Spock, is in great form.
"Final Frontier", while also a "giant" novel, is also only 90 mins but is a favourite because James Doohan gets to reprise his rendition of Robert April, whom he voiced so warmly in TAS. The closing narration, of April/Doohan doing the supposedly first-ever version of Kirk/Shatner's iconic "Space... the final frontier..." gives me chills - an era of ST truly lost in time.
"TNG: Q-in-Law" is a must-listen. De Lancie, Barrett-Roddenberry and Peter David at their best.
Joe Morton doing his strange, haltingly "alien" delivery, as Mackenzie Calhoun, is a huge disappointment, but the ending of Morton's "New Frontier: Stone and Anvil" brought tears to me eyes. So tragic and bittersweet! (This and "Sarek", read by Mark Lenard", were the two audios I cheated with, and listened to the audio before reading the hardcovers.)
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So have you bought:
"Star Trek Nemesis" by J.M. Dillard, read by Grover Gardner, Sound Library/BBC Audiobooks America, 2002, 347 min.
"Vulcan's Soul, Book 1: Exodus" by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, read by Richard Poe, Recorded Books, 2004, 510 min.
"Vulcan's Soul, Book 2: Exiles" by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, read by Richard Poe, Recorded Books, 2006, 630 min.
"Vulcan's Soul, Book 3: Epiphany" by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, read by Richard Poe, Recorded Books, 2007, 694 min.
"Star Trek" by Alan Dean Foster, read by Zachary Quinto, Simon & Schuster Audioworks, 2009, 480 min?
In your opinion. I have all of the S&S ST audios and most of them are excellent. For what they are. The abridged ones do not ever pretend to be unabridged, but most tell a seamless, satisfying story in a dramatic way - especially the first eleven TOS titles, which included Spock's specially written log entries. When these abridged tapes were first being made, unabridged novels were something aimed at people with problematic eyesight. I remember seeing the first commercial, unabridged audios (in huge blocky boxes of cassette tapes) aimed at the general public and was incredulous that I would ever want some celebrity to read a whole book to me.
I own the Quinto ST movie audio, but have never gotten around to finding the time to make him read to me for hours on end. I'd be more inclined to play the movie on DVD, or read the novelization. I anticipate enjoying the audio but, so far, I haven't had the inclination.
I've never bothered buying the Poe-narrated "Vulcan's Soul" trilogy either. Nor Grover Gardner's "Nemesis", since I already had the shorter S&S Boyd Gaines version.
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