A Traveller in Time, by Alison Uttley, read by Imogen Stubbs

I was able to purchase the last copy of A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley from http://www.bookcloseouts.com. It was a two-tape abridgement of the classic children’s story. It is more of a mood piece, switching back and forth between the life of a sensitive girl who is sent to the English countryside for her health – and a world of the past. She experiences slips backwards in time to the 14th century where she meets a family involved with an attempt to free Mary Queen of Scotts. She knows that the family will meet disaster and Mary cannot be saved. The child grows up over a period of years and her occasional time slips bring her back to critical moments in the growing conspiracy. It is a touching and sometimes moving story. It is missing a real conflict other than the growing realization that her friends in the past will fail, one of them will be executed, and all their lives will be changed.

Unfortunately, there is no resolution to the story and it ends sadly with her family in the past full of hope of success.

Imogen Stubbs, the reader, did a wonderful job.

Erica sold the tapes on eBay for more than I paid for them so overall it has been a good experience.

I have, in the back of my mind, the idea of doing a children’s story about the ghost of a young Revolutionary War soldier. My family is descended from a number of war heroes from the revolutionary war, and I live on land where George Washington camped, next to a cemetery that is full of Revolutionary War veterans. One of my favorite books, growing up, was Way Down Cellar by Phil Stong. This was the story of a couple of boys that discover a secret passageway in a revolutionary era house and encounter the ghost of a Tory minister. I would like to combine elements of both the Uttley and the Stong books into a short story.

Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein read by Lloyd James

It is no secret that I am a huge Fan of early Robert Heinlein, especially the juveniles. Heinlein wrote a series of young adult books during the 1950s ending with Starship Troopers. Starship Troopers was rejected as being too violent, but went on to be one of Heinlein’s most popular books.

My favorite Heinlein books are slowly coming out on tape. Citizen of the Galaxy is a typical Heinlein YA book. It is structured, as many of Heinlein’s novels were, in sections. These are episodes designed for serialization in magazines. They could almost be three separate stories. The first part of the book is about Thorby (our hero) as a boy on a distant planet where he is bought as a slave by Baslim the Cripple. Baslim is secretly a spy gathering information on the slave trade. This parts ends with the death of Baslim and the escape of Thorby.

The second part deals with Thorby’s life among the Free Traders and is a long anthropology lesson with a few moments of action. Thorby spends the end of this section in the Galactic Patrol where the plot line is mostly his superior officers trying to find out his identity.

The third part is Thorby’s return to earth where he finds that he is heir to one of the largest fortunes in the know galaxy. He must learn Earth customs and aided by the skills learned as a beggar, a trader, and a member of the galactic patrol, he fights for the return of his fortune against the corrupt lawyers who murdered his parents.

As are all Heinlein books, Citizen of the Galaxy has serious flaws that only Heinlein’s force of personality can overcome. Heinlein writing suffers from long lectures and unresolved plot points. They are journeys into Heinlein’s imagination, but are not as well crafted as other writers of the time. Heinlein’s clear voice is the driving force behind his fiction. His intelligence, knowledge, and imagination put on a good show in spite of the construction failures.

Heinelin’s opinions were often extreme in one way or another. In some ways such as nudity, sex, and women’s rights, he had extremely liberal views, but Heinlein is often criticized for his conservative, almost pedestrian, attitudes about government, the military, and crime and punishment. Citizen of the Galaxy is a testament of how training and strong values can free a man from slavery, implying that a strong man will be able to break free of his chains. These attitudes are good for fiction, but they give his stories a naiveté that troubles anyone that did not grow up in Iowa.

I have a bone to pick with Blackstone Audio in their choices of readers for the Heinlein books. Lloyd James, in the other Heinlein books, does a simply awful job. He may have redeemed himself somewhat in Citizen of the Galaxy, though. He does a straightforward read, using some strange accents at times and is not bad, except for his very “gay” voice characterizations of women. He portrays Baslim the Cripple using the voice of Sean Connery and he does the Lieutenant as Clint Eastwood. These are actually appropriate, but still they are distracting. In Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I was disappointed with his style. Part of the problem is that Heinlein himself has been such a strong voice in my head for so many years that I couldn’t accept another voice.

I bought this book through Amazon Z-Shops. Blackstone Audio has an Amazon Z-shop presence and they are dumping many of their rental audio tapes cheap. Audio cassettes are starting to fade away and I think the Blackstone will be phasing them out in favor of CDs and MP3s.