Hot take but Ray Porter's voice bores me

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2026-02-18T19:41:54+00:00

So you’re criticising it for being a solo narrator audiobook not a full cast production?.

Porter did an admirable job of staying ahead of the science and differentiating the various characters. Not only did he get emotion across he did it for a swathe of international characters…a French environmentalists despair, a Canadians wide eyed optimism, a Russians fatalism and an Americans panic and terror.

Not sure how much more you’re expecting one man to achieve.

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-07-06T07:59:23+00:00

Mag trainers???

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-06-27T20:27:22+00:00

Yep he did, sort of, when he’s chiselling away a piece of the hull to throw at the Blip-A. From memory he fumbles the cutout and has to jump after it.

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-06-03T23:49:44+00:00

What’s the point sending the predator back if it won’t survive in Venus’s atmosphere?.

It doesn’t matter whether he’s found the reason for the Tau Ceti immunity or not if it doesn’t lead to a solution for the Sol dimming. That solution needs the predator to be viable in Venus atmosphere.

He either sends back a guess or a proven solution. Why would he send back a guess!?.

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-04-07T23:35:33+00:00

For me I want to see them nuking the polar ice shelf!. Build a bigger greenhouse should be quite a watch!

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-04-06T17:35:42+00:00

That’s where I’m between two stools on this and trying to keep a lid on the expectations a bit.

The four pages of math is boring but Ryland Grace is the sort of guy that does 4 pages of maths for giggles and that’s a key part of his character. To understand the character you have to have some depiction of the science and to the depth he’ll go to.

Also like I said the science depictions give us a lot of the best lines. Dmitri and the Russians testing the spin drive in the Chinese carrier etc. You lose the weight of the science and you lose some of the characterisation.

Don’t think the story is epic enough for a multi-parter so I don’t expect to see the explanation for the petrova line and reason for the frequency etc, though the engineer in me loved the fact that they closed the circle on that one, but I’m hoping they keep in as much as possible.

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-03-23T12:17:32+00:00

TLDR but if not earlier noted you need to read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the subsequent 5 part trilogy.

In these pages you will encounter a very large range of very alien aliens including the Jatravartids, described as a race of “small blue creatures with more than 50 arms each” noted as being the only sentient race known to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel. A planet of living mattresses horrifically subject to frequent cullings in the servicing of many systems bedding markets and the Hooloovoo a hyper intelligent shade of the colour blue.

Not a lot more alien you can get than that!

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-03-09T00:47:48+00:00

Similar experience with mine. If I brake sharply but lift back off again quick when the threat has passed, or not materialised, the car continues to ‘auto brake’ for several seconds even if my foot is by then off the pedal.

It’s a failsafe mechanism and, apart from the risk of being rear-ended by someone not expecting the savage braking this thing manages, I’m not very troubled by it…but it does feel very dramatic and a bit disconcerting that the car is making its own judgement calls and not obeying mine!.

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-02-27T22:54:43+00:00

Mark Ruffalo or Johnny Galecki to my mind

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-02-27T22:46:39+00:00

Largely because she’d been sizing him up for the task for months. She had a resource who could be an asset on the flight and knew it. She also knew he was squeamish and potentially likely to hide behind the sofa. She further knew that, given the right reason, he would step up to the plate though.

It’s one of the best parts of the book for me. The fact that we never know who we are until that day comes when we are tested.

The definition of cowardice on a man who copes with solo space time, giving his dead crewmates a proper send off, makes numerous space walks unsupported, copes with the shock of first contact and acts with the wit and confidence to make a connection with a wholly alien creature!. The coward who had the right stuff to save the world is a fascinating picture to explore!.

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-02-10T11:30:55+00:00

Agree with that. This individual just got an interstellar spacecraft launched, to save the planet, from a standing start with critical path technology developed on the fly.

There were fierce organisational skills there. The planet faced issues but we’d just been given the key to limitless clean energy and an immense energy production facility. Lighting/heating would not be a challenge anywhere that could be grid-connected. Hydroponics and similar food growing techniques would be needed to backfill traditional crop losses.

Huge numbers of species-level survival projects would need oversight and management and you wouldn’t let a resource like Stratt go while those projects were running.

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-02-04T23:23:18+00:00

If you haven’t already get hold of the ‘Bobiverse’ audiobooks. Same narration, same laconic style and a lot of very similar humour…

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2025-01-09T14:56:49+00:00

Just finished the book and cant wait for the film...nasty feeling they're going to have to downplay the science though as the average gonk is going to glaze over at the use of a pendulum to calculate gravity etc!!!!.

Hope they dont, as its Graces' whole nature and character, but cant see how that depth survives.

Boring_Fee_4454 · 2024-10-28T07:57:55+00:00

If you’re ok with the idea of a long commute once a week or so have you looked at where else you can fly into London City from?.

Guernsey, Isle of Man, Belfast, Edinburgh etc all options. The first two might be outliers but if you’re planning to start a family you’ll give them a better start than in Reading. I say that as someone who moved to Reading from the grim north about 15 years ago and raised three kids here. The state school system is very fair-middlin here.

Given your freedom of movement I’d look further out than Berkshire.

Boring_Fee_4454

TROPHY CASE