Tell Me a Story

Science Fiction One

By: Arthur C. Clarke, William Gibson, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Terry Bisson, Avram Davidson

Narrated by: uncredited

Ready for a story? Author and editor Paul Williams has selected some of the finest science fiction short stories of recent years, including: Arthur C. Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of Gods," Isaac Asimov's "Insert Knob A in Hole B," William Gibson's "Cyber-Claus," Robert Sheckley's "The Perfect Woman" and "Beside Still Waters," Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat," Avram Davidson's "The Golem" and Philip K. Dick's "Expendable."Recording (P)1997 by Audio Literature

Has the Narrator ever read anything out loud before

Wow. The narration is painful on this one. The stories are great but it sounds like the narrator is reading this book for the first time. Choppy sentences, mispronounced words. No voice inflection or anything to discern different characters or moods. I had to stop listening after 2 stories because it was just too painful.

Just get the print version

If the narrator were a robot from the 1950s, I would rate the performance 5 stars, but I’m pretty sure he’s a sentient being, so 2 stars is generous.

As for the stories, they were probably great, given who wrote them, but I really couldn’t get past the narration. Four stars anyway.

I hate to pile onto this poor guy, but this was bad.

Good mix of short stories

Many of these were familiar but were read a long time ago. Others were new to me. The reader seemed to have more of a love for and familiarity with some stories while others were read as if for the first time, with stilted delivery. In the whole, though, a nice sampler of the genre

Poor reader

Good content, enjoyed the stories. When I could get past the halting monotone of the reader.

Playback speed adjustment improves the listen

What did you like best about Tell Me a Story? What did you like least?

These are classic syfy stories, very enjoyable in themselves, however the reader does an unusually poor job. I found if I adjusted the playback speed to 1.5 most of the awkward gaps in the speech cadence were eliminated.