Deathworld

By: Harry Harrison

Narrated by: Jim Roberts

Harry Harrison is best known for his Stainless Steel Rat stories and the novel Make Room! Make Room! which was adapted for film as Soylent Green. Deathworld is the first in a series of novels begun in 1960. In it professional gambler Jason Dinalt who has "psionic" ability is hired to win a great deal of money for a mysterious and very imposing stranger. When he "breaks the bank" their expertly timed escape gets them off-world just in time. The gambler learns he has helped the dwellers of Pyruss otherwise known as "Deathworld" - a planet that appears to be fighting and trying to destroy its inhabitants. Intrigued he determines to see this world and learn its secrets. He discovers that there are colonists who live outside the embattled city who are not under constant and ever evolving attack from the planet.

Jason's efforts to help the city dwellers and re-unite the two planetary groups before they are all destroyed makes for a gripping listen.

©1960 Astounding Science Fiction (P)2011 Jimcin Rercordings

Complete story

Good read as this was my second time through. Despite the planet trying to kill everyone in the settlement the grubbers found a way. Jason gives Kirk the keys to this psionic world. Death will come to the city but the survivors will win the planet. Weird, huh?

Favorite from my childhood!

Enjoyed listening to this great story again, hopefully one day it will be made into a movie. Harry Harrison delivers action packed story and interesting characters. Looking forward to more about Jason din Alt

Good story, slightly stilted narrator

Good story, a bit dated technically and socially but a great fun sci-fi yarn. The narrator is easy to understand but does not put much emotion into the dialog.

Decent story terrible performance

The narrorator has like a Jersey accent or something that is distracting and makes the cadence of the recitation tedious. Get the book instead.

Love his writing...but needs Phil Gigante

I have been a fan of Harry Harrison's works since I was a little sci-fi geek many (OK..many many) years ago. I have read all of his works and in fact the first book I downloaded was the Stainless Steel Rat. The first book I looked up was the Deathworld trilogy and was disappointed to not see it. When I saw the release of the first Deathworld I instantly bought it. Loved the book but I think they should have stuck with Phil Gigante who has done the VO work for the Stainless Steel series. I found Jim Roberts voice to be rather dry but I still enjoyed it. I am assuming they will use Mr. Roberts for final 2 books (for continuity) and his voice does lend to the dry-humor Harrison writes. Can't wait for the next 2 books.

MY ARM IS YOUR ARM

HE'S A QUAKE MAN
There were several things I enjoyed about this book. I always like wild biology books. One of the main characters is a strong woman and by strong I mean physically as well as mentally. There are some cool inventions such as transparent metal and a gun I like to call the windows 8 gun (very touchy). What I didn't like were the huge amount of politics and the PSI stuff. PSI was the explanation for most things happening and that just seems like a cheap way out to me. At the time this was written, PSI and telepathy were big in a lot of books, so Harry is just writing what was being written at the time. I also felt that Harry held back on some of the science to make this more pulp.

I like some of the books Harry wrote later, but audible does not carry these books. His Eden series was excellent and I would love to have that in audible. He also wrote a book called Captive Universe which was pretty cool. If you like the biology gone wild stuff, Audible does carry Neal Asher's books. I have only read one so far, but hope to read more.

I used to have a problem with Jim Roberts. I mostly connected him to cheaply done stuff, but I have grown used to him for these older books and he has grown on me.

Great stuff!

Great sci-fi novel and very good reading. Can't wait for Deathworld 2 to come out.

The End

Kirk voice could have been stronger all other voices were good!
This story is so short maybe add other stories.

older sci-fi

This is a good story if you like the older sci-fi. I liked the world building. The hidden ability of the plants and animals was a nice touch. The narration was good enough.

A miscasting for the reader drops a star

I have enjoyed the books of Harry Harrison for more than 40 years and this first in his Deathworld trilogy is one of his best and I understand that Mr Roberts is a popular reader with more than 70 books read by him here on Audible and I have in fact enjoyed his work several times in the past but I feel he was miscast for this book. A better choice I think would have been one of the readers used for the Prattchet books or the stainless steel rat tales of Harrison with their wide command of accents and vocal color at their command. Of course the problem may be more the director and choices he made as to the personalities assigned to the characters in the book. in this book the reader sounds to me as if he has been told to give a reading suitable to the books read for the visually impaired where the standard direction was I recall from when I volunteered my services to them was to " read rapidly and clearly with little or no attempt to interpret or dramatize the work" this makes a lot of sense when one is reading a textbook or similar for use by the blind but it is not what I want from a book that I buy here.