METAtropolis: Cascadia

When I saw that Audible did a follow up to the original METATropolis, I was interested to see what they had done to one of my favorite programs.

"The Bull Dancers": Extension of "Forests of the Night" the original leadoff. Pretty decent story other than the fact that it went on for much too long (3 hrs). Rene Auberjonois was decent, however most of his characters sound like Odo from Star Trek.

"Water to Wine": A wonderful tale that fits well in the Cascadia cycle. Definiteley a good choice of narrator

"Byways": Extension of "Stochasti-city". Didn't work as well as the other stories, but Wil Wheaton definiteley got the same rhythm/pacing that the original had.

"Confessor": Right length, however all the characters (male and female) all sounded the same, so identifying which story line we were on is difficult.

"Deonand": The Bad of the book. While the text is spot on, Frakes is not the right person to be narrating this segment. His butchering of Gennady (pronounced Go-Knot-ee) Malianov is so disjointed as compared to "To Hie from Far Cilenia"


In short I can tell which narrators had gone over the previous work (if there was one) and which did not. Audible, If you care about this book and the series please bring Stefan Rudniki in and re-record Deonand.

After hooked on the first series of Metatropolis, I had to also listen to the sequence. It's great to catch up with some of the characters from the initial series and to see how things developed. Each story is brilliant, filled with many inventive details, that are scarily likely to develop at the same time. Metatropolis Cascadia plays entirely in the USA/Canadian area, it would be interesting to read Metatropolis stories from other parts of the world.

This is an exceptionally good book of speculative fiction. What a relief from ridiculous vampire novels and vapid space operas. The book builds on the first volume and the stories are all as good and most are better. Like good speculative fiction they are not predictions of the future but vehicles for looking at current issues--ecological breakdown, privatized military and law enforcement, genetic experimentation, adding intelligence to formerly unintelligent things, and many other ideas. And they are great stories by some of the best new scifi writers. And I thought the reading was superb. On the contrary, actors often make the best readers. Next task for me is to see what else each these authors have written.

I've now been through this title twice - it was just as good the second time around as it was the first. Its a wonderful read - a future that could happen and who knows, might. I like the collaborative style that the different short stories bring and well, the reading talent, amazing. If I could suggest two titles that every audio book nut should read - METAtropolis and METAtropolis: Cascadia are the two!

This is a good collection of stories with a cohesive arc. The stories are interesting and held my attention, but some of the stories were less than subtle and a little heavy handed. In particular the final story that deals with a preacher replacing his faith in a divine plan with a faith in humanity. I cannot fault the author too much, characters in short stories are often 2 dimensional out of necessity, but some of the characterizations are a bit too easy. Other than that, I enjoyed this story and the performance of the Star Trek actors was thoroughly professional. Some of the best readings I have heard on audible are in this collection.

Great narration but very weak story lines. A great disappointment. I actually regret buying the series. That is a first for me.

I liked it a lot; enough to buy the other one. Liked them both a lot. Loved how the other one has so many different stories, but they all relate.

Even tho' a Sci-Fi fan, I had found METAtropolis disjointed, difficult to follow, and had to listen to the story 2x to establish a foothold on what Jay Lake was trying to accomplish. NOT SO with Cascadia.

I found Cascadia entertaining, easy to follow (with the exception of Bull Dancers), most of the narration well done, even tho' for some of the narrators this is not a primary occupation, but most of all, the characters thoroughly engaging, realistic, so much so that I sort of hated to see some of the short stories stop. There was good interplay between the stories, but not so obvious that it felt like one long novel. It seemed clear that the authors had worked well together, with Jay Lake accomplishing some good coordination. It also takes place primarily in the geographic area where I live. .

I heartily recommend the book to any Sci-Fi fan; it will probably appeal to most people interested in our country's future.

I should have known better when I didn't see either the original readers or John Scalzi associated with this project. In this sort of collection the editor has a strong influence over the course of the stories. The replacement of the original readers with Star Trek cast when no less than four characters were recycled from the previous Metatropolis was a very bad decision.

As someone who lives in "Cascadia", I can really see this as a potential for my grand-daughters future. They are 19 and 7 and I suspect the world they will live in is going to be much different than it's been. As for me, I've been a recycler hippy/greenie/recycler since the 1950s and as far a I'm concerned, we should have been living this way for the last 50 years and not doing so is what will lead to the dystopian future as discussed in the two books in the series.

All the stories are interesting and some are better than others. Johathan Frakes (Reiker from Star Trek) is a very bad narrator but LaVar Burton and
Wil Wheaton are both great. I love Wil Wheatons narrations of John Scalzi's novels. If you haven't read them, give yourself a treat-most are very funny...gut laugh funny even with Scalzis inability to write dialog without "He Said" 'She Said" and it happens in his piece in the first of the Metatropolis anthologies. But you get used to it.

I'm going to share these with a few family members-I think they will enjoy them a lot.

I encourage them for those who want to think about a potential new future that could be in our not so distant future!