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METAtropolis
- Narrated by: Michael Hogan, Scott Brick, Kandyse McClure, Alessandro Juliani, Stefan Rudnicki, John Scalzi
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
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METAtropolis
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Summary
Welcome to a world where big cities are dying, dead - or transformed into technological megastructures. Where once-thriving suburbs are now treacherous Wilds. Where those who live for technology battle those who would die rather than embrace it. It is a world of zero-footprint cities, virtual nations, and armed camps of eco-survivalists.
Welcome to the dawn of uncivilization.
METAtropolis is an intelligent and stunning creation of five of today's cutting-edge science-fiction writers: 2008 Hugo Award winners John Scalzi and Elizabeth Bear; Campbell Award winner Jay Lake; plus fan favorites Tobias Buckell and Karl Schroeder. Together they set the ground rules and developed the parameters of this "shared universe", then wrote five original novellas - all linked, but each a separate tale.
Bringing this audiobook to life is a dream team of performers: Battlestar Galactica's Michael Hogan ("Saul Tigh"); Alessandro Juliani ("Felix Gaeta"); and Kandyse McClure ("Anastasia 'Dee' Dualla"); plus legendary audiobook narrators Scott Brick (Dune) and Stefan Rudnicki (Ender's Game).
John Scalzi, who served as Project Editor, introduces each story, offering insight into how the METAtropolis team created this unique project exclusively for digital audio.
Critic reviews
- 2009 Hugo Award nominee, Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
- 2009 Audie Award nominee, Original Work
“Each story shines on its own; as a group they reinforce one another, building a multifaceted view of a realistic and hopeful urban future.” (Publishers Weekly)
“Scalzi and his contributors/collaborators have created a fascinating shared urban future that each of them evokes with his or her particular strengths.... This stellar collection is a fascinating example of shared world-building.” (Booklist)
"This impressive group of writers imagines what happens when the world moves beyond cities as a locus of human civilization. The range of narrators...brings a unique narrative style to the production. Of the five narrators, all well chosen for the stories, Allessandro Juliani proves to be the best with his rendering of Scalzi's piece." (AudioFile)
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What listeners say about METAtropolis
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Mrs J M Maric
- 25-03-24
All very confusing
Like John Scalzi but found these stories too hard to follow and too disconnected from each other. Love the idea but the reality not so much.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Andy Sealey
- 18-12-18
Really hard to listen to and follow
Couldn't get into the joint universe, to me it didnt feel all that joined to be honest. Not a fan, which is a shame because I thought I would be
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Adam Thompson
- 23-01-24
Science Fiction by TED Talks
This had some interesting ideas, but they were badly explored, underdeveloped and in many cases shallow and vapid. The stories themselves too, were very mixed.
The supposed shared setting for these short stories is set 20 minutes in the future but seems to be developed in a way that seems far more based on tech, ideas and jargon from TED Talks than on any original thought by any of the authors. Like TED Talks, it's all style and no substance, and ultimately empty and unoriginal.
This reliance of TED Talks to do the heavy lifting in creativity already makes Metatropolis feel dated in a way that many works of science fiction still don't a century after their publication. Meanwhile, Metatropolis was released in 2008, only 16 years before the date that I'm writing this review.
Other than that, the supposed themes were weak, preachy yet had nothing new to offer. Some of the authors seemed intent on glorifying themselves for reinventing the wheel, while others seemed to have missed half the themes that others were supposedly exploring. This was a bad anthology.
The real question here is, "what was the point of creating a shared setting for these stories? The connecting thread: cities of the future is very vague and feels like it would have been better leaving this as a more conventional anthology, where each author was able to explore that topic in anyway they liked with as much creativity as they liked.
If you're bothering with creating a new shared setting, then that lends itself far better to longer works, and to composite novels/short story cycles. These are made up of short stories that can stand alone but also come together with common themes, settings or characters. This too, may have been better, if done by one author (depending on who...) or multiple.
The problem with METAtropolis is that it doesn't seem to know if it's meant to be an anthology (and it's smothering the contributing authors' creativity), or it's a composite novel with themes that are meant to run through the book (where several authors apparently didn't get the memo...). This leaves it overall as just a mess, and weaker than a sum of (most of) its parts.
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