Hello everybody,
I've been listening to Escape Pod since mid-2007 (I subscribed and told iTunes to "get all episodes" at that point). It doesn't seem like that's a lot of time, but on the other hand I feel like I've been listening forever. I love Escape Pod. Thank you for all the fantastic stories! I started listening at Episode 90 (How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas), and have listened to everything since, but a while back I also started going through all the back-episodes, thanks to Escape Archive (thanks! really).
Now, on to why I'm writing this comment:
It seems a bit lame to be moved to post to the forums for the first time ever with a negative comment, but I just listened to Episode 64 (Head of State, read by Wichita Rutherford) the other day, and
I hated it.
Now, to explain ... the story, I think, was excellent, but the reading and production were terrible.
The accent was hard to understand, especially with loud bed music, but that wasn't really the most significant problem. The biggest problems were:
- (1) that the mode of speech took away from the story by having the exact same emphasis in each sentence,
- (2) the music tried to force us into feeling a certain way rather than subtly aiding in the feeling conveyed by the story, and
- (3) the reader colloquialized the text in a way that I'm almost certain was not as written (which would leave me utterly furious if I were the author). Not just lines of dialogue, but exposition. Ugh. If that's how the story was written, then that's different, but I'm nearly certain it was not.
To expand upon #2, good "bed music" in a story subtly aids in fostering feelings the story evokes in us. Usually less is more, in terms of in-your-face-ness, but in "Head of State" I felt like the music was trying to drag me around and tell me "NOW. YOU WILL FEEL RELIEF."
Perhaps this was to make up for the lack of conveyance of relevant emotion in the reading of #1 where
every sentence ended dramatically. It seemed odd since it really didn't
depend on the content of the sentence. It annoyed me and tired me out and outright
made my wife angry. (I was going to use caps in this paragraph to imitate the style of delivery, but it was too jarring for me to want to inflict on you all).
My wife also expressed concern about the podsafeness of the bed music as she thought she recognized things which she thought would not be.
Regards,
Stephen