Remember that audio gig that I was saying I was really enjoying recording? Now I can tell you about it. I was one of the six women that John Scalzi asked to record an audio version of The Sagan Diary. He has the recordings of each chapter of the The Sagan Diary up on Whatever, to coincide with its release at Subterranean Press.
I have something special for you today, and something I am extraordinarily proud of. To celebrate the release of “The Sagan Diary,” (which you can get through Subterranean’s Web site and through Amazon) I and Subterranean Press have arranged for a reading of the book — the entire novelette — here on the Whatever. But it’s not me who will be reading the book. “The Sagan Diary” is meant to be the thoughts of Jane Sagan, as she looks over her life after the events of The Ghost Brigades and prepares for the life which will be detailed in The Last Colony. I wanted voices closer to hers than my own.
So I asked some friends if they would speak for Jane Sagan: I asked Elizabeth Bear, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ellen Kushner, Karen Meisner, Cherie Priest and Helen Smith. Happily for me (and for you) they said yes. Each of them recorded a chapter (or more, in the case of Mary Robinette Kowal), and took the words I wrote for Jane and gave them extra dimensions — made more of them than I would be able to make of them myself. If you’ve wondered what Jane Sagan sounds like, she sounds like this. I was delighted to hear her voice coming through these readings, and deeply humbled by the efforts these women provided in letting Jane speak with them and through them. Without prejudicing your own hearing, let me say that I found myself getting emotional listening to these words given voice. Listen to it; you’ll figure out where.
This is a wonderful piece of fiction and I could not be more delighted and honored to get a chance to read it. As a reader, there are some stories which it seems impossible to read aloud without stumbling, and others which flow without stopping, as if the words are part of your tongue. This is one of the latter. With the exception of one notable sentence in the preface, I can not remember a story which was easier to read. I think this is because, besides being beautifully written, this is something which Jane is “speaking” and so inherently wants to be read aloud.
I encourage you to go and listen to each of the chapters.
