AUDIOBOOKS have found their perfect niche: the late 20th-century car. Now you
can let a scientist bend your ear while you鈥檙e stuck in a traffic jam. Six
leading media scientists feature on audiocassette from Orion. Recorded on two
90-minute tapes, each is an abridgement of a bestseller in the Science Masters
series. Also on offer in similar format is Simon Singh鈥檚 Fermat鈥檚 Last
Theorem, from HarperCollins. The audiotape鈥檚 allure lies in the sheer fun of
listening to a good story. The downside is that you must go at the storyteller鈥檚
pace.
Hence my frustration with Ian Stewart鈥檚 Nature鈥檚 Numbers in the
Science Masters series. He reads his own text well enough in a lively style. But
I鈥檓 soon irritated by the long introduction with its relentless descriptions of
patterns in nature, and half an hour later I still haven鈥檛 learnt anything. If
this were a book, I could have skimmed the familiar bits.
Broadcaster Sue Davies reads Paul Davies鈥檚 The Last Three Minutes,
and I confess I didn鈥檛 stick with it much longer than that. To my ear, her
delivery is stilted and awkwardly paced. The American scholar Daniel Dennett
gives a polished, if donnish, performance reading his own text Kinds of
Minds, but here the script is disappointing. In what is more philosophy
than science, he bombards the listener with question after question.
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My favourite of the four Science Masters tapes I heard is Richard Leakey鈥檚
The Origin of Humankind. There鈥檚 a good story line, and it鈥檚 easy to
listen to; the reader is actor Sean Barrett. The actor-narrator wins hands down.
Again, Singh鈥檚 Fermat鈥檚 Last Theorem benefits enormously from being
read by actor David Rintoul. His lovely baritone voice, deployed with just the
right emphasis and intonation, brings the text to life. Yet strangely, the
producer of the Science Masters tapes, Nicholas Jones, says he wants 鈥渁s far as
possible鈥� to have the author-scientist reading their own text. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like having
a friendly chat with someone of world class,鈥� he says. Well, it鈥檚 more of a
monologue than a chat. And although it is interesting to know what the Great
快猫短视频 sounds like believe me, the fascination soon wears off.
鈥淭he voice is hugely important,鈥� says leading audio-abridger Kate Nicholls,
who worked on the Leakey audiobook. 鈥淚f it鈥檚 wrong or overacted, it is truly
dreadful.鈥� She doesn鈥檛 favour authors reading their own work because 鈥渢hey are
not trained to do it鈥�. Rosalie George, head of HarperCollins Audiobooks, reckons
that after about ten minutes 鈥渋t鈥檚 hard to sustain interest if the voice is
产辞谤颈苍驳.鈥�
And it takes great skill to abridge a text. Singh, working closely with his
abridger John Nicholls rewrote large chunks of Fermat鈥檚 Last Theorem.
Singh sees audiobooks working at a new level of narrative, somewhere between TV
and print. Singh says: 鈥淚n the audio, you can go slightly more into the maths by
turning it into images and trying to describe the images.鈥� For logical
arguments, you must read.
So, does popular science on tape work? I confess that I鈥檝e been avoiding my
ailing car of late and have listened to these audiotapes at home. Singh鈥檚
Fermat鈥檚 Last Theorem is far and away the best; it sets high standards for
those that follow. But stuck on the M25, I fancy I would have welcomed even
those I have disparaged here.
鈥淔ermat鈥檚 Last Theorem shows that educating yourself about science
and mathematics can be pleasurable,鈥� says abridger John Nicholls. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e got to
be friendly on an audiotape because of the way you do it.鈥� Brilliant actors
reading well-abridged texts could do wonders for science鈥檚 public image.
Also available on Orion Audio: River Out of Eden read by author
Richard Dawkins, and The Origins of the Universe read by author John
Barrow. All at 拢8.99