Landfall

by Mike Walker

Genres: Science Fiction

120 pages

About the author

Mike Walker is a life-long desert dweller, raised in a family of creative, artistic, dramatic, and literary fellow humans. His particular combination of passionate curiosity and big imagination, while not always appreciated by teachers in his formative years, makes him an exceedingly interesting dinner guest and a formidable trivia opponent. After retiring, he landed the job he wishes he’d spent thirty years in at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. He lives a stone’s throw from said Desert Museum with his wife, who says it isn’t hoarding if it’s plants, and their acre of plants, wildlife, and the dog who oversees the whole operation. He misses reading bedtime stories to his (now adult) son, and is enjoying life so much that he wishes growing old took longer.

Reviews

[Janis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Premise interested me. With only audio, I had a lot of difficulty keeping the characters straight. There’s always a surprise waiting for the landing team in a sci-fi tale. I was pretty much lost once it was discovered. I think I understood the ending, but not how they got there.

This was only a one hour book. I didn’t think I needed to hear as much of the secondary “androids are scum” plot. I got tired of that in a hurry.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable and atmospheric short sci-fi dramatisation.

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cally ... Nicola Miles-Wilden
Intaba ... Cyril Nri
Hudson ... Clare Perkins
JD ... Alex Tregear
Hussam ... Adeel Akhtar

Sound design by Pete Ringrose and Colin Guthrie

The director is Marc Beeby

blurberoonies - When five lost souls, recruited by the Company travel to an abandoned planet, all they know is that they are to retrieve the only known sample of an ore left over from an old mining operation. But their task becomes considerably more complicated when one of their party has a close encounter with the indigenous plant life - plant life which seems to have some very odd, very powerful properties. Soon they are battling not only to stay alive, but to hang on to the very things that make them human.

Not so much

[Petra X: Tbilisi - graffiti capital of the world · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting premise that hours after finishing the book I am still thinking about. In fact it was a very clever ending which could be interpreted as the crew won or lost, that Daddy knew what he was doing or he just didn't care, or that the intergalatic police force or whatever had come to see the mission had been carried out or perhaps it had failed utterly. Other than that I didn't think much of it, but then its years since I enjoyed sci-fi and even more years since I read anything of a speculative nature. But... because the ending was such genius this three-star book gets a 5.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saturday Play: Next On: Today, 14:30 on BBC Radio 4

When five lost souls, recruited by the Company travel to an abandoned planet, all they know is that they are to retrieve the only known sample of an ore left over from an old mining operation. But their task becomes considerably more complicated when one of their party has a close encounter with the indigenous plant life - plant life which seems to have some very odd, very powerful properties. Soon they are battling not only to stay alive, but to hang on to the very things that make them human.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zhc3t