Imaginary Worlds - Narrating Audiobooks From Other Worlds

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

The field of audiobooks has exploded since the introduction of mp3 players, and it continues to expand. But it takes a unique set of skills to voice audiobooks in sci-fi and fantasy genres. I talk with audiobook narrators John Pirhalla, Luke Daniels, Amy Landon, and Heath Miller about juggling dozens of voices or accents at the same time, and the kinds of choices they have to make when voicing characters who are not human. We discuss their approach to making dense worldbuilding narration feel like an intimate conversation, and how to voice the game mechanics in Lit RPG books. They have to do all that while competing against a very sci-fi type of threat: AI and voice cloning.   Today’s episode is sponsored by Henson Shaving. Go to https://hensonshaving.com and enter IMAGINARY at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. (Note: you must add both the 100-blade pack and the razor for the discount to apply.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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See Kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. Hey, everyone. Before we begin, we're doing another listener call out. This September will be the 10th anniversary of Imaginary Worlds. I can't say the time has flown by because 2014 feels like a different historical era. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the show, I'd like to talk with you about some of your favorite episodes. Was there a sci-fi or fantasy book, game, movie, TV show, or comic book that you didn't know about until you heard about it on Imaginary Worlds? And then after you read, watched, or played it, did that work of culture become really important to you?

Did it speak to you on a deep personal level? If so, please email us. The address is contact at imaginaryworldspodcast.org and we might get in touch with you. Thanks. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky.

Every year, I do a call-out on social media for episode ideas, and a listener named Alex Ferguson suggested an episode about audiobook narrators. This piqued my interest because I don't listen to audiobooks anymore. It's not because I don't like them. When I used to work in animation many years ago, I used to listen to books on cassette tape when I had to draw for days on end. But now, I don't have a lot of time for just listening, and I spend that time listening to podcasts because it's what I do for a living, and I like to keep up with the field.

So, I didn't know that there had been an explosion of audiobooks since MP3s. When the iPhone came out in 2007, there were only about 3,000 audiobooks made every year. This year, there's expected to be over 3,000 audiobooks made every year. This year, there's expected to be over 70,000 audiobooks published, and the sales of audiobooks are over $2 billion in the U.S. alone. I also discovered there's a specific craft to voicing science fiction and fantasy books, and there is a small subset of actors who do them. Some were longtime fans, like John Perhala. If you have a genuine love of the genre, it comes out.

It comes out in your narration as well. And you understand it. You understand the world-building and the creation and the different creatures and elements within it. And there's so many sub-genres, obviously. If you have a love for all of them, then it shows in your narration for sure. Amy Landon voices a lot of sci-fi and fantasy audiobooks. She was also a fan going back to her childhood.

And the, like, best thing that ever happens is every once in a while I get a backlist book from some fantasy author that I was obsessed with in my teens, and it's a book that I read like 12 times growing up. And it's like the best feeling in the world. It's amazing. Like which ones? I did a two book series for Mercedes Lackey that I read growing up when I was like 13. I don't know how many times I read that book so many times. So narrating that was just amazing. One of those audiobooks is called By the Sword. She froze. Child, I am not the snow demon. I don't eat babies. I just came here tonight to talk to you. She didn't move and the voice took on a tone of exasperation.

didn't move, and the voice took on a tone of exasperation. Will you please light that candle again and go sit down? Who are you? She stammered. Where are you? Right here. Amy also reads a lot of romanticity audiobooks. I just did an episode about romanticity. It's a blending of romance and fantasy genres. In those audiobooks, she's often paired with a male actor who will read the male character's point of view. Apparently, that's actually common for Romanticy audiobooks. Yeah, pretty common, honestly. It's a newer trend. It used to be often still one POV, but I would say the last five, eight years, that's really shifted. How come you think you get a lot of Romanticy?

Because, dare I say, I have like a decent Brit and a decent Irish and that kind of thing. And I think it comes up a lot in Romanticy. We've got a lot of accent work and I work really well with a couple of Brit narrators. So I think part of it is that. I think part of it is I just I like building those worlds and I have a lot of fun with it. And I've done enough of them that I think people know that and ask for me. Some actors end up in sci-fi fantasy audiobooks because of their natural accents. Heath Miller lives in the U.S., but he's from Australia.

He wasn't being offered a lot of romance audiobooks or thrillers, even though he can do British and American accents. It became, well, not British, not American. Where do you fit in? And apparently like Australians fit in like in space or in a fantasy world, basically. So I do think that a lot of it kind of early on was that. John Perhala's voice has also gotten him a lot of work, although he's become known for specializing in military science fiction. I think because this voice that I do, no, I don't use that voice all the time.

I think I've got a deeper voice. I'm a little bit older, right? So I've been around, I've lived a deeper voice. I'm a little bit older, right? So I've been around. I've lived a lot of life. And you bring your life. You bring those moments in your life that you can, you know, I've been there before. I know how that person feels. I can bring that to the words.

Also, his natural accent is Southern. I grew up in Decatur, which is basically Atlanta. Because I feel like that helps with military sci-fi, I would imagine. It does. It does. But he can do a lot of accents, which is also very important for the genre. Military sci-fi, commonly you'll have a troop. You only have a group of people, men and women together. And if you can create accents for everyone and have everyone have their own personality, it's a talent that you develop to be able to switch characters. And in your head, I mean, I see it.

It's very visual to me. I mean, when I'm narrating and I'm in the space capsule, I am in the space capsule. This is from the audiobook Wolf Legion by William Frisbee Jr. Everyone, I know we're all a bit bored. Extended worm travel can be physiologically challenging, to say the least. But let's keep things a bit more formal. Stick to procedures. Let's stay sharp, folks. Core status, Bennett? Core status all green, sir. Although we are a few hours away on the spawn drive. Sputters of laughter scattered across the bridge.

Bennett, what the hell's with the Scotty routine? What are you guys trying to do to me? Sorry, sir. I had to. Just upholding my honor. Upholding your honor? Bennett lost a bet to Petrova, sir. I had to. Just upholding my honor. Upholding your honor? Bennett lost a bet to Petrova, sir. He can't hold his liquor, sir.

I told him not to challenge Petrova. She could eat him for breakfast. Although when it comes to the aliens, he does like to ham it up sometimes. You know, so an alien might be pushed in that essence where, like it, we are Corellians. We are superior to other alien life forms. We will destroy these tiny humans

because we need the resources on their planet. They are insignificant life forms, worthless in every way but one.

They are delicious. We are doing vocal gymnastics over here. I've done fantasy and sci-fi series where I'm voicing well over 100 characters or more. And every once in a while you'll get those reviews where you're just like, well, you know, not every single voice was distinct. And you're like, oh, man, guys, there's a hundred characters. And the reality is I have one instrument and I can do a fair amount with it. But you are just constrained by literally what your body and your voice can do on some level. Is that unique to a lot of sci-fi fantasy where they'll have a lot of different kinds

of characters, especially if these epic stories and you really need audiobook narrators who are very adept at accents and can also just kind of have a dialogue with themselves in going back and forth instantly between these characters? I don't know if it's completely unique to that genre, but I think that is the genre that does it the most to that extent. Having narrated, you know, I do a bunch of thriller, I've done a bunch of romance, horror, all of those kind of things. Those books usually have a smaller cast. You know, you're dealing with really at the end of the day, maybe kind of 10 biggish characters with a bunch

of small things here and there, but they're people giving you coffee at the barista, whatever. And sci-fi and fantasy, you really can have these epic casts and conversations with 10 of them in a chapter. And you're going back and forth between all of those different voices. I think it happens the most in those genres and it is challenging. It's one of the bigger challenges, I think. In researching this episode, I spoke with someone whose job is to cast audiobooks. She told me only a select number of narrators can read sci-fi and fantasy because they have to have enough stamina to be able to do 50 to 100 voices while recording 10 to 20 hours worth of material for each audiobook on a weekly basis. 10 to 20 hours worth of material for each audiobook on a weekly basis. She said it takes years to achieve that level of muscle control and breath support. It's almost like training to sing opera or musical theater professionally.

And there are so many more challenges to voicing sci-fi fantasy audiobooks. So we went deep into learning what it takes to make the fantastical seem real and the otherworldly feel intimate. According to a recent study, two-thirds of men experience irritation when they shave. I am definitely one of those guys. In the summer, I put on lotion or sunblock immediately to ease that irritation. And I'm not going to grow a beard. It just doesn't look good on me. And this is why Henson Shaving wants to change the shaving industry. Not through gimmicks, but through groundbreaking research on the impact that shaving has on your

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The actors that I spoke with said that typically they have to audition to get an audiobook. They compete against several other actors, although they have to audition to get an audiobook. They compete against several other actors, although they don't know who those actors are. Sometimes the publishing house chooses the actor. Sometimes it's the author or the rights holder. And the actors that I spoke with said that their relationship with the writers runs the gambit. Some writers have no interest in audiobooks, or they're just too busy to talk with the actors. Other writers are very involved. John Perhala says he works with a lot of independent writers, and they tend to be more hands-on when it comes to audiobooks. And I love it because a lot of times we'll collaborate beforehand, and they'll give me,

they've been in this world, their head has been in this world for years sometimes, and I want to hear what they're thinking. I want to hear what voices they hear. And they appreciate it, and a lot of times it makes it a much better audiobook too. And if he's working on a book series, he often likes to know where it's going, especially when it comes to character arcs. Arcs are critical, and when you're working on a series, I have to talk with the writer beforehand because I need to know, hey, where is Luke going to be in book 10? You know, what is the arc of

this character? We talk about arcs a lot when I talk to writers. When it comes to a book series, Amy Landon also likes to know the arc of a story so she can prepare. But sometimes the authors don't know where their inspiration will take them, or she doesn't have any contact with them. So... I build a voice and pronunciation bank as I go. So every time I'm working on a new book and I have to say a word that is a made-up word, I record myself and I save it so I can hear it if I need to five years later, which has come up many a time. Or I'll pull a character reference so I know what they sound like so I can go back and revisit and remind myself. And it is shocking how many times I've saved my own butt where I'm

like, wow, I didn't think that chef with two lines in book two was going to be a major character in book eight. But boy, are they OK. Getting a series is a big deal. It could be guaranteed work for years. And the fans can get very attached to an actor's interpretation of the characters. But sometimes actors can't stay on an audiobook series for different reasons. John took over an audiobook series for a narrator named Travis Baldry. Travis Baldry is best known for writing a cozy fantasy novel called Legends and Lattes.

But before he became a published author, he was an audiobook narrator. He narrates his own books, and he still narrates other people's books as well. At one point, Travis Baldry wasn't able to finish narrating a series because of scheduling conflicts. It wasn't his own series, it was written by someone else. He recommended a few actors who could take over for him, including John Perhala. The writer picked John. John figured he was all set. But nobody gave a heads up to the listeners. set, but nobody gave a heads up to the listeners.

And they were very displeased. I've never gotten so many negative comments in my life. And it turns out that this is a very common thing. I was a little bit naive. And so I took over another series from him and I did it a little better. The third series I took over from him, I got with the writer and we both went to the audience. We went to the fan base together. We both recorded an author's note and a narrator's note at the beginning of the book that when I took over. And just when they know that you've really tried really hard to make it a seamless transition, they really appreciate it. So in that instance, we did the transition properly. It's my biggest reviewed book that I've ever done. Travis Baldry had also given John

the data bank of his voice files, so John could match the different voices that Travis had done for all the characters. Amy says being able to do different voices and accents are critical for world building. She spends a lot of time figuring that out before she even starts recording an audiobook. Prep becomes a lot of how do I help a listener understand the world through the vocal choices that I'm making. Does this group kind of sound like this? Does this group kind of sound like this? How do they relate to each other or not? I.e. are we kind of building a world around the

UK dialects? And so these people over here on an island might sound Irish and over here they might sound Scottish because they're up in the mountains. Or do we want to play against that and choose sounds that are completely different than maybe what would be the most obvious choice? that are completely different than maybe what would be the most obvious choice. Amy narrated one of my favorite science fiction books from the last five years, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. It's a story of political intrigue in the capital city of an intergalactic empire. For me, I was trying to figure out how to narrate the story and the world that she was trying to build. And I think she was trying to build this idea of what do you do if you're the

outsider, but you fall in love with the colonizer? And what does that mean for you? I definitely stumped on that one for a while. It took me a minute to kind of figure out how am I going to do this without beating someone over the head with it either. So I ended up going with sort of the empire, the people in the empire with this very light British sound. Then my heroine, who was coming from a much, much smaller mining clan, you know, kind of tribal. I didn't really give her a distinct accent. I kept her more in the American, but just tried to make her a little less elegant and a little less well-spoken because she was so obsessed with kind of how they spoke. They spoke poetry, basically, off the cuff. And she really loved that. And she was emulating it, but never quite

was of that world. The main character is an ambassador named Mahit. She tries to navigate the highbrow political scene, where a faux pas could be disastrous, if not deadly. Do you like poetry, ambassador? Mahit nodded. Very much, she said. On La Salle, the arrival of new works from the empire is celebrated. She wasn't even lying. New art was celebrated, passed around through the station's internal network. Nevertheless, she disliked Nine Maze's acknowledging smile, the condescension of his nod. Of course new works were celebrated in backwater barbarian space.

For that dislike, she went on. But I've never before had the honor of hearing one of your pieces, Patricia. They must not be distributed off-planet. The way Nine Maze's expression shifted, he couldn't answer that insult, not from a barbarian, was perfectly satisfying. John had an interesting challenge when he did the audiobooks for a fantasy series called Artorians Archive. He had to figure out how a character would sound at different ages in his life, sometimes within the same scene.

This main character becomes an old man, and then the next chapter he may become his young self again and switch back and forth and then you know the listener is is ready for these erratic movements and vocal performances oh you foolish boy you'll never learn you mean you'll never learn? I refuse to watch you make the same mistakes that I made when I was you. That's just it. I have to make the same mistakes, or I'll never learn. Well, you don't have to make the same mistakes that I made. You can change your life, change the past. That's absolutely not the way it works. And you know that.

But what about voicing characters that aren't human? Heath Miller worked on a series of audio books called Dead Man, which is like a Western set in a post-apocalyptic world. And the main character is a, what is called a dead man. So basically like a ghoul kind of living corpse you know anti-hero and it's a western style thing so i uh tried so many different approaches because again there's no makeup you can't see this person's face and they're also a character it's a challenge in that they're a character who is very circumspect and quite

taciturn so when someone is not a verb character, you've got a lot less to work with when you're just saying, sure, or, you know, okay, or something, you know, very, very monosyllabic or shorter bits of text. I did certainly record that many times trying different things, you know, a different kind of placement in the mouth as to where these giant teeth are, you know, and the character has no nose. How does that affect their sound? In a film or a television show, it would be lots of, you know, shots of them staring into the distance and, you know, Western music playing, and it would be established what kind of character we're talking about visually, rather than it's an audiobook. The only special effects we have is us. Sorry, man. We're closed.

I know. I'm Donovan. I'm investigating Lydia's death. His eyes widened. Donovan? The Marshal? I gave a slight nod. Come in. He opened the door, and I stepped through it. Who's inhal? I gave a slight nod. Come in. He opened the door and I stepped through it. Who's in charge? I asked. Marshal Donovan. I turned toward the new voice and saw a portly dead man with a surprisingly full beard standing in front of me, the boy who let me in standing

just a few feet behind him. You run this place? I asked. Uh, yeah. I'm Mel. I nodded. I have some questions, Mel. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. Hey, it stinks down here. Why do armpits get all of the attention? We're down here all day with no odor protection. Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea.

That's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. Luke Daniels is another actor who voices a lot of science fiction and fantasy audiobooks. He says if there isn't a clear cultural context and he can't speak with the author, he looks for clues in the text to understand what the author intended

or what aspects of the real world inspired the writer. So, for instance, if you think of an alien species, a lot of times they'll kind of base them off an animal. So, for instance, if we're going to make up an alien species today, let's say that our alien species is based off of, I don't know, give me an animal. An animal? I feel like the most common go-to these days are bugs. So let's say giant crickets because they're a benign alien species but still looks alien. So you're already like an author because you're giving me a lot of information there, right? They're benign. Okay, so give me an adjective.

Concerned. I'm pitching a movie right now. You're already trying to write it. You're already trying to write it. I just want your improv. So if it's a concerned insect-type alien, and give me one verb. Can you have, yeah, just any verb you can think of in action. Let's see.

The thought I thought of was folding. I just imagined this creature folding itself in ways that will be kind of weird and mesmerizing. So, yes, exactly. So if it's kind of very precise, you might be able to slow its tone down and maybe not necessarily give it something that's a specific accent, but is very methodical. And now it's starting to sound to me a little bit more dangerous. And you said benign. So he's got to lighten up a little and maybe he's a little softer. And now he's sounding a little too old to me. So maybe he's very precise and we could add a little bit of an accent there.

And he is now sounding a bit more like someone that's a little alien because their intonation and their rhythms are a little different than how we would talk, right? Give them something that we can relate to and then also something that makes it otherworldly. And I think that distilled down for sci-fi fantasy. That's kind of what we look for, right? We want something that's outside of our everyday norm, but with the stakes of our everyday norm. everyday norm, but with the stakes of our everyday norm. Since he has so much latitude with non-human characters, I was wondering if he ever changed a character's voice as the series developed. He said, absolutely. For example, I voiced a dog that's a very popular character named Oberon

for an author named Kevin Hearn in his urban fantasy series, The Iron Druid Chronicles. an author named Kevin Hearn in his urban fantasy series, The Iron Druid Chronicles. This dog started out and he's a main character. He's like the best friend and communicates telepathically with our main character. And so they talk throughout 13 books. And when he started out, I did him very simply. He was very much just like this guy. And he was very excited. He was a dog. Everything was kind of in that same dog way. But as I started doing more books, I realized, like, he's got, like, pages of dialogue and stuff. It became a little one note. So I began to add more variation.

So it took that same guy. And now he maybe could kind of things change up a little bit. And he could go really low like this. Or he could go really high and be kind of like so it's still based in that same character I originally came up with that I really like and that I feel is close to what the author was intending which side note the author says it sounds nothing like what it sounds like in his head so but he's a great guy and we're friends and he's like that's the process like it just it it's not how I heard it, but it's how you heard it and it works.

Heath Miller once had to take a more radical approach when changing up a character. He narrates a series of audio books called He Who Fights With Monsters by Travis Deverell. There was a character, a god introduced, who only had a couple of lines and it was, the god is named Dominion. In the lines that I gave him, it was very much uh you know do as i have told you you know this kind of very extreme even more so than that

i won't blur the microphone as i'm recording it then of course a few books later that character decided to come and have a barbecue um with the protagonist and you know a long monologue a leisurely conversation i then made a different choice as to how they're going to sound both for the fatigue of the listener's ear and also my own voice. And so I basically had the character come in. This isn't in the text because this is, you know, audio choices, creative choices that I've made. I had the character come in and speak in a different voice. And then quite early on in the conversation, they did a line in that voice that kind of worked within the text

to show that it was still the same person, but sounding different. They're a god, so they can sound like however they choose to sound. Unlike the last time Jason saw him, the god was projecting the form of a Celestine with brassy eyes and hair. Those of us who embody mortal concepts tend to have more mortal attributes. Knowledge,

deception, vengeance. Me, obviously. I'm the important one. Of course you are, Dominion chuckled. But what about characters who don't speak any language? Luke worked on an audiobook where he had to perform the voices of monstrous animals. In that case, the writer was actually there to give him feedback. It was a fantasy sci-fi about an island where a bunch of experimentation has gone wrong and the animals of the island are all giant monsters and our main characters are running through the island trying to survive. So we were in the booth and

it comes time for a giant parrot is now attacking. And the parrot on the page, it's written R-A-W-R in large block print with exclamation points. And so I go, and he's like, oh, that's great. That's great. That's great. That's great. Okay, now make it just a little bigger, you know, like it's even scarier. Okay, now, but shorter, that's too long. Okay, very good. like it's even scarier okay now but shorter that's too long okay very good but it's blowing out the mics you're gonna have to back off a little bit

okay now we're sounding more cat-like can we go back to more of a parrot you know so you're kind of like trying to get the train to to keep going and finally you get one that that just hits that that okay well this is actually a monster. It's not just a parrot. So can you make it more of a monster parrot and not just a straight parrot? Okay, so there's a million different interpretations you can do. And having an author that's listening in at the time can be very helpful. And some sci-fi fantasy novels have sound effects written into the text. Heath has a lot of fun with those.

I read a fantasy book that had a lot of kind of smash, you know, bang, that kind of onomatopoeic, like, ting, you know, the author had written in kind of battle effects. John takes a different approach. They'll write out weird words, like for a laser beam blast, you know, zurp, zurp. You know, and I'm not going to say zurp, zurp. You know, that's going to sound terrible. So you have two choices. You either just leave it out, leave out the zurp, zurp, or you use a sound effect. He has a catalog of digital sound effects.

That's a little unusual for audiobooks because an audiobook is different from an audio drama. Typically, I'll ask the writer, hey, do you mind if I throw in some sound effects? And I don't know if I've ever heard one say no. You know, they all love it. Another big challenge with sci-fi fantasy audiobooks is narration. Another big challenge with sci-fi fantasy audiobooks is narration. Some of these books will take place on the other side of the galaxy or thousands of years in the future. Everything we're familiar with has been reimagined from scratch.

For instance, a book like Dune starts with chapters full of dense exposition. I asked Amy how she handles that kind of writing. Part of it's like literally pacing. Are you narrating slow enough? When it's so much new information coming at a listener, you kind of have to start those books, I think, a lot slower so that people can follow along and go with it. And you're trying to highlight in some ways for them without hitting someone over the head.

The important things like pay attention to this, this little part over here is going to be really important later in the book. And maybe this little part where we're just describing what the world looks like, it's a little less important. I'm going to move through that. But you really need to understand these character dynamics or these political dynamics. Trying to set up a listener for that, it's hard. It's hard. You really have to know the whole arc of the book from the very beginning and try to help guide a listener through that for those really complicated, oh my God, we're building a world from scratch Dune books. Luke says narration is the part he finds most challenging,

much more challenging than doing lots of different voices or accents. So when he has to read a section with a lot of heavy world building, he imagines that he's reading to somebody who's sitting right across from him. You really have to be personal and tell the story to someone. I'll oftentimes, before I start, pick someone for the day. So I'll say, today I'm going to tell this story to my son, or today I'm going to tell this story to my brother. I imagine them in my head and it helps that break down that barrier that usually we'll put up when we start to do that narrator voice. So chapter one, you know, anything to kind of cut that out and still perform in a way where it's engaging and it's a performance,

but make it intimate and personal with the one listener that matters, and that's the person listening at that moment. Another interesting challenge with narration is a genre called lit RPGs. That's short for literary role-playing games. Imagine instead of playing Dungeons and Dragons, you're reading a book about a D&D campaign. And every so often, the narrator will switch to being like a game master, giving you statistics or telling you what kind of items have just been added to your inventory. So you've got a literary genre that is turning the experience of playing a game into the experience of reading a book. And now these actors have to adapt that literary experience

into the medium of audio. And so when the text switches from narrator mode to game master mode, how do they make that clear with their vocal choices? Again, here's Heath. That, I think, is a unique challenge with lit RPG. Depending on how they're written, sometimes they have pages and pages of system text, of statistics or leveling up or description of skills or something like that. It just depends on how they're written. I do a series called Heretical Fishing.

There's been two books in that that's been quite popular, which is a cozy, laid-back lit RPG where it does what it says on the tin. It's a guy who gets transported to another world and decides he doesn't want to be involved in politics or go on adventures. He just wants to fish. He'll catch a fish and it'll say, this fish is good for eating and like

blah blah blah i gave that voice kind of a david attenborough-esque delivery and even for this for this character within the book what would be a familiar way and i'm like well how do you hear nature described that's you know kind of such a touchstone for like describing nature you know the car moves towards the mother and does this and does that. So the system voice in that series is like, this fish is delicious and known for its nutrients. You know, it has this kind of nature documentary sound to it. And there's other choices, too. The book I'm doing at the moment is one is the I think the only book where I made the choice to read the system text as the protagonist, reading it and reacting to it. So

in this book, the protagonist, JD Rideout, will have the pop-up and he'll be like, sword is called, you know, sidearm, plus two to strength, plus five to endurance. So he's kind of reading and reacting to whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. He Who Fights With Monsters, I went with an Australian customer service kind of voice. So I would say like ability, standard. This uses something ability. So it's not a person talking. It's a computer generated information. Speaking of computers, this is a great time to appreciate the craft of audio books. It's a computer-generated information.

Speaking of computers, this is a great time to appreciate the craft of audiobooks because it's under threat from AI. There are tens of thousands of audiobooks being produced with computer-generated voices. Labs, made a deal with the estates of James Dean, Burt Reynolds, Laurence Olivier, and Judy Garland to develop AI readers that sound just like those movie stars. You know, so it's like you can have Judy Garland read you Wizard of Oz. And it's hard enough to compete with other artists without competing with dead artists who don't have families to feed and bills to pay and mortgages and rent. And the fact is, from an artistic perspective, you're not listening to Judy Garland read you Wizard of Oz because she's not making any creative choices.

It's the resurrected golem. It's the reanimated vocal corpse of Judy Garland reading you a book. It might sound like her, but there's no anima. There's no choice. and there's no soul behind it. In terms of accessibility, screen readers have been around for a long time. I don't have any issue with that. But in terms of a performance, a computer-generated vocal reconstruction of an actor isn't a performance in the sense that I want to hear one. Although he thinks that his job might be safe for a while,

because the vocal dexterity that's required to do sci-fi fantasy audiobooks is beyond what AI can do for now. That is not to say that reading nonfiction is not also absolutely a skill and performance just as much, but, you know, like AI might get away with that a little more when there's less, you know, there's less variation in that sense, less character voices and kind of, you know, it can do that. But that's a shame because it means people starting out don't have that work.

All you can do is be, you know, the most human you can be when you're competing with the machines without getting too, you know, Skynet about it. Visual effects are getting better at faking real people. But I think the human voice is harder to clone. Our brains are so tuned to know when an emotion is being expressed sincerely in somebody's voice or being portrayed authentically by an actor. There's something about it that's intangible, but you know it when you hear it.

AI may be able to turn text to speech, but the human voice can bring text to life. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Luke Daniels, Heath Miller, Amy Landon, and John Perhala. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. If you like the show, please give us a shout out on social media or leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. Or tell a friend who you think might like the show. The best way to support Imaginary Worlds is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you get either free Imaginary

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