Review: Beyond the Horizon by Bluefax

When I was little, I used to curl up on the sofa next to the record player and listen to audio dramas for hours: on vinyl, on tape and even some on CD. I wore The Lion King out completely, and Tabaluga still has a spot where you need to nudge the needle over a scratch. There's something fascinating about stories you can hear, but not see. They have the immersive quality of a movie, combined with the freedom to use your imagination that a good book provides. I missed those stories as I grew older; we still have audiobooks today, but few of them have that full spectrum of music, sound effects and different voices that make a story come alive.

This is the kind of nostalgia that the YouTube voice artist known as Bluefax evokes with Beyond the Horizon. The 30-minute audio drama, written, produced and performed by himself with music borrowed from various film soundtracks, is a classic work of science fiction reminiscent of the original Star Trek or C.S. Lewis' Perelandra series. If you've ever been nostalgic for a past when people still looked forward to the future, you'll know what I mean. The story begins with a collection of triumphant news clips, from real (Neil Armstrong's moon landing) to fictional (the end of hunger and disease), setting the scene for protagonist Don Lightwood's confident announcement of his upcoming mission: to study the event horizon of a black hole. It's described as the last frontier of human knowledge, and Don is eager for the fame and glory the mission will bring him, ignoring the warnings of his ship's A.I., Percy, about how dangerous space can be. What happens to them when they reach the black hole? You'd have to listen to find out.

Plot- and character-wise, I would have liked a little more. Don is the only human character, and we know almost nothing about him except that he is a talented, ambitious, and somewhat reckless astronaut. I would have liked to know why he seems so careless of his own life as to override multiple warnings from the A.I., or why he doesn't care about the time dilation that could cause him to come home several years too late. Does he have no family or friends? All this is understandable, though; according to the video description, Beyond the Horizon was originally intended as a documentary. not a work of fiction. With only half an hour to work with, all the scientific facts about space travel and black holes to fit in, and all the philosophical discussion points he wanted to get across, it's no wonder if the artist had to compromise on the storytelling front.

The voice acting and the sound effects, however, are professional. If anyone here is familiar with Bluefax's theatrical audiobook adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, they will recognize the same attention to detail: giving all the characters different voices, making sure the music is just loud enough to convey emotion without overwhelming the narrator. That's not the only thing the two works have in common, either. Whether consciously or not, there is a clear Tolkienesque influence at work in Don Lightwood's poetic, almost archaic speech. The black hole he's studying, for example, is "a sphere of midnight surrounded by a ring of fire". (Bluefax even voices Don with the same Northern English accent he used for Thorin Oakenshield; I was rather distracted by visions of Richard Armitage as a space pilot. Someone please make a movie out of this!) Also, like Tolkien, Bluefax does not hesitate to use the genre of speculative fiction to ask the big questions: Why do we explore? Is it worth trying to learn everything in the universe even if it's impossible? Can one person's achievement matter to the world as a whole? And is Pluto really a planet or not? (Just kidding about that last one, although it does provide some much needed humour in an otherwise deeply serious story.)

With the pandemic still ongoing (stop me if you're tired of that word) and more and more living in lockdown, audio dramas might well be making a comeback. Even if they don't, I'd still consider this one worth a listen. What do you think? Please like, subscribe, or contact me in the message box below.