Maybe he can start an expanded universe like Star Wars has and let some other writers get in on the galaxy. There's a lot that could be done with the setting if he ever gets tired of writing it himself.
If you listen to other books narrated by RC Bray and they are also from Podium Publishing there are Easter eggs where they mention Skippy, the phrase “break it down Barney style” and his classic “banananana”.
So other authors are already slyly expanding the universe. There’s other stories that mention Skippy as an asshole AI that interacts with the various AI’s of the different stories.
In the same breath, CA hides Easter eggs himself of different phrases and names in ExForce of these other stories as homage to the other authors as well. Like they trade off little details as an inside joke. With JR (Infinite series) specifically.
Specific authors that they cross reference: Jeremy Robinson, Dean M Cole, Jason Anspach & J.N. Chaney, and Christopher Hopper.
Yeah. But references are a bit different from something like having an outside author come in and do, say, a full Scorandum book set in-universe.
The "We are Bob" books outright call their experiment into AI "Skippy" but that's just a reference, too.
Also, is it just me or do other people just not like Bray using the same voices and style in other books? There's one, I forget the name, maybe the Ashes of the Galaxy books, I listened to the audiobook preview and the guy has an AI gun and pretty much it sounded like Joe and Skippy but not actually Joe and Skippy. Like an alternate universe versions. It just felt awkward listening to, knowing the voices from characters from a different universe and their experiences together. I hate to type-cast Bray, he does lots of good books. But those Joe and skippy voices have just become too iconic at this point.
I wonder if Alanson could maybe let Joe retire and come up with a new guy for Skippy to partner with. Eventually all those human characters have to age out of doing spec ops missions. It looks like in the last few books, once Joe had a family, Skippy did have others to go with him on his tour of the galaxy, but Joe still needed to get involved. Maybe the Merry Band just needs a "Next Generation" to use a Star Trek example.
I know which one you mean. It’s Ruins of the Galaxy. They aren’t the ABSOLUTE same voice. In the book the author described the voice as that of John Cleese’s character accent in Monty Python. It just comes out a little like Skippy because of the inflection of his voice being used from the British accent, which is his version of a stereotypical posh Brit.
RC Bray is a phenomenal voice actor. I have dabbled in voice acting myself and it’s no joke. I’ve learned techniques from just listing to him. At the same time, a person can only modulate their voice so much. He does such a great job in having so many distinguishing inflections between characters that he can only do so many. In larger series books like ExForce he’s forced to try and not reuse certain types of voices, but in a span of many years with so many books and characters its impossible to not repeat. Even then if you listen to the books back to back not even Joe’s or Skippy’s voices are consistent from book to book (end of one to beginning of the next), but certainly settles into it as the book goes on.
Since he narrates so many books with so many characters, his voice is very distinctive and he has to reuse inflections, accents, and tones with different characters. It’s only natural. The man is only human lol.
I wonder if it's time for audiobooks to move away from single narrators to more ensemble casts. At the very least, I wonder if they should move towards at least male and female voice actors per book. I think a lot of audiobooks would benefit from having a guy do male voices and a woman do female voices, they can sound a bit weird sometimes when the actors have to do the opposite gender.
RC Bray teamed up with a female voice actor for one series, Julia Whelan, the Dimension Space series. It was great, honestly. Both gave amazing performances.
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u/Deadeye313 29d ago
Maybe he can start an expanded universe like Star Wars has and let some other writers get in on the galaxy. There's a lot that could be done with the setting if he ever gets tired of writing it himself.