June 2008 – Page 3

Review of Enna Burning by Shannon Hale

SFFaudio Review

Enna Burning
By Shannon Hale; Read by Cynthia Bishop and the Full Cast Family
8 CDs – 8.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Full Cast Audio
Published: 2007
ISBN: 9781934180198
Themes: / Fantasy / YA / Magic / Fairy Tale /

First, I have to say that I LOVE Full Cast Audio. They always do family-friendly books and they are always unabridged. They do an excellent job.

Enna Burning is the sequel to Goose Girl, Shannon Hale’s novelization of the classic fairy tale (also on audiobook by Full Cast Audio). However, you do not need to read/listen to Goose Girl to enjoy Enna Burning”. Hale does an excellent job of giving just enough background to ensure that the reader knows what is going on.

The story is well paced and full of action. The cast of actors does a great job of keeping the feel of the book and keeping the listener’s attention.

Izzy, the “goose girl”, is now princess and her friend, Enna, has gone home to the forest to take care of her dying mother. Enna’s mother dies before the book starts, but she is still in the forest, taking care of her older brother, Leifer. Leifer finds a long-hidden piece of vellum that teaches him to magically work fire. He struggles to control this power as it slowly consumes him. Finally, he uses his power to save their country of Bayern from the invading country to the South, but the fire destroys him.

Enna’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she, too, reads the vellum, telling herself she won’t ever follow the path her brother chose. But her need to help Izzy and save Bayern from being destroyed soon cause her to take a path not of her choosing.

The story is well paced and entertaining. It is written for the Middle Grade/Young Adult market, but is a great story for all ages. I highly recommend both the book and the audiobook.

Posted by Charlene C. Harmon

LibriVox: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

SFFaudio Online Audio

Virtually forgotten for 64 years since it was first serialized, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland is a utopian novel with a feminist bent. It’s extremely readable and plays out as a cross between Thomas More’s Utopia and The Man Who Would Be King. Three male chauvinists, adventurers all, but scientifically bent, hear rumor of a mysterious semi-tropical land composed entirely of women. And off they go. As they approach by airship, guns at the ready, they speculate as to what they’ll find and do when they get there. But, what they discover isn’t at all what they expected. Have a listen to just one chapter and you’ll stay for at least another two.

Herland
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Read by various readers
12 Zipped MP3s or podcast – Approx. 5.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 2008
Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society comprised entirely of Aryan women who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination. It first appeared as a serial in Perkin’s monthly magazine Forerunner.

Subscribe to podcast via this feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/herland-by-charlotte-perkins-gilman.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

The I, Libertine Hoax and how demand creates supply

SFFaudio Online Audio

“‘Gadzooks,’ quoth I, ‘but here’s a saucy post!'”

Today BoingBoing points to a vintage 1968 WFMU radio interview |MP3| with Jean Shepherd who, in the 1950s, promulgated a seemingly unstoppable hoax designed to lampoon the spurious bestseller book lists and their adherents. Shepherd asked his late night audience to visit their local bookstore and ask for a copy of I, Libertine, a book that didn’t exist.

The I, Libertine hoax is like something out of Gravy Planet (AKA The Space Merchants)! Shepherd had equipped his listeners with a plan, a plot summary, and an author with a whole fake biography. The furor created by the phony demands for the seemingly very scarce book led to reviews (both positive and negative) by regular folks and the book critics who claimed to have read it, or to have even had lunch with the imaginary author.

Then, Ballantine Books, sensing a pre-sold market, commissioned none other than Theodore Sturgeon (!) to write the novel everyone was clamoring for. Sturgeon nearly banged it all out in one “marathon” typing session before collapsing onto Betty Ballantine’s couch. She responded by finishing the novel herself.

One thing not in the BoingBoing.net story, there’s a FREE AUDIOBOOK version of the book available! Seriously!

Check it out out here…

I, Libertine
By Frederick Ewing; Read by Jim Campanella
13 MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Uvula Audio
Podcast: 2006

Amd there’s podcast feed for it:

CLICK HERE

Posted by Jesse Willis

Surviving a sudden time travel to 1000 AD

SFFaudio Online Audio

SFSignal.com today posted a link to a story on the Marginal Revolution blog which answers a question about what would happen if you suddenly time-traveled back to 1000 AD Europe. Read that article HERE.

I think this is far too softball a question. What if you got suddenly transported to somewhere else on Earth? Why do those pesky time travel machines always send you to Europe? Don’t we already have like a thousand answers to that question already?

I mean, just read Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court for one!

Why not go for something or somewhere we are less familiar with here?

Well, it just so happens Bob Packett of the History According To Bob podcast has just completed a 7 part tour of the year 1000 AD. In it he tours all around the world in the year 1000 AD. This was done in celebration of History According to Bob‘s 1000th podcast! Have a listen…

1000 AD Part 1 |MP3| Africa, South America, Meso-America, North America
1000 AD Part 2 |MP3| Oceania and Australia, East Asia, South East Asia
1000 AD Part 3 |MP3| South Asia (India and Himalaya)
1000 AD Part 4 |MP3| West Asia (Middle East, Anatolia, Arabia, Iraq, Iran), Central and North Asia (the ‘stans)
1000 AD Part 5 |MP3| Europe (Balkans)
1000 AD Part 6 |MP3| Europe (Eastern Europe and Scandinavia)
1000 AD Part 7 |MP3| Europe (Italy, Iberia, France, and the British Isles)

Or subscribe to the podcast feed:

http://www.summahistorica.com/podcast/rss.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

ZBS’s Ruby 5 set to be podcast June 30th

SFFaudio Online Audio

The ZBS Foundation, the creators of Ruby, the Galactic Gumshoe, will be podcasting all of Ruby 5, “The Land of Zoots”, starting on June 30th! Episode one is already in the feed. Jerry Stearns of Sound Affects fame describes it as: “a fun, romping story set on an archipelago on Ruby’s home planet, Summa Nulla, Crossroads of the Galaxy.”

And here’s the description from wikipedia entry on Ruby The Galactic Gumshoe:

Ruby is hired by the President Koonstar Bootstar to find out who created the Land of Zoots, a fantasy land that has stated to be made real by the inhabitants of the Awakening Archipelago.

Ruby 5 was intended as a daily continuing story for radio, so it’s gonna be podcast that way too. It will be released in daily 4-minute (or so) episodes for 64 days!

Subscribe to the podcast for it via this feed:

http://www.zbs.org/podcasts/ruby5Podcast.php

Also available, “Meatball’s Meatballs” podcasts. Which is described as “Fabulous info on the making of some of the best audio theater in the last 30 years. Great tips on music, field recording and writing for audio, and just stories full of fun.”

Subscribe to that via this feed:

http://www.zbs.org/dircast/dircaster.php

[Thanks to Jerry Stearns for the tip!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Bill C-61’s impact on LibriVox.org (it’s bad)

SFFaudio Online Audio

Solid! Check out THIS open letter from Hugh McGuire, (the founder of LibriVox.org) written to Jim Prentice and Stephen Harper. The letter is posted up on the LibriVox blog, and was mailed to the Industry Minister and the Prime Minister, it fully illustrates just two examples of how by being a LibriVoxateer (someone who volunteers to make audiobooks for the public domain out of public domain books) you can become a C-61 criminal. You know there’s something wrong with a piece of legislation when volunteers working from their home recording studios, on public domain materials, for the public good, are made liable for hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of damages!

Posted by Jesse Willis