TEDxUCDavis – Michael Saler – History and Imaginary Worlds

SFFaudio News

Professor Michael Saler, of UC Davis, suggested I check out his talk about “History and Imaginary Worlds” which he gave at a TEDx at UC Davis.

Saler’s talk reminded me of something Dave Barry said.

He said he wanted to get an Amtrak jersey made, like one of those football or hockey style oversized jerseys. He wanted to get an Amtrak logo emblazoned on the front of it, and have two little ones put onto the shoulders. He wanted to have “GUNN” stitched on to the back of it (David Gunn was the president of Amtrak at the time). He wanted to walk around in public wearing it, and quote statistics about how many miles of track Amtrak had laid down, and to tell everyone how many passengers it delivered in it’s 2003 “season.”

I guess he thought that a lot folks might think it strange if a grown man walked around wearing a costume of one of his heroes. He didn’t want any of those normal sports fans to think he was strange.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

SFFaudio Online Audio

Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

Baby Is Three - Editorial Description From Galaxy

CAEDMON - Baby Is Three by Theodore SturgeonBaby Is Three
By Theodore Sturgeon; Read by Theodore Sturgeon
2 MP3s – Approx. 58 Minutes [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Caedmon Records
Published: 1977
Product #: TC 1492
First published in Galaxy October, 1952.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

Here are Don Sibley’s illustrations from the original publication in Galaxy:

Baby Is Three - illustration by Don Sibley

Baby Is Three - illustration by Don Sibley

Baby Is Three - illustration by Don Sibley

Baby Is Three - illustration by Don Sibley

Baby Is Three - illustration by Don Sibley

[via the Library Of America]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Printable PDFs Posted

SFFaudio News

SFFaudio MetaI’ve created a PDF Page, that is a page full of printable PDFs. Most are short stories, most are in the public domain (in most places). There are more than fifty PDFs there. All ready for download and printing.

Now I’m afraid that most have no OCR. But on the other hand the files are unlocked and so you could OCR them yourself should you so desire.

It’s currently filed under out FEATURES page, but HERE‘s the direct link.

Please let me know if any of the files there don’t download.

Authors included:
Charles Beaumont, John Buchan, Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Boucher, Emily Brontë, Lucy Clifford, John Collier, Philip K. Dick, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Laura Lee Hope, Robert E. Howard, W.W. Jacobs, Henry Kuttner, Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, C.C MacApp, William Morrison, Fitz-James O’Brien, Edgar Pangborn, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Sheckley, T.S. Stribling, Voltaire, H.G. Wells, and Manly Wade Welman.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Crime City Central: Keller The Dog-Killer by Lawrence Block

Aural Noir: Online Audio

Crime City CentralTony Smith, of StarShipSofa, was telling me, a few months ago, that he was working on a new podcast. I’m not much for plans. I don’t like to be disappointed. I don’t want to know what’s coming out next month or next year. Instead, I look backwards into what I see as the ever settling waters of history.

Tony had said the show was going to be crime fiction themed. He was excited. I was non-committal. But, now I’m excited.

That show he mentioned has come to fruition and is perfectly wonderful.

The first episode of Crime City Central features a short story by one of the world’s all-time best crime fiction writers, Lawrence Block. Keller The Dog-Killer was first published in the May 2008 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine – but it was originally a part of a novel, called Hit Parade, which itself was a part of a series of short stories that were fix’d-up into another novel (and then spawned more novels, which themselves were fairly episodic – and which included Hit Parade) – hence this short story. The “Keller” series features the adventures of Keller. He’s a shy stamp collector and curiously amiable freelance hit man who operates out of New York. You’d probably not want to know Keller in real life – he’s rather dangerous. But as a fictional character, he’s very fun to hang out with.

Keller The Dog Killer - from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May, 2008 - Illustration by Mark Evans

Aficionados know that Lawrence Block often narrates his own audiobooks, and he does a great job at it. But the narration here by reader Ray Sizemore is top shelf too. He does a seamless back and forth between Keller and Dot (his agent) and the story flows very smoothly.

I highly recommend giving it a listen. |MP3|

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://crimecitycentral.com/feed/

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt

SFFaudio Review

Science Fiction Audiobooks - The Engines of God by Jack McDevittThe Engines of God
By Jack McDevitt; Read by Tom Weiner
14 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2012
Themes: / Science Fiction / Archaeology / Climate Change / Aliens / Space / Space Exploration /

Climate change has Earth on the brink of disaster. The only viable solution is terraforming other planets to ensure survival. For a small group of archaeologists, however, terraforming is the worst possible solution. The only suitable planet is also the one planet with the most promising artifacts of an unknown alien race. Known as the Monument Makers, the aliens’ buildings feature a seemingly uncrackable code on them. The team is looking for the alien equivalent of the Rosetta Stone and must race against time to finish excavations before terraforming begins.

Despite the fact that the book begins by talking about climate change, which always gives me a sinking feeling, that is just the pretext for launching readers into a mystery. The team’s quest takes them to outer space, other planets, and into extreme danger as they follow the Monument Makers’ trail to discover their whereabouts and why every alien civilization has been abandoned.

This book reads as if it were a series of four novellas strung together with the common thread of tracking the Monument Makers. Each of the completed stories gives Jack McDevitt the opportunity to take the reader a bit further into archaeological mysteries while also examining different planets, space travel, and alien beings. Transitions between “novellas” are minimal at best and character development is weak. Still McDevitt wove a mystery that kept me listening at a red-hot pace. This is surprising because the author revealed his story in a very straight forward manner with plenty of foreshadowing. In McDevitt’s case, however, the telling itself was so compelling that I was fascinated to hear what would happen next.

In short, I enjoyed this very much, although at the end the story suddenly threw off narrative and resorted to bullet points to finish things off. “In audio, it was an abrupt ending that startled me, however, that didn’t spoil it as the story itself was done. In fact, I didn’t care about the “[insert name here] went on to do this” summary and it could have been left out without hurting anything.

Tom Weiner did a fine job of narrating the book. His reading was not something that stood out for any reason but which carried the story along very well. It left me with the memory of story rather than reader, which is surely what good narration should accomplish.

McDevitt tells a very good mystery that gives answers to some questions and leaves others to the readers’ speculation. Engines of God is ultimately a satisfying adventure which introduces us to a universe that he went on to write other novels about and which I will be seeking out.

Posted by Julie D.