Recent Arrivals: The Scarifyers: The Thirteen Hallows

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

The Scarifyers: The Thirteen HallowsOur preview copy of The Scarifyers: The Thirteen Hallows has just arrived. This is the eighth Scarifyers adventure. The first was released in 2006. I’ve caught previous releases on BBC Radio – and found it to be smirkingly good stuff – a period ghost hunter send up, full of jokes, and top shelf performers.

Indeed, The Scarifyers is rather like a sweet marmalade that you really don’t mind if it gets in your mustache as you’ll be able to enjoy it all day long.

It’ll be available for purchase on December 3, 2012 HERE.

Here’s the official description:

When a haunted chess set causes consternation at the British Chess Championships, and a horse magically materialises in Kettering Agricultural Museum, MI:13 are called to investigate.

Harry Crow (David Warner) and Professor Dunning (Terry Molloy) follow the trail of inexplicable happenings to an unremarkable terraced house in South Wales, home to the mysterious Mr Merriman (David Benson). He’s very old, and very mad; but is there more to Merriman than first appears?

Meanwhile, in the South West of England, famed archaeologist Ralegh Radford (Ewan Bailey) is on the verge of the greatest discovery of the age. Britain’s Tutankhamen, the press are calling it. But what he certainly isn’t expecting to unearth is boisterous 1400-year-old knight Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr (Gareth David-Lloyd).

As Crow and Dunning unravel an unlikely plot to resurrect Britain’s greatest-ever hero, the race is on to stop sinister forces at home and abroad from finding… THE THIRTEEN HALLOWS.

The Scarifyers - The Thirteen Hallows

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4X: A Canticle For Leibowitz: Fiat Homo by Walter M. Miller Jr.

SFFaudio Online Audio

A new five part abridged reading, with added sound effects, of the first part of A Canticle For Leibowitz, “Fiat Homo”, begins here:

BBC Radio 4 ExtraA Canticle For Leibowitz
By Walter M. Miller, Jr.; Read by Nigel Lindsay
STREAMING AUDIO – [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4 Extra
Broadcast: November 26, 2012
Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the fictional Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man’s scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it.
First published in 1959.

A Canticle For Leibowitz

[thanks Roy!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

R.E.H. by R.H. Barlow

SFFaudio Online Audio

Robert Hayward Barlow, a friend of both H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, wrote this poem after the suicide of the author of the Conan yarns.

R.E.H. by R.H. Barlow

First published in Weird Tales, October 1936.

Barlow, “apparently fearing the exposure of his homosexuality“, would also kill himself in 1951.

And here is John Feaster’s reading of the poem: |MP3|

R.E.H.
Died June 11, 1936

By R.H.BARLOW

Conan, the warrior king, lies stricken dead
Beneath a sky of cryptic stars; the lute
That was his laughter stilled, and sadly mute
Upon the chilling earth his youthful head.
There sounds for him no more the clamorous fray.
But dirges now, where once the trumpet loud:
About him press old memories for shroud,
And ended is the conflict of the day.

Death spilled the blood of him who loved the fight
As men love mistresses, and fought it well—
His fair young flesh is marble where he fell
With broken sword that vanquished all but Night;
And as of mythic kings our words must speak
Of Conan now, who roves where dreamers seek.

R.H. Barlow, newspaper obituary, 1951

[Thanks John]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The City by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio Online Audio

John Feaster has recorded this 1919 H.P. Lovecraft poem for us |MP3|.

The art, by Matt Fox, is from its publication in Weird Tales, July 1950.

The City by H.P. Lovecraft

[Thanks John!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer (a 1963 TV documentary)

SFFaudio News

Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer is a 25 minute TV documentary produced by David L. Wolper in 1963. It includes a little dramatization of Dial Double Zero, a short story about the emergence of an artificial intelligence within the telephone system.

And it’s also available as a download |MP4|.

[via Maria Popova and Archive.org]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Galileo Radio Theater (a lost 1980 audio drama series)

SFFaudio News

Here’s an intriguing magazine ad from Galaxy Science Fiction magazine’s final issue (July 1980):

Galileo Radio Theater

And here’s the text from the ad:

The Martians have landed in New Jersey.

It might sound absurd today, but in 1938 it drove thousands of people into a panic when they thought Orson Welles’ radio production of War of the Worlds was an on-the-spot newscast. But that’s the power of radio drama, and Galileo has recaptured that power with a new series of radio shows taken from the pages of today’s liveliest science fiction magazine. Return with us now to the thrilling days of … TOMORROW! You can hear these thrilling shows even before they reach the radio stations. Galileo magazine is offering tape cassettes of the series for direct sale. Hear the new golden age of radio when you
want, as many times as you want. with no commercial interruptions. Series one includes three shows offered here for the first time anywhere. They are actual productions, not dramatic readings, produced and performed by The Open Book theater company in New York. they are professional dramas based on the best science fiction from Galileo magazine.

NOW AVAILABLE:
.”Due Process” by D.C. Poyer
-follows the Supreme Court trial of a man accused of stealing a sentient computer. But who is to say if it was theft or liberation?

·”Take My Planet-Please” by D.L. Borengasser
-in which a washed-up comedian is abducted by extraterrestrials. What hope is there for an old joke to span the gulf between man and an alien?

·”Calling Shapes and Beckoning Shadows” by Eugene Potter.
-the tale of an athlete’s search for himself in a bicycle race on the Moon. at four hundred miles per hour.

Does anybody know if the second series was produced? Or if it was ever actually broadcast? Does anybody have a copy of either cassette?

I’d never heard a whisper about Galileo Radio Theater before today.

[thanks Mike]

Posted by Jesse Willis