A few weeks ago Jesse posted my list of Best Free Audiobooks. I got a great response for this post, so I thought I’d do another one with my favorite free short stories that I’ve reviewed at Free Listens. Of course such lists are inherently silly, as they depend upon the listmaker’s tastes, current mood, memory, and a host of other little factors that have nothing to do with the quality of the story. So, if you’d rather, here’s a list of 10 really darn good stories (but maybe not the best):

1. “The Lottery” – Shirley Jackson
2. “A Rose for Emily” – William Faulkner
3. “The Gospel According to Mark” – Jorge Louis Borges
4. “The Gift of the Magi” – O. Henry
5. “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov
6. “Bullet in the Brain” – Tobias Wolff
7. “A Sound of Thunder” – Ray Bradbury
8. “The Monkey’s Paw” – W.W. Jacobs
9. “The Open Window” – Saki
10. “The Yellow Wallpaper” – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Hope you enjoy these!

Posted by Seth

The SFFaudio Podcast #068 – Scott and Jesse talk about recently arrived audiobooks.

Talked about on today’s show:
Recent arrivals, Penguin Audio, The Books Of Elsewhere: The Shadows by Jacqueline West, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, TheBooksOfElsewhere.com, inherited books, The Green Knowe series, kids love series, Nelson DeMille’s The Lion, Lion’s Game, Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According To Mark by Jorge Luis Borges, Gene Wolfe, George Guidall, Anne McCaffery’s Dragonriders Of Pern: Dragon Girl by Todd McCaffrey, Mexico, Mexico City, “turista”, Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, the thread threat, the Honor Harrington series, Mission Of Honor by David Weber, Paul W. Campbell, On Basilisk Station by David Weber |READ OUR REVIEW|, Lois McMaster Bujold, Full Cast Audio, The Unicorn Chronicles: Book 4: The Last Hunt by Bruce Coville, Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder by Jo Nesbo, Mobile Infantry vs. the immobile infantry, re-write Starship Troopers as Warehouse Troopers, Water Steps by A. LaFaye, Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters for kids, Spaceship Rat, baby rat trauma, capybara, Brilliance Audio, The Deed Of Paksenarrion: Book 2: Divided Allegiance by Elizabeth Moon, The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bulington, The Vampire Earth: Valentine’s Rising by E.E. Knight, space vampires, Graphic Audio, The Immortals: Book 4: The Realms Of The Gods by Tamora Peirce, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon (read by Stefan Rudnicki and Harlan Ellison), gestalt, fix-up, Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon, Caedmon, H.G. Wells, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold (read by Grover Gardner), The Reader’s Chair, Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold |READ OUR REVIEW|, Paul Is Undead by Alan Goldsher (as read by Simon Vance), zombies, has the public domain classics remixed with supernatural horror jumped the shark?, A Picture Of Dorian’s Gray, Quirk Books, “paranormal romance has got completely out of hand”, Dark Shadows, soap operas, Soap, M*A*S*H, Three’s Company, Bosom Buddies, Blackstone Audio, the Newford series, Widdershins by Charles De Lint, urban fantasy alert, Mindswap by Robert Sheckley, Tom Weiner, Altered Carbon, A Galaxy Trilogy: Volume 3, Giants Of Eternity by Manly Wade Wellman, The War Of The Worlds, “standing on the shoulder of giants”, The Girls With Games Of Blood by Alex Bledsoe, The Return: Book IV of Voyagers by Ben Bova, “sensawunda”, first contact, the Grand Tour series, the Asteroid Wars series, the 2006 Harlan Ellison interview, City Of Darkness by Ben Bova |READ OUR REVIEW|, Neil Gaiman, Around The World In Eighty Days by Jules Verne (as read by Jim Dale), Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: Live In Concert, Footfall by Larry Niven by Jerry Pournelle, Audible Frontiers, Police Your Planet by Lester Del Rey, Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp, The Sword Of Shannara, The Elfstones Of Shannara, Neal Stephenson, Anathem, Boneshaker, The City And The City, Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson |READ OUR REVIEW|, Palimpsest, WWW: Wake, The Windup Girl, ebooks, Fictionwise, PaperbackDigital, Kelli Stanley, The Functional Nerds Podcast interview of Mike Resnick, Pump Six and Other Stories by Paulo Bacigalupi, The Alchemist And The Executioness by Tobias S. Buckell and Paulo Bacigalupi, Scott’s Pick Of The Week: Despicable Me, Jesse’s Pick Of The Week: Police Your Planet by Lester Del Rey, Zombie Astronaut, The Frequency Of Fear, The Frequency Lite.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Speaking of Gloomy Sunday and the 1930s … October 30th, 1938 was a Sunday. And as it happens an important one.

I’ve been re-watching all The Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror episodes. There’s a terrific, and hilarious sequence in The Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror XVII called “The Day The Earth Looked Stupid.” It’s a parody and satire of the Orson Welles’ broadcast of The War Of The Worlds with a little Fallout 3 and Iraq War thrown in.

Orson Welles: “They’re grinding up the bodies of human beings.”

[SOUND EFFECT]

Orson Welles: “Now they’re riding horses in the rain.”

[SOUND EFFECT]

Orson Welles: “Now they’re playing the xylophone while bowling near an airport.”

[.....]

I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire |MP3|

[via Rocker Chris Video and Archive.org]

Posted by Jesse Willis

1936, a Sunday in June. The tides of woe are sweeping in. Today is Robert E. Howard’s funeral.

Gloomy Sunday (1936) by Paul Whiteman with Johnny Hauser |MP3|

That must mean…

there’s a new Jake Sampson serial starting up.

Episode 1 of Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter: The Gods Of War |MP3| is out now!

Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter is my favourite original serial from BrokenSea. The show is set in 1930s and features a cast of characters that’s half Indiana Jones half Tales of the Gold Monkey. Throw in plots about Howard Carter, cursed Egyptian mummies, evil South American cults, vampires and the source of Robert E. Howard’s stories and you’ve got the fixins for one heck of a fun show.

Podcast feed: http://brokensea.com/jakesampson/feed/

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[via BrokenSea Audio Productions and Archive.org]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a man with gigantic mentality and gigantic faith…

Myself, I prefer the mentality in his fiction to the fiction in his mentality.

[via OpenCulture]

Posted by Jesse Willis

At 110 years old The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz (aka The Wizard Of Oz), is one of the few children’s classic novels, that children read, and that WAS a children’s novel from the very beginning. Today a tour through the kids literature section of your local big box bookstore will probably turn up a dozen or so “classic novels” that purport to be ‘kid lit’ of some sort. For publishers what makes them ‘children’s classics’ is that they are public domain and they have recognizable titles. Few were written with actual children in mind, and due to the age many can use an English language that’s so archaic as to be hard for many adults to read. Not so with The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. Sure it’s public domain too, but unlike most it was actually written with children wholly and completely in mind, unlike say, The Call Of The Wild, Frankenstein or Dracula.

In a 1975 essay entitled The American Grimm, comics legend Roy Thomas describes L. Frank Baum as the New World’s successor to “Hans Christian Anderson” and “The Brothers Grimm”. Writes Thomas:

“After trying his, hand at both acting and journalism, Lyman Frank Baum decided to create a unique Americcan fairy tale which did not owe its entire existence and background to the European tradition of goblins, witches, elves and the like. To do this, he set the beginning and ending of his story (which was originally called simply The Emerald City and at one point even From Kansas To Fairyland) in the heart of the American prairie. Of course. he didn’t completely keep out the witches.”

The Free Listens blog rates LibriVox’s audiobook version, as narrated by J. Hall, rather highly! Consider:

“J. Hall narrates the book with a pleasant American accent that would be at home at NPR. This isn’t a professional reading; Hall has several minor stumbles and he doesn’t attempt distinguishing voices for the characters. However, these minor faults can be easily overlooked when one considers the excellent pacing and emphasis with which Hall reads. The recording is free of any background sound, but has a compressed sound when played at higher volumes, perhaps due to noise filtering. All in all, this is a excellent choice if you’re looking for a recording of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz that comes without silly voices or overacting.”

The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz
By L. Frank Baum; Read by J. Hall
1 |M4B| File, 25 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 10, 2007
The timeless story of the Wizard Of Oz. Follow Dorothy as she leaves Kansas for Oz on a cyclone. She meets many strange, and wonderful people and creatures along the way. Enjoy it again with your children and family.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[via Free Listens]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #067 – Scott and Jesse talk to Dan Carlin, of the Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts!

Talked about on today’s show:
Hardcore History, Common Sense, the Rashomon effect, Gilligan’s Island, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, defensive reporting, nuance vs. talking points, BBC, NPR, PBS, Wikileaks, Common Sense Show #179 – GenX Journalism, the Martian political position, comics, What If…, Niall Ferguson, “counterfactual history“, “how different would voting be if there were no money impacting the political system at all?”, the toothless United Nations, the Canadian political system vs. the U.S. political system, the Congress Of Vienna, WWI, WWII, the Napoleonic Wars, the Rwandan Genocide, the Korean War, the Gaza flotilla incident, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq War, unilateral action, Panama, NATO, imagine if the United Nations wasn’t toothless, Wikileaks’ “Collateral Murder” video, Grenada, a “muscular” foreign policy, “air on the side of reality”, Julian Assange, unreleased Abu Ghraib prison video, podcasting, “how cool is it to have an international program?”, Pierre Trudeau, “we live in reaction to you”, U.S. foreign policy, Barack Obama, first contact in Science Fiction, first contact in history, Despoilers Of The Golden Empire by Randall Garrett, Fransisco Pissaro, United States expedition to Korea, “Korea is a dagger, in the hand of China, pointed at the heart of Japan”, Globalization Unto Death, “the hermit kingdom”, Magellan expedition, Steppe Stories, an island off the coast of India, Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, Sid Meier’s Civilization, Civilization (board game), Sparta, the freedom of podcasting.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Iron Heel, one of the books from our 4th Annual SFFaudio Challenge. It is now complete and available free from LibriVox! Narrator Matt Soar sez:

I have just this afternoon finally finished the last chapter of Jack London’s The Iron Heel. Phew! It’s been quite an experience – begun in Montreal, completed in France, six months in the making.

He actually wrote that two months ago. See, Matt decided to make a planned creative commons release release PUBLIC DOMAIN! Woohoo! It’s on LibriVox and it has now been catalogued!

And, over in the “about” section of Matt’s site, TheIronHeel.net Matt wrote:

The entire expe­ri­ence has been intrigu­ing, if not uncanny: The story, about an over­bear­ing, immoral gov­ern­ment char­ac­ter­ized by decep­tion, tor­ture, and war­mon­ger­ing, against a back­ground of civil­ian exploita­tion and reli­gious zealotry, is mainly remark­able for the fact that it was writ­ten a hun­dred years ago — rather than, say, five.

Per­haps the only aspects of The Iron Heel that really age it are its breath­lessly roman­tic hero­ine, occa­sion­ally pro­saic lan­guage, and the author’s fleet­ing use of dubi­ous terms to describe eth­nic minori­ties. These quib­bles aside, I’m really glad I took the time to record it, and hope you enjoy it too.

The Iron Heel
By Jack London; Read by Matt Soar
26 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 8 Hours 18 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox / TheIronHeel.net
Published: July 16, 2010
Generally considered to be the earliest of the modern dystopian novels, The Iron Heel chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London’s socialist views are most explicitly on display. A forerunner of “soft science fiction” novels and stories of the 1960s and 1970s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4342

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks a ton Matt!]

Posted by Jesse Willis

ca·lyp·so – /kəˈlɪpsoʊ/ – a musical style of West Indian origin, influenced by jazz, usually having topical, often improvised, lyrics.

I’ve only been the Caribbean once. But I still greatly feel its tropical magnetism. Ian Fleming did too. The first James Bond film, Doctor No was set in Jamaica. It’s where Ian Fleming lived and where he wrote Doctor No. I think he really brought the flavour of the Caribbean to the story. Throw in a mysterious Chinese, a yellow peril type, complete with fire-breathing dragon – and that’s entertainment folks!

When you think about it, Doctor No has just about everything a James Bond movie would later come to epitomize. First, there’s the exotic locale, Jamaica! Then there’s the titular villain with a body quirk, Doctor No has functional metal hands. And finally there’s the beautiful and headstrong woman, Honey Rider. Her first appearance, on screen, is perhaps the best known scene in any James Bond movie. As we first meet this enterprising shell collector she’s singing a song to herself on the beach. It’s a calypso tune that goes … “Underneath the mango tree me honey and me…” |MP3|

Now while that’s a great scene, the original novel ain’t no slouch either. Check out the unabridged reading by Simon Vance…

Dr. No
By Ian Fleming; Read by Simon Vance
7 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – Approx. 7 Hours 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2001
ISBN: 9781433258572 (cd), 9780786190720 (mp3-cd)
Sample |MP3|
M called this case a soft option. Bond can’t quite agree. The tropical island is luxurious, the seductive Honey Rider is beautiful and willing. But they are both part of the empire of Dr. No. The doctor is a worthy adversary, with a mind as hard and cold as his solid steel hands. Dr. No’s obsession is power. His only gifts are strictly pain-shaped.

In the novel, “Honeychile Rider” is described as “Botticelli’s Venus as seen from behind.” The movie has her in a bikini, in the novel she’s nude, except for a belt. In the movie she’s singing “Underneath The Mango Tree,” in the novel she’s whistling “Marianne.” Fleming describes “Marianne” as “a plaintive little Calypso that has now been cleaned up and made famous outside Jamaica.”

And it’s “Marianne” that’s used in the most recent incarnation of the Doctor No story, the BBC audio dramatization! And, in case you were wondering, it returns Honeychile to the nude.

I really like the movie, and the novel is definitely up there, but for me, now that I’ve heard it, the 2008 BBC audio dramatization of Doctor No is now my preferred version. It has that, sense of place, that a film gives, it plays up the mystery element, (which the movie downplays) and compresses the narrative with a “show, don’t tell” way that good audio drama really excels at.

I got a copy from RadioArchive.cc. The uploader there describes the audio dramatization like this:

Ian Fleming was never satisfied by the movie world’s take on James Bond. This dramatisation by Hugh Whitemore would meet with his approval as it is so faithful to the original novel. Bond, played here by Toby Stephens, is a wistful, vulnerable man as much as he is a fabulously fit and sexy hero. We hear him throwing up with fear after being crawled upon by a giant killer centipede, for example, which would never have done for Sean Connery. But both script and performances are true to Fleming’s vision of Bond.

And of course once you start looking into the actors biographies you start seeing all sorts of fascinating connections. Lucy Fleming, Ian Fleming’s neice plays a role. Toby Stephens has been in a Bond film and John Standing, who plays “M”, came from the family that owned Bletchley Park (the ultimate in espionage HQs if there ever was one)!

Now read a couple more of the listener reviews:

“Were this a movie, David Suchet [playing Dr. No] could have seriously expected an Oscar nomination, best Bond villain in any medium ever. Fantastic production all in all.”

“A splendid, sharp, slick adaptation, very faithful to Fleming’s writing. Makes you wonder why BBC hasn’t tackled more of these. And Toby Stephens is terrific as Bond.”

Dr. No
Based on the novel by Ian Fleming; Adapted by Hugh Whitemore; Performed by a full cast
Broadcast – Approx. 90 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4 – The Saturday Play
Broadcast: May 24, 2008
Provider: RadioArchive.cc
Bond is sent to investigate a strange disappearance on the island of Jamaica, and discovers that the heart of the mystery lies with a sinister recluse known as ‘Dr No’.

Cast:
‘M’ …… John Standing
Moneypenny …… Janie Dee
James Bond ……Toby Stephens
The Armourer …… Peter Capaldi
Chief of Staff …… Nicky Henson
Airport Announcer/Receptionist/Inika …… Leigh Wright
Airport Official/Pus-Feller/Henchman …… Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Quarrel …… Clarke Peters
Miss Chung/ Sister Lily …… Kosha Engler
Pleydell Smith …… Samuel West
Miss Taro/Telephonist/ Sister May/Tennis girl …… Jordanna Tin
Librarian …… Lucy Fleming
Honey Rider …… Lisa Dillon
Guard/Henchman/Crane Driver …… Jon David Yu
Dr No …… David Suchet
Acting Governor of Jamaica …… Simon Williams
Voice of Ian Fleming …… Martin Jarvis

Crew:
Music by Mark Holden and Samuel Barbour
Producer Rosalind Ayres
Director Martin Jarvis

[via Dictionary.com, BondMovies.com, Illustrated007 and Audible.com]
Posted by Jesse Willis

IT
By Stephen King; Read by Steven Weber
45 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: 2010
Themes: / Horror / Childhood / Adulthood / Monsters /

You don’t have to look back to see those children; part of your mind will see them forever, live with them forever, love with them forever. They are not necessarily the best part of you, but they were once the repository of all you could become.
—Stephen King, IT

What quality separates an adult from a child? Is it responsibility in the former and unbridled freedom in the latter? Do adults possess a higher order of thinking? Or, to take a cynical view, are adults merely physically larger (perhaps they/we never really do grow up)?

I happen to think there is a difference, though it’s hard to say precisely what. You could describe adulthood as a phase through which we all must pass, else we remain stunted and undeveloped, looking backward instead of forward, unable to transform into the mature beings that the hard world requires. Indefinable and amorphous, you may as well call this period of transition it. Stephen King did, and in 1985 he wrote a massive book by the same name about this very subject.

As is King’s forte, IT is also a horror story, and a terrifying one at that. The villain of IT is a creature that lurks in the sewers of Derry, Maine, one that takes the shape of our worst fears. IT’s favorite shape is a painted clown known as Pennywise, friendly at first glance but whose greasepaint smile reveals a double-row of Gillette razor teeth. Pennywise can also take the form of a werewolf, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, and more. Whatever a particular child finds most terrifying, Pennywise can take its shape.

Pennywise has been preyed on the children of Derry for untold generations, emerging from a deep slumber in the sewers every 27 years to feed. After a year of gruesome killings (written up in the press as mysterious child disappearances, or frequently blamed on other sources), the cycles end with a culminating event, typically an awful orgy of destruction, after which the creature resumes its hibernation.

But Pennywise—aka., IT—always comes back. Derry is perennially under its pall and seems to accept the darkness as “just the way things are” and the horrors continue in cyclical fashion. But then comes the summer of 1958. A group of 10 and 11-year-old children called the Loser’s Club, led by a stuttering, charismatic child known as Bill Denbrough, unite to battle Pennywise. All have had close brushes with the monster. Scarred by their experiences but united in purpose (Bill’s six year old brother Georgie is dragged into the sewer and killed in a gruesome scene at the beginning of the novel, and Bill vows revenge), they travel into Derry’s byzantine sewer systems to put an end to the monster. Following an epic confrontation in the creature’s den the children vow to return to Derry should Pennywise/IT ever return.

One of the club, Mike Hanlon, remains behind in the ensuring decades to watch and wait. When Pennywise does re-emerge 27 years later the children of the Loser’s Club are now adults in their late 30s. Some higher power has mercifully allowed them to forget the terrible events of their childhood and move on with their lives. But now they have to fight the terrible evil once more and growing up has diminished them in some way. This time around they find themselves less equipped to fight.

IT is a great story full of memorable events, places, and characters. King imbues Derry with its own personality, and the town feels like a member of the cast. King skillfully weaves in events from Derry’s awful past, including past murder sprees and the culminating bloodbaths that sent IT back into the sewers, including a horrific nightclub fire (The Black Spot) and the explosion of the Kitchener Ironworks.

But in the end, what I like most about IT, and what separates the book from much of the rest of King’s oeuvre, is its thoughtful exploration of that amorphous crossing of the bar from youth to maturity. To get where you want to go in life you have to grow up, King says, but it’s not a simple process. The transition from childhood to adulthood is a complex and bittersweet, its benefits equivocal. Adulthood brings with it at least some measure of financial, parental, and geographic freedom. We can leave those hometowns that are so frequently a source of shame and failure and hidden darkness. But in so doing we lose a lot, too—our dreams, our innocence, our closest friends, and sometimes even our faith in a higher power. And the only way to defeat Pennywise—that monstrous, childhood IT—is through faith.

King has been accused by his critics of being shallow, all style and no substance (he did himself no favors by once calling himself “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries”). But I’ve found that his best material has more depth than meets than eye. IT is not just about battling monsters. Or rather it is about that, but the monsters are also the real, adult fears of loneliness, guilt, and dependency, of growing up, of confronting the monsters of one’s past and trying to move on. We are all incomplete until we face our past and determine who we are, what we stand for, and how we want to live our lives. This personal struggle, as much as visceral, horrific battles with Pennywise, is what brings me back to IT again and again.

I will say that IT is not without its problems, including a sequence that remains controversial among King’s readers. Without spoiling the story, it involves a coming of age ritual in the sewers that is a bit off-putting and jarring, even though I do understand its purposes. Some of the characters feel a bit one-trick and allegorical (representative of concepts rather than three-dimensional human beings). Other readers have complained that IT’s big secret—Pennywise’s final reveal—a bit of a let-down after 1,000 pages of build up. King is unfortunately often guilty of unsatisfying endings to otherwise great novels, and IT arguably suffers from the same problem. I don’t necessarily agree, as I find the epilogue incredibly satisfying, but others have made this criticism.

But despite its flaws, IT is one of my favorite books by King. With a memorable monster, a nice cast of characters, and a compelling, decades-spanning storyline with an epic final showdown, IT is a horrific page turner with deeper literary ambitions that it mostly fulfills.

Posted by Brian Murphy

The SFFaudio Podcast #066 – Scott talks to Harlan Ellison, in the vintage 2006 interview, about audiobooks and audio drama.

Talked about on today’s show:
SFWA, Harlan Ellison’s Grand Master of Science Fiction award, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Repent Harlequin Said The Tick-Tock Man, A Boy And His Dog, Shatterday, Alternate World Recordings, Shelly Levinson, Roy Torgeson, The Prowler In The City A The Edge of the World, Yours Truly Jack The Ripper by Robert Bloch, Dangerous Visions, The Bloody Times Of Jack The Ripper, radio drama, Orson Welles, reading your own work aloud, Joseph Patrich, in the tradition of Geoffrey Chaucer, Ovid, Plato, auctorial performance, teaching English at universities, autodidact-ism, the Harlan Ellison Recording Collection, Caedmon, Harper Audio, The Ellison Audio Archipelago, Stefan Rudnicki, Dove Audio, A Sinner In The Hands Of An Angry God by Jonathan Edwards, Guglielmo Marconi, Voices From The Edge: I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison |READ OUR REVIEW|, Audio Literature, Blackstone Audio, Deep Shag Recordings, On The Road With Harlan Ellison series, Jack Williamson, Robert A. Heinlein, performing an audiobook, reading for the blind, Scott Brick, the wonderful voice of Stefan Rudnicki, City Of Darkness by Ben Bova, A Wizard Of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin |READ OUR REVIEW|, Ben Bova’s writing style, Mars by Ben Bova (read by Harlan Ellison), cryonics vs. cryogenics, fixing mistakes in other people’s books, the popularity of Science Fiction in radio’s heyday, Mysterious Traveler, Suspense, Lights Out, X-Minus One, Dimension X, I Love A Mystery, War Of The Worlds, 1950s “giant ant movies”, Galaxy Magazine, Radio Yesterday, Sea Legs by Frank Quattrocchi, the radio serials: Space Cadet, Superman, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, 2000X, the man Harlan Ellison won’t mention the name of (Yuri Rasovsky), Robin Williams, By His Bootstraps by Robert A. Heinlein, Richard Dreyfuss, NPR, the sense of belonging, The Green Hornet, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Tertiary Phase), Douglas Adams.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Lost World
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Source: LibriVox (zipped mp3s)
Length: 8 hr, 22 min
Reader: Mark F. Smith

The book: Not to be confused with the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, Conan Doyle’s The Lost World is an unbelievable adventure, in both senses of “unbelievable”. Like Watson in Conan Doyle’s more famous Sherlock Holmes series, the narrator, Edward Malone, is a tag-along to the real main character of the book, the conceited and quarrelsome Professor Challenger. Malone, a newspaper reporter, accompanies Challenger on  an expedition to a plateau in the jungles of South America, where dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts are rumored to live.

Although the premise for the book can now be seen as impossible, Challenger’s assertion of living dinosaurs is met with extreme skepticism by his colleagues in the novel, effectively removing the reader’s ability to criticize it. The story proceeds at a gallop, with new adventures happening every chapter. This book is fast and fun, making it a great light read for the summertime.

Rating: 8/10

The reader: You probably know by now that Mark F. Smith is one of LibriVox’s best readers. He’s done a wide range of books, and I can’t think of any of them that is bad. Smith’s dialog puts the listener into the story and his narration carries a bit of sarcasm at the right places, to help the listener see the wittiness in Conan Doyle’s writing. The recording, as always with Smith, is beautifully done.

Posted by Seth

Seth, of the FREE LISTENS blog, (a site that focuses exclusively on reviewing FREE audiobooks), has posted a TOP TEN list of FREE AUDIOBOOKS. Here it is:

1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
2. Howards End by E.M. Forester |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
3. King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
4. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
5. The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
6. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
7. Riders Of The Purple Sage by Zane Grey |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
8. Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
9. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|
10. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers |FREE LISTENS REVIEW|

There’s a a lot of good listening in there!

I’ve tried to convince Seth (AKA “The Listener” as he’s known over there) to come blog for us exclusively. Sadly, that hasn’t happened yet.

But, upon his recommendation, I’ve taken the liberty of checking out just the first audiobook on the list, The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (as read by John Telfer).

“The Listener” is right, it is absolutely terrific! Be sure to check it out for yerself…

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Read by John Telfer
25 MP3 Files – Approx. 6 Hours 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: AudiobooksForFree.com
Published: 2003
Provider: Gutenberg.org
Originally published in the Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892.

A Scandal In Bohemia Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Red Headed League Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

A Case Of Identity Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Boscombe Valley Mystery Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Five Orange Pips Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Man With The Twisted Lip Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Adventure Of The Speckled Band Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3|

The Adventure Of The Engineer’s Thumb Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Adventure Of The Beryl Coronet Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

[via Free Listens]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Way of Kings
By Brandon Sanderson; Read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading
Listen Online at tor.com [EXERPT]

Brandon Sanderson’s star has been on the ascent ever since he was tapped to complete Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series. The success of his own Mistborn trilogy, along with the strong reception of The Gathering Storm, have given Sanderson the opportunity and confidence to bring to light a new world that he’s envisioned for years. The Stormlight Archives, of which The Way of Kings is the first volume, may well become Sanderson’s magnum opus, his Lord of the Rings or indeed his own Wheel of Time.

Macmillan Audio has made three chapters available through tor.com.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Warbreaker and The Hero of Ages comes THE WAY OF KINGS (Macmillan Audio, On Sale 8/31), the first volume of The Stormlight Archies: a monumental ten-volume epic fantasy saga in the tradition of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. Macmillan Audio is publishing the audio edition simultaneously with the hardcover from Tor Books, and fans can now preview Chapters 4, 5, & 6 of Sanderson’s anticipated release exclusively at Tor.com. Tor.com previously posted the first three chapters in print, and we are excited to extend this exclusive preview by providing the next three in audio format.

The book is read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, whose voices also bring the Wheel of Time series to life. Registration at tor.com is required to listen, but it’s free and easy.

Hype surrounding The Way of Kings has reached mammoth proportions, but Brandon Sanderson has the writing chops to make good on the promise of another engrossing and innovative epic fantasy.

Posted by Seth Wilson

Back in 2005 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a compelling documentary on something called “Numbers Stations“, automated shortwave radio stations that are linked to international espionage. Check out the Wikipedia entry for “The Lincolnshire Poacher” and have a listen to an |OGG| recording of an example transmission! Then listen to the doc…

Tracking The Lincolnshire Poacher
By Simon Fanshawe
1 |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [DOCUMENTARY]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4
Broadcast: 2005
Simon Fanshawe embarks on a detective journey into the clandestine world of radio cryptography and attempts to solve one of the most unusual broadcast mysteries of all time.

[via Simon Mason and Speechification]

Posted by Jesse Willis

WARNING: This review is a bit of an aberration, it’s a bit more gonzo. It was written this way out of necessity and it is thus perhaps only suitable for those who… ‘heard he was dead.’

Escape From New York
Based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Nick Castle; Adapted by Bill Hollweg; Performed by a full cast
5 MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 2 Hours 15 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: BrokenSea Audio Productions
Podcast: April 2009 – March 2010
Themes: / Crime / Dystopia / Science Fiction / Alternate History / WWIII / Prison / Horror / New York /

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3|

In the year 1988 the crime rate in the United States rises 400%. The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A fifty foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline, across the Harlem river, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. The prison’s name: New York Maximum Security Penitentiary, Manhattan Island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners, and the worlds they have made. The year now… 1997.

In the opening crawl (detailed above) we are given a world rife with Science Fiction glory. Escape From New York has a premise full of promise. It is a story pregnant with possibilities – nearly all of which are fulfilled. Escape From New York, my friends, is both a powerful satire of our times and a powerful cinematic experience movie. Now, thanks to the creative love and attention by fans at BrokenSea Audio Productions it is a wondrous audio drama made by fans for fans.

Now hang with me on this. I hope I don’t end up seeming like a crazed french film critic, arguing for the superiority of the second Star Wars trilogy (The Phantom Menace et. al) over the original Star Wars and Empire. Take that first statistic: “the crime rate in the United States rises 400%” – how would that be possible? It certainly wouldn’t match any conventional trend or shift in population growth. Might it then be categorized under some sort of Freakonomics-style explanation? Maybe. But, I think we could argue, quite convincingly, that the only way to increase the crime rate 400% overnight would be to make a whole lot more human behaviors crimes. Disrespecting authority, sharing files with friends, or as the trailer for Escape From L.A. puts it “No talking, no smoking, no littering, no red meat, no freedom of religion. And remember all marriages must be approved by the Department of Health.” So, the world of Escape From New York is really fun. But a world is not enough. You need a plot and a set of characters. As to the latter…

The anti-hero takes many forms but I have a special fondness for Snake Plisken. As in an IMDB grendelkhan says:

“Snake Plissken is the classic anti-hero, ala Clint Eastwood’s Man-with-no-name. Plissken is an ex-soldier turned criminal, recruited/blackmailed into rescuing a hostage president from the prison of New York City. Plissken is a walking ball of anger and a survival machine.”

Indeed, a survival machine who’s been betrayed, lied to shat on by his own government – and he’s got a cool eye-patch, a reverse tramp stamp of a cobra, and a gravelly voice. He is a great character.

“But what of his motivation?” You ask.

Read on…

Plisken, call him Snake, lives in a parallel universe – a USA run like a fun-house-lensed double craptoberfest of moral hypocrisy. If you’ve seen the movie Escape From New York, you’re seeing the 1980 zeitgeist of Manhattan as the epitome of ghettoic urban decay. This fear, that your neighbors are out to get you, the horror that politicians so often rely upon, works great in movies (and in the opening credits to The Equalizer). But this isn’t only a horror story. The prison genre is one of my favorites (check out Animal Factory). Like westerns, these genre stories have a certain set of conventions or constraints that make a story told within those constraints far more satisfying. But neither is Escape From New York just a prison story. For it
is also a quest story, a revenge story, an all out action adventure. There are MacGuffins galore for Plisken to chase after: First up is a world peace conference that is about to end in disaster lest a certain audio cassette is retrieved, then there’s a kidnapped President Of The United States to be rescued, and of course there’s a jet glider (don’t think too hard about that one) as their only escape, but to top it all off there’s a pair of ticking time-bombs in Snake’s body! That’s not just motivation, that’s entertainment folks!

Snake, now motivated, has enough-knock-down-drag-out adventures in the course of just less than 24 hours, so as to numb any thoughy you had about suspending any disbelief. Or as Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued: “[if a writer could infuse a] human interest and a semblance of truth [into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative].” If you look at it another way this is the original 24, but with a hard-assed biker veteran saving the USA instead of a Kiefer Sutherland. In the course of just over 2 hours Bill Hollweg and the folks at BSAP have created a faithful and loving tribute to one of 1981’s best movies.

Speaking of 1981, I look forward to hearing BSAP adapt Clash Of The Titans (1981), Excalibur (1981) and Body Heat (1981). They’re already working on a Mad Max II (1981)-inspired series.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #065 – Scott and Jesse and Luke Burrage talk about the latest audiobook releases!

Talked about on today’s show:
The Year’s Top Ten Tales Of Science Fiction – Volume 2 edited by Allan Kaster, Infinivox, On The Human Plan by Jay Lake, Tarnsman Of Gor by John Norman, Gorean subculture, The Chronicles Of Counter-Earth, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Boris Vallejo, Brilliance Audio, Dog Blood by David Moody, Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, Hater by David Moody |READ OUR REVIEW|, David J. Williams, editing your novel, Gerard Doyle, Guillermo del Toro, Borders Of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold, The Reader’s Chair, Grover Gardner, Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold |READ OUR REVIEW|, Penguin Audio, The Left Hand Of God by Paul Hoffman, Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfus, A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire, Rosemary And Rue by Seanan McGuire, “urban fantasy warning”, fey vs. fairy, Audio Realms, Double Shadow by Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales, William F. Nolan, Michael Bishop, F. Marion Crawford, Wayne June, The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, Robert E. Howard, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, The Things That Are Not There by C.J. Henderson, naming your weapons, Happiness Is a Warm Gun, Gonji: Red Blade From The East by T.C. Rypel, the anti-Marco Polo, Hunt: Through The Cradle Of Fear by Gabriel Hunt, The Hunt For Adventure series, Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime, manly adventure, Christa Faust, Money Shot by Christa Faust, the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, Nancy Drew, James Reasoner, People Of The Dark: The Weird Works Of Robert E. Howard – Volume 2, CONAN, Queen Of The Black Coast, Castaways by Brian Greene, A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Disney edition (John Carter Of Mars), chain-mail bikini, Chicks In Chainmail, hauberk and coif, Gust Front: Legacy of the Aldenata by John Ringo, the Legacy of the Aldenata series, “military science fiction warning”, Flag In Exile (Book 5 In The Honor Harrington Series) by David Weber, “there is no happily ever after in a series”, Mass Effect, Steam, the wikipedia entry for Elder Race, big dumb objects, xenoarchaology, uplifting as a god replacement, Sid Meier, Babylon 5, Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds, Heechee vs. XeeLee, lamp-shading the foam forehead, GoodReads.com, Smoke by Donald E. Westlake, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, House Of Suns by Alastair Reynolds, Century Rain, Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, Audible.com, Audible Frontiers, Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Oath Of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn, Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, Steve Feldberg, Ubik by Philip K. Dick, Science Fiction And Politics podcast, Lost, Geek Nights podcast, The Darkness That Comes Before, The Lies Of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch |READ OUR REVIEW|, middle grade vs. young adult vs. vampire romance, The Books Of Elsewhere: The Shadows by Jacqueline West, Penguin Audio, Song Of The Dragon by Tracy Hickman, Brilliance Audio, fantasy, Harriet Klausner, Tracy And Laura Hickman’s Eventide, Adventures In Sci-Fi Publishing, Medal Of Honor (pre-order), Dragonlance, 23 Hours by David Wellington, vampires, comics, Classics Illustrated #3: The Count Of Monte Cristo, Epic Illustrated, The Rook, Unknown Worlds Of Science Fiction, Behold The Man by Michael Moorcock, Conan: Black Colossus, Garth Ennis’ The Boys, Herogasm, the video review of Herogasm, The Guns Of August by Barbara Tuchman, GraphicAudio, Batman: Inferno by Alex Irvine, “I’m Batman”, Elantris, Writing Excuses, Cory Doctorow, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, The Way Of Kings, A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, Luke’s Pick Of The Week: The Writing Excuses Podcast, “stories have to have an end”, Epic Fantasy’s appeal is that it has no end, The Lord Of The Rings vs. A Game Of Thrones, Eric S. Rabkin, I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells, Scott’s Pick Of The Week: GraphicAudio’s Batman: Inferno by Alex Irvine, Jesse’s Pick Of The Week: The Sandbaggers, BFS Entertainment, Ian Mackintosh, James Bond, espionage, Queen & Country by Gregg Rucka,

Posted by Jesse Willis

Fred Greenhalgh, audio dramatist and host of Radio Drama Revival sez:

Finalrune’s new show! I’ll be releasing it as a free podcast in 5-7 min installments, with a paid download of $2.99 available which includes all episodes as a director’s cut and 2 bonus music tracks.

Fred will be posting a new episodes on Fridays throughout July. But if you’re into it, consider downloading the paid version |HERE|.

The program is genuinely funny, featuring a Philip J. Fry-like goober who hits a troll while driving home from a party he was found too uncool for. The troll, by the way, is more of the “grind your bones to make my bread”-type, rather than the cutesy, pink-haired desktop variety.

Later episodes straddle the line between humor and horror. Audiobook narrator William Dufris, playing the troll, is nearly unrecognizable. It sounds as if he’s been gargling battery acid! And the sound, as with all of the field recorded Final Rune shows, is absolutely wonderful.

The first free episode is available now, check it out…

The Troll Of Stony Brook
By Frederick Greenhalgh; Performed by a full cast
Podcast or MP3 Download – Approx. 36 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Final Rune Productions
Podcast: July 2010
An awkward teenager, Jamie, is driving home one night from a party when he hits something – something big. His pushy co-worker, Rick, talks him into going back to the scene of the accident… and what they find will change them both forever.

Standalone Episode 1 |MP3|

As Part of Radio Drama Revival Episode #180 |MP3|

Podcast feed:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/FinalRune

Here’s the promotional video too:

Posted by Jesse Willis

It’s kind of a shame that this LibriVox edition of At The Back Of The North Wind is not wholly narrated by Meredith Hughes. She only reads the first three chapters. They are wonderfully narrated.

I happened across this audiobook whilst researching a stack of old hardcovers that I inherited from my grandmother. I must have read it at some point as the story is entirely familiar. But now, looking at it with adult eyes, the ideological argument it makes seems more quaint than persuasive. See, At The Back Of The North Wind is a theodicean Fantasy. It uses the personification of the “North Wind” to explain why evil exists in the world. As such it belongs on the bookshelf between two of C.S. Lewis’ books, The Problem Of Pain and The Lion,The Witch And The Wardrobe.

If you’re looking to get into some late 19th allegorical Fantasy, you probably couldn’t do much better than this wholesome story of what is essentially a gray witch and the good little boy she takes on a series of adventures.

Here’s the color plate from my paperbook edition (it depicts the Diamond, the little boy protagonist, and the North Wind (in the guise of a little girl):

At The Back Of The North Wind
By George MacDonald; Read by various
38 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 8 Hours 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: March 24, 2007
Diamond the little boy sleeps in the hayloft above the stall of Diamond the horse. The loft is snug but drafty, and after plugging a hole in the wall one night, Diamond is scolded by the beautiful Lady North Wind for closing her “window” into his room. Thus begins their friendship. Spirited away by the North Wind, Diamond embarks on a series of adventures both near to and far from his home. His pure heart and his simple, loving spirit guide him as he journeys to the back of the North Wind and home again. Originally serialized in 1868, beginning with the first issue of “Good Words For The Young” magazine.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/at-the-back-of-the-north-wind-by-george-macdonald.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

This is a fun post apocalyptic Science Fiction story that takes a truly preposterous situation and plays it straight.

Two shipmates, late of the U.S. Navy submarine Sea Sprite, stop off in New York. They’re waiting for someone to arrive, but when she turns up things go sideways, for she should be a he, and she ain’t no he. To make matters worse she wants to buy one of the sailors from the other!

As a bonus, especially for fans of Mad Magazine, be sure to check out the fun Don Martin illustrations in the text edition available over on Gutenberg.org.

The Knights Of Arthur
By Frederik Pohl; Read by Gregg Margarite
2 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: July 1, 2010
With one suitcase as his domain, Arthur was desperately in need of armed henchmen … for his keys to a kingdom were typewriter keys! From Galaxy Science Fiction January 1958.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4456

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Betty M. and Bart de Leeuw]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Here’s a promotion that, if you’ve got a Mac or Windows machine, and are in the mood to jump through a couple of hoops, you’re sure to appreciate. And, you can start at it right now.

Starting today there are two FREE MP3 audiobooks available, per week, throughout the summer. This comes courtesy of a new website called AudiobookSync.com.

To get the audiobooks you must download the “Overdrive Media Console.” Then you’ll have to give your name and an email address. It’s a bit of a muddle on the site itself, but after clicking around for five minutes or so I think I’ve got the process completely streamlined in my notes below.

First, if you don’t have it already, you’ll need to download the OverDrive Media Console
MAC |HERE|
Windows |HERE|

After it is installed you’ll need to go to the…

First Download page |HERE| to fill in your details

and then, after that’s started, go to the…

Second Download page |HERE| and repeat the process.

Be sure to take careful note where the files are set to download to. Mine defaulted to a folder called:

“\My Media\MP3 Audiobooks\”

There’s also a promise of more audiobooks, week by week, throughout the month of July. And at least some of them are definitely worth getting!

Here’s the complete release schedule:

Available July 1 – July 7
The Angel Experiment by James Patterson [ABRIDGED]
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [UNABRIDGED]

Available July 8 – July 14
Over the End Line by Alfred C. Martino
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

Available July 15 – July 21
Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Available July 22 – July 28
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Available July 29 – August 4
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Available August 5 – August 11
Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Available August 12 – August 18
Beastly by Alex Flinn
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Available August 19 – August 25
Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Available August 26 – September 1
Handbook for Boys by Walter Dean Myers
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Posted by Jesse Willis

This 100 year old story of a very Canadian bank heist, authored by Canada’s greatest literary humorist, could encapsulate a good part of that elusive Canadian culture we say were always looking for.

My Financial Career
By Stephen Leacock; Read by Mister Ron
1 |MP3| – Approx. 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Mister Ron’s Basement
Podcast: 2005

My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock

When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.

The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.

I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month, and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.

So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I had an idea that a person about to open an account must needs consult the manager.

I went up to a wicket marked “Accountant.” The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.

“Can I see the manager?” I said, and added solemnly, “alone.” I don’t know why I said “alone.”

“Certainly,” said the accountant, and fetched him.

The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.

“Are you the manager?” I said. God knows I didn’t doubt it.

“Yes,” he said.

“Can I see you,” I asked, “alone?” I didn’t want to say “alone” again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.

The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to reveal.

“Come in here,” he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in the lock.

“We are safe from interruption here,” he said; “sit down.”

We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.

“You are one of Pinkerton’s men, I presume,” he said.

He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me worse.

“No, not from Pinkerton’s,” I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency.

“To tell the truth,” I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, “I am not a detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this bank.”

The manager looked relieved, but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.

“A large account, I suppose,” he said.

“Fairly large,” I whispered. “I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly.”

The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.

“Mr. Montgomery,” he said unkindly loud, “this gentleman is opening an account. He will deposit fifty-six dollars. Good morning.”

I rose.

A big iron door stood open at the side of the room.

“Good morning,” I said, and stepped into the safe.

“Come out,” said the manager coldly, and showed me the other way.

I went up to the accountant’s wicket and poked the ball of money at him with a quick, convulsive movement, as if I were doing a conjuring trick.

My face was ghastly pale.

“Here,” I said, “deposit it.” The tone of the words seemed to mean, “Let us do this painful thing while the fit is on us.”

He took the money and gave it to another clerk.

He made me write the sum on a slip and sign my name in a book. I no longer knew what I was doing. The bank swam before my eyes.

“Is it deposited?” I asked in a hollow, vibrating voice.

“It is,” said the accountant.

“Then I want to draw a cheque.”

My idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present use. Someone gave me a cheque book through a wicket and someone else began telling me how to write it out. The people in the bank had the impression that I was an invalid millionaire. I wrote something on the cheque and thrust it in at the clerk. He looked at it.

“What! are you drawing it all out again?” he asked in surprise. Then I realized that I had written fifty-six instead of six. I was too far gone to reason now. I had a feeling that it was impossible to explain the thing. All the clerks had stopped writing to look at me. Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.

“Yes, the whole thing.”

“You withdraw your money from the bank?”

“Every cent of it.”

“Are you not going to deposit any more?” said the clerk, astonished.

“Never.”

An idiot hope struck me that they might think something had insulted me while I was writing the cheque, and that I had changed my mind. I made a wretched attempt to look like a man with a fearfully quick temper.

The clerk prepared to pay the money.

“How will you have it?” he said.

“What?”

“How will you have it?”

“Oh”—I caught his meaning and answered without even trying to think—”in fifties.”

He gave me a fifty-dollar bill.

“And the six?” he asked dryly.

“In sixes,” I said.

He gave it me and I rushed out.

As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank. Since then I bank no more. I keep my money in cash in my trousers pocket and my savings in silver dollars in a sock.

And here is the 1962 National Film Board adaptation:

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Red Panda Adventures – Season 5
By Gregg Taylor; Performed by a full cast
12 MP3 Files via podcast – Approx. 6 Hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: Decoder Ring Theatre
Podcast: 2009 – 2010
Themes: / Fantasy / Superheroes / Mystery / Crime / Nazis / Adventure / Toronto / Magic / Dinosaurs / Telepathy / Amnesia / Airships / Time Travel / Caribbean / New York / Los Angeles / Espionage /

Of the many terrific episodes in this season’s dozen, I think Just Like Clockwork is my overall favourite. It’s an exemplary episode and it’s probably as close as Gregg Taylor will come to adapting a Philip K. Dick story. Events in any given Red Panda show can stand completely alone, but they’ll still often add to a developing story. Like in all the previous seasons villains rise, and fall, rise and then fall again. But sometimes the villains aren’t really villains, and sometimes the heroes are more frightening than we’d like them to be. By the final episode of Season 5 we know were heading towards some serious World War II stories. Here’s my description of each episode:

Episode 1 – “Nightshade” |MP3|
The newly married super-couple, August Fenwick (aka The Red Panda) and Kit Baxter Fenwick (aka The Flying Squirrel), are returning from their honeymoon in Europe. It was a working holiday, but they’re looking forward to a relaxing flight home aboard a Zeppelin. But there is a mysterious passenger aboard, and she has other plans.

Episode 2 – “Flight Of The Bumblebee” |MP3|
Doctor Darius, an earnest rooming-house tenant with a “felonious past,” is having trouble paying his rent. If he can only perfect his “royal jelly” formula … well, let’s just say that not all super-villains, it seems, are motivated by megalomania.

Episode 3 – “The Puzzle Master” |MP3|
A fiendish deathtrap, in the form of a labyrinth, faces any victim of The Puzzle Master. Can RP and FS, with the help of “Doc Rocket”, navigate the maze?

Episode 4 – “Just Like Clockwork” |MP3|
An amnesiac awakes in a dark alley. He meets a young woman, she wants to help, and he’s definitely in need of it. Meanwhile, the Red Panda is hunting for someone or something that poses a threat to someone or something somewhere in Toronto. It’s a mystery! It’s a love story! And it has all got to end either with a bang, a twist, or in tears!

Episode 5 – “Murder Wears A Mask” |MP3|
An old debt must be repaid with a trip to New York City. But unlike in Toronto, NYC has licensed superheroes, the mayor has given them badges and charged them with tracking down one of their own. But two crusaders from the Great White North don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

Episode 6 – “Terror Walks The Night” |MP3|
A cold spell, and a series of suicides isn’t likely to be a dastardly plot. Not during the 1930s depression. But when those suicides coincide with a series of disappearances then a certain something must be up. Right? Add in a snake cult and this looks like a job for a certain married couple, in thermal tights!

Episode 7 – “The Secret City” |MP3|
A dozen unsolved “society” kidnappings are followed up by an “impossible” $80,000 jewel robbery – the police are baffled but Red Panda (and wife) are on the case. Perhaps one jocular simian and his Oliver Twist-like crew are responsible?

Episode 8 – “A Dish Best Served Cold” |MP3|
A stakeout, some “ritualistic nonsense” and a gravelly voiced villain leading a covert cabal of criminal creeps may spell the extermination of both Panda and Squirrel. Can anyone stop The Red Panda Revenge Squad?

Episode 9 – “Song Of The Siren” |MP3|
A Caribbean vacation for Mr. and Mrs. August Fenwick is cut short when a Havana based pleasure boat, reported in distress and then missing, proves irresistible to this power couple. Could a mysterious high pitched cry, and an inconspicuous island deep in the epicenter be signs of a secret testing base? But testing for what? And for whom?

Episode 10 – “Eyes Of The Idol” |MP3|
Late one night in Los Angeles two security guards pass the time by talking. One has a strange tale to tell. It seems there was once an uninhabited island off the coast of India. On that island was an ancient ruined city. In that city was a certain eldritch idol. And that idol had two jewels for eyes, now called the “Eyes of Doom.” Now one of the guards has one. Two means doom.

Episode 11 – “Sins Of The Father” |MP3|
Is it only coincidence when Fenwick Industries is plagued by accidents? After all, accidents happen. But sometimes accidents aren’t actually accidents at all! And a sniper assassin is no kind of accident. Its all very hush hush, but what exactly does the suspicious Colonel Fitzroy know about it?

Episode 12 – “The Great Fall” |MP3|
Set in late August 1939, with a recently signed non-aggression pact between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. One hero, and her husband, will fight one final holding action in a losing war, the Occult War. Their opponent is Professor Friedrich Von Schlitz and a division of SS scum.

Happy Canada Day everybody, go celebrate with some RED PANDA!

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://decoderring.libsyn.com/rss

Posted by Jesse Willis

Looking for reviews of your favorite Audio Dramas? Recently started, is Audio Cinema Review! Besides just reviews of Audio Drama, we also have round tables with people who are in the Audio Drama scene, and panels from different con’s across the country.

You can subscribe to the show by telling your favorite podcatcher to subscribe to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AudioCinemaReview

Posted by Chris Moody

Jacques Futrelle was a mystery writer best known for his creation, a rival to Sherlock Holmes, a detective named Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, (aka “The Thinking Machine“)! Futrelle’s career was tragically, and famously, cut short whilst traveling aboard the titanic:

“[He] steadfastly refused to accept a chance to enter a lifeboat when he knew that the Titanic was sinking under him.”

This story, a novella, was actually adapted to film in a pair of 1920s movie serials. Sadly they no longer exist. But, Futrelle lives on, in this audiobook, and as the protagonist of The Titanic Murders by Max Allan Collins, which is a murder mystery set aboard the Titanic on its final voyage .

The Diamond Master
By Jaques Futrelle; Read by Dawn Larsen
17 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 23, 2010
A perfect diamond worth millions is mailed, in a plain package, to a diamond dealer. Then he finds that identical diamonds were delivered to other diamond dealers. Where did the gems come from? Who sent them? And why?

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4161

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to Annise]

Posted by Jesse Willis

It seems I posted the last post a bit too quickly. Audible.com is offering any one of FIFTY audiobooks to NEW Audible.com MEMBERS. Here’s the text:

“Welcome to Audible.com’s Summer FREE Audiobook Giveaway! We’re offering some of the season’s top titles, along with a number of our best-sellers, absolutely free with no strings attached. This is your best opportunity to try an audiobook absolutely free and kick-start your summer with a great book. Choose 1 FREE audiobook on us. There is no credit card required to participate. This event ends July 2, 2010, at 11:59 PM EST.”

Titles of interest include:
METAtropolis |READ OUR REVIEW|
The Lost Fleet: Dauntless by Jack Campbell
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
On Basilisk Station by David Weber |READ OUR REVIEW|
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold
I Am Legend: Free Version by Richard Matheson |READ OUR REVIEW|
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
The Lion’s Game by Nelson DeMille

There are plenty of others available too. Check it out |HERE|.

There is a limit of 1 audiobook per customer. Some audiobooks may not be available outside the United States and Canada.

Addendum: If you already have an existing account you probably won’t be eligible for this deal. Click on through to find out.

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE, right now, to Audible.com account holders, the first book in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “The Fey” series!

The Sacrifice: The Fey, Book 1
By Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Read by David DeSantos
Audible Download – Approx. 26 Hours 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: June 22, 2010
Legendary for their bloodlust, sorcery, and fierce, dark beauty, the Fey have swept across three continents and never face defeat. But now, in defiance of their Black King, the warrior-prince Rugar and his fearless daughter, Jewel, have marshaled an invasion farce to meet its ultimate challenge: Blue Isle, glistening beyond impregnable rocks and raging waters. A people of simplicity and faith, untainted by intrigue, enchantment, or war, the Blue Islanders have never before been invaded. But their young prince, Nicholas, dreams of battle and will rally his countrymen against the onslaught of the Fey, even as the Islanders discover a deadly, undreamed-of power of their own. So begins a conflict that must ultimately destroy one race or the other – or both.

[via Audible's Twitter feed]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #064 – Scott and Jesse talk with Julie Davis and Luke Burrage about The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester!

Talked about on today’s show:
Forgotten Classics, Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, Richard K. Morgan’s The Steel Remains, The Invisible Man, Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization, exploding volcanoes, Gulliver Foyle, jaunting as teleporting, BAMF, The Uncanny X-Men, Jumper by Steven Gould, Charles Fort Jaunte (is a reference to Charles Fort), Fortean Times, The Tyger by William Blake,Tā moko (Maori facial tattoo), religion, swearing, tabernac, future swearing, Louis Wu in Larry Niven’s Ringworld, the frivolity of the wealthy, satire, sailing as conspicuous consumption, telepathy, Paul Williams, The Stars My Destination as a “pyrotechnic novel”, the power of the narrative imagery, the audiobook (a Library of Congress Book for the Blind version), the heirs of Alfred Bester are fighting over the rights, transformation, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, “Most scientific!”, Alfred Bester’s years writing comics, WWII, the Wikipedia entry for The Stars My Destination, synesthesia, the long forgotten histories of synesthesia, Of Time, And Gully Foyle by Neil Gaiman, cyberpunk, a hard-boiled Philip K. Dick novel, passive schlubs, The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Pyrenees, the induction scene in William Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew, a shotgun approach to transformation, The Stars My Destination as meta book, Peter F. Hamilton, the renaissance man, Classics Illustrated #3 The Count Of Monte Cristo, Fourmyle of Ceres, PyrE, (the inspiration for Pyr Books?), Napoleon Bonaparte, thought turning into action, our overcrowded future, Second Life, Surrogates, only in a cyberpunk future, retroactive foreshadowing, the 1991 BBC Radio Drama version of Alfred Bester’s Tiger Tiger, the old language, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Pyrene, cyborgs, wired nerves, bullet time, you can’t spoil a book like this.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Deus Et Machina
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Christopher Aruffo
4 CDs – 4.5 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Acoustic Learning
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9780980058161
 
 
The Pioneers
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Christopher Aruffo
6 CDs – 7.5 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Acoustic Learning
Published: 2009
ISBN: 9780980058154
 
 
Themes: / Horror / Science fiction / Travelogue / Angels / Space Travel / Hot Air Balloons / Alchemy /

We don’t know Poe. The mad success of his weird fiction, combined with the myth of his erratic lifestyle, supply more than 90% of what we think we know about Edgar Allan. But was he really erratic, obsessed and disturbed? And even if he was, is that the whole story?

The folks at poeaudio.com are attempting to tell something close to the whole story of Poe with a series called the Edgar Allan Poe Audiobook Collection. In multiple volumes, the greats of the Poe prose oeuvre—your Rue Morgues, your House of Ushers and your Masques of the Red Death—are read with histrionic flair by actor Christopher Aruffo. Here, however, we review volumes 9 (The Pioneers) and 10 (Deus et Machina) which contain lesser-known works.

These two volumes bring out into the fresh air some of the more musty trunks from the attics of Poe’s cobwebbed mind. They will be of thrilling interest to Poe fans and scholars with completest proclivities. For the rest of us, they are of mixed interest. I’ll let you know which tracks are worth a listen.

Vol. 9, The Pioneers gathers together writings about travel. Some pieces are journalistic descriptions of underappreciated natural scenery in the United States; these are of mild interest. “The Journal of Julius Rodman” purports to be the journal of an explorer who became the first white man to cross the Rocky Mountains; this hoax, written by Poe, is a rather dull read to anyone not fooled by its true origin. (And worse, it stands unfinished.)

“The Balloon-Hoax” does a better job of passing its truth-in-labeling test, and describes the crossing of the Atlantic by a famous aeronaut which never happened. (What’s with all these hoaxes? Orson Wells, eat your heart out.) Again, the lack of any suspense on the part of the present-day audience renders this story uncompelling. Better read the history of these two stories than the stories themselves.

The one really interesting work of volume 9 is “The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaal”, an novella about a balloon ride—no kidding—from the Earth to the Moon. What shocks me is Poe’s attempt here, before the genre had even been invented, to create a work of hard (yes, I mean it, hard) science fiction. He goes to some length to marshal scientific evidence for the possibility of at least some atmosphere in deep space, based on the existence of zodiacal light, the faint glow that Poe assumed was atmospheric haze, but is scattered by space dust in the ecliptic.

This, and other tech-y details, such as the description of the balloon flipping over when the moon’s gravity becomes predominant, reveals Poe’s endearingly quaint attempt at scientific rigor. He seems to understand that his scenario goes too far, however, because he ends with a plot device meant to give him deniability regarding the seriousness of the story. (It’s that hoax thing again!) “Hans Pfaal” is the one work of this volume I strongly recommend.

Vol. 10, Deus et Machina (that’s a pun in the title, not a typo) focuses on metaphysics and technological advances. This latter emphasis is a real eye-opener. It turns out Poe was a tech geek! I would have never guessed–it’s the one big revelation of the audiobook. If he were alive today, he’d be writing articles for Seed Magazine. Poe loves to report especially on the latest in printing techniques, and, oddly enough, street paving. These articles are short, and very revealing of Poe’s psyche. I recommend them.

His big hobby horse is the advantage of wooden streets, which he seems to prefer especially because they make the urban environment quieter. (Here, he is entirely consistent with our myth of him as the high-strung, hyper-sensitive genius.) Discussing the main objection to using wood as paving material—it rots—he takes seriously concerns about unhealthy “miasmas” rising from the decay, yet he reacts with eye-rolling prose to fears that mercury-based preservatives might have any health impact.

The two headliners of this volume, “The Facts in the case of M. Valdemar” and “Von Kempelen and His Discovery,” are diverting but not especially compelling. “Valdemar” is an exploration of mesmerism interacting with what I can only call the death process. It posits a state of suspended animation which was meant to creep us out, but falls flat. Dude: mesmerism is so over. “Von Kempelen” is less original, and no more plausible: a slight account of the discovery of the laboratory of a successful alchemist. Leave these stories to the serious Poe fans.

Least interesting of all are Poe’s metaphysical musings in the form of angelic dialogs. These are some of the most difficult audio narration I’ve ever heard. (Or tried to hear. Multiple listening left me asking myself: what the heck was that about? What did he just say?)

The one gem in this metaphysical manure pile is The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion. It’s is another angel dialog, but it explores a speculative concept that merges apocalypse (in the Biblical, as well as more modern, sense) with science fiction in a way that must have been very advanced in its time. The surprise ending really shocks, and gives a taste of that old Poe horror we know and love. This one has aged very gracefully and is highly recommended.

Posted by the Fredösphere

Our friend, Julie Davis of Forgotten Classics podcast, is the narrator of the latest Escape Pod episode. It’s a Mike Resnick story that retells the first Science Fiction novel.

Bride Of Frankenstein
By Mike Resnick; Read by Julie Davis
1 |MP3| – Approx. 39 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Escape Pod
Podcast: June 23, 2010
Victor can be so annoying. He constantly whistles this tuneless song, and when I complain he apologizes and then starts humming it instead. He never stands up to that ill-mannered little hunchback that he’s always sending out on errands. And he’s a coward. He can never just come to me and say “I need money again.” Oh, no, not Victor. Instead he sends that ugly little toady who’s rude to me and always smells like he hasn’t washed. And when I ask what the money’s for this time, he tells me to ask Victor, and Victor just mumbles and stammers and never gets around to answering. First published in the December 2009 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine.

Podcast feed:

http://escapepod.org/podcast.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

I’m not sure Heidi can be properly classified as an “adventure” novel. But it sure has one adventurous little girl as it’s star! PLUS, Kara Shallenberg’ narration is TRULY OUTSTANDING! She’s got what sounds like an authentic pronunciation for all those Swiss place-names. And, be sure to check out the gorgeously illustrated edition on Gutenberg.org! Here’s an illustration from the edition that my great grand parents gave to my uncle Paul on August 2nd, 1955. It was his birthday present and he had just turned 8 years old.

Heidi
By Johanna Spyri; Translated by Elizabeth P. Stork; Read by Kara Shallenberg
23 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 9 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 8, 2006
Hear Heidi if you’ve ever longed to see the Swiss mountain slopes. This story transports the listener from the fine air and freedom of the mountaintop to the confines of Frankfurt, back to the peaks again, bounding in flowered fields with goats at your heels and sky utterly surrounding you.

We meet Heidi when she is 5, led up the mountain by her aunt who has raised the orphan but must leave now for a position in Frankfurt. In a mountain cottage overlooking the valley is Heidi’s grandfather, and there with him the girl’s sweet, free nature expands with the vista. The author’s voice is straightforward, and so is our reader’s, with the child’s wonder, devotion, and sometimes humorous good intentions. When Heidi is taken from the mountains and nearly doesn’t make it back again, the most humorous as well as most heart-wringing scenes occur. All she learns during her absence from the mountain she brings back as seeds that will grow to benefit everyone around her.

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/heidi-by-johanna-spyri-solo.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Cremation Of Sam McGee
By Robert W. Service; Read by Katie Gibboney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [POETRY]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 30, 2007
First published in in 1907.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that he’d “sooner live in hell”.

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ’tain’t being dead — it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows — O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May”.
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here”, said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”;. . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm –
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

There is also a solid NPR reading (read by Scott Simon and Daniel Pinkwater) |MP3|

And, NPR also has Johnny Cash’s reading:

[unsigned images from Sense And Feeling edited by R.J. Scott]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The latest Spark podcast has a fascinating segment called “The future of public library design” in which host Nora Young talks to a Dutch librarian, and a designer, about their bold experiment in library design. The new Almere public library looks like a bookstore, features a big video gaming section, and uses a “shop concept” to make the various groups of patrons much more likely to stick around.

There’s a great idea, check it out … play X-Box and PC games, in the library!

Check out the full post over on the Spark blog HERE, and have a listen to the segment |MP3||.

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. CBC is still hiding the J. Michael Straczynski radio drama. Bad CBC!

Out of print, (I found it on ABEbooks.com), and just arrived by Canada Post, is this 10 cassette audiobook written by Paul Bishop, of the Bish’s Beat blog!

Tequila Mockingbird
By Paul Bishop; Read by William Roberts
10 Cassettes – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Chivers Audio
Published: 1998
ISBN: 0792722426
The murder of Alex Waverly, a highly decorated detective in LAPD’s anti-terrorist division, appears to be an open-and-shut case of domestic violence turned deadly. But circumstances are not what they seem, as Fey Croaker discovers, when the Chief gives the case to her with instructions to wrap it up “quick and tidy. No muss, no fuss.” Caught in the middle of a power struggle, Fey and her crew search for the truth. But they quickly become moving targets in their effort to stop a south-of-the-border terrorist from striking at the very heart of Los Angeles.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #063 – Scott and Jesse talk to Rick Jackson and William Coon about audiobook narration and recording.

Talked about on today’s show:
Eloquent Voice Audiobooks, Wonder Audio, LibriVox.org, Wordpress, Elements of SEO (a wordpress theme), The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Wench Is Dead by Fredric Brown (available on audible.com), The Defenders and Other Stories by Philip K. Dick, Starman’s Quest and Other Stories by Robert Silverberg, OverDrive.com, Borders, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith, public libraries, Toronto, Anton Chekhov, “life is a passing parade”, Henry James, The Madonna Of The Future, William James, philosophy, Pro Tools, Starman’s Quest by Robert Silverberg, TellTaleWeekly.org, relativistic near-lightspeed travel, Majipoor.com, hard Science Fiction, The Happy Unfortunate, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Defenders by Philip K. Dick, The Skull by Philip K. Dick, time travel, Behold The Man by Michael Moorcock, The Little Movement by Philip K. Dick (which is sadly not public domain) is the inspiration for Toy Story, The Guardian article Philip K. Dick Needed A Co-Author, The Time Traders by Andre Norton, A Princess Of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bill C-32, copyfight, how to make the economy better=make copyright really clear, the DMCA, Forrest J. Ackerman, The Day The Earth Stood Still by Harry Bates, non compos mentis, A.E. van Vogt, have any EULAs or Terms Of Use contracts ever been enforced?

Posted by Jesse Willis

This may be the best treat in the month of June! Check out this wonderful reading of the original 1936 CONAN novella, Red Nails, by my friend Gregg Margarite! Read what Robert E. Howard wrote about it, as he was writing it:

“‘You see, girl [Howard was writing to Novalyne Price], when a civilization begins to decay and die, the only thing men or women think about is the gratification of their body’s desires. They become preoccupied with sex. It colors their laws, their religion — every aspect of their lives.[...]‘Girl, I’m working on a yarn like that now –a Conan yarn. Listen to me. When you have a dying civilization, the normal, accepted life style ain’t strong enough to satisfy the damned insatiable appetites of the courtesans and, finally, of all the people. They turn to Lesbianism and things like that to satisfy their desires…I am going to call it The Red Flame of Passion.’”

We call it Red Nails!

I broke out my copies of Savage Tales #2 and Conan Saga #9 in order to illustrate some of the terrific art that Robert E. Howard’s last Conan story has generated. Here are some of additional materials from the original publication too. First up, it’s desribed as:”One of the strangest stories ever written—the tale of a barbarian adventurer, a woman pirate, and a weird roofed city inhabited by the most peculiar race of men ever spawned”Then the editorial staff of Weird Tales had this to say:

“Nearly four years ago, WEIRD TALES published a story called The Phoenix On The Sword, built around a barbarian adventurer named Conan, who had become king of a country by sheer force of valor and brute strength. The author of that story was Robert E. Howard, who was already a favorite with the readers of this magazine for his stories of Solomon Kane, the dour English Puritan and redresser of wrongs. The stories about Conan were speedily acclaimed by our readers, and the barbarian’s weird adventures became immensely popular. The story presented herewith is one of the most powerful and eery weird tales yet written about Conan. We commend this story to you, for we know you will enjoy it through and through.”

And, after you begin listening, be sure to compare the three scenes from the story I’ve matched up.

Red Nails
By Robert E.Howard; Read by Gregg Margarite
5 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 19, 2010
Text Source: Gutenberg.org |HTML|
Conan the Cimmerian pursues the beautiful and deadly pirate Valeria after she kills a Stygian only to find himself cornered by a dragon. Apparently this dragon doesn’t know who he’s messing with. The pair then encounters the city of Xuchotl with its warring factions and ancient secrets. Swordplay and sorcery ensue. – Red Nails is Howard’s final Conan story. First published in the July, August, September and October 1936 issues of Weird Tales magazine.

Chapter 1 |MP3| Chapter 2 |MP3| Chapters 3 & 4 |MP3| Chapters 5 & 6 |MP3| Chapter 7 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4404

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Art from the original 1936 Weird Tales publication:

Art from the Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith comics adaptation from 1973 & 1974 :

[Thanks also to Betty M. and David Lawrence]

Posted by Jesse Willis

From Infinivox, a free story from their Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 2!

“On the Human Plan” by Jay Lake
I am called Dog the Digger. I am not mighty, neither am I fearsome. Should you require bravos, there are muscle-boys aplenty among the rat-bars of any lowtown on this raddled world. If it is a wizard you want, follow the powder-trails of crushed silicon and wolf’s blood to their dark and winking lairs. Scholars can be found in their libraries, taikonauts in their launch bunkers and ship foundries, priests amid the tallow-gleaming depths of their bone-ribbed cathedrals.

Here’s a direct link to the |MP3|

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Here’s a queer, 100 year old non-SF story that has influenced many a Science Fiction reader (and writer). I had actually first taken note of it, and planned to read it when, a few years ago, I spotted Blackstone Audio’s release of The Secret Sharer And Other Stories by Robert Silverberg. Here’s a snippet from Jon Davis’ Majipoor.com (the Quasi-Official Robert Silverberg website):

“[The Secret Sharer] was written as a sort of tribute to the classic Joseph Conrad story of the same name. … Conrad’s tale of a ship captain who befriends a mysterious stowaway is translated into a far future where the technology appears magical, and interstellar trade is accomplished on gigantic needle-shaped ships seemingly made of light.”

Now The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad, on the other hand, is a story that I’ve meant to read for years. Now, thanks to LibriVox.org (and narrator Gregg Margarite), you, I and everyone else finally has the opportunity to hear it and share it freely!

The Secret Sharer
By Joseph Conrad; Read by Gregg Margarite
2 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 1 Hour 43 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: June 14, 2010
A young untested ship captain finds a man named Leggatt clinging to the side of his ship. The Captain makes the unusual decision to hide Leggatt in his quarters. What is he thinking? Conrad will tell us. First published in the August and September 1910 issues of Harper’s Magazine.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/4388

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

Blood Oath: The President’s Vampire
By Christopher Farnsworth; Read by Bronson Pinchot
10.5 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

In 1867, a sailor was caught drinking the blood of two dead men on a whaling vessel. He was pardoned for insanity and died in an asylum. At least, that’s the cover story. In fact, nineteen-year-old vampire Nathaniel Cade was secretly recruited by the president to defend the United States against “unnatural” threats. Cade is the ultimate secret agent, battling nightmares before they can break into the daylight world of the American dream.

When Zach Barrows, an ambitious twenty-six-year-old White House staffer, is assigned as Cade’s new handler and presidential liaison, he soon learns that the world is far stranger and far more dangerous than he ever imagined. Their mission reveals the truth about the real Dr. Frankenstein, a shadowy conspiracy within the government, and a plot to attack the United States with a gruesome biological weapon: an army of undying, unstoppable killers.
 
 
Enchantment
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir
16.7 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

The moment ten-year-old Ivan stumbled upon the clearing in the Carpathian forest, his life was forever changed. Atop a pedestal encircled by fallen leaves, a beautiful princess lay still as death, but a malevolent presence nearby sent Ivan scrambling for safety.

A rich tapestry of clashing worlds, Enchantment is an original novel of a love and destiny that transcends centuries and the dark force that stalks them across the ages.
 
 
The Bradbury Report
By Steven Polansky; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
11.7 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

The year is 2071. It is a world very recognizable to our own, only now the United States has implemented a wide-scale, government-run cloning program that is tied directly to health insurance. Each U.S. citizen has a “Copy” living separately in a cleared zone in the Midwest. If an “Original” is sick or injured and requires surgery, whatever he or she needs is taken from their clone. In the two decades since the program’s inception, no person outside the government has ever seen their Copy or been inside the Clearances, and no clone has ever successfully escaped—until now. The Bradbury Report is a fascinating meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of as a race and society. It is a powerful work of speculative fiction, beautifully written, about love, identity, free will, aging, and intelligence that will linger with you long after reading.
 
 
The Musashi Flex
By Steve Perry; Read by Joe Barrett
9.3 hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2010

In the early twenty-third century, one of very few ways to rise above your caste is to become a player in the extreme martial-arts game known as the Musashi Flex. Now, three people will enter its violent culture.

Their fates will entwine and be decided in the bloody arena of the Flex. And if they survive, their story will become legend.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

If you’ve been watching or listening to CPAC, you may have been mislead by a very bad translation.

CPAC’s podcast Canada’s House of Commons – Question Period for June 14th 2010 |MP3| (20:30 – 23:00)

The exchange in English, for the television broadcast (and captured in the podcast), went like this:

Carole Lavallée, Member of Parliament for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, asked:

[translated from French] “The artists and creators are hotly criticizing Bill C-32 on copyright and digital lock as stipulated under the act. It will not help them. because they will have to become detectives, investigators and attorneys in order to avail themselves of their rights. By forcing creators and artists to have to look after their rights themselves does the minister not understand that he is not protecting people well enough?[/French]

Hon. James Moore (Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, CPC) responded:

[translated from French]“Mr. Speaker here in the House we tabled Bill C-32 which is fair for everyone, consumers and creators. This is what the Canadian Association Of Film Producers said: ‘We hail the reform of Bill C-32. The Association of Film And Television creates more than 160,000 jobs in Canada. The Government’s actions have played an important role by protecting this area of copyright and creating new jobs.’ We have delivered the goods for both consumers and creators.”[/French]

Carole Lavallée, Member of Parliament for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert:

[translated from French]“That’s a mistake. They have not considered the goods to the consumers. The Canadian Initiative for consumers considers that ‘the digital lock is a punitive approach that is proven ineffective elsewhere in the world. The rights of consumers will be limited and even denied by the entertainment industry.’ Those are the organizations responsible for consumer advocacy across Canada who have said this. How can the minister deny that his bill does not do anything for either creators or consumers.”[/French]

Hon. James Moore (Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, CPC):

[translated from French]“That’s completely false Mr. Speaker. This is something that was said by an organization that is very well known by my colleague. The Consumers Association of Canada say this bill is ‘an important step towards the maintenance of a competitive and thriving economy. Bill C-32 allow us to maintain a stable and competitive environment in Canada.’ And the only thing we’ve heard from the Bloc Quebecois is that they want us to impose a new tax on consumers $75 on iPods. That’s not out approach.[/French]

The problem comes at the end when it sounds as if Heritage Minister James Moore is citing a consumers advocacy organization.

HERE is the official exchange, from the “EDITED HANSARD.”

In it the “Consumers Association of Canada” turns out to actually be “the Canadian Chamber of Commerce” (which is ABSOLUTELY NOT a consumers advocacy organization). Here is the amended translation:

Hon. James Moore (Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, that is simply not true. This bill is good for both groups. An organization that my colleague knows well, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, does act in consumers’ best interests. According to the chamber, Bill C-32 is ‘an important step toward maintaining a competitive, thriving economy. Bill C-32 is a monumental and essential measure that will go a long way toward maintaining a stable and competitive business environment in Canada.’ The only suggestion we have heard from the Bloc Québécois so far was to impose a new $75 tax on iPods. That is not in consumers’ best interests.

Myself, I would far prefer to pay a $75 levy on my next iPod, than be deemed a criminal. But maybe that’s because I don’t consider myself a consumer. I consider myself a voter.

[via Michael Geist and CPAC]

Posted by Jesse Willis