New Release: Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (Full Cast Audio version)

SFFaudio News

Day folk and night folk, take note!

This is now available over on Downpour.com

Harper Audio - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman FULL CAST

A brand-new full cast audio edition of Neil Gaiman’s Newbery Award-winning novel, The Graveyard Book (on-sale: 9/30/14 from HarperAudio). Special content in this edition includes the story behind The Graveyard Book, written and read by Neil Gaiman.

Cast:
Derek Jacobi: Narrator
Robert Madge: Nobody Owens
Clare Corbett: Scarlett Perkins
Miriam Margoles: Mrs. Owens and Miss Lupescu
Andrew Scott: That Man Jack and Jay Frost
Julian Rhind-Tutt: Silas
Emilia Fox: Liza Hempstock
Reece Shearsmith: Jack Dandy, the Sleer, and Mr. Kirby
Lenny Henry: Honorable Archibald Fitzhugh
Neil Gaiman: Reads an essay about the creation of
The Graveyard Book and performs the part of Nehemiah Trott

Ensemble:
Elizabeth Bennett, Allan Corduner, Sean Baker, Tim Dann,
Adjoa Andoh, Jenny Gannon, Dan Weyman, and Daniel Brocklebank

Featuring music by Béla Fleck

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #245 – The Best of 2013

Podcast

TheSFFaudioPodcast600The SFFaudio Podcast #245 – It’s our -The Best of 2013! episode. For it we invited SFFaudio fans, SFFaudio reviewers, and SFFaudio participants to share their listening highlights of 2013. We asked folks to tell us about their favourite audiobook or podcast episode.

If you don’t see your favourites listed below, feel free to add them as a comment. And remember, it needn’t be a podcast or audiobook from 2013, only one you heard in 2013.

And if you leave a comment in the first week (and a way to contact you) you’ll also be eligible for a a FREE PRIZE audiobook mailed to your home (anywhere in the whole universe*)!

Participants:

Bryce L.

  • The Stand by Stephen King, Read by Grover Gardner (Random House Audio)
  • The Magicians and The Magician King by Lev Grossman, Narrated by Mark Bramhall (Penguin Audio)
  • Hard Magic by Larry Correira, read by Bronson Pinchot (Brilliance Audio)

Casey Hampton.

  • Boy and Going Solo by Roald Dahl; Read by Dan Stevens (Penguin Audio)
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, Read by Neil Gaiman (Harper Audio)

Maissa Bessada

Seth Wilson

  • The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, Read by George Guidall (Harper Audio)

Paul Weimer

  • Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal, Read by Mary Robinette Kowal (Macmillan)

Jenny Colvin

Scott D.

Posted by Jenny Colvin

*Mirror universe inhabitants need not apply

Caedmon

SFFaudio News

Harper Audio was founded in 1952 under the name “Caedmon.” Harper Audio still occasionally publishes under its Caedmon label but its real heyday was in the late 1970s. Uniquely, the back of each album featured unique liner notes typically written specifically for the LP. Witness this vintage magazine ad (from Unearth, Spring 1978):

CAEDMON ad from Unearth, Spring 1978

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: Downpour.com – an audiobook delivery system that just works

SFFaudio Commentary

Downpour.comDownpour.com, Blackstone Audio’s online audiobook store, is a genuine competitor to Audible.com.

It offers audiobook downloads of titles, from Blackstone Audio’s extensive catalogue, and also those from many other audiobook publishers like Recorded Books, Harper Audio, Penguin Audio, Hachette Audio, and AudioGo.

Their subscription service is almost identically priced to Audible’s, each offers one credit per month for about $15. And, like an Audible credit Audible.com, a Downpour credit almost always gets you one audiobook.

I signed up for Downpour when they started late last Summer. And so far, I really, really like it.

I’ve had an account with Audible.com since 2001. But Audbile.com has always caused one giant problem for me: DRM.

DRM is actually designed to prevent you sharing your audiobook with your friends and family.

But worse, it can also make it difficult for you, the owner of the audiobook that you bought, to actually listen to what you have paid for.

Over the years I’ve spent countless hours trying to make an audiobook, that I bought, play on my audiobook players.

Every single time I’ve bought a new computer, iPod, iPad, or iPhone I’ve spent time authorizing and deauthorizing my devices. Sometimes it just takes a couple of minutes, sometimes hours.

Audible’s DRM makes you have to authorize your iTunes account, and your computer, and your iPhone, and your iPad, and your iPod. And you have to deauthorize your old devices to make the new devices work. You can’t have all of your devices authorized if you have more than three.

I just want my audiobooks to work like regular books, I want them to open up and give me their ideas. DRM cripples your ability to do that.

Downpour.com has no DRM at all. It just works.

In fact it works absolutely perfectly.

You make a purchase, it shows up in your online library, and then it downloads and delivers itself to your devices.

It is smoother than any audiobook service I’ve ever seen. It’s even smoother than Tantor Media’s excellent DRM-FREE download service.

If you use an iOS device for an audiobook, like I do, I’m betting Downpour.com is will work for you.

If you use a different audiobook player Downpour offers MP3s, which work with every audio player.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Duel by Richard Matheson

SFFaudio Online Audio

Derived from an incident in which he and a friend were dangerously tailgated by a large truck on the same day as the Kennedy assassination, Duel is emblematic of Richard Matheson’s queer existential fiction. It was first published in the April 1971 of Playboy.

Playboy, April 1971 - Duel by Richard Matheson

The most accessible version of this classic story is this one, put out by Harper Audio in 2009:

Harper Audio - Road Rage by Richard Matheson, Stephen King and Joe HillDuel (from Road Rage)
By Richard Matheson; Read by Stephen Lang
1 |MP3| – Approx. 63 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: February 2009
“Driving to San Francisco, a businessman finds himself the victim of a deadly game being played by the driver of a huge, mysterious truck. Later to become Steven Spielberg’s classic 1971 film.”

But, back in 2006 BBC Radio 7 (now BBC Radio 4 Extra) did a special broadcast in honour of Richard Matheson’s 80th birthday. Along with a specially recorded interview there was also an unabridged reading of Duel. That version is available via torrent over on RadioArchive.cc:

RadioArchives.ccBBC 7's The 7th DimensionDuel
By Richard Matheson; Read by Nathan Osgood
2 MP3s via TORRENT – Approx. 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 7
Broadcast: February 18, 2006
“A huge truck plays deadly games with an innocent motorist.”

Blackstone Audio’s collection, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, released in 2009 also includes it:

Horror Audiobook - Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard MathesonNightmare at 20,000 Feet
By Richard Matheson; Read by Various
10.5 Hours – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2009

And while the movie version is currently available, in its entirety, on YouTube this short film version, recut from Spielberg’s TV-Movie is perhaps even better:

Posted by Jesse Willis

Recent Arrivals: Harper Voyager’s Seasonal Publication Schedule 2011/12

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Harper VoyagerReceived in the mail, the Harper Collins / Voyager “SEASONAL PUBLICATION SCHEDULE 2011/12” it includes paper, ebook and audiobook titles by the likes of George R.R. Martin, Stephen Hunt, Blake Charlton, Kylie Chan, Clive Barker, Cinda Willams Chima, Janny Wurts, Sara Douglass and Drew Magry. This is the U.K. based imprint of Harper Collins.

And here’s the complete |PDF| made from the scanned catalogue.

Posted by Jesse Willis