The Chaser by John Collier
John Collier’s modern fairy tale, The Chaser, was adapted as an episode of the first season of the original The Twilight Zone. And now the story has just been narrated for Tom Elliot’s The Twilight Zone Podcast.
The Chaser
By John Collier; Read by Danny Davis
1 |MP3| – Approx. 11 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: The Twilight Zone Podcast
Podcast: March 18, 2013
Alan, a lovelorn man, desperate for the object of his affections to return them, visits a queer chemist for a solution. First published in The New Yorker, December 28, 1940.
Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheTwilightZonePodcast
iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|
Here is a |PDF| of the story, and here is another |PDF|.
And here’s The Twilight Zone adaptation:
The story also inspired a Tales From The Crypt story, in issue 25:
That, in turn, was adapted for the television series, using the same name:
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #188 – The Queen Of The Black Coast AUDIO DRAMA
The SFFaudio Podcast #188 – First podcast in 2008, in seven separate installments, here it is, the legendary, unconquerable epic that they didn’t want you to hear. It’s back, stronger, and wholly united into one massive adventure … the mighty BrokenSea Audio Productions adaptation of The Queen Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #188 - The Queen Of The Black Coast AUDIO DRAMA [ 2:18:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadThe Heathen by Jack London
Here’s a terrifically interesting story of romantic adventure, and love, between two very heterosexual men.
Did I mention they are heterosexual?
Well they are.
They have wives!
That’s all there is to it.
The Heathen interweaves Jack London’s racist ideas with his experiences as a sailor to make a truly he-manish tale of two macho sailors who form an unbreakable seventeen-year bond after being shipwrecked in the South Pacific. This is manly beefcake Jack London from 1910, working the blood and breed obsessed vein of fiction and friendship that Robert E. Howard did so masterfully in stories like Queen Of The Black Coast and Hills Of The Dead.
Unfortunately, the version that my good friend Gregg Margarite read for LibriVox, a couple years back, was abridged (or perhaps sanitized) – the PDF version below includes a couple of extra lines here, there, and at the end. Important lines. It also includes more swearing.
Damn those abridgers and sanitizers.
Gregg is dead.
I’m confident he’d have wanted to have read the unsanitized and unabridged original had it been available.
The Heathen
By Jack London; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 46 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: December 3, 2009
First published in Everybody’s Magazine, August 1910.
Here’s a beautiful |PDF| made from a scan of the magazine.
Here are the rest of the terrific illustrations by Anton Fischer:
Posted by Jesse Willis
LibriVox: Pygmalion’s Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum
Pygmalion’s Spectacles was first published in 1935 in the aptly named Wonder Stories magazine. Four years after it’s first publication it was reprinted in Startling Stories as a “classic” and it was placed in their “Scientifiction Hall Of Fame.” It was reprinted again in Fantastic Story magazine in the Spring 1955 issue. Three magazine publications is a rare occurrence for any SF story. So, what makes this story special?
Well, this tale of utopia, immortality, and romance, is also, most probably, the very first story to feature the concept of virtual reality.
Here’s the description from the Wikipedia entry:
A comprehensive and specific fictional model for virtual reality was published in 1935 in the short story Pygmalion’s Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the story, the main character, Dan Burke, meets an elfin professor, Albert Ludwig, who has invented a pair of goggles which enable “a movie that gives one sight and sound [...] taste, smell, and touch. [...] You are in the story, you speak to the shadows (characters) and they reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it.”
And though the ideas may be pioneering, the plot of Pygmalion’s Spectacles is very similar to Fitz-James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, itself an excellent SF tale. The tone of their respective endings differs, but their plot, in which a man falls in love with an intangible woman, is straight out of the Greek mythology that Weinbaum alludes to. And they both use science, rather than magic to get to their respective endings.
There is, I should also point out, a LibriVox |MP3| recording of the Metamorphoses by Ovid, a 2,000 year old poem featuring the myth of Pygmalion.
Here is a |PDF| made from the Pygmalion’s Spectacles publication in Fantastic Story. And here are two LibriVox versions (my advice, go for the first one):
Pygmalion’s Spectacles
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 43 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 13,2009
He put on the glasses and fell in love with a dream… First published in Wonder Stories, June 1935.
Pygmalion’s Spectacles
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Chrystal Layton
1 |MP3| – Approx. 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: November 17, 2007
He put on the glasses and fell in love with a dream… First published in Wonder Stories, June 1935.
Pygmalion’s Spectacles illustration by Lumen Winter (from Wonder Stories, June 1935):
Pygmalion’s Spectacles illustration by Virgil Finlay (from Fantastic Story Magazine, Spring 1955):
Painting of Pygmalion and the statue by Jean-Baptiste Regnault:
[Thanks to Tim at The Drama Pod for the reminder]
Posted by Jesse Willis
CBC: As It Happens: Moonlight by Guy de Maupassant (as read by Alan Maitland)
Here’s a sweet find from the CBC Digital Archives! It’s Alan Maitland, perhaps you know him as “Front Porch Al”, reading Moonlight (aka In The Moonlight) by Guy de Maupassant.
It was first broadcast on CBC Radio’s As It Happens on August 2, 1993.
The tale of a misogynist priest, the Abbé Marignan, who is ruled purely by reason, but whose view of life and love is influenced by the magic and splendour of moonlight.
And, I’m pleased to offer a different translation of the same story in |PDF| form.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Review of Just Another Perfect Day by John Varley
Just Another Perfect Day
By John Varley; Read by Stefan Rudnicki
34 Minutes – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Lightspeed Magazine
Published: 2011
Themes: / Science Fiction / Memory / Aliens / Love / New York /
Stefan Rudnicki expertly narrates this story, which is perfectly suited for audio. John Varley wrote the story in the form of a letter (or letters) to the main character from the main character, who can only remember his life up to a certain point. Since a lot of time has passed since that point, and a lot of things have happened, he needs to be told what’s going on every single morning. These letters do the job.
Varley, of course, is amazing. In the space of this short story he explores not only the concept that this character is in essence a new person every single day, but also what it means to those who love him and those who find his difference especially meaningful. Varley originally published this story in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, June 1989. It’s a great one.
I continue to admire what John Joseph Adams and Prime Books are doing with Lightspeed Magazine. From the audio perspective, I greatly appreciate the professional quality of this podcast. This is an excellent story, the narration is wonderful, and the audio is professional. As good as it gets!
Links:
Just Another Perfect Day by John Varley
Direct Link to the |MP3|
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
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