Tag: alien life

New Releases – Wonder Audio, Leiber and Weinbaum

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Did you know you can get either of these titles, as well as any other Wonder Audio title for free?  Just sign up at Audible.com/WonderAudio

The Night of the Long KnivesThe Night of the Long Knives
By Fritz Leiber; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
3hr,  37 min.- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2009

Available at Audible & iTunes

A Deathlander’s life is a rough one. Atomic radiation, murder and sex preoccupies the sparse inhabitants of what used to be a great portion of America’s West. Kill or be killed is the law of this sickened land. Multicolored radioactive dusts floats in the atmosphere of this nuclear desert.

When Ray Baker meets a woman on his sojourn, he doesn’t know if he wants to kill her or sleep with her. Ray doesn’t understand his urge to murder. But he feels it like all the other Deathlanders. Just as he knows the girl feels it. Laying down their arsenal of weapons will leave them both vulnerable. The cost of a moment of intimacy may lead to the last moments of their lives. And what to do when the act is over, and both their minds turn back to murder.

Parasite Planet: The Ham & Pat StoriesParasite Planet: The Ham & Pat Stories
By Stanley G. Weinbaum; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
3hr, 47 min.- [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: 2009

Available at Audible & iTunes

The short and meteoric career of Stanley G. Weinbaum produced many instantly hailed classics. None had the breadth of wonder, and adventure with philosophic insight as the trilogy of stories that feature Ham Hammond and Patricia Burlingame.

Parasite Planet begins with Ham Hammond trekking across the surface of Venus. The environment is parasitic, filled with bizarre alien life forms like the lasso throwing Jack Ketch Trees and the doughpots, a mindless omnivorous ball of animate cells that devour all living things in their path. When Ham meets the contentious Patricia Burlingame, they have to march across Venus to safety. It’s not clear what is going to kill them first, Venus’s hostile environment or each other.

In The Lotus Eaters, Ham and Pat are on a special scientific expedition to the dark-side of Venus. They discover a strange warm-blooded plant. The most disconcerting thing about the plant is when it begins speaking English and waxing philosophically.

The Planet of Doubt brings the duo to Uranus on another special scientific expedition. The cloudy shrouded terrain strikes terror into the heart of Ham as tries to find the lost Pat who he hopes is still be alive!

Posted by The Time Traveler of the Time Traveler Show

Review of The Harvest by Alec Sand

The Harvest by Daniel SandThe Harvest
By Alec Sand; Read by John Pruskin
1 MP3-CD – 4 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Academic MP3 Audiobooks
Themes: / Science Fiction / Space Travel / Biology / Alien life / Medicine /

Click here for an Audio Trailer

The Harvest is a short novel of future history. No, it’s a bit more than just that. Alec Sand has created a detailed future in which his characters move. It is a future in which a substance called iridium has changed things significantly – it’s a substance from which power is derived and the finding and mining of iridium occupies much of mankind’s time. The Harvest is hard science fiction in which the ideas and concepts generously flow.

In this future, Gideon and his sister Dara reside. Dara has a disease that Gideon is somehow convinced has a cure somewhere “out there”, so he takes her with him on a mining expedition to a new planet. Dara finds much there.

There was some lecturing during the story, which I felt slowed things down a bit. The author could have found smoother ways to introduce information, but it was all interesting, and I found myself eager to know what happened next. I liked the story as a whole very much.

John Pruskin narrates, and overall was very good at keeping my interest. There were a few errors in the narration, but again – I was always eager to continue, and a listener can’t ask for much more than that. He maintained a good, consistent pace throughout and read with clarity.

A unique aspect of this audiobook is its soundtrack. There are several songs that play at various times throughout the audiobook, usually as bridges between chapters or sections. A band called Silk84 provides this music, and the songs are included in full in a different folder on the MP3-CD. I’m listening to some of this music as I write this… I like it! The music ranges from upbeat dance music to beautiful piano music, and though I didn’t always feel the music matched my mood while listening, what Academic did with music in this audiobook is unique and it worked! Yeah, Silk84… I like the sound of your guitar. (You can find Silk84 on iTunes.)

You can get a copy of The Harvest from Academic MP3’s website by clicking right here.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson