The SFFaudio Podcast #659 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Shadow Of The Vulture by Robert E. Howard

MAGIC CARPET - The Shadow Of The Vulture by Robert E. Howard
Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #659 – The Shadow Of The Vulture by Robert E. Howard; read by Connor Kaye

This unabridged reading of the story (1 hours 38 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Trish E. Matson, Connor Kaye, Alex, and Chris Schweizer

Talked about on today’s show:
The Magic Carpet, January 1934, some public domain, the output of Lovecraft was a quarter of Robert E. Howard, not counting the letters, trying to make a living, a day job, write letter every 5 minutes, not into the marketing, rich stories, shocking, detective stories, fight stories, sailor stories, comedy, his weakest genre, historical adventure, salivating over every remaining sentence, everybody comes to Howard through Conan or his Lovecraftian output, at least 6 stories that are Lovecraftian stories, The Black Stone, The Thing On The Roof, he really doesn’t want to get to the action does he?, finally!, why is it that this other stuff doesn’t grab us in the same way?, we’re all stupid and lazy, the Siege Of Vienna, which one, the final chapter is a mirror of the first chapter, the amount of historical work he has to do, tons of research, doing his best to get the clothes right and the names, a Serbian knight, a real incident, he thinks its awesome, take slaves, Suleiman the magnificent, a slaving expedition, our Conan equivalent is crying, go to the bar and have some ale, we’re setup for WWI, the Astro-Hungarian empire, filling in history for us, making history really interesting through fiction, a Catholic school, WWI and Saskatchewan, opinions or ideas, favourite stories, Blue Flame Of Vengeance, she comes out of nowhere, until Sonya shows up, the love interest gets heart stabbed, motivated for some vengeance, she’s not into you, she’s the hero of this story, he never saves her, Godfried, some good characters, a big drunk dummy, unstoppable Hercules, kill a hundred men on the wall, tricked at the easiest thing, hyper competent in one arena, he needs somebody to take care of him, a big dumb oaf, mutually beneficial?, all those Janissaries is a few too many, dog-brother, that word “dog”, John Sladek, parodying their writing, Solar Shoe Salesman, hawk nose, pantherish, condor wings, he actually has them!, that 1500s era, those Polish knights, Victoria’s Secret wings, literally described, Connor’s conspiracy theory, try to wrangle the history into a story format, the coolest kind of things, she’s a historical figure, give Roxelana a sister, we can kind of have that aspect, Hardcore History, 16th century, the Battle vs. the Siege of Vienna, Turkish forces trying to get into Europe, the Polish hussars, a cavalry charge, very Riders Of Rohan, too cool not to include, maybe that’s where it came from, a twitter bot that does Doctor Who episode titles, shadow, blood, ISFDB.org, seven stories with “shadow” in the title, crimson, scarlet, red, what visuals he wants to throw in, a guy who is literally a vulture, picking over the bones of a battle, backstory, personally scarred the emperor, leaving with a bag of gold, a chestful of head, if I don’t come back with his head…, that promise is fulfilled, we as the readers know it, beautiful symmetry, any old WWII movie that fits the facts, historical fiction vs. Quentin Tarantino WWII, he got the word right, what an amazing talent, probably wrote it in a weekend, Chris is in a really rural area, how difficult it was to find the material for historical fiction, so much of a struggle, faking historical fiction through, the Crogan Adventures, stories of personal family history told through history, this is the book where he got this, he probably had three books, reverse engineering Howard’s research, talk about the animals, vultures, dogs, the Conan adaptation, Sword and Sorcery, all the best parts are extrapolations or adaptations of actual text, Conan is trussed up, look at all you dogs, the cur has pups, how Conan feels when this woman is as good as him (or better), a dog barks at him, show not tell, our Germanic dumb guy, we become him, this lady shows us up, Conan The Barbarian #23, the Red Sonja – Conan relationship is huge and long, that relationship is entirely from the relationship in this story, the dynamic between them, all the ladies who don’t pick up swords in Conan stories, Jim Zub, it doesn’t zing at all, these are philosophical stories about how to be, freely adapted, they fly, in the comic adaptation, one panel in the comic, it ends the same way, a cutaway before the fight, very literary, the low that comics lend themselves to, kinda like Elmore Leonard, Justified and Jackie Brown, leaning in to what makes it unique vs. leaning into the surface details, Conan as a franchise, this is the Brotherhood without Banners in Khitai, a flaming sword, gunpowder, the Chinese witch, the letters are nordic runes, you’ve made a huge mistake, the source is the character, old west stories, Miami stories, take a Breckenridge Elkins pilot and work it into Conan, Sailor Steve Costigan, L. Sprague De Camp, the Afghanistan stories, the Middle Eastern stories, Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet, anywhere east of Austria is the orient, Swordwoman, Dark Agnes, highly prized assassin, shoehorned into Red Sonja, Conan The King, this Kull character, its not character its the author, Dan Panosian’s Drink And Draw, a character is an image, the backstory of philosophy, why Thongor doesn’t work, Ka-Zar is a knock-off Tarzan, the creation of a dynamic, the Sonja Conan dynamic came out of this story, the German dumb-guy viewpoint character is us, he’s played for comic relief, drunk and waving away the host, the place is on fire, and then she dies, the second time he gets drunk, able bodied men are drafted for grunt work, build a wall or whatever, setting the characters aside, what the city looks like, fabulous, when the final chapter comes, the city of Istanbul again, identical sentences?, the city so brightly lit that it doesn’t know night, the first city that’s on fire, an amazing writer, he mustabin born with it, super-young, only 30 years old, Connor has a lot of writing to do, good set-pieces, mirroring, a pleasing way, the descriptions of Istanbul at the end, we pretty much know what happened, all of Chapter 7 is 10 straight minutes, you really settle into it, all the crazy stuff this insanely rich sultan can put on, making himself feel better, propaganda, Beyond The Black River, an analogy for the Texas frontier, Comanches and Mexicans, working a historical fiction based, Aquilonia, this history is visceral, stretches forward to the present, it stretches back in history, after Charlemagne, before WWI, the Janissaries, 1000,000 child slaves brainwashed into becoming the elite fighters for a reverse crusade, all these placenames, Shem is probably supposed to be Judea, is Ophir Greece?, we need to be trained to read Robert E. Howard’s other stuff, the familiarity of the placenames, reading historical fiction through the context of films, the rusty nail, the helmet, really rare in historical fiction, and he did it in 90 minutes, James Michener’s Hawaii, Shogun, Pearl Harbor, big whopping book, complete in this issue, it doesn’t feel rushes, its leisurely at the end, struck by the resolution, send a message, the whisper, you’re going to go on a mission for me, you don’t really need the intrigue, more time with the other neat things, his pacing is amazing, spoilers make me want to read the story, why is it you should read this, the main character shows up half-way through the book, you’re selling me, looking through and finding things, the 70 year old captain mentioned in passing, real good at swinging his big sword, you are in this place, historical action fiction, the Bernard Cornwall move, Richard Sharpe, Forrest Gump his way to victory, we know this but we never notice it, always lower class going up, never top down, making their way in the world today and getting everything they got, kings by their own hand, manifest destiny, major ambition is get some booze, sister revenge, dragged away, guestemation, when people get enslaved…, your parents are murdered by the guy you’re sleeping with, works in both directions, Christians and Muslims are not allowed to enslave their own, her parents, her family, her village, why she would be incredibly angry, her son is the next sultan, took advantage, something to admire in Roxelana, a kind of a revenge, its a philosophy of how to be, the Janissaries vs. the women, the whole village won’t fit on my horse, a psychological mirror for what happened to Sonya and her family, becoming a whipped dog, the whipped dog that obeys its master, a personal philosophy vs. a nationalist philosophy, the gold rush, by you’re own hard work, it is our destiny as a nation, American Exceptionalism, go west young man, the “freest country in the world”, its all merit, these are all lies, they have good jobs and no balls (the eunuchs), they steal all the scholars and make them tutors for their kids, the tutors are slaves, they lose their name, their name becomes that of their master, a brutal relationship, wanting to cancel Robert E. Howard, everybody knows about Lovecraft being public domain, Robert E. Howard is perceived to be under copyright, Ablaze’s The Cimmerian series, hey this is popular… can we cancel it?, things to disrespect, his messages aren’t women should be dis-empowered and shut up, physically strong and mentally strong, the Dark Agnes stories are in the first person, unusual for Robert E. Howard, Brekenridge Elknins is in the first person, a doofus farm boy, why are Agnes’ stories from the first person POV?, forced into a marriage, three more years and you can record them, the copyright rules (for the USA and Canada), characters vs. stories, Sailor Steve Costigan, Ian Fleming’s James Bond (novels) is all public domain, 1934, what market was he trying to sell it to?, it wasn’t going to go for Weird Tales, Argosy might have published it, Adventure, timeline stuff, the archetype of the red headed warrior woman, C.L. Moore’s Jirel Of Joiry, similar to Agnes, an archytype that pops up again and again, red haired warrior women, Novalyne Price Ellis, The Whole Wide World (1996), you have to know what you’re getting, the introduction by Leigh Brackett to Sword Woman by Robert E. Howard, it is interesting to speculate, he had read Black God’s Shadow, which character was first conceived, their martial ladies, Joan of Arc, saintliness is not a quality of either heroine, very different, Jirel is passive in terms of being restrained, Jirel is all in her head, the red flame of vengeance, one is highborn and the girl from a town of 14 families, under a steel cap, rebellious tresses, the lingering looks on these body parts, the only time we see Red Sonja dressed like that, chain-mail bikini or blue blouse, a brace of pistols, a long Hungarian saber, a carelessly thrown cape, Chris’s picture, the Frank Thorne style Red Sonja, very different characters, everybody is close to nude, the visual medium, showing heroes fighting, showing how heroic these guys are, its comics, loving both, Chris has an amazing way with watercolours, Howard doing Falstaff, take advantage of his rich friends crusader, honor retribution, a franchise built around this character, immediately gravitate and love his characters, there’s a reason we know the names of his characters, Cormac Fitzgeoffrey should have a big Punisher skull on his jerkin, El Borak is smaller than everybody else, these are not mary suey characters, fairytale versions of the fool stumbling their way through life, The Brave Little Tailor, Jack And The Beanstalk, archetypes of the prince, the fools, the peasants telling the fairy tales [folk tales], different ways people can win, villains aka the poors, who’s the target audience for these pulp magazines, a whole lot of fun, what are we doing next, Skull-Face is pretty long, Graveyard Rats by Robert E. Howard, The Sword Of Shahrazar by Robert E. Howard, Almuric, the unfinished dregs vs. the stuff that is complete, the Amra story, all Conan stories are public domain now, the Klinger case, trademark vs. copyright, English versions of French comics, Diamond Distribution, some “negotiations”, you can’t use “CONAN” on the front of your comics, some features about Sherlock Holmes … fucking bullshit, the estate vs. the heirs, know what you’re talking about and having backbone, the HPLHS, almost nothing by Lovecraft isn’t public domain, there’s a company out there that will license it, “official”, some edge cases, The Shadow, writing under a house name as a work for hire, the Red Sonja (1985) movie, it has fake Conan, Arnold Schwarzenegger playing “not-Conan”, he’s totally Conan, its not good, Conan The Barbarian vs. Conan The Destroyer, Richard Fleischer, George MacDonald Fraser, The Three Musketeer movies from the 1970s, VLC player, Red Sonja in black and white is a much better movie, cheap practical effects, mute the dialogue, keep the Ennio Morricone soundtrack, add subtitles to fix the dialogue, Prince Tarn, Zula is a dude in the Conan comics, another female, Grace Jones is great in every movie, Christopher Walken, the old tropes you forgot about, so big into yellow peril, Fu Manchu, Shang Chi, yet another Conan show, a Red Sonja TV show, chain-mail bikini will not translate to film, peplum armor, a rockin’ mullet, wooden acting, nonsensical story, the sets and costumes were fantastic, Sandahl Bergman, there are good scenes in Conan the Destroyer, this whining princess, Wilt Chamberlain, pulling the guy’s horn, Superman II, the evil queen, Olivia d’Abo, 16 and sleeping with the producer, the costumes, charismatic on screen, little 15 minute stories, a toll-road, it doesn’t fit into the larger story, the Harry Potter movies are scene based, the first Conan movie is none of the Conan stories, The Witch Shall Be Born, The Tower Of The Elephant, he goes to Khitai, the most famous line is from Genghis Khan, it gives you the taste, that is another story, The Buckaroo Banzai ending, Connor’s narration was excellent, structural, Marvel Movies, a giant train chase at the end, the set piece action in the second third, the climax is much smaller, Kill Bill, a more immediate and small struggle, the climax is when Sonya rescues him from two dudes, keep establishing larger and larger stakes, the suddenness of the ending, Ogloo, his death is off-screen, a metaphor just for war and destruction, the thunder of guns, the real enemy was the vizier, the proxy for Suleiman, having confidence in your readership vs. thinking you’re smarter than your readers, a really satisfying shock of the head, endings are really important, the screenplay for All Quiet On The Western Front, the Marvel method for Marvel Movies, the giant fight club thing at the end, how the whole Marvel universe works, I’m glad its overwith, ending with the front being quiet and a butterfly, a traditional symbol of people’s spirits flying to heaven, going back to the title, aka he’s a ghost, he knows what he’s doing, the title is important, how noisy are those butterfly wings, The Lack with Benjamin Studebaker, really smart and not my friend, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Lee Marvin and Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, two ways or three ways of being a man, the John Wayne way and the Jimmy Stewart way or the Liberty Valance way, a movie that has confidence in its audience, Lee Marvin is a force of nature himself, a John Buchan weird tale from 1901, Fill It With Regular by Michael Shea, The Mystery Of Sylmare by Hugh Irish, “my idea of a weird tale” – H.P. Lovecraft.

MAGIC CARPET - The Shadow Of The Vulture by Robert E. Howard

MAGIC CARPET - SHADOW OF THE VULTURE by Robert E. Howard

WEIRD TALES The Shadow Of The Vulture

DEL REY - SHADOW OF THE VULTURE by Robert E. Howard

DEL REY - The Shadow Of The Vulture

DEL REY - The Shadow Of The Vulture

RED SONYA by Fluid Geometry

Rogatino, Russia aka Hyboria's Hyrkania

Conan The Barbarian - Shadow Of The Vulture

CONAN THE BARBARIAN - Shadow Of The Vulture

The first Marvel appearance of Red Sonja

Red Sonya by Chris Schweizer

Red Sonya by Chris Schweizer

Roy Krenkel sketch of RED SONIA

RED SONYA illustration by Timo Wuerz

Roy G. Krenkel - The Shadow Of The Vulture - from The Sowers Of The Thunder Pg 273 Illustration - Zebra Books 1975

Choose Your Sonja

Steve Fabian - THE SHADOW OF THE VULTURE

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The SFFaudio Podcast #240 – READALONG: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #240 – Jesse, Scott, Julie Davis, and Bryan Alexander discuss Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Talked about on today’s show:
The 1818 edition versus the 1831 edition, the half-made up prologue, Leaves Of Grass, are there any body changes?, “the corpus”, Downpour.com’s version with Simon Templeman, Anthony Heald, Stefan Rudnicki, Frankenstein vs. the monster, creature, wretch, demon, insect, incoherent with rage, face to face, moving on, the fainting hero or heroine, swooning, Lovecraftian fainting, cosmic horror, Herbert West: Re-Animator, Young Frankenstein, Cool Air by H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, M.R. James, becoming god, why are we reading a book by a teenager from almost 200 years ago, Edinborough, the broken reader, Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, etymology, Paradise Lost, Gulliver’s Travels, Percy Shelley, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Caliban, The Tempest, Science!, hey I’m killing your family and stuff, Spirits!, Russia, the Arctic, Prospero, Caliban the dogsbody, Sycorax, the pre-science world to the science world, Christopher Marlowe, “I’ll burn my books!”, the education of young Victor, religious swearing, Brian Aldiss, spark, the electrical element, Galvani and the frog’s legs, more chemical (than electrical), the Romantics, the heart of the the book, “the modern Prometheus”, nature, the North Pole, Siberia, Things As They Are; Or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams by William Godwin, berries and nuts, vegetarianism, the bringing of fire, The Wonderstick (the coming of the bow) “spooky action at a distance”, fire as technology, Eric S. Rabkin, fire -> knowledge -> enlightenment, the blasted oak, the family tree destroyed, this mortal clay, body stealing, Burke and Hare (are a lot of fun), ‘there are some things man was not meant to know’, a motherless monster, Young Frankenstein, what’s so cool about Young Frankenstein is that it solves the problems caused by previous movie adaptations, “Hey there handsome”, is the creature really hideous?, “a very Jewish movie”, “this is a boy that the world will love”, community, Victor had no Igor, Eyegor, or Fritz, well formed, euphemisms, dull yellow eye, proportionate limbs, is he veiny?, black and flowing hear, a pearly whiteness, a feminist novel, a misogynist fantasy, the framing narrative, males behaving badly, Gothic, gender coding, the curse of the Frankensteins, Frau Blücher, the Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Frankenstein, The Revolt Of Islam by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Justine (and the lack of justice she receives), Anne Rice, “I’m never going to sleep again”, the path of evil, Victor had a temper, the abnormal brain (Abbie someone), a “blank slate”, Henry Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein retcons the book and the 1931 movie (and the Hammer movies), Froderick Frankenstein, Boris Karloff, Transylvania Station, The Body Snatcher, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Cat (1934), Bela Lugosi, a movie from a parallel dimension, the perfect romantic character, the “noble savage” and the “blank slate”, flowery language and obfuscation, a baby story, that’s Science Fiction right there, an eight foot baby, how do we detect the world, what is light?, a blind man given sight, sphere vs. pyramid, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, an urbane monster, the ideal syllabus, Mary Shelley is showing the heck off, Paradise Lost, The Sorrows Of Young Werther, suicide, Lives Of The Noble Greeks And Romans by Plutarch, Ruins Of Empires by Constantin-François de Volney, Frankenstein’s lab notes, Safie, the Ottoman Empire, Turkey as a proxy for European society, Olaf Stapledon, the hapless fate of the aboriginals of North America, Shelley’s hanging out with radicals, an anti-American dream, three years after the fall of Napoleon, Lord Byron, dreams, “how are we living with each other?”, Prometheus Unbound, The Last Man, Prometheus should be our hero, Harlan Ellison, Walton, Bryan’s dissertation was on Frankenstein, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket, At The Mountain Of Madness, Star Trek, doppelgangers, doubles all the way down, perfectly symmetrical, The Prestige by Christopher Priest, Melmoth The Wanderer by Charles Maturin, The Saragossa Manuscript by Count Jan Potocki, the fire and ice, “in the cottage we are the monster”, lookism, when they see the monster, “as a lion rends the antelope”, Blade Runner‘s ending, all those murders, a child having a temper-tantrum, where you gonna get that wood?, standing on an ice-floe, Dante’s Inferno and the final circle of hell, Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Bryan reads Frankenstein every year, teaching Frankenstein in high-school, a perfect ending, is the monster still out there?, Edison’s 1910 film adaptation of Frankenstein (it’s 10 minutes), imagine Tesla adapting Frankenstein, a shameless self-promoter, “Victory Frankenstein fucked with Mother Nature, and She bore him a strong son”, ‘there are some things that man was not meant to know’, Walton wants to find the source of the pole’s magnetism, “it’s not just loving your family – it’s also loving your fellow being”, “if you make a mistake – own up”, Walton learns from the story, Young Frankenstein, it’s an ethics book, mad scientists, a Kennedy son, Moby Dick, C.L.R. James, a ship as a microcosm of society, “I smell readalong!”, Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power by Andrew Nagorski, “the kids loved Uncle ‘Dolf”, “charisma leaking out all over the place”, charisma and beauty, a bear doesn’t understand charisma, real-life parallels, what is the function of Henry Clerval in the book, is he us?, a homoerotic reading, Percy and Bryon go hiking, it’s Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, World’s End, Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, Elizabeth’s provenance and the weird relationship with her cousin/brother/owner Victor, a subterranean psychodrama, Victor’s wild dream in which Elizabeth dies and then turns into his mom, grave worms, a maternal figure and a corpse.

Theodor von Holst - Frankenstein

Frankenstein - illustration (possibly by Ernie Chan)

Frankenstein

FRANKENSTEIN - The Bride Of The Monster - illustration by Mike Ploog

FRANKENSTEIN - illustration by Dino Castrillo

These Books Make Me Feel...

World Of Wonder - Mary Shelley

LEGOized Frankenstein

The Creation Of Frankenstein's Creature - illustrated by Jesse

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4 + RA.cc: JAMES BOND: From Russia With Love RADIO DRAMA

Aural Noir: Online Audio

From Russia With Love is the third James Bond RADIO DRAMA made for BBC Radio 4 by the wife and husband team of Rosalind Ayres and Martin Jarvis. And it’s absolutely wonderful!

Compared to the movie adaptation, which complicates the plot and adds in more action sequences, this radio drama versio of the novel is much more of a straight-up espionage thriller. In fact it’s so straight-up it feels kind of like an episode of The Sandbaggers. Smart, realistic, gritty. But as with any Bond tale it’s also loaded with sexiness. I’m really in awe at the skill and scale of these adaptations.

Toby Stephens is absolutely terrific as Bond. And Olga Fedori, the spy who loves him, is the best “Bond girl” I’ve ever heard. Fedori plays Corporal Tatiana Romanova, the a Soviet state assigned seductress of 007. She’s a pawn in a game being played by SMERSH, the counter-intelligence agency of the Red Army.

Within the luxurious ninety minutes of the play you get a real sense of a story being told.

When I watch the James Bond movies it rarely occurs to me that there’s much of a plot in between the action sequences. In fact, I don’t well recall any of the Bond movie plots very distinctly. The movies, even though I mostly love them, are more apt to treat the plot’s premise as an excuse to get to the next exotic location or to the next fantastic stunt sequence. They’re more cartoon than novel. Not so with this adaption. Colonel Rosa Klebb, one of the big baddies of both, is creepy like she is in the movie, but with this radio adaptation you’ll almost feel bad for her in her later scenes. The one liners are there, but they’re not laughing jokes as much as they are punctuation marks for the gallows humour of Bond.

The radio drama adaptation offers a two kinds of Russian love, the sentimental and the soft, and the hard and the ruthless.

Indeed, the intimacy of audio version is amazing. Bundled up snugly on the Orient Express with the two sexy cold war era spies is a wondrous treat you can’t afford to let yourself miss.

Olga Fedori as Tatiana Romanova and Toby Stephens as James Bond

BBC Radio 4RadioArchives.ccSFFaudio EssentialFrom Russia With Love
Based on the novel by Ian Fleming; Performed by a full cast
1 MP3 via TORRENT – Approx. 87 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4 – The Saturday Play
Broadcast: July 21, 2012
Provider: RadioArchive.cc
It’s 1955 and the Russians plan an act of terrorism. Choice of target? James Bond. To be ‘killed with ignominy’: a major sex scandal will leave his reputation, and that of MI6, in tatters. Colonel Rosa Klebb of the KGB devises a plan to lure Bond into their trap, using beautiful Corporal Tatiana Romanova as bait – plus a Spektor, the latest Russian decoding device. MI6 learns that Tatiana wants to defect and ‘M’ orders Bond to Istanbul. When Tatiana makes contact she seems to be in love with him – but is she? Either way, he soon falls for her and they leave Istanbul together, accompanied by larger-than-life Darko Kerim, Head of British Intelligence in Turkey. The climax of the drama includes a surprising confrontation between Bond and the murderous Rosa Klebb. In writer Archie Scottney’s brilliantly evocative ‘radio screenplay’, we see another side to 007. Unsure of his judgement, can he bring the lovely Tatiana safely to England, along with the precious Spektor? Will the Russians succeed in having Bond killed? If so, who is the would-be murderer?

Cast:
General/Rene ….. John Sessions
Kronsteen ….. Mark Gatiss
Major/KGB director/Barman ….. Jon Glover
Rosa Klebb ….. Eileen Atkins
James Bond ….. Toby Stephens
May ….. Aileen Mowat
‘M’ …… John Standing
Moneypenny ….. Janie Dee
‘Q’ ….. Julian Sands
Kerim ….. Tim Pigott-Smith
Manager/Conductor ….. Matthew Wolf
Tatiana ….. Olga Fedori
Announcer ….. Micky Stratford
Nash ….. Nathaniel Parker
Ian Fleming ….. Martin Jarvis

Specially composed music by Mark Holden and Michael Lopez

Director: Martin Jarvis
Producer: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis & Ayres production for BBC Radio 4.

From Russia With Love

Tatiana Romanova, the Hagia Sophia, and the Orient Express

Trailer for the movie version:

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4X + RA.cc: Topkapi by Eric Ambler

Aural Noir: Online Audio

BBC Radio 4 ExtraRadioArchives.ccAccording to the Wikipedia entry, BBC Radio 7 was renamed BBC Radio 4 Extra back in April. I’m not much for re-branding – it’s a grubby little idea that makes me think of scientific management, focus groups and meetings … endless … unproductive … meetings. The more I think about meetings the less I want to think.

Hopefully the new name will last a few years, and then perhaps BBC management can go ahead and arrange to have a meeting about considering the update of their antiquated delivery methods – perhaps they’ve already started as I hear they’ve finally dropped RealAudio (the web’s first big audio technology).

Speaking of delivery methods, I discovered my first interesting BBC Radio 4 Extra offering over on RadioArchive.cc. RA.cc is my favourite site for public radio, its chock full of great taxpayer funded programming. The site is extremely well organized and make even people who are wary of the word “torrent” comfortable with the technology. Files are, naturally, in the MP3 format, and when well seeded, a program the size of Topkapi will take only about TEN minutes to download. That’s service folks!

Topkapi, aka The Light Of Day, is a 1962 novel Eric Ambler. I’d heard about it – but until it showed up on RadioArchive.cc I never even thought to investigate it. Well, after investigating it turns out that The Light Of Day was an Edgar Award winning novel, 1964, and has a fair cachet in espionage and crime fiction circles. The name change, for this reading, was likely done to remind BBC listeners of the movie – Topkapi is pretty famous, the Ottoman Sultans used it as their personal residence as well as an “impregnable fortress” that housed its famous seraglio/harem.

the Topkapi Palace by night

The Wikipedia entry for Ambler has this gem:

“A recurring theme in Ambler’s books is the amateur who finds himself unwillingly in the company of hardened criminals or spies. Typically, the protagonist is out of his depth and often seems for much of the book a bumbling anti-hero, yet eventually manages to surprise himself as well as the professionals by a decisive action that outwits his far more experienced opponents.”

That certainly fits Topkapi.

I can’t say how much of the novel was excised for this abridgement, but I can say the novel definitely works as a quick listen. There are some unnecessary sound effects added, but when they show up they don’t overwhelm the text. The story is told in first person, by the clever, but unlucky anti-hero. David Westhead, the reader, is truly excellent in performing the lead character. He’s got a wonderfully subdued humor, and the voice and accent work he provides for the man supporting characters adds a lot of color.

Topkapi by Eric AmblerTopkapi (aka The Light Of Day)
By Eric Ambler; Read by David Westhead
Six 30 minute episodes – Approx. 3 Hours [ABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: BBC Radio 4 Extra
Broadcast: May 2011
Source: RadioArchive.cc
Small time operator Arthur Abdel Simpson is an illegitimate stateless half British half Egyptian pimp and pornographer. He makes his living fleecing tourists in Athens, Greece. When he picks up a likely looking pigeon at the airport he soon discovers that he’s the one in trouble. He’s then blackmailed into driving a car to Istanbul.

1/6. Minor crook Arthur Abdel Simpson spots a likely mark at Athens airport
2/6. Arthur Simpson is interrogated by Turkish security for unintentional arms smuggling.
3/6. Arthur is now seconded to Turkish security. He also has to work at the suspect’s villa.
4/6. Unwilling agent Simpson watches a group of ‘tourists’, while he works as their driver.
5/6. Arthur Simpson witnesses a vicious knife fight and waits for news of Fischer.
6/6. Arthur Simpson is still on the roof. He has just reluctantly robbed the Treasury.

Here’s the trailer for the film version:

I’ll try to find a copy of the film itself, and maybe see if its anything like the audiobook.

Posted by Jesse Willis