News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
Spider Robinson has great news! On top of his upcoming Blackstone Audio release, Variable Star, Spider writes: “…after I finish recording The Stardance Trilogy [for Blackstone], they’re going to let me read [Robert A. Heinlein’s] Rocket Ship Galileo – the first book I ever read in my life.”
[props to SciFiDimensions.com]
VirtuallyAudio.com is a website that offers streaming media samples of their for for-sale products, though it appears the Virtually Audio or some variation on it has been around for several years there is only one SFFaudio related show available there at the moment. A sample chapter of their Science Fiction “audio comic book” series Sectarian Wave is available in the aging RealAudio format. One hough they note there are other shows in the pipe including one called Darwin ‘s Law which they describe as “a X-Files Styled Western,” and Emily which is touted as “a futuristic adaptation of Charles Dicken’s, Oliver Twist.”
Sectarian Wave
By Maninder Chana; Performed by a FULL CAST
Real Audio – [AUDIO DRAMA]
Started: July 2006
Status: Underway
For more information you can visit the official website.
Unfortunately there is no RSS feed or podcast for this site’s stuff. I’m very surprised that there are any sites still using RealAudio when it is so unfriendly to portable media players.
My head may explode from happiness…
I finally spotted them on Amazon.com:
“Shadows Kingdoms is the first volume of The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, presenting all of Howard’s Work from the classic magazine Weird Tales, meticulously restored to its original texts. This volume begins with Spear and Fang, Howard’s first professional fiction sale, and concludes with Red Thunder, a gripping sword & sorcery tale. Series characters present in this volume include King Kull and Solomon Kane. A 5 disc CD-Audio edition.“
There is also a listing for an MP3 CD edition of the same volume!
The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard Volume 1: Shadow Kingdoms
By Robert E. Howard; Read by ????
5 CDs or 1 MP3-CD – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wildside Press / Audio Realms
Published: December 2006 / November 2006
ISBN: 0809562286 or 1897304129 (CD), 0809562278 (MP3-CD)
Stories include:
Two-Gun Musketeer: Robert E. Howard’s Weird Tales an introduction by Mark Finn, Spear and Fang, In the Forest of VillefFre, Wolfshead, The Lost Race, The Song of the Bats, The Ride of Falume, The Riders of Babylon, The Dream Snake, The Hyena, Remembrance, Sea Curse, The Gates of Nineveh, Red Shadows, The Harp of Alfred, Easter Island, Skulls in the Stars, Crete, Moon Mockery, Rattle of Bones, Forbidden Magic, The Shadow Kingdom, The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune, The Moor Ghost, Red Thunder
And perhaps even more exciting….
Original Stories Of Conan The Barbarian Volume 1: The Phoenix And The Sword
By Robert E. Howard; Read by ????
5 CDs – Approx 5.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wildside Press / Audio Realms
Published: October 2006
ISBN: 0809562766 or 1897304080 (CD), 0809562758 (MP3-CD)
Stories included:
The Phoenix On The Sword
The Scarlet Citadel
The Tower Of The Elephant
Black Colossus
Gods Of The North
We knew that Fred Godsmark over at the hideously awesome Audio Realms was working on some audiobooks of Robert E. Howard’s works, but the official availability on Amazon makes them orderable! Place your preorders people, the bigger the pre-order demand, the more likely we are to get Volume 2 in each series faster.
Audiofy Audiobook Chip
Amongst other titles, Audiofy has re-released a number of Simon and Schuster’s well-produced Star Trek titles on Audiofy Audiobook Chips. What’s an Audiofy Audiobook chip? Well, it’s an SD chip with an audiobook on it. In my little world, the SD chip works with my laptop (which is my main computer – I’m typing on it now) and my Pocket PC. I inserted the chip first in my Pocket PC, and the audio started to play automatically after asking me if it was OK to do so. After about 15 minutes, I stopped the playback and put the chip in my laptop, where it resumed right where it was playing on the Pocket PC.
Anti-DRM folks will not be pleased to find that the chip is not just a collection of MP3 files – in fact, a quick exploration of the contents of the chip didn’t provide me a clear idea of where the audio files actually are on the chip. The player that plays the files is contained on the chip, and it will work in Pocket PC’s, Palm Pilots, Macs, Smartphones, and PC’s. They also have an application on the chip that allows for easy transfer of the audio to an iPod.
Overall, I had a good experience with the Audiofy Audiobook Chip. It did what I wanted it to do – played the content, bookmarked where I was from device to device, and sounded pretty darned good – the sound is not of the highest quality, but it’s certainly more than adequate. They are easy to use and are definitely space savers.
Apart from the many Star Trek titles, Audiofy offers some excellent audiobooks in their science fiction collection. Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin of Souls and Curse of the Chalion are there, along with The Consciousness Plague by Paul Levinson, several from Edgar Rice Burroughs (Mars and Tarzan), Roger Gregg’s superior audio drama The Last Harbinger, and a couple of Spider Robinson’s Callahan novels.
ADDENDUM: I didn’t explain that picture very well… ok, not at all. What you have there is the Audiofy Audiobook Chip version of Star Trek: The Next Generation: Imzadi by Peter David, read by Jonathan Frakes. You can see the chip itself, and a credit card-sized holder for when you are not using it. The shiny round silver thing is a quarter, provided for perspective. Of course, if you don’t know how big a quarter is, I suppose it won’t help much. –sd
Posted by Scott D. Danielson
This just in from the Master of all things cloned, J.C. Hutchins:
Find the world of 7th Son … in-world
Six months ago, the 7th Son sci-fi podiobook trilogy began: Seven clones were ripped away from their “normal” lives to hunt a ruthless criminal — the man they were cloned from, the man who masterminded the assassination of the President … John Alpha.
Listeners met John, Father Thomas, Kilroy 2.0, Michael and the other Beta clones. They watched the conspiracy of John Alpha emerge. It was all a story, it wasn’t real.
But for one night … it will be.
On Saturday, Sept. 23, 7th Son fans can become a part of podcast history. They’ll enjoy an exclusive sneak peek of 7th Son, Book Two: Deceit. It’s the first-ever launch party for a podcast novel in the online community Second Life, and everyone’s invited. Folks can meet author J.C. Hutchins in-world, and listen to interviews about Book Two they won’t find anywhere else. Listeners will learn about the upcoming novel, and get hints of the plot twists to come. They’ll even get to hear the first chapter of Deceit days before it’s released as a podcast.
And they’ll see fiction given dimension. In-world, 7th Son fans can step into the memorable “Womb” cloning chamber from Book One: Descent, where the story’s heroes were born. Fans can see the clones. They can be a clone. It’s a new life, there in Second Life.
The party starts at 7 pm Second Life time (10pm EST, 7pm PST) on Saturday Sept. 23, at the Podcast Island. Podcast Island is the Second Life community of Podcast Pickle. As always, the 7th Son experience won’t cost you a dime — all you need is a Second Life account, available for free at secondlife.com.
Fans joined the Descent. Now they can fight the Deceit. All are encouraged to visit Podcast Island at 7pm SL time on Sept. 23 to experience 7th Son for the first time … a second time.
7th Son, Book Two: Deceit debuts on Tuesday, Sept. 26th. The story will be available at jchutchins.net and at Podiobooks.com.
ABOUT SECOND LIFE:
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by more than 297,400 people from around the globe.
From the moment you enter the World you’ll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Sign up at secondlife.com/join. It’s free!
ABOUT PODCAST ISLAND:
Podcast Island was created by Gary “P. Dilly” Leland, the founder and owner of the Podcast Pickle podcast directory. Everyone is welcome on Podcast Island; podcasters and listeners as well as those not yet familiar with podcasting. This island exists as as a meeting place and virtual directory dedicated to bringing podcasting into the virtual realm of Second Life.
How to get to Podcast Island:
When you enter Second Life, simply click on the Search button near the bottom of your screen and select the “Places” tab at the top. Then enter in “Podcast Island” for a search term. There will be a button on the results which will allow you to teleport directly to the island … and to the party.
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For more informaton, please contact J.C. Hutchins at [email protected]. Visit jchutchins.net for additional news about the 7th Son podiobook trilogy.
Other than our recently updated Online Audio directory, there are several options for finding Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror related podcasts…
Oldest among the specialized driectories is TSFPN.com, which started strong last year and then too rapidly expanded into other categories of podcasting – this seems to have hurt their Speculative Fiction listings. A useful feature for some is their listing of podcasts by age appropriateness (General Audience, Safe For Age 14 and Not Work Safe) unfortunately they no longer include what I would consider some of the top podcasts (if you don’t list Escape Pod there has to be something wrong) though to be fair there are still some truly great podcasts listed on TSFPN, The Rev-Up Review, fior instance. Unfortunately the categories are not strictly SF, F and H related. Skepticality is listed and I think it is a terrific show, and I know it to be beloved by many speculative fiction fans, but it has no speculative fiction content at all.
SciFiPods.com, a new venture that started just one week ago, is a daughter site of PodcastPickle.com. Strangely it also lists Skepticality, just because the show is awesome doesn’t make it speculative fiction. This is a nit-pciky thing, I love skepticality but I’ve never found a away to mention my favorite no Speculative Fiction podcast on SFFaudio’s Online Audio page, sure History According To Bob is an awesome podcast, but it just isn’t related. Like TSFPN, SciFiPods also gives an explicit content ranking system to their 139 currently listed podcasts. You’ll find more content listed here than anywhere except for iTunes. Unfortunately the site has a flash intro, that while entirely skippable, serves no purpose.
iTunes’s Music Store (so named in spite the fact that the podcasts are all free), offers a comprehensive search feature that will dig into the podcast descriptions and find some excellent obscure podcasts. iTunes also offers featured podcasts picked by some nameless Apple folks. There are some terrific picks in there, but if a podcast doesn’t have a decent looking logo, the chances of being featured approach zero. There is a new feature tyhat alows you to browse by category too. By clicking around in there you may be able to find their “Arts : Literature” section, which lists many interesting podcasts.
Podiobooks.com gets short shrift in listings, it isn’t a podcast per se, though it does have a “what’s happening at podiobooks” podcast. Instead it is a podcast provider, a collection of podcast fiction, one like no other. Listed among its dozens and dozens of podcasts are three solid categories, Horror/DarkFantasy, Science Fiction, and Fantasy sections. In them are dozens of excellent podcast novels and books. Sure, some of the podcasts listed on Podiobooks.com get attention elsewere, 7th Son for example is currently listed at #1 on SciFiPods.com’s top 100 podcasts. But if you want to find some of the older titles, still available to your podcatcher Podiobooks.com is the place you need to go.
There is also the venerable, PodcastAlley.com, the oldest of all podcast directories. But they do not list “Science Fiction,” “Fantasy,” or “Horror” categories. The closest they come to making navigation managable is a “storytelling” category. There they do list many excellent podcasts, but the ranking system puts DVD review podcasts ahead of actual storytelling podcasts. Its more of a popularity ranker than a podcast directory in that respect.
So which directory should you be using? Here’s my opinion:
1. Use iTunes and slog through their massive listings using as many related search terms as you can. But be warned, they don’t always bring results, to find the Yog Radio podcast, for instance, you can’t use “Lovecraft” as a search term, even though Yog Radio releases unabridged H.P. Lovecraft stories, instead you’ll need to use the term “Cthulhu.”
2. Keep visiting SciFiPods.com, maybe they will become the resource in the months to come. But for that to happen they’ll probably have to dump that annoying intro.
3. Visit Podiobooks.com or subscribe to their blog’s RSS feed. The Podiobooker podcast is also useful, though it is currently on hiatus (I’m told it is coming back).
4. Keep us subscribed, or occasionally visit our Online Audio page. It is organized visually with logos from the listed podcasts and other online audio sources. It is by no means exhaustive, but we have tried to include many of the best podcast and online audio resources that deal in Speculative Fiction.
