Month: February 2007

Joe Gold serializing his novel The Lamp Post Motel

Online Audio

Joe Gold @ World Science Fiction Convention 2006
I met Joe Gold, a San Fransisco based writer, at The World Science Fiction Convention 2006 (last August) – he was in the dealer’s room signing copies of his first novel The Lamp Post Motel. At that time, I talked with Joe about the potential of podcasts and podcast novels, he seemed interested but I had forgotten about the conversation until today. It turns out that the conversation we had has born fruit…

Joe emailed us to say: “I am in the process of recording as a 49-chapter podcast (posted on my site for the book, coincidentally named TheLampPostMotel.com). The Lamp Post Motel suggests that UFOs are actually grad students of the future, doing research here in the past. In this case, they’re from 2000 years from now, looking for a field research site for sexual anthropology.”

And here it is…

Science Fiction audiobook - The Lamp Post Motel by Joe GoldThe Lamp Post Motel
By Joe Gold; Read by Joe Gold
49 MP3 Files – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: TheLampPostMotel.com
Status: IN PROGRESS
Students from the University of the Rings are doing field research in sexual anthropology—at the Lamp Post Motel. Elmo Skinner prefers logical circuits to unpredictable people. He owns the motel and watches his customers on hidden cameras—until the time travelers drop Elmo’s mind into the people he’s watching.

You can listen to the first 9 MP3 files, already recorded by clicking HERE.

posted by Jesse Willis

FREE MP3 NOVELETTE: The Sagan Diairy by John Scalzi

Online Audio - Free Science Fiction Audiobook

Blog - John Scalzi's WhateverJohn W. Campbell Award winning author John Scalzi writes:

“I have something special for you today, and something I am extraordinarily proud of. To celebrate the release of [The Sagan Diary] I and Subterranean Press have arranged for a reading of the book — the entire novelette — here on the Whatever. But it’s not me who will be reading the book. The Sagan Diary is meant to be the thoughts of Jane Sagan, as she looks over her life after the events of The Ghost Brigades and prepares for the life which will be detailed in The Last Colony. I wanted voices closer to hers than my own. So I asked some friends if they would speak for Jane Sagan: I asked Elizabeth Bear, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ellen Kushner, Karen Meisner, Cherie Priest and Helen Smith. Happily for me (and for you) they said yes. Each of them recorded a chapter (or more, in the case of Mary Robinette Kowal), and took the words I wrote for Jane and gave them extra dimensions — made more of them than I would be able to make of them myself. If you’ve wondered what Jane Sagan sounds like, she sounds like this. I was delighted to hear her voice coming through these readings, and deeply humbled by the efforts these women provided in letting Jane speak with them and through them. Without prejudicing your own hearing, let me say that I found myself getting emotional listening to these words given voice.”

The novelette in question is set in the same universe as Scalzi’s novels Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades…

The Sagan Diary
By John Scalzi; Read by various readers
9 MP3 Files – Approx. 81 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Subterranean Press / Scalzi.com/whatever
Published: February 2007

Download the entire audiobook:
Preface |MP3| Chapter 1 |MP3| Chapter 2 |MP3| Chapter 3 |MP3| Chapter 4 |MP3| Chapter 5 |MP3| Chapter 6 |MP3| Chapter 7 |MP3| Chapter 8 |MP3|

And as a point of interest you can click on over to SFFaudio’s own Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog to read and hear about her reading of The Sagan Diary – in that post Mary shows how just a few stumbling words can make a relatively short audiobook much longer.

posted by Jesse Willis

The Sci-Phi Show on Levinson’s Chronology Protection Case

Episode #31 of The Sci Phi Show |MP3| is on the topic of the “chronology protection conjecture” (an idea that physicist Stephen Hawking used to answer the question of why historic events don’t appear to be flooded with time traveling tourists). More specifically under discussion is the concept as represented in Paul Levinson’s story and radio drama of The Chronology Protection Case. Before you listen to the analysis check out the original tale itself |MP3| which can be found in the same feed. On the topic of the feed, you can subscribe to the podcast via this link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSciPhiShow

posted by Jesse Willis

James Patrick Kelly Podcast Through Audible.com

SFFaudio News

James Patrick Kelly has teamed up with Audible.com to launch a for-pay podcast called StoryPod. Audible’s StoryPod 1.0 subscribers will get thirteen stories delivered weekly (for $16.95 USD).

There are three more thirteen story sequences set to follow too! Over the course of the next year Kelly will read fifty-two of his previously-published stories.
Jim writes:

“This project grew out of my Free Reads podcast, which will continue with a reading of my novel Look Into The Sun. I do all the production myself. In effect, I have become my own publisher of audiobooks. The idea behind StoryPod is to mashup the traditional audiobook and the new form of podcasting. I introduce each story, read it and then in an afterword I discuss some of the ideas behind the story, or talk about how it came to be written.”

StoryPod 1.0 kicks-off with Kelly’s Hugo and Nebula nominated story Rat. Forthcoming in the first thirteen week sequence will be Hugo finalist Bernardo’s House (available through Free Reads and reviewed previously), Standing In Line With Mister Jimmy, Solstice (available through Infinivox) and Mr. Boy, The Leila Torn Show, The Edge of Nowhere (previously available through Free Reads), The Dark Side of Town, and more.

posted by Jesse Willis

New Releases

SFFaudio New Releases

Leading the pack, with a Murray Leinster classic …

Science Fiction Audiobook - Anthropological Note by Murray LeinsterAnthropological Note
By Murray Leinster; Read by Tara Platt
1 MP3 Dowload – 55 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Wonder Audio
Published: February 2007
Miss Cummings, a female anthropologist, is set down in the middle of a Venusian Krug village to study the alien culture. Ray Hale, a scondrel and murderer, is on his way to the very same village. Miss Cummings and Ray Hale have a past, but what of their future?

Audio Renaissance has much lengthier modern titles…

Science Fiction Audiobook - Empire by Orson Scott CardEmpire
By Orson Scott Card; Read by Stephan Rudnicki
9 CDs – 11 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published: November 2006
ISBN 1593979800 (CD)
The American Empire has grown too fast, and the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point. The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone. The battle rages between the high-technology weapons on one side, and militia foot-soldiers on the other, devastating the cities, and overrunning the countryside. But the vast majority, who only want the killing to stop, and the nation to return to more peaceful days, have technology, weapons and strategic geniuses of their own. When the American dream shatters into violence, who can hold the people and the government together? And which side will you be on?

Science Fiction Audiobook - Halo Ghosts Of Onyx by Eric NylandHalo: Ghosts Of Onyx
By Eric Nylund; Read by Jonathan Davis
CD or Digital Download – [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published:
ISBN: 1593979835
Covenant forces are sweeping through the outer colonies, glassing the planets and taking no survivors. But humans have a super weapon more powerful then one-hundred covenant troops, Spartans. These super soldiers are part human part machine, tactical and strong, and spell one word for the covenant, Death. Few are left, so ONI decides to mass produce them in a remote planet Onyx.

A freshly minted Octavia E. Butler novel, perhaps her last publication…

Science Fiction Audiobook - Fledgeling by Octavia E. ButlerFledgling
By Octavia E. Butler; Read by Tracey Leigh
10 CDs – 12 Hr 19 Min [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Published: February 2007
ISBN: 0792746716 (CD)
The late Octavia E. Butler’s final novel: The story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted–and still wants–to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of “otherness” and questions what it means to be truly human.

posted by Jesse Willis