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.
Escape Pod continues what it started last year – they are offering audio versions of some of this year’s Hugo nominees. Available right now are these nominees for Best Short Story:
Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt – |MP3|
The House Beyond Your Sky by Benjamin Rosenbaum – |MP3|
Eight Episodes by Robert Reed – |MP3|
Kin by Bruce McAllister – |MP3|
And over on Neil Gaiman’s site, you can get an audio version of the other Short Story nominee, How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman
Okay, before you click anything, first note, Mark Butler has placed an important disclaimer on his website, Mark’s Place, about these readings:
THESE BOOKS ARE COPYRIGHTED AND THESE FILES MAY NOT BE LISTENED TO WITHOUT FIRST BEING PURCHASED IN PRINT FORM. BY CLICKING ON THE LINKS BELOW YOU AGREE THAT YOU ARE A LEGAL OWNER OF A VERSION OF THESE BOOKS.
For those poor saps who haven’t already got ’em, paperbook or pulpmag copies of both of these out of print beauties can often be found on either eBay or Abebooks.com.
First up is, Doc Savage: Birds Of Death, which was originally published in Doc Savage Magazine‘s October 1941 issue. It follows The Man Of Bronze and his associates as they “battle strange yellow canaries whose mere song can kill a man and then bring him back to life!” This pulpy romp takes you from the streets of New York to the deepest darkest jungles.
Narrator, and Savage enthusiast, Mark Butler sez:
“I read this book into the microphone, trying to give the proper emphasis to the words and convey the feelings being written about. I’m not very good with different voices so the various characters sound a lot alike. But the story shines through my attempts. I’ve also added a lot of sound effects. Its not an ‘audio adaptation’ but I think it really enhances the audio.”
Doc Savage: The Birds Of Death
By Kenneth Robeson (AKA Lester Dent); Read by Mark Butler
14 MP3 Files – Approx. 3 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Source: Mark’s Place
Posted: 2004
Doc’s musical accomplishments are almost as well known as his scientific genius – but even he can’t match the peculiar talent of the strange yellow canaries whose sweet music is the song of death!
Chapter 01 |MP3| Chapter 02 |MP3| Chapter 03 |MP3|
Chapter 04 |MP3| Chapter 05 |MP3| Chapter 06 |MP3|
Chapter 07 |MP3| Chapter 08 |MP3| Chapter 09 |MP3|
Chapter 10 |MP3| Chapter 11 |MP3| Chapter 12 |MP3|
Chapter 13 |MP3 | Chapter 14 |MP3|
A similar description accompanies, The Living Shadow, this is a single narrator reading that includes sound effects. First published in 1931, in hearing it you’ll be hearing the original Shadow character, in his first ever story! It’s difficult to imagine that this character has spanned more than 75 years of spicy tales that can …”cloud men’s minds”… hmmm, what was I saying?
The Shadow: The Living Shadow
By Maxwell Grant (AKA Walter B. Gibson); Read by Mark Butler
38 MP3 Files – Approx. 6 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Source: Mark’s Place
Posted: 2006
“The Living Shadow is the first Shadow novel. It sets the tone for all of the stories to follow. The Shadow recruits Harry Vincent and we learn with Harry about the Shadow’s remarkable organization and methods. The story is full of mystery as Harry gradually learns the real truth behind the Laidlow murder and the missing diamonds.”
MP3s:
|Introduction|
|01|02|03|04|05|06|07|08|09|10|
|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|
|21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29|30|
|31|32|33|34|35|36|37|
Thanks so much Mark!
The sounds of things to come…
|MP3|
The MP3 above was recorded as a special promo by Scott D. Farquhar of Prometheus Radio Theatre. It looks like the plan is to use it on an upcoming LibriVox community podcast. The novel it is promoting is Alan E. Nourse’s Star Surgeon, one of our SFFaudio Challenge titles. Likely, Star Surgeon is just a few hours (or days) away from being officially catalogued, but I couldn’t wait to tell you after I heard this 5 minute promo. And BTW, we’ve already got a peek at the all new cover art for the official release, so we’re recycling our old art for this post, one last time. It’s sounding great, and looking great, thanks ComposerScott!
